Madison and Sportline CEO Dominic Langan on what we can expect from digiBike 2022

digiBike is returning with a whole month of content from Monday 21st February to Friday 18th March. Dominic Langan, CEO at Madison and Sportline, outlines what we can expect from the online show

This piece first appeared in the February edition of BikeBiz magazine – get your free subscription here 

Tell us a little about digiBike 2022 and what dealers can expect from it.
With digiBike we try to replicate as much of the traditional iceBike trade show as possible and give dealers an opportunity to learn all about our brands on a deeper level. As usual, many of our brands will be exhibiting new products and offering insights and information that you would not normally get access to.

We always have exclusive offers available to digiBike attendees which is a great reason to attend, but it really is a unique opportunity to learn as well. When you walked around iceBike, one of the best parts about the show was hearing all the excellent conversions being had at brand booths.

While it is a shame that we won’t have that again this year, the video content that we have created will hopefully get visitors inspired and excited about what our brands are up to in 2022. Brand managers and sales agents are all available to chat to afterwards, and there will be comment sections throughout the website.

Education, and an opportunity to learn and improve together, is a huge focus of digiBike. We will have a number of seminars for dealers to watch from industry experts like Shimano, Park Tool and more. Keep an eye on the website for updates on these.

How will it be different to last year’s online show?
We listened carefully to feedback from dealers and suppliers after last year’s digiBike show and while it was largely positive, there are a number of things we are doing to make it even better for 2022.

We will be producing more professionally shot and engaging video content, with a better range of promotions and incentives released throughout the month. We have worked hard to make retailer access better and have also linked it directly into our B2B platform so the ordering process will be much simpler.

We will put offer codes into some videos so they are much more visible and include a comment functionality on certain pages to help instigate more conversation. Obviously, the big change is that the show will run for four weeks instead of four days.

What are the advantages to it taking place over a month?
Some of the feedback we had from dealers was that they were simply too busy while the show was running last year. We really sympathise with this as it is difficult to find a spare few hours to browse all the content and offers while trying to run a business. We therefore have extended it to give busy business owners and shop staff more opportunity to explore the website in their own time.

What aspect of the show are you looking forward to the most?
The most exciting aspect of this year’s digiBike is definitely the extra effort we are putting into our informative video content so we are looking forward to seeing the reaction to that. By adding comment functionality to some of the pages, we also hope that it will encourage more conversation and real-time feedback.

As mentioned already, the conversations that happen at iceBike are what makes it such a great show, so if we can replicate that even just a little bit, we will be very happy. It will also be great to see how much impact extending the show will have and we really hope it makes it easier for dealers to log-in, see what’s new and take advantage of the offers.

We are running a ‘Dear Dom’ feature at the show this year, where dealers can ask me anything they like and I will answer as many questions as possible on camera. We have already had lots of great questions submitted and think it is a great way to engage with the industry – the full video will be exclusively available to watch for digiBike attendees.

How might this year’s show influence your plans for future years?
That is quite a difficult question to answer right now but after every iceBike or digiBike, we ask visitors and dealers for feedback. It is so important to listen to what people did and did not like, so we can improve and make it a better experience for everybody.

We do believe in the digiBike format however, so it will continue to exist for product launches that require a bigger focus. The most important thing for now is that we work hard to provide a great exhibition for our dealers and we really hope that they enjoy this year’s digiBike. Finally, we have plans to organise face-to-face retailer events later in the year but of course this will be Covid-permitting and at a time where we can all be as relaxed and happy as possible.

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