It’s all been about bikes, bikes. It started as a teen aged boy competing at a local athletic club and then riding in the ‘boneshaker’ cycle races each week on the grass track and winning time after time.

The first racing bike was a Malvern 5 Star fixed wheel with Dunlop rims and Michelin HP tyres, having to pay for it by riding a butcher’s bike after school delivering meat around Whakatane.

That Malvern Star had its first race at Opotiki at an athletic and cycling meeting. First open race first place 13 years old. The same meeting in a 2 mile event involved a crash which saw the Malvern Star mounted quickly and finished 3rd.

A busy racing career followed with with both road and track events (grass and hardtrack) locally, (now in Auckland) provincially and soon nationally.

Time to leave school (Mt Albert Grammar) and join the work force with brief stints with a Customs and Cartage agent, Oil Company and then employed by NZ’S then largest Wholesale Bicycle Importer Hope Gibbons who were also an automotive wholesaler with links to Ford Motor Company being the original assemblers of Ford motor vehicles in NZ.

Raleigh, Humber, Phillips, Sturmey Archer were some of the traditional English made product and bikes imported. These arrived in crates of 25 in CKD (completely knocked down) crates. Today many years later we are now the Sturmey Archer agents in NZ

 They had to be sorted from parts as minute as loose ball bearings, Head sets, Bottom Brackets, Spokes and Nipples.  Paper wrapped frames and forks etc to complete each bike.

Some had to be packed into bike kits which the bike shop customers then built up or we built up some for them.

I was working with tradesmen who were artisans in the bike trade, being frame builders, stove enamellers all learnt before World War 11.  I was privileged to be taught by these men  in  so many aspects of the bicycle trade.

I became a salesman calling on many bike shops locally ,soon also was buying and setting up the specialist racing division introducing, bike brands such as:

 Zeus components and bikes from Spain

 Holdsworth, Falcon from England, and Raleigh racing bikes, with Carlton and Sun framesets.

 GB brakes, handlebars and stems, Cyclo gears and tools, Williams cranks, Chater Lea pedals and components, Barum tubulars and RIH racing frames from Holland .

Many years later I then joined Ford Motor Company as the National Parts Centre buyer and during this experienced the first world wide energy crisis. Time to go back to my roots in bicycles.

Opened Pedal Pushers in Palmerston North with a cycling business partner Stewie Watts, it was an immediate success, soon bought Stewie out who moved to Australia. Gary Buys who had worked with us while at college for 'work experience became a permanent part of the business

Was frame building and was approached by two teenagers who wanted the new US craze BMX bike. These were not in NZ, and because of Import License Controls could not be obtained in NZ unless you had bike import licence which was impossible to get.

Made the first prototypes and soon was in demand. PANTHA BMX was the result when I co-opted a cycling family who were also engineers.

Russell Dixon and I agreed to produce a few frames and made components like Handlebars, stems, seat pillars, and needed to find wheels, as Dixon Engineering were casting car wheels we came up with the concept to cast alloy BMX wheels, the design chosen was one now famous done by David Dixon, with his draughting skills.

 Warren Dixon a talented engineer helped develop the casting, jigs and welding

 

 

1978 we had developed kit sets which could be sold to bike shops…who would build them up. This was the introduction of the BMX sport in NZ.

1979 the Government Trade and Industry Department granted us import licence and we were able to manufacture complete bikes in an abandoned Glaxo factory at Bunnythorpe…and the rest was history being almost two years in front of other manufacturers.

 1978 a full BMX track was built at the factory for testing the bikes and at the same time a club was formed with meetings being held regularly with visits from Kapiti and Wanganui.

At the factory I built the first track funny bike in the free world from aero aircraft cro- moly after being in the NZ Cycling team in Holland in 1979.

 We shared a hotel with the Worlds top cycling country at the time East Germany who had put millions of dollars into sport at the time including the development of unique racing bikes.

Because the bike industry did not have tubing sets to meet this new development ,I modified aircraft profiled tubing to make the first bike for World Record holder Anthony Cuff, so keen was he to ride it he took it bare steel onto the track with immediate success.

I resigned from the Pantha board of directors as a result of a dispute over adding a brazing line to make Holdsworth bikes under licence with their assistance in setting up as a new product range had to be set up to compliment BMX bikes. Also there were concerns over the direction of Pantha BMX production.

Scott Clavis continues with re-development on the PANTHA BRAND

Since those days I have been totally involved in the bike industry working in the UK and Europe as a frame builder then a contract assembler, which was curtailed because of family member’s sudden illness (since recovered).

Family now has bike shop retail interests

 

 

 And a new  shop which is part of Velomaster and backs up with service requirements

Also now importing specialist components and liased with design and manufacture of custom made traditional framesets in Reynolds and Columbus tubing.

Set up Velomaster online shop to market niche market components and accessories, now moving into local NZ market with a comprehensive product range of bikes and components.with a bricks and mortar retail shop Bike West in Henderson bikewest@orcon.net.nz

 

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