DISTRIBUTOR


AN INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE


With 40 years in the business, Ison Distribution managing director Lloyd Townsend has seen the bike trade change many times. BikeBiz gets his thoughts on the current state of the industry


Mood music going into 2023 It was quite a mixed vibe at the start of 2023. We knew of the Moore Large situation happening around COREbike, and I feel that was really an unfortunate thing to see occur. Naturally, it is a small industry and many of us have friends and acquaintances who we’ve known for years that were being adversely affected. Following their collapse, there was a concern that the large inventory sitting with Moore Large could cause a problem in itself, with a pile of cheap stock going into the market. Ultimately, if I’m honest, I don’t know if it has caused quite as many ripples as we feared it might have done. However, it was perhaps the first indicator of the potentially devastating impact of an unstable market on the cycling industry that was to come, following Covid. Frankly, everyone I’d spoken to in the early part of the


24 | January 2024 www.bikebiz.com


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