This morning I wrote a fairly bland, financial story outlining that Rapha has reported a loss for the seventh year in a row . It was awash with technical terms like EBITDA and pre-exceptional losses; the terms I really never thought I’d be using as a cycling journalist. It’s chugging along nicely, and will probably be the top tech story of the day before being buried into obscurity.
The story was posted to Instagram, after which I went to the gym, had a sauna, and packed a small test ride in on the new Brompton G Line. On returning home after this brief foray I was surprised to see that such a seemingly beige financial story had lit up the comments. At the time of writing over 100 people have weighed in on their mobile keyboards, and the majority of them seem to be gleefully enjoying the fact that the brand is in financial disarray.
Most, but not all of them seem to focus on the brand being ‘overpriced’, or that it’s not cool anymore. This latter point kind of sent my head into a spin as I’d argue that no brand has done more than Rapha to make cycling as a whole cool. If it continues to post losses, and eventually goes under, it will be a huge loss, not just in terms of the genuinely good product the brand produces - I’ll get to that in a bit - but in terms of the cultural void it would leave behind.
Cycling used to be lame I have ridden bikes my whole life, but growing up nobody besides the occasional oddball and my best friend Henry had any inclination to ride.