Not any old cycling mind you, but specifically road racing, a niche that has been mired by more drug scandals than Amy Winehouse in the past three years.
Not only that, but Mottram and his business partner, design guru Luke Scheybeler set their sights on the US market at a time when the dollar was sliding inexorably against the euro and the pound.

Not only that, but all Rapha’s bread was buttered on one side only, the side called ‘discretionary spending’ instead of ‘bare necessities,’ resting as it did initially on luxurious cycling apparel with a partly intangible appeal.

No wonder all Rapha’s initial backers viewed their initial, 2004 cash investments as pure risk capital. That same year the company launched with a single core product, a cycling jacket with a ‘soft shell’, subtle pink trim beneath a black exterior and unusual details such as internal iPod loops and tailored pockets. Far from putting off the customers, the stiff price tab of €250 positioned the product as the best money could buy – aided by some superb reviews in the UK cycling press.

A few other core products such as classy leather gloves, a là Jacques Anquetil -whose racing team St. Raphael, which dominated pro-cycling in the 1950s, inspired the brand name- was the inspiration for the name the fingerless ones with holes over the knuckles, and suddenly Rapha was leading the pack. In his first year Mottram knocked up sales worth €365,000.

Fast forward to the third quarter of 2008 and Mottram is quietly and confidently motoring – perhaps we should say pedalling, avec souplesse- towards 2009 sales that are comfortably into the single digit millions.

Quite conceivably, he could have expanded much faster than that. Compared to a typical consumer technology or rapidly growing services company Rapha is progressing as fast as a punctured domestique. But that’s to completely miss the nature of his business model and the type of brand that Rapha is becoming.

It’s also to miss the sheer authenticity of Mottram and his dozen or so full time employees, who work in a beautifully hip, airy converted warehouse in London’s Kentish town, where the walls are covered in massive photos of greats like Eddy Merckx and cleats are to be heard pattering across stripped wooden floors.

“Road racing was always my passion,” says Mottram. “It’s the only bit I care about – it’s not cycling from BMX to touring to single-speed to Keirin; they’re all different cultures and worlds. I love road racing. I always have and I always will. It’s completely unique. There’s a huge opportunity to make a great business there.”

By ‘great’ Mottram does not mean ‘large’ nor ‘profitable’ in a locust sort of way. He means doing everything right, his assumption being that if the fundamentals are correct the products will fly.

It all boils down to what Mottram calls ‘passion marketing’. The source of the passion is road racing, so any product that can connect the customer to that passion is legitimate within the business model.

Back in 2003 when Mottram first hatched his plans, he conceived of “a road racing emporium – a passion brand – not a clothing company that might branch out into surfing gear.”

If you go to Rapha’s website you find that boutique clothing is still at the centre, yet along the way Rapha has spawned many limited edition products including a famous green jersey co-designed by Sir Paul Smith and launched at the 2007 Tour de France when it came to London. It has also begun to host bike rides in key markets both in the UK and US; to create and sponsor a professional road racing team called Rapha-Condor-Recycling and to spawn a publishing division which includes a new brand, Rouleur, the title of a coveted, limited production journal.

Next year’s racing team will be uniquely owned not just by its main sponsors but by wealthy supporters, 100 of whom will be offered all sorts of exclusive events, team kit, VIP hospitality at race events and access to cycling coaches in return for a €1,500 contribution. 

Altogether, these very many ‘diversions’ look like a crazy neglect of the ‘core business’ until you realise that actually constitute the core by having a steadfast link to road racing.   Recently publishing a lavish book of classic bike rides in the Pyrenees, Mottram cites it as an example of his approach. “It was very expensive and took over two years to bring to completion – but it was correct for the brand,” he notes.

In a curious way this reinforces the defensive appeal of the brand in a recession. If you can really engage the passions, so the theory goes, then it takes priority over even the gas bills, which after all are completely boring.

Mottram’s objective is to build the brand in this manner until 2010. “By then, we will be the most desirable high end brand in road racing; razor sharp in its execution; limited in terms of volume and maximised in terms of feel and lustre.”

He recognises that by then many other options will become open to the brand, perhaps focussing on international expansion, or on new ranges of accessories or clothing aimed at other groups of cyclists. 

That turning point will necessitate a much larger capital injection and send Rapha off in a new direction. By then, if all goes to plan, Rapha will have evolved from start up to medium sized company in just six years, and might need a larger trade investor to spur its global growth aspirations. What’s certain is that the exclusivity and core identity is sure to remain.

For now, Rapha is bristling withexciting plans for new products that constantly whet the appetites of fans who constantly scour the company’s slick website for new product releases.

He mentions a bespoke jacket with cycling features, a bespoke brogue with a recessed cycling cleat, an entire range of sunglasses and some skin care products as well. He’d also dearly love to co-brand a special, limited edition watch from one of the makers who once sponsored the Tour de France, such as Tissot or Longines perhaps, but not Festina owing to their association with the big drugs bust of 2003; and naturally a bike, probably a very expensive one hand crafted from narrow gauge steel.

So who is Rapha’s average customer? Mottram replies with great precision, citing a questionnaire they issued to customers earlier this year. “He – and it is a he - is a 37 year-old male, married with two kids, white collar professional with an annual income of €100,000 or more.”

What makes Mottram and Scheybeler prouder than anything is the fact that this was the exact customer that Rapha identified from the start. Instead of proving to be a chimera, like so many other customer groups bandied about by enthusiastic start-ups, the middle-aged passion cyclist with cash turned out to be true.

As well as starchitect Norman Foster, fashion designer Sir Paul Smith and hotelier Rocco Forte, Mottram notes that Starbucks founder Howard Schultz reportedly flagged down a cyclist recently, making a note of the jersey and then discovering that it was a Rapha. This sort of attention has led Rapha to be referred to as the “Prada of sportswear,” an association that Mottram endorses as long as no one forgets that the other inspiration for the brand was “the glory and suffering” of road racing and not a little courier chic, served up from the mean streets of Shoreditch and London’s East End.

His business, claims Mottram, is surprisingly resilient despite all the talk of a consumer slow down in the UK and elsewhere. Sales growth remains on target and has not slowed perceptibly in 2008, he notes, adding that he has felt some pain from fabrics purchased in euros but sold in US dollars, offset however by that part of his mostly dollar-denominated Asian production.

There is perhaps a degree of luck in Mottram’s timing, since he claims that road racing is the fastest growing amateur sport segment in the UK, aided by a historic drop in the real cost of bikes and by British dominance in Olympic track racing.

But most of the luck appears to have been his own making, in stark contrast to much of the rest of the bike industry where there is still a myopic focus on much-duplicated, zero-sum lycra garments where there is literally nothing but branding to separate them. Mottram says, “The industry as a whole still don’t get it – they don’t understand what drives people to spend £5000 on a bike. It’s not because it has more gears than the £4000 bike.”

What no one else ‘got’, in many ways the riskiest aspect of Mottram’s original business plan, was whether customers were willing to mix luxury purchases with online ordering. Like Natalie Massinet over at Pret a Porter, Mottram has faced down his critics on this front – today as at the start, 85% of Rapha’s sales are via the internet, and the average spend is €150.

The question going forwards is whether this model will work globally, given the spiraling costs of shipping and insurance. The US already accounts for a third of sales and Japan for 8%. If we have to guess, Mottram’s greatest challenge will be to maintain the quality of service and customer experience from a London base, a classic problem of an otherwise successful instance of globalization.