Daily wear also plays a part. Sweat, sunscreen and regular use all shorten a helmet's working life, so riders who use a helmet every day should expect to replace it sooner than someone who rides occasionally.

The trade off is scale. A workshop like this will never produce helmets as fast as a large factory, and that is treated as acceptable, since the aim is a considered, well finished helmet rather than the fastest one to market.

To find out more about the made to order process, visit full face and open face range.

This is slower than fully automated manufacturing, and that is the point. A handcrafted shell trades speed for a level of finish and individual attention that a purely machine made helmet does not offer.

A handcrafted helmet shell starts with a base material, commonly fibreglass or a composite blend, layered and shaped by hand rather than produced purely by mould and machine. Each layer adds strength, and the shaping stage is where a lot of the time in production actually goes.

Trying a helmet on in person, and wearing it for a few minutes rather than a few seconds, catches problems a size chart alone cannot. Padding also settles slightly with use, so a helmet that feels snug when new is usually the right call.