Iconic motorcycling retailer M&P appears to go bust
An iconic name in British motorcycling appears to have gone bust.
Everything-motorcycling retailer M&P appears to have shut down without warning or explanation.
One can’t help but think of the Ernest Hemingway observation that bankruptcy happens “Gradually and then suddenly.” This has come on very suddenly, to the extent that we’re still not entirely sure what’s happened.
Here’s what we do know: last night (24 September) M&P’s online face, Mike Morgan, posted a somewhat cryptic video on the company’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, in which he tearfully appeared to say goodbye. Shortly afterward, a graphic was posted of the company’s logo on a black background and the text: “1978-2025 / Ride in Peace.”
Hours later, the video was deleted but as of this writing, the graphic remains. Meanwhile, Google Maps states that the business is “permanently closed,” and M&P’s website is not currently accepting new orders.
Visitors to the website are met with a message stating: “Temporarily closed. Store update in progress. Please check back soon to place your order.”
Meanwhile, access to all of the pages related to the sale of new and used motorcycles has been blocked. Visitors attempting to access this side of the business are confronted with the message: “Website Undergoing Maintenance. Our website is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We will be back shortly. Thank you for your patience.”
Hitherto, M&P had been a dealer for a number of brands, including Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, KTM, Royal Enfield, and eight others. It also sold used motorcycles.
Checking the various social media accounts related to those brands - eg, M&P Kawasaki, or M&P KTM - one will discover that access to their Facebook pages has been restricted. All visitors will see now is a message stating: “This content isn't available at the moment. When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people or changed who can see it, or it's been deleted.”
Google Maps, meanwhile, describes these businesses as “permanently closed.”
Digging through the social media that, as of this writing, is still publicly viewable, one can see rumblings of problems stretching back at least a week. On 15 September (last Monday), a post on the M&P Facebook page announced the cancellation of that week’s bike night, blaming inclement weather.
However, most of the comments on the post take issue with the claim and speak to rumours they’d heard that the business had gone bust. One commenter claimed he had visited the business earlier in the day to receive an MOT and was told that the business had been closed down.
“Apparently everyone has been made redundant and it’s gone into administration,” wrote Ben Preece.
We don’t have any evidence of that being true or otherwise, but clearly this is not business as usual.
So, what happened?
At present, there is no information on the Companies House website to suggest that M&P has gone into administration. Indeed, it appears that the company had satisfied all its debts to creditors as of late May.
But with ties to so many globally important brands, you wouldn’t expect this sort of behaviour unless something had gone very wrong.
Backing up, we know that 2025 has been a time of dramatic change for M&P. In February of this year, M&P Direct was acquired by an investor group led by former BSB racer Peter Graves.
“Our goal is to build on the solid foundation already in place, investing in the future,” Graves said at the time.
An accompanying statement from the company said that M&P Direct would “continue to be driven by its dedicated team,” which included Mark Collings - M&P’s founder and managing director at the time - and Co-director Lynette Ballard.
“We’ve had a challenging few years in common with many in the industry,” Collings said at the time. “We’ve seen many friends and competitors fall by the wayside. We wanted to make this change to give M&P the best possible opportunity for the future.”
According to filings with Companies House, Collings resigned just two months later. Ballard resigned in late July.
Along the way, M&P’s Swansea Harley-Davidson dealership shut down, as did the M&P Cardiff location, which had served as a dealership for Harley-Davidson, Ducati, Royal Enfield, and several others. Staff there were made redundant.
But amid these cutbacks, in May, M&P added Bimota to the long list of brands that it sold. In late August, it took part in a special UK dealer launch for the KB998 superbike.
Indeed, up until a week ago, when people called shenanigans on the retailer’s cancelled bike night, M&P was outwardly operating like a business that fully intended to stay in business for the foreseeable future.
Again, we don’t know if the 47-year-old brand really has gone into administration, but it’s definitely hit the brakes very, very hard. And it is often the case that when an entity is about to enter administration, the advice they are given is, effectively: Stop everything now.
As you can probably guess, no one at M&P is answering the phone at the moment. Emails to people within the company are being bounced back with messages like the automatic reply from Mike Morgan: “Dear friends, colleagues and spam bots: as of Wednesday 24th September, I will no longer be an employee of M&P Direct.”
We’ll continue to try to get in touch with someone from the company.
For the latest on this story and other motorcycle news, stick with Visordown.
Chris Cope is a fourth-generation journalist, originally from Texas. He has lived in the UK for roughly two decades and has been writing about motorcycles for most of that time. He has written for dozens of publications and websites in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.
