Posts by Phil Latz
Continuing Very Low Bicycle Imports are Actually a Positive Sign
Canberra, ACT We’ve just received the latest bicycle import data for the months of January and February 2023. In summary, the number of bikes that were imported was way below average. In normal times, this might be cause for concern, but given our current industry situation of overstocks and discounting at both wholesale and retail…
2023 Micromobility Conference Postponed – A Personal Letter from Phil Latz
Wollongong, NSW I’m writing to announce that we’ve decided to postpone the 2023 Micromobility Conference. We ran the first Micromobility Conference in November 2022 and although it was a great success in terms of fantastic speakers, encouraging reviews from delegates and many other positive aspects, it ran at a financial loss. It’s about a month…
What Does Our Bike Industry Future Look Like?
As we all know, Australia’s bike industry went through an unprecedented two-year boom from about March 2020 until it started to taper during 2022. During that boom, I wrote two opinion pieces here and here predicting what would happen next and then, early this year, this article in which I summarised which of those predictions…
How’s Business – April 2023
Welcome to our monthly conversation with retailers across Australia and NZ. It’s always dangerous to define any trends from a sample of, in this month’s case, just seven stores. However, it seems stores with less nearby competition, particularly regional stores, are finding things better than city stores where there are multiple shops nearby. We’ve been…
How’s Business? – March 2023
Welcome to our monthly chat with bicycle store owners and managers across Australia and New Zealand. We’ve been hearing reports of very large discounts being initiated nationwide by multiple bike brands as the industry faces a perfect storm of over-stock, demand returning to pre-Covid levels and consumers struggling from increased cost of living pressures. So…
How Accurate Were Our Covid Bike Industry Predictions?
During the Covid pandemic I wrote two articles predicting what would happen in the future of the bike industry as a result of Covid’s ‘big disruption’. The first one was posted on 17th December 2020 and the follow-up was posted on 23rd September 2021. There’s a strong chance you might have read either or both…
Inside Bikecorp – Before and After Photos
Melbourne, Vic Back in May 2021, we managed to sneak into ‘Fortress Victoria’ between Covid lockdowns and take photos of Bikecorp’s then brand new headquarters while it was still a hard hat construction zone, about a month before they started to move in. The new warehouse is located in a brand new industrial precinct next…
Bicycle Imports in Freefall but Unit Value Soars
Canberra, ACT Bicycle import numbers in Australia were on an earthbound trajectory when The Latz Report last reported on the data late last year. My article on the data to the end of September 2022 reported: “It appears that after two years of stratospheric bicycle imports, numbers are starting to fall back to earth.” One…
Revolve Recycling Aims to Fill Important Gaps in the Bicycle Industry
Sydney, NSW Revolve ReCYCLING officially launched its expanded facilities in Sydney last week, within the Bingo waste management depot at Alexandria in the city’s inner south. Speaking at the launch on Tuesday 14th February, general manager Guido Verbist gave an overview of Revolve’s operations and reason for being, using 10 numbers in ascending order. “Six…
Where is He Now? Curating an Amazing Bike Collection!
Rochester, Victoria If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you might remember that for two decades we featured regular columns by Greg Griffiths, across both Bicycling Trade and Bicycling Australia magazines. In particular, his ‘Behind the Counter’ column often drew wry smiles from other bike shop owners/managers when writing about ‘slice of life’…