Madison are now responsible for the distribution of PRO, the parts and accessory brand from Shimano and they will soon be readily available from Ultimate Pursuits stores accross the UK. Dominic Langan, MD of Madison said:
“PRO is a strong and growing international brand, thanks to the investment and development resources of Shimano. We believe that the selected Pro range being offered by Madison will fill many of the gaps within our current product offering and will help further deliver our objective to be the UK’s number one cycle trade supply partner.”
Arjen Vinke, PRO brand manager based at Shimano Europe’s headquarters said: “We are proud that Madison will distribute and market PRO in the UK, we know from our experience with Shimano that they are the leading UK distributor and that will add value to our product range with their specific knowledge of the UK market.”
PRO started off as a range of general parts and accessories from Shimano’s European distributor, although it was not directly linked with the Shimano brand. However, over the last year there have been some significant changes: the PRO brand has become the overall responsibility of Shimano International, with all the benefits that brings in respect of product development, tooling, quality control, and marketing the PRO range has been rationalised, with a focus on certain important categories, which is where you will see the greatest innovation and investment; some existing categories will be discontinued.
PRO has benefited from exposure through Shimano-sponsored ProTour teams, such as the carbon wheels used by T-Mobile, or the bar and stem components used by Rabobank and Credit Agricole.
The full PRO range will be on show at forthcoming Trade road show and consumer expo areas at the Tour of Britain, by which time our first stock will have arrived. Stock availability and pricing will be a from late August. We’ll keep you posted.
