World
Wahoo Fitness Acquires Speedplay Pedals
On 24th September Wahoo Fitness announced that it had acquired Speedplay, the niche high end pedal manufacturer known for its unique colourful ‘lollypop’ shaped Zero pedals. In a joint press release Wahoo Fitness founder Chip Hawkins said, “Wahoo and Speedplay share a common approach of leveraging technology to develop products that enhance the performance of…
Eurobike Numbers Up for 2019
After a failed experiment last year with a move to July and no public day, Eurobike returned to its traditional early September date and three trade days, one public day format. The change back appears to have worked. According to a press release, Eurobike trade attendance was up 6.6% this year with 39,834 trade visitors…
USA Based Private Equity Firm on Bike Brand Buying Spree
Iconic French brand Mavic, was sold in July 2019, completing a deal that was first announced on 15th March. Previous owner Amer Sports, a European based sporting conglomerate, sold Mavic to Regent, a USA based private equity firm. Amer also purchased ENVE wheels in 2016 for US$50 million (A$74 million), but ENVE was not part…
Sachs Brand Relaunches at Eurobike
Sachs is a century old bicycle component brand from Germany that also had a presence in Australia for many years, despite having a small market share here. In November 1997 American component company SRAM bought Sachs and took over its German factory as the centre for its internal geared hub manufacture. But due to declining…
Harley Davidson Enters the Bicycle Market
Four years after introducing their LiveWire electric motorcycle program, on 23rd August 2019 Harley Davidson presented three ebike prototypes. They released a photograph, but no technical information. The urban style pedalec bikes appear to have only one brake lever to operate both front and rear brakes.
Giant & Shimano Trading Strongly
Two of the cycling world’s best known manufacturers have released their latest financial reports showing strong sales and profits over recent months. On 19th March Giant announced that its sales for 2018 grew 9.1% over 2017 to NT60.24 billion (A$2.83 billion) with net profit up 46.3% to A$203 million. Giant said that strong ebike demand…