How’s Business
How’s Business? March 2021
Welcome to our monthly chat with bicycle store owners and managers across Australia and New Zealand. Recently we’ve seen a proliferation of electric scooters on the roads, bike paths and footpaths across both countries. Many are part of newly emerging hire schemes, but many more are privately owned. It appears that most of these are…
How’s Business? February 2021
Welcome to our first How’s Business interviews conducted in 2021. As always, we called a selection of shops across city and rural locations throughout Australia and New Zealand. This month’s follow up question was, “Did you notice any differences in your Christmas trade compared to previous years?” Paul Fitzgerald from Giant Echuca in the historic…
How’s Business? Christmas 2020
Welcome to our monthly survey of bike shops where we start by simply asking, ‘How’s Business?’ As we anticipated, the shop owners we talked to quickly raised the issue of supply shortages. For this month’s follow up question we asked, ‘Given the ongoing shortage of new bikes, have you considered selling second hand bikes?’ In…
How’s Business – December 2020
Reports of stock shortages are certainly sounding like a broken record in our monthly ‘How’s Business?’ column. But that’s what was top of mind for every retailer we spoke to this month. With Christmas looming our follow up question for this month was, ‘How do you think this Christmas season will compare to previous years?’…
How’s Business? – November 2020
Welcome to our monthly conversation with bicycle shop owners across Australia and New Zealand. It would be lovely to have a break from talking about the Covid-19 impact upon the bicycle industry, not only for the relatively trivial reason of editorial variety, but because, as the pandemic drags on, it’s really starting to put a…
How’s Business? – October 2020
Welcome to our monthly chat with bike shop owners across Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, stock shortages continued to dominate the dealers’ concerns and comments. This month our follow up question was, “How do you see this new season going and have you made any changes to your usual new model year bike orders?” Steve…
How’s Business? – September 2020
Welcome to our monthly conversation with six bike shops selected from across Australia and New Zealand. This month our follow up question was, ‘Which products are in shortest supply for you right now and how long do you think it will be until you get adequate supplies?’ As you would expect, dealers were all still…
How’s Business – August 2020
Welcome to our monthly conversation with six bike shops selected from across Australia and New Zealand. Knowing in advance that bicycle stock shortages would be a topical response this month, our follow up question was, ‘Do you think it’s possible for a workshop to be a profit centre in its own right?’ Damien Lack of…
How’s Business – July 2020
Welcome to our monthly survey of six bike shops across Australia and New Zealand where we start by simply asking, ‘How’s Business?’ Our follow up question for this month was, ‘What product categories are currently out of stock both in your shop and with your suppliers?’ Darryn Giles from Chain Reaction Christchurch, New Zealand said:…
How’s Business – June 2020: Special Expanded Edition!
It was already obvious from last month’s How’s Business responses that the Covid-19 virus has caused an unprecedented boom in demand for workshop services and certain categories of bicycles and P&A. This month I wanted to share more detailed information about which categories of bikes and P&A in particular are in the shortest supply, along…