BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
BikeBiz catches up with Windwave MD Peter Nisbet
This piece first appeared in the March edition of BikeBiz magazine – get your free subscription here
COREbike is returning in March, what can dealers expect from Windwave?
First and foremost, 2022 marks our 35th anniversary. The COREbike show will be the perfect opportunity to celebrate this with our stockists and industry network, and we’re looking forward to it!
Product-wise, our brands have been very busy lately and we’ll have many exciting new bikes and P&A products showcased on our brand new displays. Among others, we’ll have CeramicSpeed’s brand new Gold Edition OSPW, Vision’s Metron range, FSA’s NS AGX VAS Stem, Dainese’s brand new Linea helmet range, Thok’s MIG HT, Transition’s Spire Alloy and many more… It will also be the first time we’ll have Granite Design products on display.
Why are shows like COREbike so important for the bike industry?
When it comes down to identifying new and exciting products for your bike shop, it’s almost impossible to replicate seeing those in real life. Catalogues and websites are great and very convenient but can’t always convey the real value of a product.
As well as recognising the market appeal of a product, you can also take a closer look at the packaging, the display options, the product’s size and how much space is required in your store. It gives you a better idea on the bigger picture that is bicycle trading – do you invest in a whole range or just the one product? Can you order 10, 50 or 100? Do you need specific POS or backdrop? What margin and potential profit can you make from one buy-in? And repeat buy-ins?
On top of that, trade shows like COREbike are also a good chance to put faces to the names and/or voices you might have been dealing with in the past. We’re proud to have one of the friendliest teams here at Windwave and everybody is super keen to get back together and meet face-to-face.
Windwave won Bike Distributor of the Year at the 2021 BikeBiz Awards – what did it mean to win?
Winning Bike Distributor of the Year at the 2021 BikeBiz Awards was definitely a huge highlight for us. We’ve worked hard over the years to provide the best bikes to the best dealers and build the best relationships and this award felt like the culmination of all that effort.
Our award is proudly displayed in our meeting room now, alongside Tadej Pogačar’s signed 2021 Tour de France yellow jersey and our CeramicSpeed Distributor of the Year award. Talk about an epic year!
Looking ahead to 2022, what can we expect from the business and the industry?
So 2022 will be an interesting year. Whilst we’re expecting to see the pandemic boom settle down a bit in certain areas, we’re also hoping the supply chain backlog will gradually go back to a more normal state.
When it comes to our current brands, we’re expecting demand to remain just as high as it’s been the past couple of years. The exciting challenge ahead will be to explore different avenues where cycling growth continues to boom (we’re keeping a close-eye on the industry’s move to more electrification in particular). Watch this space.
