Chain Reaction Cycles Discount Codes ( Chain Reaction Cycles Voucher Codes) 2025 UK

The birth of their first bicycle shop

In 1984, George and Janice Watson made the decision to open a bicycle shop and armed with just a £1,500 bank loan, they opened Ballynure Cycles in the small village of Ballynure in Northern Ireland. Janice and George have always been enthusiastic cyclists and used to spending their holidays on tour with their bikes, and with him also having a great level of mechanical experience after spending his youth working on cars and motorcycles, they were ideally placed to create an excellent little bicycle business for the family.

After some excellent years in Ballynure, the next obvious step in the business's progress was a move to the larger neighboring city of Ballyclare, with a much larger area of ​​influence. There was no bicycle shop in the city, so in 1989 a suitable location was found and the first major change took place.

Chain reaction cycles come to life!

The move from Ballynure to Ballyclare meant that the company name had to change and, planning for the future, calling the Ballyclare Cycles store did not seem like a good idea, as another change could happen! George and Janice Watson didn't want to go through the trouble of renaming the store again, so after a family conference and suggestions from their daughter, Lola, who now runs the marketing department, created the Chain Reaction Cycles. George and Janice's bicycle-crazy son Chris had turned 16 and was getting more involved in running the business in a more specialized direction. Although there was no real mountain bike scene in the local area at the time, the store took the bold step of stocking specialized brands like GT, Marin, Proflex and Cannondale.

The risk was worth it, not only in terms of selling shares, but attracting a hardcore group of off-road racers who lived and breathed the sport. This scene grew rapidly around the store and became a local meeting place, the first Chain Reaction Cycles store was the scene of many debates. Chain Reaction Cycles began to spread its wings and became one of Northern Ireland's most specialized retailers with people traveling to buy exotic components that most bicycle stores were not prepared to stock.

The workshop staff started to enter the races and, in those early days, races were few and far between. The CRC organized some of the first downhill races in Ireland and set up Northern Ireland's first Downhill Series. It was amazing how people got to know about races at that time, without local magazines, without internet and without e-mail, but people came and ran and the scene developed and flourished with word of mouth.

Our core values ​​are established.

During those first days of mail order sales, we quickly developed some of our core values, the same values ​​that remain with us today:

Sell ​​at the best possible price;

Sell ​​only quality products;

Strive to always dispatch the goods on the same day they were ordered.

With a wide variety of actions and growing ambition, they started to think about what should happen next. Reading the bicycle magazines, they were full of stores advertising all the latest kits - the same kit we had. They realized that the future was to reach what is now called a 'global market', spreading our wings beyond Ireland. The ads were reserved, although the price of a page was incredible for us at the time. They put their best stock on the list and wait by the phone. The ads hit the streets and the phone started ringing, and because we had invested in the product, they were able to sell, it seemed like people liked how we did things!

Scaling the business to deal with growth is always a difficult point, but we always resolve it. Developing the new procedures and processes they needed has always been natural. They continue to learn and change processes daily and weekly to keep up with growth.

The focus of correspondence begins.

In 1998, the small store in Ballyclare was about to burst. The displays had to give way to boxes of new kits piled up to the ceiling and it became obvious that another change was needed. Difficult decisions were needed. However, they realized that the future would be to move to Belfast and enter a larger retail unit and try to balance street retail with their growing direct mail business, or they could go completely the other way and bite the bullet and move to a warehouse with focus almost entirely by correspondence.

So they chose the second option and hoped that local customers who were already happy to travel to buy their latest exotic kit would not need a flashy street showroom. They knew that the warehouse would also give them the chance to greatly expand their stock offerings in quantity and also offer a much wider range of specialized products.

Chain Reaction Cycles hits the web.

Some of their rivals started getting sites, but most were difficult to use and didn't seem up to the job. They believed that a site should be about content and products. Users must be able to easily find what they are looking for and never get lost on the site. The second important thing for them was honesty in the stock. Even today, on some websites, the stock is not 'active' and depends on a distributor's store order. This was even more so at the turn of 2000, when some stores seemed to list everything they could and could not or could not indicate to the customer what they actually had in stock.

The website was a success.

They were no longer limited by the number of products we could put in magazine ads. CRC can now really showcase our huge range of inventory and great prices, and orders have really started to arrive.