BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

A lengthy report on the Edinburgh Bike Co-op in the business section of last night's Edinburgh Evening Post makes for revealing reading. For instance, a fifth of the shop's income comes from its website (which is the fastest growing part of the business) and the shop gets lots of orders for mudguards from America. And what does one of Britain's best bike shops think of fellow IBDs, and UK suppliers?

2000 events have been registered with the Bike Week organiser. 58 of these events are Dr Bike free safety checks for consumers. But only 15 of these are to be run by IBDs. Is this because the Dr Bike concept is "naff" and is giving away something for free when IBDs normally charge for such services?

The proceedings from the Velo-City conference, held in Edinburgh and Glasgow in September 2001, have been burnt to a CD. For a tenner you get the full papers from the 234 speakers at the conference plus transcriptions of the plenary sessions. Most of the talks were campaign-focussed but some were bike-trade oriented, including seminars on helmet use, design of utility bikes and the future for the bike market

So far, the only Far Eastern companies to have created powerful brands, recognisable in Europe and the US, are Giant and Shimano, argues The Economist. But, in an article entitled 'Another new model from Asia', the British news-magazine argues that European and American cycle manufacturing companies will only survive by continual innovation

Today's release of the Quarterly Distributive Trades Survey from the Confederation of British Industry shows that retail sales slowed significantly in May. This is for all sectors of retail, not just the bike trade. The survey seems to confirm that April's exceptional results were boosted by the timing of Easter and good weather.