Posts by Phil Latz
World News Briefs – Trek to Cut Staff and Product Range
Trek To Cut Product Range by 40% and Staff by 10% In an internal memo to staff delivered in early March, Trek Bicycle President John Burke announced that he has decided to “right size” the company by 10% in response to slow sales and high inventory levels. But he says the company’s overall strategy remains…
Oh No! Is Chinglish an Endangered Species?
Taipei, Taiwan Wikipedia’s definition of chinglish is, “Slang for spoken or written English language that is either influenced by a Chinese language or is poorly translated.” It’s easy to be critical. The languages are so different. Imagine the “funny” mistakes that a westerner like me would make if I tried to write something in Chinese.…
Three Examples of Increasing Product Diversity
Taipei, Taiwan Just two decades ago the cycling market was much simpler. In Australia there were mainly just road, mountain and family/kids bike categories. There were virtually no ebikes, no gravel bikes, no bike share, no cargo bikes, no subscription schemes, not to mention, no e-scooters. The 2024 Taipei Cycle reflects all of these changes,…
Study Finds that K-Mart Bikes Cost More Than IBD Bikes
Sydney, NSW Year after year, independent bicycle dealers (IBD’s) miss out on sales of entry level bikes because the customer thinks it’s cheaper to buy a bike from K-Mart or another mass merchant. All of us in the bike industry know that most mass merchant bikes are rubbish! But it’s hard to get a sale…
How’s Business? – March 2024
Welcome to our monthly chat with bike shop owners across Australia and New Zealand. Firstly we’d like to thank Bikecorp, Australian distributor of Knog, for sponsoring our How’s Business column for the previous six months! This booking has run its course, so if you’re a wholesaler reading this that would like to sponsor our most…
Inside Rapha – Sydney and Beyond
Sydney, NSW I recently visited Rapha’s Sydney ‘Clubhouse’ and was kindly given permission to take the photos that you see accompanying this article. A Global Brand We’ll look more closely at the Sydney premises in a moment, but first a global overview. Rapha was founded in London, UK in 2004 by Simon Mottram. It quickly…
E-Bikes and Cargo Bikes Heading for Over 50% Market Share
I remember, back in the days when we still owned and published the quarterly print edition of Bicycling Trade magazine, boldly predicting that, “Within three years e-bikes would become a mainstream part of the Australian bicycle industry!” Unfortunately, I don’t own an archive of these magazines, so I can’t look up the year I wrote…
It’s Update Time! YearBook Portal Now Open
It feels like a long time ago since we first launched what was then called the Bicycling Trade YearBook in 1996! Technology has certainly progressed since then, which is why we launched the online ‘flipbook’ version of the YearBook four years ago. It has been consistently and heavily used, becoming our second busiest page, after…
Record Low Bicycle Imports for 2023
Canberra, ACT Bicycle import data for December 2023 has now been made available so we can compare the total imports for calendar year 2023 with previous years. The decline has been dramatic. In total 666,393 conventional (‘analogue’) bicycles were imported in 2023. That’s a drop of almost half a million units, 490,697 to be exact,…
Everything Electric Show Includes E-Bikes
Sydney Showgrounds, NSW Everything Electric returned for their second annual Australian expo, held from Friday 9th to Sunday 11th February 2024 at the Sydney Showgrounds. Last year, the event was branded the Fully Charged Show, matching the name of the YouTube channel founded by British actor Robert Llewellyn in 2010 that now has over one…