BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

Keolis, co-owner of the Thameslink and SouthCentral rail franchises in the UK, and bus and tram networks throughout Europe and Canada, is to trial city-centre bicycle hire centres at transport nodes such as railway and bus stations. The Oxygen Stations will also offer electric bikes and Segways for hire.

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...

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.