Royal Enfield
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| Public Listed Company | |
| Industry | Motorcycles, bicycles, lawnmowers, cars |
| Founder | Albert Eadie and Robert Walker Smith |
| Headquarters | Redditch, United Kingdom, England |
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Areas served
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All continents |
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Key people
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| Products | Royal Enfield Clipper, Crusader, Bullet, Interceptor, WD/RE, Super Meteor |
| Website | none |
Royal Enfield was a brand name under which The Enfield Cycle Company Limited of Redditch, Worcestershire sold motorcycles, bicycles, lawnmowers and stationary engines which they had manufactured. Enfield Cycle Company also used the brand name Enfield without Royal.
The first Royal Enfield motorcycle was built in 1901. The Enfield Cycle Company is responsible for the design and original production of the Royal Enfield Bullet, the longest-lived motorcycle design in history.
Enfield's remaining motorcycle business became part of Norton Villiers in 1967 and that business closed in 1978. A former subsidiary continues to manufacture Royal Enfield motorcycles in India.
George Townsend set up a business in 1851 in Redditch making sewing needles. In 1882 his son, also named George, started making components for cycle manufacturers including saddles and forks. By 1886 complete bicycles were being sold under the names Townsend and Ecossais. This business suffered a financial collapse in 1891. Albert Eadie, sales manager of Birmingham’s Perry & Co Ltd, pen makers who had begun to supply components for cycles and Robert Walker Smith an engineer from D.Rudge & Co were chosen by Townsend's bankers to run the business and in 1892 a new company was incorporated named Eadie Manufacturing Company Limited based in Snow Hill, Birmingham. In turn in 1907 after serious losses in their newly floated Enfield Autocar business Eadie Manufacturing and its pedal cycle component business was absorbed by BSA. Years later the BSA chairman was to tell shareholders the acquisition had "done wonders for the cycle department". Eadie still retained a separate identity when Raleigh bought BSA's cycle interests in 1957.
Eadie had won contracts to supply precision parts for fire arms to the government's long-established Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, Middlesex, now the London Borough of Enfield with its offshoot in Sparkbrook and had assumed the brand name Royal Enfield. In 1896 they also incorporated a new subsidiary company, The New Enfield Cycle Company Limited, to handle much of the cycle work and in 1897 Enfield making complete cycles as well parts for other assemblers took all the cycle assembly work from Eadie.
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Wikipedia