Rapha recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary and for the majority of that time it was the darling brand of cycling. Everything Rapha touched turned to gold. Founder Simon Mottram saw cycling apparel differently than anyone else and created an entirely new market for people who connected with his vision.

In 2017, RZC, the Walton brothers’ investment arm, bought a majority stake in Rapha. Things began to change, and not in a way their customers and community hoped. In 2021, Mottram stepped down as CEO and the business has gone through two (or three, depending on how you count) CEOs since. Not only have they had to deal with the lasting effects of COVID, but many customers will say that the brand is not what it used to be.

Last year, in August 2024, Fran Millar stepped into the role of CEO. She has a wide array of experience that has prepared her for this unique challenge, most recently turning around the struggling British heritage brand, Belstaff. Earlier, she was instrumental in starting and running Team Sky, organising Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two-hour marathon project, and many other career achievements.

In this wide-ranging interview with Millar, we talk about what she intends on fixing at Rapha, how she’s going to go about that, and what her long-term vision is for the business.

Welcome to this special episode where we dive deep into one of cycling's oldest, most fascinating, and perhaps largely unknown stories - how a single French family, best known as their business entity the Amaury Sporting Organisation or ASO, came to control the Tour de France, the world's most famous bicycle race. Because, if you recall, they didn’t invent the TdF. A little french newspaper called L’Auto did.

Today we're exploring this remarkable story detailed in Alex Duff's book "Le Fric" (which is slang in french for The Money) and we’ll be speaking with Alex himself about this incredible saga of family, power, and money. Alex is a UK born sports journalist and author of 3 books who has spent much of his career covering the intersection of business, money, and sports.

To understand the ASO and the grip they have on the crown jewel of professional cycling, you need to understand the history of the Tour de France and how the Amaury family acquired it. History, national pride, politics and legacy mean so much more than money to this family, and is why the Tour de France will likely never have a price tag put on it.

The Cape Epic is widely regarded as the crown jewel in mountain bike stage racing. Many notable legends of the sport have called it the Tour de France of mountain biking. So how did Kevin Vermaak, a 30-year-old man new to mountain biking create a cultural phenomenon in the MTB world in the far away land of South Africa? This is his remarkable story...

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You could argue that Bonnie Tu is the most powerful woman in cycling, although she wouldn’t think of describing herself that way. She’s best known for being the face of the Liv brand she created back in 2008, but more than that she’s chairperson of the largest bike brand in the world: the Giant Bicycle Group. What does that mean? Quite simply, she runs the entire company.

Giant Bicycles is a US$2.1 billion-per-annum publicly traded company that produces millions of bikes per year, while also serving as manufacturer for some of the largest and most reputable bike brands.

Giant was founded in 1972. That’s 48 years ago, and Bonnie was one of the founding shareholders. As you’ll hear, she has been very influential in many of the company’s foundations and its pathway up until now.

This is the growth story of Bonnie Tu and not necessarily the story of Giant Bicycles or Liv. But they’re so intertwined that it’s hard not to tell one without the other.

In recent years Rapha has been one of the most innovative, aspirational and disruptive businesses in cycling and Simon Mottram is the mastermind behind the brand. He took the company from a single idea, with the premise of how he felt about road cycling and how he wanted it portrayed. From a single jersey that wasn’t even ready in time for the company launch during in 2004, he build Rapha into the darling child of cycling brands that inspired an entirely new market of ‘micro apparel brands’ and showed many others of the cycling industry the power of storytelling and looking at the sport differently.

This is Simon’s remarkable story of how he built Rapha.

Indoor training has been around for longer than I can remember, but when Zwift came along in 2014 it changed the market forever. The company came into the world with bold ambitions, reimagined the space and what it could become, and has grown the market to a size that nobody could have imagined.

Some of the earliest pioneers in the indoor virtual world space were the likes of Computrainer and Tacx back in the late 90s, early 2000s. But they never really delivered on the promise of making indoor training much more enjoyable. They can’t be blamed for lack of vision or not trying – the technology wasn’t even there at the time. Social networks didn’t exist, multi player online games weren’t around, broadband speeds were slow and wireless protocols such as ANT+ and BTLE hadn’t been invented yet.

But, in 2010 when a gaming software developer in Southern California named Jon Mayfield began tinkering with his kinetic trainer and finding ways for it to communicate with a virtual world he built, he had no idea how big this would become.

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To most of us it would seem inconceivable to build one of the biggest bike brands in the world from absolutely nothing. Think of the capital it would require, the global distribution network, complex supply chains, logistics, manufacturing, sales, design … It’s a daunting endeavour and hard to imagine where you’d even begin.

Well, it didn’t start with all of those elements in mind. Roman Arnold, Canyon's founder, simply started cycling as a way of competing for recognition and approval from his father over his three brothers. His father sold bike parts at his weekend races to help pay for the hobby. And the rest is history.

He started from humble beginnings, got his hands dirty, educated himself, and grew Canyon to be one of the largest cycling brands on the planet through baby steps, hard work, diligent spending and most of all, a true passion for cycling.

For a brand that feels so young and progressive, some might mistake it for an overnight success. But as you’ve now learned it’s been over 45 years in the making, one small step at a time with the resources that Mr Arnold has had right in front of him.

This is Roman’s remarkable story of how he build Canyon Bicycles.

Many would argue that Cervélo is one of the most innovative bike brands in the cycling industry. Back in the 1990s when they first started, almost everyone else was focusing on lightweight bikes. Cervélo, meanwhile, was busy pioneering bicycle aerodynamics. I’ve ask engineers at various bike companies which brand impresses them most with regards to engineering and innovation, and overwhelmingly I hear them say Cervélo.

The genesis of Cervélo started in 1995 when two young engineering students named Phil White and Gerard Vroomen met in the composites lab at McGill University in Canada. Over a span of 15 years they went from building a crazy aerodynamic time trial bike as a university project to creating one of the most disruptive and loved bike brands in the world.

But what many people don’t know is that as wildly successful Cervélo was up until 2011, it was a pressure cooker of constant financial challenges which ultimately led to Gerard and Phil selling the business to Dutch holding company, PON. 2008-2011 had been the perfect storm for Cervélo with the global financial crisis, setting up a professional team that was far more successful than anticipated, and a private lender which led to the company’s turn of events.

Escape Collective is entirely member-funded. If you like this podcast please consider supporting us by becoming a member: https://escapecollective.com/member/