LONDON — One winter’s day in the early 1980s, a young Will Butler-Adams found himself in the middle of a predicament that would have terrified most children. Skiing with his sisters, he veered off-piste and lost sight of them on a steep, unfamiliar slope. The weather had taken a turn, dropping a haze of fog over the mountain, and every direction looked the same. It was, by most accounts, a child’s worst nightmare. Yet for Butler-Adams and his siblings, that sense of peril was electrifying. They imagined themselves explorers on a daring expedition, convinced that if they just stayed calm, they’d find their way. When rescuers finally tracked them down at dusk, the children emerged feeling more heroic than humbled.
It’s a telling prelude to the life that followed. Because for Sir Will Butler-Adams, CEO of Brompton, the iconic British maker of foldable bicycles—stepping into the unknown has always been part of the adventure.
For Will, risk is not a threat but an invitation, one that has shaped both his personal exploits and his business philosophy. “We once got lost skiing,” he says, recalling that misadventure with the glee of a schoolboy, “and they sent a search party for us. We thought we were absolute heroes.”
A Curious Road to Brompton
That ready embrace of the unknown might explain how Butler-Adams came to helm a company beloved for its two-wheeled contraptions that fold down small enough to slip under a desk. Growing up in a family where “if you can’t be good, be careful” was considered sufficient parenting advice, he roamed free in the countryside, rode ponies to the local sweet shop, and occasionally got in over his head. That fearless childhood laid the groundwork for adulthood, where forging new territory—geographically and creatively—felt natural.
Butler-Adams was awarded a first class Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in Mechanical engineering from Newcastle University in 1997. During his degree he studied the Spanish language at the University of Valladolid in Spain.
He joined Brompton over two decades ago, back when the folding bicycle was more of a curiosity than a mainstream hit. Many of his peers in business school saw an opportunity in slick corporate careers, but Butler-Adams went the other way, choosing a small British manufacturer that seemed decidedly unglamorous. “Friends thought I’d lost the plot,” he admits, “but something about Brompton just grabbed me.”
Now, at six foot four, he still cuts a curious figure riding through London on a petite foldable bike, yet the image encapsulates his ethos: defy expectations, embrace adventure, and find joy in the unexpected.
Turbulence in the Global Cycle Market
Such a sense of boldness might come in handy these days. Earlier this year, The Guardian reported a significant drop in Brompton’s profits, tying it to oversupply in the post-pandemic bicycle market and shifts in consumer demand. That news made waves in an industry that had boomed when lockdowns drove people outdoors to explore cycling in record numbers. Now, with some of that initial enthusiasm subsiding—and supply chains righting themselves—brands are grappling with extra inventory and thinning margins.
“Of course, the sector is in absolute turmoil,” Butler-Adams concedes. “You can’t just skip along and think everything’s rosy.” Yet his response to the slump has the same measured calm he displayed as a child on the ski slope. He doesn’t seem rattled; rather, he leans on his decades-old conviction that adversity should sharpen rather than diminish. “If anything,” he says, “these moments demand a bit of madness, but not in a panic-stricken sense—more in a creative, let’s-try-something sense.”
That blend of caution and audacity is emblematic of Brompton’s own ethos. For nearly fifty years, the company has built bicycles around Andrew Ritchie’s three-part fold design, allowing riders to collapse a full-size bike into a neat, portable package. Over time, it evolved from a niche commuter choice to a global symbol of sustainable, stylish urban living—particularly in cities like London, New York, Tokyo, and increasingly Beijing.
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Heritage Meets Innovation
Brompton’s heritage resonates deeply with Butler-Adams’s personal background. His family roots trace back to the wine trade, a line of work more than a little concerned with longevity. “From a multi-generational wine business, you learn that greed doesn’t work—it’s about building trust,” he explains. “If you’re thinking fifty years ahead, you don’t cut corners for quick gains.”
That perspective, he says, guides Brompton’s focus on “designing out obsolescence, not in.” The company is known to service bikes that are 20 or 30 years old—loyal owners simply bring them in for tune-ups or upgrades, and the frames roll on. Butler-Adams compares it to a treasured bottle of Rioja: if properly stored and cared for, it can last for decades. “We’re not perfect,” he’s quick to add, “but we believe in creating a product that genuinely endures. It’s exactly what the planet needs more of—fewer products, made better.”
Such a philosophy extends into his personal life. He favours high-quality coats and shoes; a ventile coat he has kept for 15 years, regularly reproofing it so it looks “cooler with age”—over disposable fast fashion. Will continues, “The same with shoes. I’ve got a pair of Cheaney shoes that have lasted forever. People spend loads on white trainers that look wrecked in nine months. I’d rather invest in something I can repair and keep for years. That’s the same mindset we have at Brompton: buy less, buy better. We want things that endure.”
Flying Lessons for the Boardroom
Though courage is part of his persona, Butler-Adams approaches risk with more than sheer nerve. In his twenties, at Newcastle University, he was intrigued by a classmate who casually mentioned flying her own plane back home to Zimbabwe. It sounded impossibly cool, so he and a friend decided to become pilots themselves. “I’d never been in a small aircraft at all,” he recalls, still sounding surprised at his younger self. “A few months later, there I was, up in the skies, learning how to navigate cloud cover.”
It wasn’t just a whim; Butler-Adams found it sharpened his instincts about managing uncertainty—something that has proved invaluable at Brompton. He points to an Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) rating, which allows him to fly in clouds. “When you’re in cloud, you have zero visibility. You have to trust your instruments—altitude, airspeed, vertical speed, cross-referencing everything. If one gauge fails, you look to the others. It’s a perfect metaphor for running a business once it scales: you can’t see everything yourself, so you rely on data and metrics. But if that data is off, you could be a hundred feet from a mountain and not know it.”
He cites another flying lesson that translates seamlessly into corporate leadership. “Sometimes, if the plane goes into an unexpected roll, the worst thing you can do is wrestle the controls too hard. You might overcorrect and spin it. The best approach can be to let go for a moment—let the plane stabilise—then intervene with a clear head. In business, that means stepping back when trouble hits, gathering yourself, and making calculated decisions. Panic rarely produces a better outcome.”
Wine, Wonder, and the Wow Factor
Though the conversation inevitably touches on the minutiae of supply chain woes and brand strategy, Butler-Adams’s voice warms noticeably when he speaks about wine. Being a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Vintners, he likes to compare great bottles to well-crafted bikes: both can be family heirlooms in their own right.
If stranded on a desert island with only three bottles, he says his picks would be Pingus 1996—from Spain’s Ribera del Duero region—“because it’s extraordinary after 15–20 years. Second is a 1933 bottle that came through the family. My dad had six bottles, and we drank them only at very special family gatherings. Lastly, I’d bring a very old rare Sherry—a 25-year-old blend from a bodega in Jerez. Sherry is underrated; I love presenting something unexpected that blows people’s minds. It’s not about the alcohol content; it’s that it’s so interesting, a bit of a hidden gem!” The laughter in his voice suggests he relishes confounding those with more conservative tastes. He says, “It's just absolutely an epitome of if you really want to produce something outstanding, it's not cheap, but it delivers over time and it's so special. It’s the same with Brompton: people who doubt might think, ‘Who would want a bike that folds so small?’ And then they try it, and they’re converted.”
A Boyhood Sense of Globalism
Butler-Adams’s view of the world as a playground of possibilities emerged early. He recalls his father’s stories of travelling by boat to Australia at 20, meeting people in far-flung places, or going on safari in the days when sleeping in canvas tents with lions nearby was not for the faint of heart.
Those tales might explain why Brompton’s expansion into Beijing feels less like a bold frontier and more like a natural extension. “We’ve learned a ton from our Chinese customers,” Butler-Adams says. “For them, Brompton is almost this status thing for young urban professionals—our average buyer there is under 30, and it’s our biggest market now. That’s not something we ever predicted a few decades ago, but it aligns with the idea that if you have a useful, well-made product, people anywhere might see the value.”
Out of all the countries Butler-Adams has visited for work, I asked which one has left the most lasting impression “It’s not really countries, it’s cities—because we are a city business. Each city has its own journey. When I first went to China, I visited Beijing. There’s that song ‘Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing,’ and we’ve been brought up with this vision of Beijing being full of bikes. But when I got there (17 years ago), it was not like that at all. There were no bicycles—it was smoggy, dark, cold…I remember cycling in Tiananmen Square, and there was a big bike lane, but I was literally the only person on a bicycle! Fast-forward 17 years: now Beijing has big, wide cycle lanes, it’s much cleaner, more electric vehicles, and the transformation is breathtaking.”
“The same goes for Paris—seven or eight years ago it was choked with cars and fumes, but now you see way more people on bikes than in cars. So we do face big challenges in our cities, but places like Beijing or Paris prove that truly transformative change can happen in less than ten years…It’s very positive—it gives you a lot of hope. People are happier in those cities as a result.”
Riding Out the Market Downturn
All of which leads back to the present-day challenges. The Guardian headline was stark: Brompton’s profits had fallen amid the broader bike industry turmoil. The pandemic-driven sales frenzy of 2020 and 2021 may have lulled many companies into thinking demand would remain permanently high. Instead, it has levelled off, and brands from giant to boutique are struggling with surplus stock. Butler-Adams calls it a “reset,” emphasising that Brompton doesn’t see gloom as a reason to abandon its principles.
“We double down on what we do best: a product that’s built to last, in line with how cities are evolving. London, Paris, Beijing—they show how quickly an urban landscape can transform if people commit to better, greener mobility.”
It’s exactly that sense of long-haul thinking that gives Brompton a certain gravitas. Like a family winery that invests in casks not paying off for decades, Brompton invests in R&D projects that take years to mature. The brand’s electric range, developed partly with Williams Advanced Engineering, came after careful research into how best to integrate power-assist without losing the lightweight, foldable essence. “We’re not aiming to be some unicorn that doubles overnight,” Butler-Adams says. “We’d rather grow 15 or 20 percent a year, building real trust and real customer loyalty. Longevity is the point.”
Something that particularly excites me is the addition of the Brompton G Line to the fold. I was able to review the G Line recently but what I am especially intrigued with is the electric version that I hope to test one day soon.
Will shares, “The G Line is definitely a big step. But the electric development with Williams was also huge, as was the T Line. When you stand back, it’s really a natural evolution of trying to create ‘urban freedom for happier lives.’
Some of that R&D, he admits with a grin, comes from pure trial-and-error—like a trip to the Shetland Islands where he and a group strapped Bromptons to kayaks, paddling from one island to the next, testing the bikes on unpaved roads in a remote, windswept landscape. “We wanted to see how the bikes held up in extreme conditions,” he says. “That’s how we learn and how we end up improving the product incrementally, pushing them well beyond what they were originally designed for.”
Will continues, “So we’ve been thinking about these improvements for years, and we try to do it well—proper first-principles research, optimising within the Brompton fold, and delivering the best possible ride. It takes time, and it’s incremental. But once you actually ride one of these newer bikes, the penny drops, and you see the difference.”
In other words, Brompton’s G Line stands as a significant milestone: retaining the core three-part fold while offering modern refinements that meet the evolving demands of urban mobility.
Beyond the Fold
Curiously, if there’s one other project that captures Butler-Adams’s imagination, it’s not a new kind of bike at all; it’s something more stationary. “A house,” he says, without missing a beat when asked what he would design outside the bicycle realm. He enumerates the woes of typical home construction: flushing toilets with drinking water, letting rainwater go unused, ignoring the potential of solar energy. “We could fix so much of that at the design stage,” he notes. “It’s not rocket science. It’s just about thinking beyond what’s always been done.”
The parallels to Brompton’s design philosophy are obvious: rather than accept conventional limits, question them. Where can we fold, tweak, or retool a tradition to eliminate waste or improve efficiency?
Out of Office
Away from the whirr of production lines, how does Will Butler-Adams unwind? “I go to the garden,” he confides. “It’s one of life’s simple pleasures, where you must work hard to reap the rewards. You can’t rush it, and you’re so close to nature you can observe her majesty.” It’s the unhurried complement to his adrenaline-loving younger self—yet as grounded and methodical as a pilot trusting the readouts on a flight panel.
When he’s home, his favourite room is the drawing room: “It’s an eclectic mix—old family furniture, paintings by friends, a piano, a wood fire in winter. A calm oasis,” he says. You sense it’s where he can catch his breath, surrounded by the mementos of a life devoted to curiosity and craft.
On the Horizon for Brompton
With Brompton’s 50th anniversary coming in 2026, Butler-Adams is both proud and pragmatic about the company’s trajectory. “We’re not about some big unicorn moment,” he reiterates. “We’re about evolution, not revolution.” That means carefully refining the design, perhaps expanding the electric range, or exploring new materials—as they did with titanium in their T Line. But he won’t drop hints of any jaw-dropping new product. “We’re building on decades of engineering. That’s the beauty: we can keep surprising people without abandoning our DNA.”
He’s also mindful that urban life is changing in unpredictable ways. Congestion, environmental imperatives, and shifting work patterns continue to reshape how—and why—people move through cities. The folding bike, which was once a novelty, now feels like a pragmatic response to dense living. Brompton’s storied reliability may well be its best asset in a time when trust in brand promises has grown precarious.
A Mindset for the Marathon
Reflecting on his journey, Butler-Adams offers a piece of advice he’s often shared with his daughters: “Dedicate your working life to something you believe in, but don’t take it too seriously. That clouds your judgment and stops you having fun.” It’s a sentiment that frames his entire ethos—equal parts earnest commitment and playful exploration. He’s quick to note that building bikes is, at heart, about making people’s lives freer and more enjoyable, which is precisely why you don’t want to lose sight of the fun.
This balancing act—fun and seriousness, ambition and restraint, risk and caution—has propelled him from a fearless kid lost on a foggy mountain slope to the pilot’s seat of one of the world’s most recognisable cycling brands. “If you trust your instruments, if you keep calm under pressure,” he says, “you can handle the turbulence. That’s the thrill—and it’s also the reward.”
As Brompton navigates the current downturn in profits, the big question is whether the company can maintain its slow-and-steady course while continuing to capture the imagination of new riders. If Butler-Adams’s personal history is any indication, bet on him to see the path forward, even in the densest cloud cover, and guide Brompton across whatever terrain lies ahead.
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