Wiggle and Chain Reaction Cycles' websites are back online this morning, Frasers Group restoring the old orange logo to the former having also purchased all the rights for Wiggle's in-house brands such as Nukeproof, Vitus and DhB in a deal believed to be worth less than £10 million.
Last week, the websites shut before Mike Ashley's Frasers Group, which has added Wiggle Chain Reaction to a retail portfolio that already includes Sports Direct and Evans Cycles, confirmed that they would be relaunched this week.
The new websites have an air of familiarity about them, the much-criticised Wiggle rebrand scrapped and the old orange logo reinstated. It also states that new lines are being added "daily", the road bike section currently only displaying Cannondale, Cube and Pinnacle models, many of which remain heavily discounted. Pinnacle, Muddy Fox and Dare 2b represent the first sight of Ashley's Evans and Sports Direct brands appearing on WiggleCRC.
> "The assumption was Wiggle Chain Reaction wasn't going anywhere": Ex-employee talks "shock" at retail giant's demise
There have been some reports of issues with the new websites, some pages "could not be found" or "no longer exist". And while the past few months have seen a fire sale of old stock (one road.cc reader last week snapping up 15 3T Eye cycle computers – which retailed at £94.99 when first released in 2016 – for 99p each) there are still some heavily discounted products to be found following relaunch too. The Schwinn Scree Gravel Bike for example is cut to £189, from £549.99, in all sizes.
Last week, following their closure, Frasers Group told road.cc that the websites would be back online shortly as the retail empire aims to "become the no.1 Sporting Goods retailer in Europe".
"Alongside the e-commerce relaunch, which is due to take place next week, Frasers Group is looking to create commercial partnerships to enhance and expand these own-brand lines through development, sales, licensing, and international distribution opportunities," Frasers Group said.
Russell Merry, Managing Director of Wheels for Frasers Group, formerly the managing director of Cycling Sports Group and director of Pacific Cycles, added: "Wiggle and Chain Reaction are well established names among riders in the UK and across Europe and the acquisition of both brands is consistent with our ambition to become the no.1 Sporting Goods retailer in Europe.
"It also brings with it the opportunity to work with respected partners through the highly admired, award-winning product lines that Wiggle and Chain Reaction had built. We are excited to explore partnerships with suppliers or distributors looking to expand their offering or an organisation looking to get a foothold in the market by leveraging some established names."
> Mike Ashley's Frasers Group buys Wiggle Chain Reaction Cycles for less than £10 million
The full-list of intellectual property acquired includes Vitus Bikes and Ragley, Prime's components range, DhB clothing, Lifeline Tools, Mobi bike pressure washers and outdoor clothing range, Fohn. However, it isn't confirmed yet whether any of the personnel involved in developing and running these in-house brands have been retained, leading to uncertainty over their future development.
Before the imminent purchase of Wiggle by Mike Ashley, it was reported that almost everyone in the company was made redundant in a second wave of job cuts, with several employees confirming the news on LinkedIn.
Last May, Frasers Group also bought the stock and intellectual property assets of online retailer ProBikeKit (PBK), which had previously shut down its lifestyle division citing "lossmaking".
Frasers Group swooped for Wiggle CRC following months of uncertainty, job losses and the descent into administration after its parent company suffered a withdrawn funding commitment from its own parent company amid "severe liquidity and profitability challenges".
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26 comments
I won't be giving the odious Mike Ashley any of my money. Plenty of other retailers out there providing good service, and with good stock levels.
The website says old accounts haven't been transferred over; so what's happened to everyone's data...?
The usual Mike Ashley shambles...
They only bought the brand, right? So that need not include customer data / accounts.
Yes, so who's marshalling the old data?
presumably the administrators of whats left of Wiggle that Mikey didnt buy.
which is fair enough, Id have hoped a benefit of data protection rules was that a retailers customer data isnt just something you can buy from bankrupt firms.
Ditto.Well said.
Doesn't inspire much confidencce.
The real shame would be if good quality/ reasonably priced dHb stuff suffers.
It isn't Wiggle though.
Yeah, not too impressed so far. No sign of existing Wiggle account being available or Wiggle+ .... glad I got my money's worth out of that!
I'll give it time to develop but if it is anything like Evans website (and prices) which I gave up on a long time ago after some very poor experiences trying to order stuff, my money will be going elsewhere, either LBS or several other 'not-so-LBSs' that also have very good websites too.
Well on the plus side. The website is a million more times usable compared to the horrendous change that was made to it months before the buyout.
Unfortunately its now a souless sportsdirect/evancycles et al' clone.
Im guessing Ashley will do what he did to evans and also get rid of most of the major brands and other things that wiggle used to stock to streamline the business
What worries me is when I go to the "Contact Us" section of the new site.
It's just a series of links to text answering simple questions and absolutely no way to contact them.
No email address, no phone number.That gives you an idea of the service you can expect; there isn't any.EDIT: OK I eventually found the contact details... down a flight of stairs, behind a locked filing cabinet, beind a door marked "Beware of the Leopard". I'm still not impressed though.
Superb HHGTTG reference.
I see what you did there Arthur
Also comes with Evans delivery pricing. Need to factor in at least £5 on top for delivery.
Time for RoadCC to support and promote all the smaller bike shops with online sales presence.
And all of us need to keep buying the occasional item from smaller retailers/LBS or watch the race to the bottom continue.
As usual Mike got rid of all knowledge staff and destroyed another company, will now be selling all the cheap stuff.
Well, they've definitely got rid of anyone who knows anything about bikes: breaks for brakes.
I'm guessing this is just going to be the same stock as the Evans website?
The app doesn't seem to be working again. It's still got the rebrand colours and the "spring's in, everything's out" headline.
Great to see Schwinn MTBs on sale for £149.99.
The skilled people who designed and sourced the products are gone, but the old logo is back? Well, that's a no from me. I'd rather shop for bike equipment in the middle aisle of Lidl than give Frasers Group any of my money.
Let's hope they ditch the absolute pile of shite website they "upgraded" to.
Looks like it's just a 'wiggle orange' colour scheme for the existing Evans web site at the moment
But with only a subset of the range - so far wiggle has just 24 products from Muddyfox against the 73 to be found on both Evans and SportsDirect websites.
Wiggle now an Everlast stockist with 300 of their products (SportsDirect has 808 and Evans none).
The Evans "own-brand" Pinnacle clocks in at 156 products on all 3 sites.
Oh, and so far the wiggle in-house brand dhb has just 82 products listed on the wiggle site, but 261 on Evans and a whopping 421 on SportsDirect (most with a "Preorder - Image coming soon" thumbnail)
You can imagine them sitting down and saying "people didn't like the new Wiggle branding, so lets dump it and go to the old version, that will be a popular move with customers". What people didn't like about the new branding was the website wasn't as easy to use. He's now got a crappy Evans website with an old logo slapped on it. It will be even less choice now. Evans, Wiggle, CRC, Sports Direct, Muddy Fox, DHB, Pinnacle it will all be the same generic crap with different logos