How’s Business – April 2023

Bike store interior

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

Hunter Cycles shopfront

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?

Empty shipping container

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

warehouse interior

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

Bicycle store interior

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

People meeting in a recycling warehouse

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!

Large bicycle 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’…

How’s Business – February 2023

Giant Bicycle store in Hobart

Welcome to our monthly round up across Australia and New Zealand, where we talk to independent bicycle dealers to ask them “How’s Business?”. The entire global bike supply chain has gone from famine to feast in most, but not all, bike categories, with manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers all struggling with high inventory levels. With that…

Pon’s Global CEO is Upbeat About Industry’s Future

Two men standing at bicycle event. Pon Bike CEO

Adelaide, SA At the start line of Stage 3 of the 2023 Tour Down Under, all eyes of the huge crowd were on the elite professional cyclists. Few people would have noticed the casually dressed Janus Smalbraak unobtrusively visiting some of the teams. A study of his online media shows that Janus likes it that…

Still a Market for Framesets Only, Says Chapter2 Founder

Man standing with bicycle display

Adelaide, SA Back in the olden days, that this author well remembers, it was virtually impossible to buy a complete high-end bike off the shelf. You would have the frame made by a local hand builder, buy the components through a bike shop and either build it yourself or have your preferred bike shop piece…