Brompton Bicycle’s CEO, Will Butler-Adams Will Butler-Adams shows off Brompton Bicycle’s factory and HQ in Greenford, west London, with an energy comparable to that of a child showing off their Christmas presents. While you’d expect every business leader to talk up their company, his elevator pitch is earnest to the point of being impassioned.
“They’re a mind-blowing bit of kit,” he says of his firm’s famous folding bikes. “They’re empowering. They let people have real fun and freedom in cities.”
Butler-Adams provides an enthusiastic guided tour of the 8,000 sq m site, which juxtaposes powerful robotics with intricate human skill in the working bays of the main hall. Next to that, there is a Brompton museum, which charts the company’s rise from a cycling eccentricity to an internationally recognisable product. Upstairs, in addition to offices and conference rooms, there is a social space complete with a ping-pong table.
Butler-Adams, who studied engineering at Newcastle University, says that he’s a naturally curious person. He first learnt about Brompton during a chance encounter with the firm’s then chairman, Tim Guinness, on a London bus in 2002.
After working in a range of project management roles for chemical companies ICI and DuPont, at 28 he had planned on enrolling at Insead, the French business school. “But then I heard about this really cool bike and I just needed to find out more,” he explains.
After their bus meeting, Guinness introduced him to Andrew Ritchie, Brompton’s founder and inventor. Butler-Adams was offered a job and, by 2005, he […]
Continue reading the original article at: www.raconteur.net