From a garden shed in Whitemoor

The Damerell’s story commenced in 1936 after Stuart Damerell lost an eye in an accident at the china clay quarry where he worked, using his garden shed to repair and sell bicycles. The Whitemoor business did well and later moved into a bigger shed in the village. After the war, with utility wheels in hot demand, he opened a second shop down the road in Lanjeth. Not wanting to take on staff, he operated from the Whitemoor site in the morning and Lanjeth in the afternoon!

Damerell’s first move into powered two-wheelers came in 1951 when Stuart took on the engine-in-wheel Cyclemaster. The Cyclemaster proved extremely popular with workers at mid-Cornwall’s clay mines, which at the time employed over 6,000 men. It was said at the time that Damerell’s were Cyclemaster’s top dealer. Ride-to-work options later increased significantly with the introduction of Raleigh’s moped range and its Roma scooter.

Up until the early sixties, bicycle sales were responsible for around half of annual turnover, but all that changed in 1963 when son Alan joined the business following a five-year apprenticeship with St Austell’s Ford dealer.

The Japanese arrive

Alan’s arrival was perfectly timed, almost coinciding with the entry of the Japanese. However, the first foreign franchise to be signed on was Lambretta scooters, followed in 1964 by a sub-dealership for Yamaha, then in its very early years of trading and operating out of railway arch premises in Camberwell, South London.

At the same time, alongside its thriving retail business, Damerell’s developed what was to become a substantial trade spares business following its appointment by Yamaha in 1967 as a national distributor.

Alan Damerell was one of the first in the trade to realise the cost and service advantages of spares computerisation over the labour-intensive manual systems then being used. Despite being at the ‘end’ of the country, computerisation allowed 48-hour spares delivery (against the normal five days, if you got lucky) anywhere in the country. Its unbeatable service made Damerell’s the go-to people for Yamaha trade spares. At its peak, before Yamaha took spares supply in-house, the Whitemoor spares operation employed nearly 60 staff, and annual turnover was in the millions of pounds.

Honda joined Yamaha at the Whitemoor showroom in 1975 following a visit from the then sales supremo, the late, great Eric Sully. Sully was less than pleased that Yamaha sales in Cornwall were twice that of Honda!

Three years later, in 1978, Damerell’s opened a solus Yamaha showroom in Plymouth, some 40 miles away, and an area where a significant number of Whitemoor customers were coming from. The branch was closed in 2016 following 38 years of trading; the cost of bringing a Victorian building up to the required Yamaha European standard was seen as prohibitive and unlikely to provide a return on what would have been a significant investment for a single franchise showroom.

Championing sales and rider safety

Respected throughout the industry and liked for his gentle Cornish humour and Jethro accent, Alan has done more than most in promoting motorcycle sales and rider safety. Back in 1985, after annual new registrations had dived by 54% from the 1980s record of 316,000, Alan, in the total absence of any promotional activity by the manufacturers or their association, organised a £50,000 South West TV advertising campaign. Funded by contributions from most of Devon and Cornwall’s dealers and some suppliers, the four-month-long campaign increased West Country sales by 3%. Over the same June–September period, sales were down 17% in the rest of the country. The campaign’s resounding success was the catalyst for an industry-funded national TV campaign the following year. Saatchi & Saatchi ‘designed’ the £2 million campaign. It was a spectacular flop, sales falling by 14%! And the less said here about the costly fiasco, the better.

Damerell’s got involved with rider training long before CBT became law. Along with the late Colin Appleyard, the Keighley, Yorkshire dealer, they were the first dealers south of the Scottish border to support Edinburgh dealer Graham Chatham in his 14-year-long campaign for mandatory rider training, eventually introduced in December 1990. To the concern of most dealers and the majority of manufacturers, Damerell and Appleyard adopted Chatham’s policy of not selling a bike to new riders without at least four hours of training. Until 1983, the law allowed anyone to ride up to 250cc just by sticking on L plates, and a lot of youngsters were being killed or seriously hurt.

Rider training is still seen as an integral part of the Damerell’s business, but in commercial terms it’s almost a loss leader. That said, it keeps customers safe, and they keep coming back.

Four generations and a new home

Alan’s son Steve joined the business in 1984, aged 18. After gaining experience across all departments, he took control of sales in 1998 and was made managing director in 2003. It was to be another nine years before Alan fully retired in 2012. His wife, Angela, who has managed the accounts side of the business right from the early days, still puts in two days a week. Grandson Luke, the fourth generation of the family business, signed on in 2013 and works on sales in the showroom. Steve’s eldest son, Ross, who is a director, works in London and doesn’t have an active role in the business.

A landmark occasion came in 2007 when Damerell’s moved from its Whitemoor base of 70 years to new-build, state-of-the-art showrooms at Indian Queens, St Columb, with the old Whitemoor showroom and warehouse being demolished and redeveloped into an estate of some 35 houses.

Easily one of the most impressive-looking bike showrooms in the country, the 10,000 sq ft building comprises a well-ordered display area for around 250 new and used bikes, an immaculately presented clothing and accessories display area, a five-bay workshop, plus a separate area on site for the rider training school.

As of now, Damerell’s has franchises for Honda, Kymco and Royal Enfield. Its 55-year-long partnership with Yamaha came to an end in 2019 by mutual and amicable agreement.

“Not a damn thing”

Now retired, Alan Damerell still takes a lively interest in the business and looks back at building it into one of the top bike dealers in the country with justified satisfaction. Asked if he would do anything differently given his time again, his response was an emphatic “not a damn thing”!

Reflecting on those early days back in the sixties when setting up Yamaha spares distribution, he recalls how helpful the late David Jarry at Lings of Norwich was.

He spent a lot of time helping me out with computer problems he’d already experienced setting up his Honda trade spares operation. Lovely man; when I offered to pay for his help, he said, ‘Next time we meet, you can buy me a beer!’

Looking ahead

Looking to the future, Steve Damerell, who has now been running the business for 15 years,

...this season has been a good one for the 90-year-young business. The new Honda Dream display area opened six months ago and has worked well, Enfield sales have been strong, and demand for places in the training school, always a good indicator of future interest and sales, has been exceptional.