BIG INTERVIEW
government should directly support. We need to make this case as loudly, and on as many fronts as possible, to compete with other industries doing the same. The Manifesto makes the case that we should be recognised as a strategic vehicle industry, just like the automotive sector, pointing out to politicians we already provide £7.5billion in economic value each year, bigger than the steel industry; with thousands of diverse and innovative businesses supporting 64,000 jobs on high streets and industrial estates in every constituency. We believe this could easily double over a decade with the right policies and investment. Most importantly the manifesto contains a blueprint – a comprehensive set of proposals - for the next government, focussed on securing policy support and direct investment for the industry. This is quite different from cycling campaign groups’ efforts (albeit we applaud and support these) who already make the case for things like cycle infrastructure. Ours is an “industrial case” for cycling, led by business, rooted in hard economics, and we hope compelling to politicians of any hue. We’ve focussed on securing incentives for things like e-bike uptake – the engine of growth in other cycle markets; widening access to our products and services with measures like VAT reform, particularly for children’s products; and supporting industry jobs with direct investment in innovation, and lower business costs. We’ve also taken our own small but important steps in helping shape the industry of the future – particularly one that is more diverse and more sustainable. We launched our diversity programme in March to unite the cycle industry behind a shared commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; and we’ve successfully bought the cycle industry into scope for public innovation funding, which should allow more cycle businesses to access this significant funding stream for the first time; and which other sectors like automotive have been accessing for years.
How important has Investors in Cycling been in scaling up the BA’s efforts? The BA is hugely grateful to the more than 1000 businesses across the industry who contribute to the industry advocacy fund. “Investors in Cycling” was created as a way to explicitly recognise those who support our advocacy work, and also to give something back in the form of some key benefits – a voice in shaping the advocacy asks, and access to free services like legal and HR support, and non-profit preferential rates on consumer finance.
Without these contributions we would not be able to champion the industry to
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PHOTO: RICHARD BELL VIA UNSPLASH
government, to seek policies which benefit the industry as a whole, or policies which could directly support our contributors - for example reform of business rates, or VAT reform for cycle products like children’s bikes, or workshop labour.
How have members reacted to some of the market challenges in 2023?
PHOTO: JORDAN BRIERLEY VIA UNSPLASH
It’s obviously been a very challenging year for the industry. Rising costs, oversupply, and soft demand have coincided to create the most difficult market conditions for decades. One positive impact we’ve seen at the BA is an increasing use of market data. A number of subscribers to our market data service have told us how they’ve been able to use it to identify areas of opportunity – even in a declining market - by benchmarking against the market average to find areas where they’ve been underperforming. More generally, and despite the prevailing conditions, we’ve seen a surprising amount of optimism about the long- term outlook. There’s a strengthening case that cycling simply has to grow given macro trends like climate change, electrification of transport, and local pressures to reduce congestion, pollution and generally live, work and consume more sustainably. For the BA this has translated into real enthusiasm and engagement from many cycle businesses on things like our industry manifesto. This is heartening in itself for us, but more to the point gives us a broader mandate upon which to represent the industry to Government.
It also means that for the first time we’re beginning to exploit one of the industry’s inherent advocacy strengths – which is that our members are based in practically every constituency in the land, and we can use the local connections to add weight to the national and industry-wide arguments. So much more powerful to approach
January 2024 | 21
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