Blogs
Car Industry’s Bad Track Record on Electric Vehicles
In BE’s e-mail newsletter (May 14th) reporting about the SRAM ‘Urban Days’ event in Schweinfurt, the header BMW: ‘Bike Industry Has To Learn Quickly’ caught my attention (click here for that story) I may have misunderstood the details of the message by Mr. Augustin E-Mobility manager at BMW, ...
Advocacy Centre Stage at "Taipei"
The Taipei International Cycle Show has put bicycle advocacy centre stage, with proof that cycling can grow the industry. If we want 35 million more cyclists by 2020, then industry and advocacy must act united. And we must act today. I delivered a keynote address at Taipei Cycle Show during the pres...
More Money
More money than ever before is going around in the bike sector. Our cover story of the Bike Europe March 2013 issue is just one example of what is going on. Here we report that Accell Group got 300 million euro from a group of banks to refinance itself and to have ample funds available for the take-...
How to Prevent Recalls of Li-Ion Batteries?
HONGKONG – Reports on safety issues in the field require a recall of the whole batch. Look what happened with Dutch Gazelle as they had to issue a recall of thousands of batteries in our report last March 26. This is a not only a costly and complex operation, but also hurts the image of the e-bike m...
Creating a Bigger Cycling Market
How to create a bigger market for the global cycling industry? What is required to do this is a systems approach to cycling similar to what helped revolutionize the biomedical industry in the last 20 years. A systems approach to cycling means putting together rather than taking apart, integration ra...
We Try Harder
We try harder to be the best trade journal in the bike business. That’s why you see here a completely overhauled Bike Europe. We not only have restyled the magazine but have also focused on bringing our editorial content to a higher level. For example by having more on the financial issues of the wo...
2013 - The Year of the Money
In business every year is the year of money – so why is 2013 different for cycling? Because this year those endless EU summits become a budget and a business plan. Miss the chance and we will spend the years to 2020 fighting for cycling’s place at the international policy table. The EU dedicated jus...
More on Major Price Increases
Earlier this week, on July 24, we reported that major price increases are on the way as the euro – dollar rate was heading towards 1.20. Since last Tuesday the euro value against the dollar was up again and traded yesterday for a rate close to 1.23. Still it’s a lot down on what this rate looked lik...
New Eurobike Trend?
Is it the start of a new trend? Or is it the financial crisis and all that goes with it like the drop in bike sales in Europe? Fact is that three big names in the industry pulled out of Eurobike. Trek, Vittoria and Sun Race – Sturmey-Archer have decided not to take part in the 2012 global bike show ...
Fair Trading......
In order to get the latest on the state of the Chinese industry and the latest on the anti-dumping investigation that is currently being carried out by the European Commission, I travelled to the 22nd China International Bicycle & Motor Fair (better known as the Shanghai show) last month. It turn...
