TRENDSPOTTING
My view is that to grow the bike industry must attract brand-new people to cycling and to do that we need marketing representative of the public at large and appealing optics behind, just like the automotive adverts always portray.
The difference is cars come with a roof and that’s a problem when the public at large almost always mention the weather when dismissing cycling. Industry veteran and sales trainer Colin Rees once told
PHOTO BY DMITRII ELIUSEEV ON UNSPLASH
whole lot more frequent now that e-bikes all have partner apps.
It feels as though in the future it will be difficult for an electric bike sale to not have a digital paper trail embedded in the process, removing the manual work previously required. Alongside spotting a sharp increase in annoyingly loud alarms on even budget-tier e-bikes I’m testing, this fills me with a little hope of a trend reversal.
Climate change: We’re in the find-out phase This year was wet, record-breakingly so. September had over 300% of the normal amount of rain across much of the UK, while the first six months of the year were just grey drizzle. Then October and November were just weird combinations of mist, snow, warm blasts, monotonous grey, and oddly dry ground. I think we should just rebrand Autumn to ‘confused’ season. Yep, 2024 wasn’t a good year for weather, which is probably in large part to blame for the delay in fully solving our bike overstock issue and prompting the need to revaluate the “survive to ‘25” phrase that had become so popular amongst forecasters like myself. To be less anecdotal and more evidential, for every degree of warming at least 7% more moisture is held by the atmosphere. If you looked at Spain in late Autumn you might revise that figure upwards. Lucky that wasn’t us, eh? And it was luck, one day it will be. Now I’m not saying we as a nation are underprepared for foul weather, but this month I’ve been able to make time for a spontaneous haircut because my train was delayed by leaves on the tracks. A very predictable annual occurrence, would you believe?
I strongly suspect that one of our major challenges, deep into the future, will be the fact that the data is showing an increased trend for precipitation here in the UK.
Are we turning the tide on bike theft? PHOTO BY JASPER GARRATT ON UNSPLASH
www.bikebiz.com January 2025 | 43
me: “You must always have something available and to mind when a customer gives you a reason not to buy”. For this one issue, I’m struggling with a comeback I believe will turn the dial.
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