Top cycle designer says ‘industry too focused on high-end’

BikeRadar reports that top industry bicycle designer, Mark Sanders, has claimed the industry is missing out on the lower-end market potential.

At a conference in Taipei, Sanders said: "There’s a potentially unlimited market for good quality, well-priced bikes for the mass market."

Sanders went on to discuss how other markets – such as the mobile and laptop trade – have achieved desireable and technologically advanced, yet low cost items with a consistent sell through.

"Imagine, just for a moment, that the bicycle had not been invented," he said. "Imagine no mountain bikes, no racing bikes and no bicycle industry. Imagine no UCI; it’s easy if you try. Now imagine that a global consumer product brand, such as Samsung, Ford, Philips or even Apple, introduced a new ‘product for personal transport’ … This ‘must have’ product has a potentially unlimited market, alongside mobile phones and microwave ovens."

Sanders highlighted Trek’s now discontinued ‘Lime’ model as fitting the bill of the kind of bike likely to appeal to the the wider non-enthusiast market.

Read BikeRadar’s article here.