Monday, 4 November 2024
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Bike prices and P&A brand building in the new issue of Cycling Industry News

Bike prices, demo fleet costs, brand building and more are in the latest issue of Cycling Industry News, now available online, with print issues on the way to subscribers.

Features in this issue include:

  • Do cheaper bikes = a stronger bike industry? We asked shops for their views and take on 2024 so far
  • Last mile special: Magura on stepping up brake performance for cargo bikes + Amazon’s increasing commitment to cargo bike last mile deliveries
  • Ask the Boss: Extra UK and Cyclex boss Will Fripp answers our questions
  • Marketers speak out! How journalists can get the most out of their bike marketing and PR colleagues
  • Market Data: Who should pay for shop demo fleets?
  • Building an own-brand: Bob Elliot takes us through the genesis and evolution of KranX
  • Velocipede Cycles: Our correspondent heads to Kent to chat shop expansion and industry trends with this bike shop
  • OnGuard! Fighting talk from the lock brand as it takes us through how its angle-grinder-beating RockSolid can tackle thieves and boost business
  • M&A in the bike trade: Opinion on the pitfalls of pushing brand expansion vs keeping things lean and focused

Don’t subscribe but want a copy? Sign up online here. Any questions? Email the team at [email protected]

 

FROM THE EDITOR:

Reshaping urban spaces

LONDON’S Oxford Street is, at last, to be pedestrianised. In many ways, it is amazing how long it has held on in its current form, with traffic thundering along between reams of shoppers. There are multiple questions on how that pedestrianisation will be delivered, but for this most famous of shopping streets, it’s surely about time.

The shape of the high street and our urban areas has a direct impact on active travel and has been hotly debated for as long as I can remember. One newish element being thrown into the mix is the advent of autonomous cars.

Coming from a cycle perspective, the prospect of autonomous cars have brought their own worries – will they be able to adequately detect and safely negotiate bicycles and their riders? And their arrival is not exactly going to reduce congestion, as they won’t be encouraging people into active travel…

I recently sat in on a seminar at the E-Commerce Expo. There, Jason Bradbury gave a wide-ranging talk with a more optimistic view on autonomous cars. Believing them to be not as far off in the future as many of us think, he pointed out the disruptive effect they will have on urban spaces. How so? Well they’d spell the end of the urban car park. It’s worth picturing that for a moment. You arrive by car in town, you step out and said car promptly drives off to pick up another passenger. The removal of car parks will provide drastic scope for the reshaping of town and city centres. That disruptive effect applies to car ownership too. One vision of the autonomous car future sees car ownership plummet. Why would you bother to own one when you can simply request one on your app, get from a to b, then leave the car to drive off and pick up someone else?

Maybe it’s overly naïve to expect autonomous cars to provide an indirect boost for active travel, but it’s worth remembering that urban spaces weren’t “always like that” and positive change is possible, even if it is coming from unusual sources.

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