--- title: "Eddy Merckx Cycles: what the Cannibal built after racing" description: Merckx retired in 1978 and opened Eddy Merckx Cycles on 28 March 1980. What his teacher, his sale and four owners teach a board about life after the peak. url: https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/eddy-merckx/ language: en-GB type: article author: Linus Murphy author_url: https://linusmurphy.com/about/ published: 2023-04-27 modified: 2026-11-06 --- [Peloton to boardroom](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/) # Eddy Merckx: after the Cannibal, a factory By [Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/) • 10 min read Belgium · Eddy Merckx Cycles · Bicycle manufacturing ![Eddy Merckx in 2009, photographed in a jacket and open-collar shirt](https://linusmurphy.com/images/peloton/eddy-merckx.webp) ## Achievements - [Tour de France general classification, 1969–72 and 1974](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [Giro d'Italia general classification, 1968, 1970 and 1972–74](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [Vuelta a España, 1973](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [World road race champion, 1967, 1971 and 1974](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [Paris–Roubaix, 1968, 1970 and 1973](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [Tour of Flanders, 1969 and 1975](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [Hour record, 1972](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx) - [Founded Eddy Merckx Cycles, 1980](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_Merckx_Cycles) Eddy Merckx won more than any rider of his era, then had to learn that winning and manufacturing are different jobs. He retired in 1978, opened Eddy Merckx Cycles on 28 March 1980 with a teacher at his side, and sold control in 2008. The company outlived his ownership. That second career teaches a board more than his palmarès. I raced as a junior in Ireland and won the national road title in 1983, so I know the small version of the question every champion faces: what is the engine for once the results stop? Merckx answered it with a workshop. ## What did Eddy Merckx build after he stopped racing? He built a bicycle manufacturer, Eddy Merckx Cycles, which officially opened on 28 March 1980, two years after he retired. He learned the trade first, with help from the Italian frame-builder Ugo De Rosa, in a workshop across the courtyard of his farmhouse. The fullest account I have found is [Cyclist’s factory visit](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/road-bikes/merckx-factory-visit), published in January 2016. A reporter walked the building in Zellik, outside Brussels, and talked to the people who work there. I rely on it heavily below because it is first-hand and specific. According to Cyclist, Merckx began learning “the bicycle-building ropes in the late 1970s, setting up shop across the courtyard of his farmhouse in Meise, just outside Brussels.” That is the detail I keep coming back to. He did not sign a licence and go home. He put the workshop where he lived. [Britannica’s entry](https://web.archive.org/web/20230217112138/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eddy-Merckx) says the same in one line: after retiring in 1978, Merckx “opened a bicycle factory near Brussels that designs and supplies custom bicycles, including those for several professional teams.” ## How dominant was Merckx as a rider? He was the benchmark of road racing. Britannica calls him “arguably the greatest professional rider ever” and records 445 victories in 1,585 races between 1965 and 1978. The [Britannica entry](https://web.archive.org/web/20230217112138/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eddy-Merckx) lists five Tours de France (1969–72 and 1974), five Giros d’Italia (1968, 1970 and 1972–74), the 1973 Vuelta a España, and professional world titles in 1967, 1971 and 1974. He was amateur world champion in 1964. In his peak years, 1969 to 1975, he won “some 35 percent of the races he entered.” The nickname, “the Cannibal”, came from that appetite. He also won the one-day classics that most stage-race riders never touch: seven Milan–San Remos, three Paris–Roubaix, five Liège–Bastogne–Liège and two Tours of Flanders, all on Britannica’s list. [Cyclingnews](https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/giro-ditalia-the-merckx-years/) records that two months before his first Tour win in 1969, he “left the Giro d’Italia in disgrace after testing positive for the stimulant Reactivan in Savona.” He has always protested his innocence, and the same report says the UCI eventually cleared him. Why spend this long on the results? Because they explain the problem he had in 1978. A rider who wins a third of his races has never needed anyone to tell him how to do his job. Running a factory needs exactly that. ## Who taught Merckx to make bicycles? Ugo De Rosa did. He was Merckx’s friend, team sponsor and the builder of many of his race bikes in the 1970s, and he offered to introduce Merckx to suppliers and teach his team to weld. The line from Cyclist’s visit is worth quoting in full. Marketing manager Peter Speltens told the magazine: “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.’” Read that as a board member. The most successful rider in the sport did not know what to do next, and someone who already knew the trade offered him the missing system: suppliers, brands, welding, production. Merckx had demand. De Rosa had the process. The apprenticeship went further than Merckx himself. Cyclist reports that he went to a local school and told the teacher: “I need good welders who live in the neighbourhood.” The teacher offered one student, Johan Vranckx, then 16, whom Merckx sent to Italy “to work alongside De Rosa and his sons.” Vranckx told Cyclist: “I was there for two months being taught different welding methods and ways of bike construction.” The first bikes were built for Merckx rather than for customers. Vranckx told Cyclist that “the first bikes we created were too focused on the geometry Eddy used for racing.” So Merckx and De Rosa designed a separate Eddy Merckx Cycles geometry “for the normal amateur”, which Vranckx said “is still the basis of our geometry today.” Inside the company, he added, Merckx is called “Mr Geometry” for being “incredibly fastidious about it.” This is the founder’s most common mistake in miniature. The first product reflects the founder’s own needs. The fix was to keep the founder’s standards and change the customer. ## How did a company only months old prove itself in the peloton? It sold bikes to professional racers straight away. Cyclist reports that after opening in March 1980 the company was “soon supplying bikes to the pro peloton with Belgian team Marc-IWC-VRD”, run by Patrick Lefevere, and that its bikes won two Tour stages that year. There are few harsher product tests. A professional team does not leave a polite review. If the frame is wrong, the result sheet says so in public within weeks. According to [Cyclist](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/road-bikes/merckx-factory-visit), over the next two decades the company sponsored teams including 7-Eleven, Motorola and Telekom. Cyclist also describes the early days in Meise, with Merckx “overseeing a team of 50 virtually from his kitchen window.” That image cuts both ways. A founder that close to the product sets the standard. A founder that close to the product can also become the only standard, which matters for what happened next. ## Why did Merckx sell his company in 2008? Because there was no successor in the family. Speltens told Cyclist: “Eddy found out that his son, Axel, didn’t want to take over the company, and Eddy was really depressed about it. So in 2008 he sold up.” [Bicycle Retailer and Industry News](https://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2011/12/20/merckx-boosted-cash-brewery) reported that Sobradis “acquired a majority stake from Merckx in 2008.” Merckx kept a small holding. I find this the most useful sentence in the whole file for a family business or founder-led company. The succession plan was an assumption, not a conversation. When the assumption failed, the founder sold under emotional pressure, to a buyer whose experience was in another trade. ### What went wrong under the new owners? The new owners bet on growth the company could not carry. Speltens told Cyclist that the buyer’s head “had made a fortune from selling shoes, not bikes”, assumed a name like Merckx would double or triple sales, and signed a three-year deal to supply Lefevere’s Quick-Step team. His verdict, in [Cyclist’s report](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/road-bikes/merckx-factory-visit), was blunt: “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 estimated the deal cost about €2 million a year, against annual sales of 7,000 bicycles. There were rider demands too: Cyclist says [Tom Boonen, a Quick-Step rider on Merckx bikes](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/tom-boonen/), needed “a ‘special frame in between a 58 and 60cm made just for him’.” Specialized eventually bought Eddy Merckx Cycles out of the contract a year early, to the company’s relief. Here is the board-level lesson. A famous name raised the ambition without raising the capacity. Nobody in that plan asked how 21 people would serve a professional team. That is not a branding problem. It is a governance problem. ## Who owned Eddy Merckx Cycles after 2008? Three new owners in under a decade. Sobradis took control in 2008; Diepensteyn, the family holding behind Palm Breweries, bought in from December 2011 and owned the whole company by April 2014; and Ridley’s holding company, Race Production, bought the brand in June 2017. The detail is in the trade and Belgian press. In December 2011, [Bicycle Retailer](https://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2011/12/20/merckx-boosted-cash-brewery) reported that Eddy Merckx Holding raised €7.4 million in capital, with Diepensteyn taking a 20 per cent stake. It cited turnover of about €5.9 million in 2009, and 10,000 units sold in 2010, a higher figure than the 7,000 a year Speltens later gave Cyclist. Cyclist dates the Diepensteyn deal to 2012; the timings differ slightly between sources. In April 2014, [RTBF](https://www.rtbf.be/article/eddy-merckx-n-est-plus-proprietaire-de-sa-societe-de-cycles-8245664) reported that Jan Toye, owner of the Palm brewery, had held 85 per cent the previous year and had now bought Merckx’s remaining 6 per cent. The company recorded turnover of €6.2 million and a loss of €2.4 million in the 2012–13 financial year. Diepensteyn’s CEO, Bart Van Muylder, said Merckx would stay on as brand ambassador and remain closely involved in research and development. Cyclist’s 2016 visit found Merckx back as an adviser, there “every fortnight, running around, asking questions, complaining about this, wanting to adjust that.” The company then made about 10,000 bikes a year, mostly in Asia, with assembly in Belgium. In June 2017, [road.cc reported](https://road.cc/content/news/224757-ridley-buys-loss-making-eddy-merckx-cycles) that Ridley had bought the “loss-making” brand. Van Muylder explained the sale on scale: “our limited scale in particular has a negative impact on our buying and selling prices and means that the fixed costs keep our financial results under pressure.” I could not find reliable profit figures for the years after 2017, so I will not guess at them. ### Timeline: from racing to the factory | Year | Racing | Business | | --- | --- | --- | | 1964 | Amateur world champion | — | | 1965 | Turns professional | — | | 1969 | Expelled from the Giro after a positive test at Savona; wins first Tour de France | — | | 1969–75 | Peak years: wins some 35 per cent of races entered | — | | 1978 | Retires with 445 professional wins | Late 1970s: learns frame-building in Meise with Ugo De Rosa’s help | | 1980 | — | Eddy Merckx Cycles opens on 28 March; supplies Marc-IWC-VRD; two Tour stage wins | | 2008 | — | Sells a majority stake to Sobradis after his son declines to take over | | 2010 | — | Quick-Step supply deal with 21 staff, costing about €2 million a year | | 2011 | — | Diepensteyn takes a 20 per cent stake; €7.4 million raised | | 2014 | — | Diepensteyn owns the whole company; Merckx stays as ambassador | | 2016 | — | About 10,000 bikes a year; Merckx back as adviser | | 2017 | — | Ridley’s Race Production buys the loss-making brand | ## What transfers from the Cannibal’s racing to running an organisation, and what does not? Hunger, standards and attention to detail transfer. Knowledge of a new trade, judgement about capacity and a plan for succession do not; Merckx had to borrow or learn each of them. **What transfers.** The appetite that won a third of his races is the same appetite Speltens describes in the adviser who complains about this and wants to adjust that. The “Mr Geometry” fastidiousness is a quality standard that survived four owners. Boards should want that in a founder. **What does not.** Winning races did not teach Merckx how to source tubes, weld frames or set prices. He had the humility to be taught, which most dominant people find hardest. In my coaching work, the expensive mistake is the opposite: treating a record in one arena as a qualification in another. **What the name cannot do.** The 2010 Quick-Step deal is the clearest case. A legendary name made the plan feel safe. It was not safe, because the operating base was 21 people. [Sean Kelly took a different route after racing](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/sean-kelly/): he stayed in the sport rather than becoming a manufacturer. Neither route is better. The question is the same in both: what do you actually know how to run, and who will teach you the rest? ## What should a CEO or board take from the Merckx story? Find the teacher before the market, test the product where failure is public, and plan succession before it becomes urgent. The company outlived Merckx’s ownership because the standard he set could be handed on. First, the apprenticeship. Merckx borrowed De Rosa’s suppliers, methods and family workshop. In a company, that is the first hire who knows the trade better than you. It is the subject of the series part on [why you need to get good people around you](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/getting-good-people-around-you/get-good-people-around-you/). Second, the test. Supplying a professional team in the first year was an expensive way to find out if the bikes were good. In a business, the equivalent is a customer who can leave, not a friend who will applaud. Third, succession. The 2008 sale started with a son who did not want the job. Ask the question early, and ask it out loud. Fourth, the founder’s later role. After selling his last shares, Merckx stayed as ambassador and adviser. That is a healthy model for a founder: no longer the owner, still the keeper of the standard. If you are coming off a career that other people still describe for you, Merckx is not “start a bike brand”. It is: find the teacher, build the thing properly, respect capacity, and let the name become a company. That is the work I do with former athletes in [my From elite sport to the boardroom coaching](https://linusmurphy.com/services/from-elite-sport-to-the-boardroom/). The other riders in [From the peloton to the boardroom](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/) show the same test from different angles. What leaders can take from this - Retire into a craft, not into a logo, and find a teacher before you find a market. - Test the product where failure is public and immediate. - A famous name does not make an unrealistic growth plan realistic. - Plan succession before you need it, because the heir you assume may say no. - The founder can stay useful as the standard-setter after giving up control. ## Questions I am asked **Did Eddy Merckx really found a bike company, or only license his name?** He founded one. Cyclist reports that he learned frame-building in Meise with help from Ugo De Rosa, and that Eddy Merckx Cycles officially opened on 28 March 1980. **Who taught Merckx to build bicycles?** Ugo De Rosa, his friend, team sponsor and frame-builder. According to Cyclist, De Rosa introduced him to suppliers and taught his team to weld, and Merckx sent his young welder Johan Vranckx to Italy for two months to learn. **Why did Merckx sell his company in 2008?** Because his son, Axel, did not want to take it over. That is the reason the company's marketing manager gave Cyclist; Sobradis bought a majority stake that year. **Who has owned Eddy Merckx Cycles since Merckx sold it?** Three owners in under a decade. Sobradis took a majority stake in 2008; Diepensteyn, the family holding behind Palm Breweries, bought in from 2011 and took Merckx's last 6 per cent in 2014; and Ridley's holding company, Race Production, bought the brand in June 2017. **Did Merckx fail a doping test?** Yes. He tested positive for the stimulant Reactivan at Savona during the 1969 Giro d'Italia and was expelled; he has always protested his innocence, and the UCI later cleared him. **What is the main lesson for a CEO or board?** Dominance in one arena is hunger, not know-how. Merckx borrowed a teacher to learn the trade, and the company's worst years came when its owners let the famous name stand in for a realistic plan. ## Sources 1. [Merckx: Factory visit](https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/road-bikes/merckx-factory-visit) — Cyclist, 8 January 2016 2. [Eddy Merckx | Belgian cyclist (Internet Archive copy)](https://web.archive.org/web/20230217112138/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eddy-Merckx) — Encyclopaedia Britannica, 17 February 2023 3. [Giro d'Italia: The Merckx years](https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/giro-ditalia-the-merckx-years/) — Cyclingnews, 3 May 2011 4. [Merckx boosted by cash from brewery](https://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2011/12/20/merckx-boosted-cash-brewery) — Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, 20 December 2011 5. [Eddy Merckx n'est plus propriétaire de sa société de cycles](https://www.rtbf.be/article/eddy-merckx-n-est-plus-proprietaire-de-sa-societe-de-cycles-8245664) — RTBF, 11 April 2014 6. [Ridley buys loss-making Eddy Merckx Cycles](https://road.cc/content/news/224757-ridley-buys-loss-making-eddy-merckx-cycles) — road.cc, 23 June 2017 ![Portrait of Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/images/portraits/linus-headshot.jpg) **[Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/)** Elite executive coach [Book a 30-minute strategy call](https://calendly.com/linusmurphy-coaching/30min) Other riders: [Greg LeMond](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/greg-lemond/); [Sean Kelly](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/sean-kelly/); [Chris Boardman](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/chris-boardman/); [Sir Chris Hoy](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/chris-hoy/); [Alberto Contador](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/alberto-contador/); [Fabian Cancellara](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/fabian-cancellara/); [Tom Boonen](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/tom-boonen/); [Jonathan Vaughters](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/jonathan-vaughters/); [Pat McQuaid](https://linusmurphy.com/peloton-to-boardroom/pat-mcquaid/). ## The jersey is not the strategy If you raced at a serious level and now hold a chair — or you are about to — I will work the identity and the operating system. 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