Posts by Phil Latz
Our First Look at Six Years of E-Bike Import Data
Canberra ACT As I confessed in another article here, I’ve only recently become aware that e-bikes imports are recorded separately under Australian Border Force tariff code number 8711.60.00, that has the following definition: “Motorcycles (including mopeds), bicycles and other cycles fitted with electric motor for propulsion, with or without sidecars.” The problem that’s immediately apparent…
How’s Business – July 2023
Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by Knog – Australian designed and lighting up the world. How’s Business is our monthly chat with bicycle shop owners and managers across Australia and New Zealand. We’ve decided to open up the opportunity for an exclusive sponsor for How’s Business, so from this month onwards, you’ll see…
FE Sports Announces Exclusive Australian Distribution of Campagnolo
Brisbane, Qld Brisbane based importer and wholesaler FE Sports released a statement on Thursday 13th July announcing that they would be the exclusive distributor of Campagnolo for the Australian market. “We are excited to partner with Campagnolo and bring their exceptional cycling components to the Australian market,” said Darren Harper, General Manager of FE Sports.…
How’s Business – June 2023
Welcome to our monthly chat with bicycle dealers across Australia and New Zealand. With winter officially started after a very cold May in most parts of Australia and NZ, our follow-up question this month was, “How are your sales of lights, winter apparel and any other winter seasonal product going?” We made our calls on…
Huge Interest in the Stratospheric Top End of Handmade Market
Williamstown, Victoria If you added up the production of every hand maker of bicycles in Australia it would probably still only amount to a fraction of 1% of the total Australian bicycle market, by volume. But that doesn’t stop people coming in their thousands to see the annual Handmade Bicycle Show Australia (HBSA). They come…
We’re Changing The Latz Report Newsletter Frequency
Wollongong, NSW From this month, we’ll be publishing The Latz Report newsletter once per month. Each newsletter will include both our popular How’s Business? column and an Annual Guide. When we launched The Latz Report, we were publishing a monthly newsletter. Then from the start of 2022, we increased the frequency to twice per month.…
How’s Business – May 2023
Welcome to our monthly conversation with bicycle shop owners across Australia and New Zealand. In last month’s How’s Business column, Leighton Thomas from Geraldton Bikes commented that he was spending a lot of time on warranty claims on new bikes that had various faults. He suggested that we ask other dealers if they were also…
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…