News
Retail Briefs: Popular Brisbane Bike Store Owner Dies During 53rd Birthday MTB Ride
Craig Saunders, long time owner / manager of River City Cycles in the Brisbane suburb of Yeronga, died suddenly and unexpectedly on Saturday 1st June. It was his 53rd birthday and he was out mountain biking with his son at one of Brisbane’s most popular trails. His family released the following statement on Instagram: “With…
World Bicycle Relief Plans to Exceed One Million Bicycles
Chicago, USA On Boxing Day, 26th December 2024 a huge earthquake caused a tsunami that swept across Indonesia and neighbouring countries, killing almost a quarter of a million people and leaving millions more homeless. F.K. Day and his wife Leah watched these events unfold from their home in the USA and wanted to help. That…
World News Briefs – Founders Buy Back Kona, Enve Sold
Kona Goes Back to its Roots Last month we reported here that the future of leading bicycle brand Kona was uncertain. Kent Outdoors bought Kona in 2022 but abruptly abandoned their stand at Sea Otter this April and then announced the brand was for sale. On Monday 20th May Kona’s founders Jake Heilbron and Dan…
Yearbook Correction – Yakima Australia.
In our 2024 Latz Report Yearbook, we made a complete mistake with the Listing of Yakima Australia. Since being alerted to the problem by Yakima, we’ve corrected the online flipbook version of the Yearbook which you can access here. But of course, we can’t change the print edition which has been mailed out to every…
How’s Business? – May 2024
Welcome to How’s Business, brought to you by our sponsor Dirt Works Australia, where right now, you can get Sunringle wheelsets for HALF PRICE. As always, we spoke to a wide range of dealers across Australia and New Zealand, with a mix of city and country locations and a wide range of store types. With…
Bicycle Imports Showing First Signs of Normalising
Canberra, ACT After 18 months of dramatically lower monthly bicycle imports, the latest figures are showing early signs that import numbers might be beginning to return to more normal pre-covid levels. Since we last wrote about bicycle imports here we have received import data for January and February 2024. In January a total of 51,765…
Premium Subscription Options Coming Soon to The Latz Report
Wollongong, NSW We’ll soon introduce a new subscription model for The Latz Report monthly newsletter. There are some technical details we still need to finalise, but in the meantime, I’d like to share with you an overview, so that you have time to give any comments or feedback before the new system is implemented, possibly…
Industry Briefs – Lively E-Bike Forum Highlights Differing Viewpoints
Lively E-Bike Forum Highlights Differing Viewpoints Bicycle Industries Australia (BIA) hosted an online E-Bike Forum on Tuesday 23rd April to allow discussion amongst bike industry members across a range of sometimes contentious issues. Because this event was not pre-publicised as a public forum, this article will not name any of the attendees or quote any…
European Bike Industry Survey is Surprisingly Upbeat
Brussels, Belgium Each year since 2020 Cycling Industries Europe (CIE) has published an annual Business Impact Survey which takes a holistic look at the state of the industry, with respondents representing various segments of the cycling industry, including bikeshare services, bike and parts manufacturers, retailers, and cycling ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) providers. The respondents were…
Latest Bicycle Sales Data from Key Cycling Nations Shows Further e-Bike Growth
Germany and The Netherlands Two detailed reports from Germany and The Netherlands show that the bicycle market is solid there, and far larger on a per-capita basis than Australia’s. E-Bikes Now Outsell Analogue Bikes in Germany Germany has long been the largest national cycling market in Europe and due to the very high average unit…