Former bike champion puts expansion plans into gear

A cramped breeze block office painted jet black and poster box red is an unlikely incubator for the world's biggest extreme sports brand. But 24-year-old Jonathan Knight is a man of formidable ambition. His company Redraven Industries is just a year in business selling a braking system for mountain bikes but he's already planning his next move.

"I know where I want to take the company and I know how big it could potentially be. I want my company to be one of the biggest extreme sports companies in the world. I want that, if you walk into a bike shop or motorcross shop, you will know the Redraven brand. It looks cool. It's fashionable. It's trendy. It's youthful."

Knight is a former Northern Ireland mountain bike champion with a self-confessed "authority complex" who's scooped a series of awards including Shell Livewire's 2005 young entrepreneur of the year. Currently based in an industrial estate in Belfast, Knight's Redraven employs three people and had a turnover of £60,000 (€87,000) last year, a figure Knight claims will treble this year.

Redraven's Alpine braking system sells directly into 450 bike shops across the world and also online. Retailing at £59.99, the Alpine system is Knight's own brainchild. Boosted by the success of the Alpine, Knight is working on a similar system for motorcross bikes (scramblers). He is also planning his own clothing line and visuals of the proposed Redraven apparel line are littered across his desk.

"There's so much going on. I'm trying to fit it all in. It's not what I expected. I expected to have a bit of money and time but I just don't. Every penny I spend personally is coming out of my business so I'm always very conscious of that. Every moment I spend away from my business is wasted money and wasted time."

Knight left school after A-levels and spent the next three years racing mountain bikes and working in bike shops. "As long as I was around bikes I was happy," he explains.

Knight learned the hard way that bike braking systems have a tendency to fail at crucial moments. "They'd fail as you were going around corners or over jumps and cause some very serious injuries to collar bones, wrists and ankles. I knew there was a real problem there that the market wasn't meeting."

So, at the age of 22, Knight retired from the racing circuit, maxed out his credit card and after eight months of research and development had his first prototype braking system turned down by six different engineering companies.

In desperation he walked into the mechanical engineering department of Queens University and asked for help. The team at Queens was intrigued, agreed to take the project on and a few months later Knight was able to bring his new Alpine braking system to the market. The mountain bike market is a lucrative one. There are an estimated 1.5 million bikers in the UK and 20-30 million in the US. It is the fastest growing extreme sport. Mountain bikers are generally male, aged 16-35, have a high level of disposable income and spend on average €3,000 on a bike every two years or so.

Manufactured in Coleraine, Co Derry, the Alpine braking system can be fitted to 95 per cent of mountain bikes in about five minutes. It creates a circle of air that filters hot air away from the rotor and braking pad so the brakes are cooler and work better. "The brakes are also really stylish on the bike," says Knight.He says there are no significant competitors at the moment.

The US market accounts for about 45 per cent of Redraven's turnover with Canada accounting for about 10 per cent and Europe, including the UK and Ireland, making up the remaining 45 per cent.

Redraven's marketing is focused on magazine advertising and sponsorship of local mountain bikers. However, Knight has recently signed well-known mountain biker Steve Peat in a sponsorship deal for the 2006 season. "He's the David Beckham of the mountain bike world and he'll help establish us on the global market," he says.

Until now Knight has funded the company entirely through loans, credit cards and savings. "I sold my car," he says. He also received assistance from Prince's Trust and Invest Northern Ireland. The upside is that the company is entirely his own. However, the next step - the ambitious move into apparel - will require significant investment.

Ideally Redraven apparel would be manufactured overseas but in the first year Knight can't afford to invest in the large volumes to make this workable. Instead, he plans to source the garments locally in smaller batches.

In addition to the motorcross braking system, Redraven is also developing another new braking system for mountain bikes. "We're a small company so we have to stay 10 steps ahead of the bigger companies. But because we're small we can adapt very quickly. I can have a product to market in about five months from scratch. Big companies take two years."

Knight rarely gets out on his mountain bike these days but the passion he brought to his racing is now invested in his company. "I've always had an older head. I have a big authority complex.

"I don't like taking orders from people. I walked out of a lot of jobs because I was always getting into rows. I didn't always agree with the way things were being done towards customers. At the end of the day customers are the people who pay your wages so you have to look after them."