Friday, 14 February 2025
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C2W, counterfeit bike tools & last mile in focus for latest Cycling Industry News magazine

C2W, counterfeit bike products, trade relationships and much more are under the microscope in the latest issue of Cycling Industry News magazine, which is available to read online now.

Features this issue include:

  • We assess the latest developments in the big Cycle to Work debate.
  • RedSky Bikes on opening during turbulent times and the importance of having an online shop window for independents.
  • Are robust cycle economies facing similar challenges in the bike shop workshop department?
  • New tools in the fight against counterfeit bike goods.
  • Is the trade shooting itself in the foot by complaining about high priced bikes?
  • Women in Cycling: More eye-watering stories from the trade and a call for the majority to speak up for the minority.
  • Bob Elliot talks trade relationships, own brand development and the positives ahead for the industry.
  • Spain’s growing mobility market.
  • With sustainability hardly out of the headlines and ESG policies, the timing is right for cargo bike operators to pick up more last mile business. We go through the challenges with Zedify.

Subscribers will receive their copies of Cycling Industry News magazine shortly. Don’t subscribe but want a copy? Sign up online here.

Editor’s Comment:

“TRUTH AND CONTROVERSY”

In the final days before the latest magazine (finally) made its way to the printers, I was momentarily alarmed by all the controversial things that were mentioned within.

Like placing the pieces of a jigsaw together and realising it’s a shocking image you’ve been making all along. All of a sudden, you realise you’re printing stuff that could upset a sizeable proportion of the industry.

It’s not, believe me, coming from a place of wishing to be controversial and ruffle feathers for the sheer hell of it. Yet, here we are – talking about the future of C2W, how the industry is not always pulling in the same direction, questioning the sustainability efforts of the trade, arguing the trade is its own worst enemy when discussing price, and noting that the industry has a bunch of challenges to overcome of its own making, diversity, moving with the times, etc. Then we skirt around the uncomfortable topic that most industries will have to deal with sooner or later – balancing selling less product in favour of stuff that avoids landfill longer and working towards a business model that works within that framework. The controversy-ometer is definitely nearing the top of the scale.

So I hope you take it in the spirit it is intended: To help pave the way for positive change. To pose difficult questions in the hope that we’re all up to the challenge of answering them. And ultimately, to highlight some of the stuff we need to work on for a sustainable (not just in the saving-the-planet-sense) cycling industry.

And we publish this stuff in full realisation that we’re not all perfect here at CIN Towers (well, not all of us, anyway). Room for improvement, there is always plenty. Onwards.