Holdsworth - Present

Present

After the death of Mrs Margaret Holdsworth in the 1970s, the company was split in two.

The wholesale and mass-production side of the business called the Holdsworth Company, which owned the rights to all of the brands, stayed in the Holdsworth family. A change in cycling tastes from road to mountain bikes, general foreign competition through cheap imports from Asia and a sequence of management difficulties led to it being sold to rival bicycle manufacturer Elswick Hopper plc in the mid-1980s. The residual brands of this side of the company are today part of the Falcon Cycles division of Tandem Group plc. A new Holdsworth Professional road bike was announced in January 2011, using the famous orange and blue colour scheme.

Roy Thame inherited two-thirds of the company, effectively inheriting the specialist retail division of the company known as W.F. Holdsworth. Today the shop at 132 Lower Richmond Rd, Putney, is still there. After a period selling just low to mid-range mountain and hybrid bikes, it has now tried to resurrect some of the Holdsworth heritage by selling road bikes, including some top-end frames (e.g. De Rosa) and recently reintroduced some Holdsworth branded road bikes and clothing. Roy Thame died aged 85 in 2006.

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