BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

The Halfords-sponsored online map of the National Cycle Network has been furnished with new clickable links to wildlife, heritage, and rail journey planning websites. Oh, and you can search for Halfords store locations, too!

Madison has booked slots on the Discovery Channel and the ads will air twice a day, at peak times, in the run up to the Easter break. The ads direct consumers to the new Shimano Service Centre website, the passwords for which will be removed in time for transmission.

Yet more details about Dura Ace 2004 have been released by Shimano Europe. The piece-meal fashion of the media releases is clever: Shimano's top-end road group is going to get multiple mentions on bike-related consumer news sites around the world. Today, feast your eyes on CAD drawings of the Dura Ace brake lever-shifters...

Raleigh chairman Phillip Darnton is in the Nottingham company's employ until the end of April. He then leads the marketing push for the National Cycling Strategy Board and will soon be elected president of the Bicycle Association, after the withdrawal of would-be president Hamish Stewart of Weldtite. Darnton believes we would all be better served by organisations that fought not with each other but for the greater good of cycling.

The soft-franchise operation behind 'Profile the Bicycle Specialist' is a small part of Euretco, a €1bn retail group based in the Netherlands with retail services offshoots, own-brands and its own shops. The group increased its turnover by 5.3 percent, with Euretco Tweewielers increasing by 12.7 percent. In 2002, Euretco achieved profits of €13.3m.