BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Over 120 members of the bicycle industry attended Future’s second annual Spring Cycling Conference last week.
Business owners and marketers attended the event held at Bath Spa Hotel, where speakers from Future, British Cycling and others discussed topics affecting the market.
Keynote speaker was Stewart Kellett, recreation and partnerships director at British Cycling, who spoke about their work to get an additional one million Britons riding bikes. Kellett discussed the ‘massive changes’ British Cycling has undergone over the past three years, and revealed plans to ’embrace the industry more’.
He said: "The Olympics is the biggest marketing campaign we’ll ever get for free – the coverage for cycling at the moment is unheard of and now’s our chance to grow the market.
"Team GB has impacted on ordinary people – there’s an affinity between them and the people on the street. We’ve got to catch them."
At the conference Future revealed a number of new projects for the cycle market: "Chop MTB, our soon to launch mountain bike video site, Cyclingnews HD our weekly iPad magazine, updates on BikeRadar Training, our exciting video work, and Project Mainstream – our initiatives to reach more non-enthusiast cyclists. All were extremely well received and we have lots of expressions of interest to follow up."
Future also presented the latest wave of its brand tracking research BikeTrack to provide some insight into consumer opinions of retail brands. The rest of the formal part of the day was dedicated to sessions on SEO, brand building, with presentations from Mediacom, John Straw and Future’s own Nick Merritt.
The day was rounded off with a series of road and mountain bike rides lead by Future’s journalists; Andrew Dodd, Robin Weaver, Warren Rossiter and Jeff Jones. Over 50 riders taking part, Future said.
"Despite the lashing rain these were brilliantly received and a great bonding experience. We counted them out and we counted each mud-splattered one of them back."
