Hot Wheels — The Bournemouth Shop That Imported BMX Into Britain (Not the Toy Cars)

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Read this first. This chapter is about a bicycle business in Dorset, England. It is not about Mattel's Hot Wheels, the American die-cast toy car brand launched in 1968. The two share a name and nothing else. We found no corporate, licensing or ownership connection between them, and none is implied anywhere on this page. If you arrived here looking for toy cars, this is the wrong page. If you arrived looking for the British company that put Mongoose bikes into UK bike shops, keep reading.

Every country that caught BMX needed the same two things: someone to build tracks, and someone to get the product in. In Britain, the second job fell to a scattering of small importers — mostly family businesses, mostly working out of the back of a shop, mostly people who had bought a magazine and written a letter. One of them sat on Christchurch Road in Bournemouth, on the Dorset coast, and was run by a man named Graham Merry and his two sons.

They called it Hot Wheels. It lasted long enough to outgrow the shop, outgrow the mail-order catalog, and end up being bought by the company that owns Cannondale.

Business: Hot Wheels — bicycle retailer, BMX and skateboard mail order, then importer and distributor

Structure: family-owned partnership

Founded by: Graham Merry; run with his sons Russell Merry and Neil Merry

Shop: 1145 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, Dorset — at that address for twenty years as of 2002

Later HQ: The Fulcrum, Poole, Dorset, from January 2003

Brands imported: Mongoose (from 1989), Snafu, We The People, Wilderness Trail Bikes, GT (from December 2001)

Retail peak: just under £700,000 turnover in 2002, the year the shop closed

Sold: October 2009, to Dorel Industries; folded into Cycling Sports Group UK

The name collision, dealt with properly

It is worth spending a paragraph on this rather than leaving it to confuse people forever.

Mattel, Inc. launched Hot Wheels in 1968 as a line of die-cast toy cars in the United States. It is one of the best-known toy brands in the world, which means that in any search engine it occupies effectively all of the oxygen around those two words. The British bicycle business in this chapter is a completely separate concern. It was a shop and then a distributor, it sold BMX bikes, skateboards and bicycle parts, it operated in Dorset, and it was owned by the Merry family. Riders and dealers who bought from it in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s knew exactly which Hot Wheels they meant, because there was only one that sold frames.

We are stating this plainly because the collision would otherwise wreck this chapter for anyone searching for it — and because collectors and former customers deserve a page that does not disappear underneath a toy company.

A bike shop on the south coast

The business grew out of a single bicycle retail shop at 1145 Christchurch Road in Bournemouth. In October 2002 the company told the British bicycle trade press that the shop had been at that address for twenty years, which puts its arrival there around 1982 — exactly the moment BMX broke wide open in Britain, the same year Raleigh launched the Burner.

The ownership was a family partnership: Graham Merry, the father, who founded it, and his sons Russell and Neil. Russell was the one who did most of the talking to the trade.

What made the shop matter beyond Bournemouth was the mail order. Through the 1980s Hot Wheels ran a BMX and skateboard mail-order business and advertised relentlessly in the British BMX and skateboard press — a documented advert from 1988 survives in a UK skate magazine archive, which describes the company as one of the most consistent advertisers of the period and as fiercely committed to that mail-order trade. That is the whole model. A kid in Aberdeen or Norwich or Swansea, nowhere near a BMX shop, could read a magazine, fill out a form, and get American parts posted to him. In a country where BMX product was thin on the ground outside the big towns, that was how a national scene got supplied.

From selling bikes to importing them

In 1989, Hot Wheels became the UK importer of Mongoose. That is the step that turned a shop into a national business, and it is the single most consequential thing on this page. For the next two decades, if a British rider bought a Mongoose, it had come through Bournemouth.

The results speak for themselves. By December 2001, Mongoose had been voted number one brand by readers of Ride UK BMX magazine for the fourth year running — a reader poll, not a sales figure, but reader polls are how you measure whether a brand is actually wanted. Hot Wheels was credited in the trade press with the distribution and promotion behind that.

The portfolio grew: Snafu, We The People, and Wilderness Trail Bikes. Hot Wheels was named Snafu International Distributor of the Year at Interbike two years running, in 2001 and 2002.

Picking up GT

In September 2001 the bankrupt Schwinn/GT business was acquired by Pacific Cycle of the United States. The UK-based European arm had been the first part of the old company to fold, and shipments to Britain had stopped since the spring. In December 2001, Hot Wheels — already handling Pacific's Mongoose — was appointed UK distributor for GT, handling the independent bicycle dealer side of the business.

Russell Merry's framing of the job at the time was practical rather than grand: GT's real asset was its dealer network, the bankruptcy had broken the supply chain, and the immediate task was to get bikes flowing again and put the independent dealers back together. Shipments from Asia restarted in June 2002 for the 2003 model year. Schwinn, the other half of the collapsed group, went to a different UK supplier.

Closing the shop

On 14 October 2002, Hot Wheels announced it was disposing of the retail business — by sale or by closure — after twenty years at the same address. Retail turnover had peaked that year at just under £700,000, and Russell Merry was straight about why it still had to go: the wholesale opportunity was bigger, and the business had to focus on importing and distributing brands. He called it the end of an era and said the Hot Wheels shop was an institution in Bournemouth. He also said the decision had been a long time coming and was a tough call, which reads like a man who did not enjoy making it.

Staff moved across to the distribution side. The company relocated to a purpose-built warehouse and headquarters on a trading estate at The Fulcrum in Poole, Dorset, completing the move by 13 January 2003.

The sale

In October 2009, Dorel Industries — the Canadian group that owns Cannondale, GT, Sugoi and Mongoose — acquired Hot Wheels along with Circle Bikes. The logic was straightforward from Dorel's side: it already owned most of the brands Hot Wheels was importing, and buying the distributor put it directly in front of British dealers and riders instead of one step removed.

Russell and Neil Merry were named Co-Managing Directors of Cycling Sports Group UK. Russell's own explanation of the deal was that he and his brother had local knowledge and experience, and that with Dorel's backing they could take the business further than they could alone.

That is where the independent company's story ends. A family partnership that started with one shop on Christchurch Road, sold to the owner of the brands it had spent twenty years importing.

Why this chapter is in the library

Britain's BMX story is usually told through the bikes and the riders. It should also be told through the people who did the unglamorous work of getting product across the Atlantic and into the hands of kids who lived nowhere near a track. In the north west, that was the Woods family at Alans BMX in Wigan. On the south coast, it was the Merry family at Hot Wheels in Bournemouth. Different ends of the country, the same job, the same kind of business — a family, a shop, a van or a postbag, and a decision to bet on a sport nobody's bank manager had heard of.

Where the record runs thin

  • The exact founding date. We can establish the shop was at 1145 Christchurch Road for twenty years as of October 2002, which puts it there from roughly 1982. We cannot establish whether the business existed before that at another address, or what year Graham Merry actually started it. This is the biggest gap on the page.
  • The trading name. The company is documented as Hot Wheels and, in its distribution years, Hot Wheels Distribution. We have not confirmed a registered company name or whether it ever formally traded as Hot Wheels BMX Imports, which is a name that circulates among British riders of the era. The page uses Hot Wheels because that is what the documented record uses.
  • What it imported in the 1980s. The 1989 Mongoose appointment is firmly documented. What the mail-order catalog carried before that — which American brands, in what years — is not, and a period catalog or magazine advert would answer it in about ten seconds. A 1988 advert exists in a UK skate magazine archive but the page would not load for this research.
  • Graham Merry. Confirmed as the founder and as a partner in the business alongside his sons. Nothing further about him — his background, his role day to day, or anything about his life outside the company — was established, and nothing is asserted here.
  • Sponsorship and teams. Whether Hot Wheels ran a shop or distributor race team, and which British riders it backed, was not established in this research pass. Given twenty years of Mongoose distribution, it would be surprising if it did not.
  • What became of the shop premises after the 2002 announcement — sold to a buyer or simply closed — is not recorded in the sources found.
  • The Mattel question, stated as a negative. We found no evidence of any relationship between the Dorset bicycle company and Mattel's toy brand, and no evidence of a trademark dispute between them. Absence of evidence is not proof, so it is flagged here rather than claimed as settled.
  • UK archives that could not be reached. bmxsociety.com was unreachable throughout this research and bmxmuseum.com blocks automated access. Period British magazine scans — BMX Action Bike, BMX Bi-Weekly, Invert, and the early years of Ride UK — would carry Hot Wheels mail-order adverts across the whole 1980s run and are the obvious next stop.

Timeline

  • 1968 Mattel launches Hot Wheels toy cars in the United States. Unrelated to everything else on this page, and noted only to keep the two apart.
  • ~1982 The Hot Wheels bicycle shop is trading at 1145 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, as a family partnership founded by Graham Merry.
  • 1980s The shop runs a BMX and skateboard mail-order business and becomes one of the most consistent advertisers in the British BMX and skateboard press. A 1988 advert survives in a UK magazine archive.
  • 1989 Hot Wheels becomes the UK importer of Mongoose.
  • 1998-2001 Mongoose is voted number one brand by Ride UK BMX readers four years running.
  • Sep 2001 The bankrupt Schwinn/GT business is acquired by Pacific Cycle in the United States.
  • Dec 2001 Hot Wheels is appointed UK distributor for GT, handling the independent dealer channel. It is also named Snafu International Distributor of the Year.
  • Jun 2002 GT shipments to Britain restart for the 2003 model year.
  • Oct 2002 Hot Wheels announces the sale or closure of the retail shop after twenty years, with retail turnover peaking at just under £700,000. It is by now the UK importer of Mongoose, Snafu, We The People, Wilderness Trail Bikes and GT, and wins Snafu Distributor of the Year for a second year.
  • Jan 2003 The business relocates to a purpose-built warehouse and headquarters at The Fulcrum, Poole, Dorset.
  • Oct 2009 Dorel Industries acquires Hot Wheels and Circle Bikes. Russell and Neil Merry are named Co-Managing Directors of Cycling Sports Group UK.

Sources

BikeBiz, 14 October 2002, Merry brothers close their shop to concentrate on booming distribution business — the core source for this chapter: the 1145 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth address and its twenty-year run, the family partnership of Russell, Neil and their father Graham Merry, the just-under-£700,000 retail turnover peak, Russell Merry's quotes on closing the shop, the move to The Fulcrum in Poole by 13 January 2003, the Mongoose, Snafu, We The People, Wilderness Trail Bikes and GT portfolio, and the Snafu International Distributor of the Year awards. BikeBiz, 11 December 2001, At last, it's official, Hot Wheels is the new UK GT distributor — the GT appointment for the independent dealer channel, the Pacific Cycle acquisition of the bankrupt Schwinn/GT in September 2001, the collapse of the UK-based European arm and the supply-chain break, the June 2002 restart of shipments, Russell Merry's quotes, the 1989 start of Mongoose distribution, and the Ride UK BMX reader poll placing Mongoose first for a fourth consecutive year and GT third. fatbmx.com, Cannondale owner acquires Hot Wheels Distribution in the UK — the October 2009 Dorel Industries acquisition of Hot Wheels and Circle Bikes, confirmation that Hot Wheels was a family-owned partnership founded by the father of Russell and Neil Merry, their appointment as Co-Managing Directors of Cycling Sports Group UK, and Russell Merry's quotes on the deal. Singletrack World Magazine, 1 October 2009, Dorel Industries buys UK distributor Hot Wheels. And Charge Bikes. — corroboration of the acquisition and of Dorel's ownership of Cannondale, GT, Sugoi and Mongoose. whenwewasrad.co.uk — a UK vintage skateboard magazine archive holding a 1988 Hot Wheels BMX and skateboard mail-order advert and describing the company as one of the most consistent advertisers of the period; the archive page itself would not load for this research and is cited as a located reference rather than a read source. Unreachable for this research: bmxsociety.com (site down throughout) and bmxmuseum.com (blocks automated access).

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

  • Mongoose — the brand Hot Wheels imported into Britain from 1989 and made the most-wanted name in UK BMX
  • GT — handed to Hot Wheels for the UK dealer channel in December 2001 after the Schwinn/GT bankruptcy
  • Schwinn — the other half of the collapsed group, which went to a different UK supplier
  • Alans BMX — the Wigan family business doing the same job at the other end of the country
  • The Raleigh Burner — the British-built BMX that opened the market these importers sold into
  • Jamie Staff — the British racer who came out of this era and won a world title and Olympic gold
  • JIVE — the Belfast number plate and clothing label, the library's other British-Isles chapter
  • The History of BMX — the whole story, start to finish