World
Taipei Cycle’s Smiling Face Hides a Tough Market
Taipei, Taiwan Sometimes people have to put on a brave face. If you walked through the bright halls of this year’s Taipei Cycle and didn’t stop to speak to anyone, you’d probably think that the Taiwanese and global bike industries were booming. But in reality, the opposite is true. I heard multiple stories about factories…
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…
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,…
World News Briefs: Giant to Sell via ‘Big Box’ Retailer in the USA
Giant Opens ‘Big Box’ Retail Accounts in the USA Giant Group announced in early February that it will be selling via “approximately” 25 selected stores within the huge Dicks Sporting Goods (DSG) chain in the USA. Those stores are branded House of Sport, Public Lands and MooseJaw. According to Wikipedia, Dick’s is the largest sporting…
Will Taipei Cycle Fully Recover in 2024?
Taipei, Taiwan For decades, Taipei Cycle has been one of the top three global cycle expos, along with Eurobike and China Cycle. The island nation of Taipei was particularly isolated right through covid, with the expo forced to run ‘virtual expos’ online. Even last year when the full expo resumed in person, exhibit and international…
World News Round-up
The End of WiggleCRC in Australia? A recent article in Bike Europe implied that WiggleCRC’s days in Australia could be over for ever. At their peak about from about 15 years ago to a decade ago UK based Wiggle and Northern Ireland based Chain Reaction Cycles were both widely disliked names amongst Australian bicycle retailers.…
Ongoing Pain for Shimano from Huge Malware Attack
Sakai, Japan Cycling media around the world have been reporting on a malware attack that has seen thousands of confidential Shimano documents leaked to the public. The source of these reports is this article in the tech website Escape Collective. In case you don’t want to wade through that fairly long and detailed article, here’s…
First Mid-Drive System Further Entrenches Hyena at Heart of E-Bike Sector
Taichung, Taiwan Taiwanese manufacturer Hyena, a supplier of e-bikes and components to some of the world’s biggest brands, recently unveiled its first full mid-drive system, as the company moves towards its ambitions to provide a full solution for systems and complete e-bikes. Hyena co-founder and CEO Charlie Chuang said the Unidrive 60 mid-drive system, for…
World Briefs: Giant, VanMoof, Zipp, MINI, Greyp, Trek & POC.
Giant has released fifth-generation ranges for both its Defy endurance road bikes and Avail Advance line-up, featuring totally reengineered frames and purposed built components for each line. The Avail range, released under the company’s Liv brand of female-specific bikes, trims more than 100 grams off its framesets compared to their predecessors – 128 grams for…
Lithium Iron Battery Closes Performance Gap to Nickel Cobalt Systems
Michigan, US A US energy storage technology company recently announced further progress in the range and energy density of its lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery system, as a safer option to nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) and with greater availability of raw materials. Michigan-based Our Next Energy (ONE) says its Aries II LFP battery pack has…