How’s Business – December 2023

Rural shopfront with bicycles parked at the front

Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by Knog – Australian designed and lighting up the world. With Christmas approaching, for this month’s follow-up question I asked, “What do you think the Christmas holidays and summer season will be like for you and your store?” In keeping with this holiday theme, I spoke to a…

How’s Business – November 2023

Exterior of bicycle store

Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by Knog – Australian designed and lighting up the world. I’ve recently been hearing about multiple stores, spread across three different States and Territories, where senior bicycle mechanics or workshop managers are being offered or already being paid salaries in the vicinity of $90,000. This is higher than…

How’s Business – October 2023

Bike Culture Belconnen store exterior

Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by Knog – Australian designed and lighting up the world. Even though it’s one of the first things dealers talk to me about, it has been six months since we last specifically asked our How’s Business participants about the ‘d’ word … discounting. So for this month’s follow-up…

How’s Business – September 2023

Bike store in a small rural town

Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by Knog – Australian designed and lighting up the world. Every month after asking “How’s Business?” we also ask a follow-up question. This month we asked: “Do you consider your workshop to be a profit centre in its own right, or a just a cost that you have…

How’s Business – August 2023

Graham Seers Cyclery Shopfront

Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by Knog – Australian designed and lighting up the world. With stock levels and discounting still a frequent topic of conversation in the bike trade, for this month’s follow up question we asked, “How does your current number of bicycles in stock compare with where you’d like it…

How’s Business – July 2023

Chain Reaction Bicycle Co shop front

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…

How’s Business – June 2023

Swan Hill Bikes & Trikes shop

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…

How’s Business – May 2023

interior of a bicycle store

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…

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…