A few days ago, we told you that UK-based used motorcycle chain Superbike Factory had officially gone into administration. Since that time, more details have emerged about what was going on behind the scenes that contributed to its collapse.
our colleagues balcony down Talked to two employees of the superbike factory Who were working on various positions in that company till last Monday. One was a truck driver, and one was in management. Both declined to give their names for obvious reasons, but wanted to speak about what they witnessed in the past weeks and months before the events currently unfolding.
The entire excerpt is worth a read if you want to get some insight; And naturally, given the two employees’ different vantage points, they both have interesting comments about what they saw. Things like, as you would expect, business slows down in the winter months and then usually picks back up in the spring.
But it reportedly never accelerated in the spring of 2026, instead remaining at dormant winter levels.
The truck driver was also quoted as saying, “We kept getting messages that there were IT problems… then we were told not to use the fuel cards because they were not working.”
Certainly not a good sign for any business that includes delivery drivers among its employees. On the other hand, the former member of the management staff mentioned how in the past, SBF would sometimes stop buying used bikes when it already had excess supply in stock. that makes sense; You wouldn’t want to get into a KTM situation where you have too many bikes in your warehouse, right? And this is true whether it’s a new or used bike, or indeed any other physical inventory situation.
But this manager said that recently, the pause in purchasing bikes was longer than usual. Earlier, it used to be about two weeks or so; It was five or six weeks, he said.
Then, both employees reported being called into a meeting at the company’s Macclesfield headquarters at 2pm on Monday, and both said they strongly suspected that the writing was on the wall. Of course, although they had heard rumors of the company going into administration via social media and motorcycle news websites, that’s when they were all told they had no job, effective immediately.
He was also reportedly told that he would not be paid for the first three weeks of July (which had already passed), and that he should apply to the UK Government Redundancy Scheme to receive compensation. They reportedly weren’t even instructed on how to proceed with the procedure, which I would feel like an additional slap in the face.
Support for Superbike factory workers who have now been made redundant
If you’re a Superbike Factory employee and you’re reading this, you should know that I’m not in the UK. However, if you have not encountered it yet, Here is the UK Government’s official website regarding redundancy and your rights as a UK citizen.
There is also a very specific page full of Information about your rights if your employer is bankruptIncluding whether it enters administration as Superbike Factory has done.
According to the UK Government, depending on your situation, you may be able to apply for things like redundancy payments, outstanding holiday pay, unpaid wages/overtime/commission and statutory notice pay. There may also be a possibility of unemployment benefits, which is a different matter; Click on the above links to know more about all the topics mentioned in this article.
But wait, there’s more
Another former Superbike Factory employee, who is also a motorcycle YouTuber, posted the video linked above discussing his time at the company. He says he worked in sales (and comments from former coworkers and customers on the video seem to support this), and he noticed some troubling trends during his time there.
He is careful to limit the discussion to personal observations and pays little attention to what he heard from friends who still worked at the company after he left; After all, he doesn’t want to face legal trouble. However, he was heard saying that a systemic problem he saw was that salespeople were insisting on calling anyone and everyone they could to answer, rather than dealing with individual customers waiting to buy a bike.
He also talks about how, based on their combined sales experiences, he felt he learned how to approach customers when trying to sell them on add-ons and accessories they might need, such as a tracker or ceramic coating on their bike purchase. And how easy is it to convince someone who tells you they’re looking for a new bike because their old one was stolen that they should spend a little money on a tracker.
Makes sense, right? Sure, it seems like obvious logic. And yet, he talks about having discussions with the company’s CEO at the time, who told him he wasn’t being paid to think, and that he should try to outwit everyone on everything all the time. He then cites this as the incident that caused him to start looking for a new job immediately after leaving work, on the very day the incident occurred.
As the weeks and months go by, it’s clear there will be more to this story. What about customers who had a bike purchase transaction in process but not completed yet? A Redditor tells a story SBF ran a hard credit check on them, worried that it might affect their ability to get financing for anything else, and the money was taken out of their account, but they weren’t able to take delivery of their new bike before this happened. He adds that his finance company is taking care of things, and notes that both his finance company and the bank say they have received several calls about similar instances since SBF announced its administration.
Here’s hoping that the Superbike Factory employees and customers get satisfaction for their dues.
