Oxford Products is one of the bike trade’s great success stories: almost all British bikers will have bought from them at some point. And now the firm is celebrating 50 years in the business, with a packed calendar of special events throughout 2023.
Launched back in 1973 by founder Alec Hammond, the firm started out by tapping into the demand for decent hard luggage. “Motorcycling was somewhat different in those days,” said Hammond, who back in 1973 was a 28-year-old sales manager working in the pharmaceutical industry. “There were massive numbers of folk riding to work and luggage hardly existed.”
Hammond was introduced to a Nottinghamshire-based inventor who had created a range of high-quality top boxes but had no idea about how to get them to market. “I agreed to show some samples to a few motorcycle dealers whilst travelling in the course of my job,” he said. “The top boxes got a massive thumbs up from several dealers who clamoured to buy them. I became convinced that I could build a business in the motorcycle world, so I left my comfortable, secure job to go into full-time production of the boxes.”
From the humble, if useful, fibreglass top box the firm went on to produce aftermarket fairings, before gradually expanding into a huge range of other parts. It pioneered electrically-heated handlebar grips in the early 1980s, and now has a wide range of security products, tuning and customising parts and bike care kit, as well as distributing HJC helmets and Alpinestars clothing. It’s built an enormous UK headquarters in Oxfordshire, with extensive warehousing, a high-tech research and design centre and on-site photographic studios, and prides itself on its in-house facilities.
Oxford kicked off its anniversary year in style with a black-tie gala evening at the Doubletree Hilton hotel in Swindon early in January. All 160 staff and their partners were invited to the lavish all-inclusive do with accommodation, food, drinks and entertainment laid on.