Rapha is to open a new Cycle Club in Spitalfields, London, doubling its standalone retail presence in the capital.
Cycle Club Spitalfields (CCSPT) will open in November. It marks the latest waypoint in the growth of the cycle clothing brand’s bricks and mortar premises, which combine a retail space with a clubhouse-cum coffee shop.
Rapha launched the format globally in 2011, with pop-up clubs in cities containing a large concentration of cyclists. “The cycle clubs were conceived as the ultimate ‘hang out’ for people who love the sport,” Simon Mottram told The Times.
The Spitalfields club will be bigger than the Piccadilly premises and opens directly onto the market. It will follow the standard Cycle Club format, but on a larger scale, according to Laura Bower, Rapha’s head of UK marketing and sales.
“We had been looking for a second London premises for a while,” she said. “If you spend any time around there you will see so many people travelling by bike, and we will also be within reach of the City, where a lot of our customers work.”
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Rapha sells high-end cycle clothing, with jerseys starting at £100 and shorts £160 and is the kit supplier to Team Sky. Initially it retailed exclusively through the www.rapha.cc website before moving into pop-up cycle clubs.
The first pop-up club was opened in Clerkenwell in May 2010, with a second club opening in the Meatpacking District in New York five weeks later, with a San Francisco club opening in 2011. This was chosen as the brand’s first permanent cycle club. Rapha’s Cycle Club London in Soho opened on the night of the Olympic road race in 2012.
Ms Bower added that the Soho club would remain as the flagship store, with Spitalfields offering similar services on the ground floor while a new, personal shopping experience would be offered in the basement where customers will get the chance to try garments while riding a bike. She explained: “Kit fits differently when it is worn on the bike.”
Food and drink will be sourced as much as possible from local suppliers.
CCSPT is located at 61-63 Brushfield St, London E1 6AA. It will open to the public in November but no exact date has been decided. For more information visit www.rapha.cc/clubs