Origins[edit]
The company was started by
Siegfried Bettmann, who had emigrated from
Nuremberg, part of the
German Empire, to
Coventry in England in 1883.
[2] In 1884, aged 20, Bettmann had founded his own company, the S. Bettmann & Co. Import Export Agency, in London. Bettmann's original products were
bicycles, which the company bought and then sold under its own name. Bettmann also distributed sewing machines imported from Germany.
In 1886, Bettmann sought a more specific name, and the company became known as the
Triumph Cycle Company. A year later, the company was registered as the
New Triumph Co. Ltd,
[1] now with funding from the
Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company. During that year, another native of Nuremberg, Moritz Schulte, joined the company as a partner.
Schulte encouraged Bettmann to transform Triumph into a manufacturing company, and in 1888 Bettmann purchased a site in Coventry using money lent by his and Schulte's families. The company began producing the first Triumph-branded bicycles in 1889. In 1896 Triumph also opened a bicycle factory in Nuremberg.
In 1898 Triumph decided to extend production at Coventry to include motorcycles, and by 1902 the company had produced its first motorcycle—a bicycle fitted with a Belgian
Minerva engine.
[3] In 1903, after selling more than 500 motorcycles, Triumph began motorcycle production at the Nuremberg factory. During the first few years the company based its designs on those of other manufacturers, but in 1904 Triumph began building motorcycles based on its own designs, and 1905 saw the first entirely in-house designed motorcycle. By the end of that year, the company had produced more than 250.
In 1907, after the company opened a larger plant, it produced 1,000 machines. Triumph had also initiated a lower-end brand, Gloria, also manufactured in the company's original plant.
Confusion between motorcycles produced by the Coventry and Nuremberg Triumph companies resulted in the latter's products being renamed Orial for certain export markets. However, a company named Orial already existed in France, so the Nuremberg motorcycles were renamed again as
"TWN", standing for
Triumph Werke Nürnberg.
[4]
