In addition to hosting Eurobike, Frankfurt was co-hosting the 2024 European Cup (soccer/football) and had a huge fan zone along the Main River where fans from every country could watch matches most evenings on the big screens.
Frankfurt, Germany
Many Aussies and Kiwis make the long journey to Eurobike each year. Most are trade visitors, looking for new products and catching up with their existing suppliers.
But a growing number are also exhibiting. In addition to the photos below, we also saw exhibits from Australia’s Knog, Steadyrack and New Zealand’s Aeroe.
Here are some highlights:
Santiago Campo, Guy McCausland and Lisa Howard from BikeBox are regulars at Eurobike.Mark Waldron and Guy Thompson from Groupe Sportif were pleased to meet the new owners of Enve who had flown out from their USA base for Eurobike.Monica and Marius Zarafu from Newcastle based e-bike share operator and docking system designer Bykko were visiting Eurobike to see the latest technology in their rapidly growing market.Manfred Otto from TMO Sports had a range of European based suppliers to meet with at Eurobike.Steve Edmonds has only been General Manager of Go Active Outdoors, which distributes Thule bike racks in Australia, for less than a year. He came from outside the bike industry, so this was his first time to Eurobike and he was impressed by its scale.Tom Hayward, CEO of Mt Manganui New Zealand based Kids Ride Shotgun said that they now had 22 international distributors worldwide. The company is only seven years old but now looking to set up an office in the UK and hire someone in the USA. “We’re raising mini mountain bikers!” Tom said. Here his is photographed with their original kids seat in the foreground and holding their Dirt Hero balance bike that features a Magura hydraulic disc brake.Ataraxy Bicycle Seat Company is a startup founded by Melbourne based Robin Macan who wanted to create a more comfortable bicycle seat. His design is called the vabsRider and each of the two split halves moves back and forth along a rail as the rider pedals.Murray Healey is the New Zealand based Product Manager for Australia’s JetBlack Cycling. At Eurobike he launched their new VICTORY smart trainer, which has been a huge development project for the company and is named after JetBlack founder Tony Simmond’s recently deceased father Victor. JetBlack has built up a significant global distribution network for their products.Melbourne based Stella Su has bootstrapped her own sunglass company, Hokky Australia.This is Lyndal Bailey from New Zealand start up Bike Matrix, in front of a Where’s Wally poster that has bicycle parts hidden amongst it.
“This is essentially what finding bike parts is like. Is it the right thing? Was that Wally or was that his imposter?” Lyndal asked.
Bike Matrix is a software solution that can be integrated into a point of sale system, workshop portal or shop website.
It allows the user to select a bike and then see the parts that fit that bike, making it easy for anyone to see for example, what are the correct brake pads or tyres. They describe it as “Compatibility as a service.”
Bike Matrix is being developed for a global market from day one. It’s still in development, but the team is starting to talk with specific customers.
Leva Group’s Dan Carr, Jordan Fraser and Jacob Carr with the new Tern Orox that had just won a Eurobike design award.Rob Akam from Reid Bikes is pictured here with a 2025 Ladies Classic e-bike that will retail in Australia for approximately $1,500.
Reid Bikes is an Australian-founded bicycle company that has seen a complete transformation since its inception.
Founded by James Reid, who no longer works in the business on a day to day basis, Reid began as a single Melbourne store, gradually expanding into a small chain of stores across other Melbourne suburbs and Australian capital cities.
Their core products were very low-priced, low spec’d Reid branded bicycles that were often sold to local students and other casual cyclists.
Today, the retail chain has gone, with just one store remaining and Reid is run from the UK by Rob Akam who joined the business 12 years ago, just two years after it started, and is a minority owner.
Today Reid creates much more diverse and high quality bicycle ranges, that it sells via distributors into over 25 countries worldwide. Some bikes are Reid branded and others are branded with various names owned by different distributors.
Rob said they’re aiming to sell about 160,000 bicycles for financial year 2024, which is only slightly down on their covid peak in FY2022 of over 200,000 units.
Of the 2024 production, over 20% of units will be e-bikes. Reid also sells direct via an online store, where any dealer within a certain range of the customer is paid full retail margin.
Some of Reid’s customers include Anaconda, 99 Bikes and Costco.
Rob says that one of the keys to their success through a turbulent decade in the bike industry has been maintaining a policy of, “No debt, no credit, no stock,” meaning that all customers must pay for their orders up front and the various national distributors have to pre-commit to stock and warehouse it themselves. He says they’ve grown by 300% since 2019 and are still finding pockets of demand for certain bike models in various countries.
Reid maintains an office in China with four staff who oversee quality control, resulting in fewer warranty claims.
