‘I can still remember the day Eddy came to my school,’ says Johan Vranckx, beaming. ‘There were 30 students, and Eddy said to the teacher, “I need good welders who live in the neighbourhood.” The teacher said, “I will only give you one because the rest aren’t very good.” That one was me!
‘I went home and told my father and grandfathers, but they didn’t believe me. Eddy told me to present myself at the company, so both my grandfathers came with me to see for themselves. I was just a 16-year-old boy, working with guys over 40, many of them Eddy’s ex-teammates who knew him really well, so at first I was eating my sandwiches alone in the corner. But over the years I learned everything about the bike.’
As Vranckx talks he deftly tacks an ‘Eddy70’ anniversary frame together in a jig, ready to be TIG welded later on. There will be 70 such bikes made to celebrate the 70th birthday of the bike brand’s figurehead. The first went to The Cannibal himself – the rest are getting quickly snapped up by collectors as far away as Japan and the US. Each bike is made from a custom-drawn Columbus XCr stainless steel tubeset and will be painted in Merckx’s white and red Faema team livery. And each will cost a whopping €14,000 (approximately £10,000). Yet these bikes represent more than just a marketing stunt – they are totems to Eddy Merckx Cycles’ heritage, craft and, most importantly, reinvigoration.
Mastering the trade
Eddy Merckx, the man, began learning the bicycle-building ropes in the late 1970s, setting up shop across the courtyard of his farmhouse in Meise, just outside Brussels. He’d been encouraged by his friend and team sponsor, Ugo De Rosa, who built many of Merckx’s race bikes in the 1970s.
‘Eddy didn’t know what to do after his career [he retired in 1978], so Ugo convinced him to start a bike company. He said, “Put your name on the frame, I’ll introduce you to the suppliers and the other brands and teach you and your team how to weld and produce,”’ says marketing manager Peter Speltens, who’s guiding Cyclist round the Merckx facility now homed in the Brussels suburb of Zellik.
De Rosa was as good as his word, and Merckx sent Vranckx to Italy to work alongside De Rosa and his sons.
‘I was there for two months being taught different welding methods and ways of bike construction,’ says Vranckx. ‘I learned a lot, although the first bikes we created were too focused on the geometry Eddy used for racing: he had a long top tube, short head tube and laid back seat tube. So Eddy – who we call Mr Geometry because he was, and still is, incredibly fastidious about it – and Mr De Rosa created the Eddy Merckx Cycles geometry, which was for the normal amateur and is still the basis of our geometry today.’
With the newly acquired expertise and the design honed, Eddy Merckx Cycles officially opened its doors on 28th March 1980 and was soon supplying bikes to the pro peloton with Belgian team Marc-IWC-VRD, run by current Quick-Step manager Patrick Lefevere. That same year Merckx’s bicycles notched up two Tour stage wins – not bad for a company mere months old.
Over the next two decades Merckx continued to find favour among the pro ranks, sponsoring the likes of Team 7-Eleven, Motorola and Team Telekom, with riders such as Erik Zabel, Jan Ullrich and Lance Armstrong pedalling Merckx bikes. It was proof that even in retirement Merckx was a force to be reckoned with. Yet today Eddy Merckx Cycles is conspicuously absent from the top flight, so what happened?
‘Eddy found out that his son, Axel, didn’t want to take over the company, and Eddy was really depressed about it,’ says Speltens. ‘So in 2008 he sold up. The problem was it was a Belgian holding company that bought us and the guy who ran it had made a fortune from selling shoes, not bikes. He thought, “Everyone is cycling, we have a name like Eddy Merckx, it’s impossible that we won’t double or triple our figures if we sponsor a big team right now.” Then suddenly there was a request from Patrick Lefevere, whose Quick-Step team was looking for a bike supplier, and a three-year contract was signed. But it was all based on a non-realistic estimation of growth. At that time [2010] we only had 21 people working at the company – far too few to support a pro team.’
Speltens estimates the deal cost the company €2 million a year, a huge amount for a company selling 7,000 bicycles annually. On top of this were rider demands – Tom Boonen needed a ‘special frame in between a 58 and 60cm made just for him’. Then there was the problem of Sylvain Chavanel taking the green and yellow jerseys on the same day in the 2010 Tour.
‘That was a unique day for us. Everyone had to stay until midnight to get a special frame painted, Eddy came by to sign it, and we had it at the team hotel by 2.30am ready to be built up by the mechanics,’ says Speltens.
Despite the publicity the deal was untenable, so it was with some relief that Specialized bought Eddy Merckx Cycles out of its contract a year early. More good news followed in 2012 when the company was bought by the Diepensteyn consortium, which overhauled the management and offered a crucial capital injection. That paved the way to sponsoring Belgian Continental team Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise, and also to bringing the man himself back to the company as an advisor.
‘The new owners wanted Eddy back in, so now he’s here every fortnight, running around, asking questions, complaining about this, wanting to adjust that. He’s always had the same attention to detail, and it’s great for the company. I don’t think our bicycles have ever been better.’
Bikes and brewers
Today Speltens estimates that Eddy Merckx Cycles puts out around 10,000 bikes a year, and has a solid financial base thanks to its new owners who, happily for the workforce, also own Belgian beer brand Palm, meaning the fridges are always well stocked.
Like most big bike manufacturers, the majority of Merckx bicycles are made in Asia and shipped to Belgium to be assembled. That might sound like a sad departure from the old days, when Merckx built exclusively in Belgium, overseeing a team of 50 virtually from his kitchen window but, as Speltens explains, it’s a necessary – and desirable – way of doing business. ‘I remember my first day at the factory in Meise. I was sitting at a desk with the CEO when the door behind us opens and Eddy comes in. It was a direct link to his house via this small kitchen! But times change, the world is carbon and the top-level suppliers, the machines, the expertise are in Asia. Yes those factories build for other people, but that is an advantage too. We design everything here – we only use closed moulds, it is never off the shelf – but to be in the same factories as other top-level brands is a huge advantage. The pool of knowledge there is very deep.’
Yet the Eddy70 is still being made in Belgium, so could that translate into a wider line of frames being made in their spiritual home? The answer is an unequivocal ‘no’, although with a somewhat surprising revelation.
‘We have made scandium frames [a type of aluminium alloy] here for years, and we offered them in our catalogue until three years ago,’ Speltens says. ‘We still supply them as special orders, and paint them here, as we do with other special orders and team bikes. But while people say, “Wow, great, made in Belgium,” to order this metal bike costs almost as much as buying a top-level carbon Merckx, and for a consumer that doesn’t add up. We’re offering two Columbus steel bikes for 2016, but to make them here is just not realistic. They have to be made in Asia to deliver them at a reasonable price.’
Pista perfect
So where does all that leave Vranckx, Merckx’s original framebuilder? Back in his workshop he seems content enough. Piles of stainless steel tubes are awaiting his attention to become Eddy70 frames, with each taking two days to complete before another two days in the paintshop next door. He’s the sole builder on this project.
To some it might seem a lonely existence representing the throes of a bygone age. As if to make this point more poignant, Vranckx lifts down a Molteni-orange Merckx Pista frame from the workshop wall, explaining that this is the last frame he ever made at the original factory. But far from the nostalgic tones one might expect, Vranckx begins to smile widely again.
‘This work is better on your own. Also for me it is better than the brazing we used to do on bikes like the Pista. TIG welding is more difficult – it’s all on show so you cannot make mistakes. I will make each of these frames perfect. Then when I am finished with the project I think I will make one for myself.’
Whether that might truly be the last steel Eddy Merckx Cycles frame to be made in Belgium remains to be seen, but for the time being it doesn’t matter. Eddy’s back, the bikes are back, and the future’s looking rosy.