Here you will find a list of workshop moves and why we did it. This goes back to Mark Mums basement in Mexborough, South Yorkshire. England. So a little history first.
Mark was lucky enough to live with his mum in an old 4 floor semi detached house on the posh street of the mining town of Mexborough.
The house sat above the main Sheffield-Doncaster Canal which was at the bottom of the garden. The house over looked the River Don, Sheffield-Doncaster railway, Denaby flood waters the village of Old Denaby and the hill above Old Denaby, in the distance Denaby and Conisborough. Little would Mark realise he would locate on the other side of that hill over 35 years later. At the time that hill seemed to take a day to get there and back!
From 1975 to 1980 this was a great play ground for a teenage boy, the water drew him to fishing, Kayaking, making dens, bird watching, shooting air rifles, riding bikes, mountain biking, train spotting, swimming and various sports.
Throughout this period Mark’s next door neighbours where the Jepsons! These strange speaking people hailed from Watford, both Daddy Jepson ‘Dick’ had previously had a Lambretta and the eldest son Arthur was an original Mod and both had run GT200s from Arthur Francis of Watford (now AF Rayspeed) The youngest son Derek not old enough for Scooters started life on mopeds the old type with pedals not the new twist and gos. Derek is a few years older than Mark and progressed onto Lambrettas around 1977. Marks gained a Mobelette did it up and used it on the fields of Denaby unknowingly starting his mechanical career. And the fields that he raced the moped and push bikes on in the Seventies was Marks play ground where the new move is to take place many years later.
Mark remembers the Wath Pathfinders calling on Derek for trips to Scarborough and the East Coast. There was always a Scooter outside his house, Derek became a mechanic and was constantly building scooters inside his basement rooms. Derek progressed to cars, running a black Mini van with a Lambretta logo on it.
Quadraphenia came and went and Derek gave Scooters up, keeping his 70s long hair rather than the short hair, period of the time and still has! Having given up, Derek returned to Scooters as many have done 20 years later ending up with a bike Mark did in 1990! And he still has it to this day.
And so it seemed Derek and family and Scooter club became the reason for Mark to know all about Lambrettas throughout the Seventies. This is was not really the case! In 1975 Mark liked Pinball Wizard by Elton John as it was been played on the radio, this led to borrowing the original Quadraphenia Album by The Who which gave him the love of music. He became a big Who fan which is where he saw a Parka and wanted one, it wasn’t until 1979 that the Parka, Lambrettas, Mod music came together and Mark became a 15 year old Mod.
Marks Nanna and Grandad ran a Bus depot and mechanics business where the basics of business and leaning the ropes started, often sweeping up and getting in the way on a Saturday morning from the age of 11 earning 50p. On a Sunday Mark took over from Derek’s car cleaning job with his other next door neighbour and at one point also had a paper round.
As things progressed Mark got a job with the South Yorkshire passenger Transport becoming a Diesel fitter where he learn’t some more of the trade! Throughout the 5 year apprenticeship Mark used the 3 basement rooms under his mums house, where he collected as many Lambrettas as he could, all stripped cleaned and prepared ready for his restorations. And it wasn’t long before mates brought bikes to Mark for repairing and tuning.
Five years into Scooters living the life touring everywhere riding them the length of Britain and using them as daily transport led to working at Beedspeed in Grimsby for a year. After a year Mark ended up redundant and stranded in a house that he had just bought.
And so the story has continued, from in the basement in Mexborough to Beedspeed to a house in Grimsby!
This was the middle of the 1980’s the jobs on offer paid less than the mortgage, after 6 months of doing Scooters in the living room and bedroom Mark took the decision to go it alone proper!
MB Developments set up on the edge of Grimsby docks! Then disaster struck one year after starting business and making a profit which totally shocked the accountant as he said ‘I never thought you could finish a year’! Then some Twat set fire to the workshop in the early hours, basically burning it to the ground!
For the first time the whole world collapsed around him, eventually he sold the house and moved back to his home town of Doncaster where he set up a temporary business in the garage next to his now retired Nannas house, with burn’t out old remains of what ever he could salvage from the fire.
Time went by and Mark through an old family friend found an old railway station near Wakefield, always a dream of Mark to have, this station was perfect, bordered up from the 1960’s still with news papers everywhere. But it was not to be, the owners were a pain in the arse, who dragged it on an on. Close to bankruptcy because of the fire and the insurance people, who were another set of nobs. Why do people put brick walls in front of you when your young and trying to set up a business, it’s beyond me. And as it transpires it doesn’t matter how old you are, people are all the same especially if they wear suits all day, nothings changed!
As the railway station fell through Mark found the Industrial Estate in Edlington, Doncaster – not after tying to buy various shops around Doncaster but as usual the blokes in suits spoil everything! These people have no foresight, so it seems Mark and MB have been knocked back from day one! Mark hates England and the shit involved in business here!
So in 1990 we took on Unit 15 Broomhouse Lane Industrial Estate and now with a 660 sq feet unit. And his first customer in that empty building was Phil slacker Davies! Mark had nothing, it all burnt to the ground! Mark started with nothing, built up a nice business and lost it in 30 minutes of fire. The insurance voided half of the money owed to him as stuff was second hand, even in those days Lambrettas were worth a lot of money and got nothing back. He lost around 5 GPs, Sx200s, Tv200, engines and body bits, some customers totally lost bikes!
On about kicking someone when he’s down. What do you do? Give up? No pick yourself up Mark and carry on. And he did, scrounging whatever he could, finding equipment as cheap as he could, replacing tools and stock, just starting all over again. And that’s what happened, I tuned and tuned and built as many engines as I could just to make ends meet.
And this is how Mark grew, been a bit clever turned his hands to anything, doing lot’s of shows and generally finding work to pay for houses, wife and kids. After 5 years it was time to move the place was full, MBD had employed a number of helpers who have stayed friends all these years later. We were getting busier and needed to move so onto Industrial unit number 3.
In 1995 we moved into Unit 31, this was much bigger at 1000 sq ft, we built a 2nd floor to extended it and carried on working all hours to cover bills! Ian Hepworth joined Mark to computerise and help bring MBD into the modern world! Again we totally out grew it, with no room after 5 years we moved again in 2000.
Unit 5, this was bigger with a court yard, again we built a second floor, shop and offices in the court yard! Only to have the bloody council come in and say no permission take it down! So £2000 and a month later it all went in the bin, only for the council to inspect and say ‘oh we would have given you permission it was built that well’ Bloody hell these job worths! Twats! Having no shop or office or room for one, within 2 months we had to move again. But this time we took a gamble and kept the big unit and rented another one for the shop and stores at Unit 17 which was in a block of 3 and the other end to where Mark first started.
So now we had split units, the workshop Unit 5 and the shop Unit 17, 300 yards apart. It’s here Phil ‘Slacker Davies’ joined the team. As with Ian both had been good customers and Mark knew them well for a number of years and so MBD grew with the foundations of good employees and a good hard working work ethics. With ex brothering law Martin Webb now working in the workshop, MBD took its modern shape! And from it we grew again.
We very quickly needed more room and took the next door Unit 16 gaining another 660 sq ft, knocking through which we made the shop front adding Ian ‘Mouse’ Marrison to the work force. If your keeping up we have 3 Units at this point. The way we worked we needed more room. We looked at a Unit in the country down the road to buy, it was great the perfect dream, but the woman who owned it was going to make £90K profit on us and became a real pain in the arse, so Mark told he to stuff it. Yes another suit but this time a woman! It’s a shame it fell through but it did and these things happen for a reason.
The workshop was over growing and Mark needed to expand and took on Unit 21 giving us 1000 sq ft more, now dubbed the F1 shop and then we needed another for more employees so took Unit 18 also, another 1000 sq ft added!
In the end we took Unit 15 again knocked through to have 6 units in total! MBD were moving forward looking at new opportunities, Scooter Attack gave us Stage 6 UK, Scooter Center Koln gave us BGM and SCK UK and Schwalbe gave us also sole distributorship in the UK.
At around this time Darrel Taylor moved up close to us so we could all work together develop our businesses and grow Team Scootermatix with Josh Brown racing. This worked well for a year or so, but some internal ranglings with partners in Scootermatix (part of MB) meant we pulled out of Darrels office, Scootermatix moved in with MB but it still wasn’t working for a number of reasons. Darrel took Lee off us and carried on until he realised working from a unit and paying rent was not for him and moved into a house with a Garage to trade from.
Maybe MB tried to expand to fast, but it was in a recession and the pound had collapsed against the Euro and not a great time to set up 3 sole distributorships from Germany. We sort of gave up/had Stage6 taken off us to a big relief of Mark and Ian as it was so much hassle. In the end we made Scootermatix company work and it made a profit as did Schwalbe and SCK UK.
Life has been hard in the recession, the Euro/pound and knock on effect of running empty units until Mark could find time to do engineering has taken its toll over a three year period. Running the 6 split units becomes a bottomless pit and this is why we are on the move again. So we move from 5000 sq ft of split units to a 12’000 sq ft a gamble and a half! But having looked back each move Mark has always why didn’t I do this years ago.
And so we made the move to Denaby Main and the story continues…….
