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In the 1960’s, Joe Hughes started selling parts of his sponsor, Alf Ellis of Elstar Motorcycles, for whom he was a works rider on a Elstar BSA. He rode speedway for Peterborough in 1969-1970 and for Long Eaton in 1971-1971. During this time, he also rode international Grasstrack and Ice Speedway. Due to the growing number of commitments on the continent, Joe gave up speedway to concentrate on Grasstrack, Longtrack, and Ice Speedway. It was during this time, that Joe made many of his business contacts that he still uses today. One of the first was with the Frey family of Daytona boots and has been their sole UK importer of track racing products for over 30 years. Joe raced regularly with the likes of Hans Zierk, Otto Lantenhammer, and Otto Weiss of Germany, Jan-Holm Nielsen and Kurt W Petersen of Denmark, Barry Briggs of New Zealand, and Ab de Grout of the Netherlands. All of these became both customers and suppliers. When Joe’s racing career was over, it was then that Joe Hughes International began in earnest.
Thought the 70s and 80s the business continued to expand. In 1993, his daughter, Natalie started working full time upon leaving school. The business moved out their camped garage location to warehouse on Goodsmoor Road. As the business continued to grow, his son, Morgan joined the business after being a mechanic for the likes of Billy Hamill, Sam Ermolenko, and Stefan Danno.
Joe has used his vast contacts and knowledge to become the leading speedway and grasstrack stockists in the world. In addition to Daytona boots, Joe Hughes International is the sole world distributor of John Shirt chainguards, Surflex speedway clutch plates, and recently the new Prodrive 115 silencer. They are also distributors of NGK spark plugs, Regina chains, K&N air filter, Joker Machine products, Stuha frames, LZ components, Renthal handlebars and grips, Venhill cables and controls, and many more. To meet the ever increasing demands of the speedway market, they have recently moved to a new purposely built showroom and warehouse facility on Victory Road in Derby