Brompton Bicycle, having a vision with Will Butler-Adams

Will Butler-Adams joined Brompton in 2002, became director in 2006, and took over as MD in 2008 and at this time has grown the company from a £2mil turnover with 27 staff to a £90 mil turnover with over 800 staff. They create urban freedom for happier lives.  Brompton exports over 75% of its bikes to 47 countries through 1600 independent bike stores. They are the distributor in nineteen of those countries, supported by ten of their flagship stores from Milan to New York and Shanghai to Paris. They have about 850k customers whizzing about on their Bromptons across the world. He is a Chartered Engineer, passionate about all things engineering, having previously worked for DuPoint, Nissan, and ICI. He is married with three daughters and lives near Marlow. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2015 for services to Industry. He is interested in education, is a Fellow of the City and Guilds Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Imperial College where he was awarded an Honorary Degree in December 2019.  KEY TAKEAWAYS We are all on the same path. Some are in front of us, some are behind us but in the end, we live the same life. We shouldn’t sell a dream. As business leaders, we need to take responsibility to encourage our customers and take responsibility to sell them things a really useful for them that last a long time in order to add value to their life. BEST MOMENTS “We haven’t created the community consciously. We’ve just been honest about the product and we’ve been really careful about selling it to people for whom it is appropriate. And if you want to build a brand, you really need to care about not selling but about looking after the customer life of the product. And therefore, if you are good at selling, you can sell anything to anybody. But in many cases, there are people for whom Brompton just is not the right product. That’s fine. But don’t sell it to them because they never love it. But there are many other people who don’t even realise they need a Brompton in their life and if they had one, they’d love it. So, we’ve spent quite a lot of time telling our sales team or distributors who not to sell a bike to as much as who to sell a bike to which is unusual.” “We’ve got some big global challenges. We need to design beautifully, considerate, useful products that last a long time, and then we can co-exist. But just sell, sell, sell, make, make, make, that is not right.” “Leadership is about a vision and about articulating at the highest level of what we’re trying to achieve. Why are we getting out of bed? Why are coming together? Why are we giving up time with our friends and family to be together?  Because we have ambition and mission. We’re trying to achieve something.” “I’m not a big fan of marketing in its traditional sense because it is encouraging us to consume more stuff than we need. More than that, most marketing is telling untruths. It is not being honest. It is exaggerating the value of the product.” “Just do it. It is really important because what gonna happen with a lot of people is just so intimidated. The more research they do, they get more intimidating. Just get out there. Go for a few days. Realise it is fine and then start proper work. That’s how we did it.” ABOUT THE HOST Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager. CONTACT METHOD Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/ ABOUT THE GUEST William Butler-Adams OBE CEng is the Chief Executive Officer of Brompton Bicycle. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2015 for services to Industry. He is interested in education, is a Fellow of the City and Guilds Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Imperial College where he was awarded an Honorary Degree in December 2019.  CONTACT METHOD https://www.brompton.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/bromptonbicycle VALUABLE RESOURCES Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/ Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR