BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

Haymarket is to run a subsidised 'make the most of your exhibition space' workshop for exhibitors at The Bike Show. Haymarket's NEC consumer show - with an associated mass-participation charity ride - is staged 25-27th April. The expo workshop is to be held at the NEC on 10th February. Haymarket stages these workshops for its other shows but this is the first one for The Bike Show.

In February, Ian Taylor joins H Young Holdings PLC of Berkshire as Group Managing Director. Taylor was Giant's UK MD for two years and was the goal-keeper in the gold medal-winning GB hockey team at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

Old Man Mountain Products of Santa Barbara, California, is a four-person rack-welding operation that now has distributors in Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherland and Australia. It produces racks that fit MTBs with front and rear suspension, and frames without rack eyelets.

The fifth edition of Transport Trends, published last week, provides an introduction to the major trends in travel in the UK, and tracks them against data captured over the past twenty years. Cycle use as a mode of transport, rather than leisure, is spiralling downwards. If Government targets to increase cycle use are to be met (which is unlikely, as most of the other 400 targets in other policy areas are not being hit), there needs to be a major rethink in the way cycling is promoted to the public.

The law is about to become less of an ass. If the Department of Transport gets its way, which is highly likely, it will soon be street-legal for bicycles to be fitted with flashing lights. Police forces have long turned a blind-eye to the illegal fitting of LED lights to bikes – better illegal, very conspicuous lights than none – but the anomoly could have been used by a bright barrister against a well-lit cyclist in a ‘I never saw ‘im, yer honour’ car-v-bike court case