Shift Up Podcast: The new challenges and opportunities facing the bicycle business

Our quarterly update on the state of the bicycle business is now live on the Shift Up Podcast, which you can listen to all week at the head of our homepage, or by hitting play below.

Topics this week are wide-ranging; taking on everything from omni-channel’s evolution, Uber’s acquisition of Jump, a skewed allocation of bike industry marketing budgets, outside influencers entering the bike industry and how to generate new customers.

Following on from his appearance on the debut episode titled ‘State of the Bicycle Industry’, CyclingIndustry.News’ editor Mark Sutton makes a call within for the bike industry to reconsider where it focuses its consumer marketing spend. Outlining that the vast majority is sunk into promoting high-end bikes for a single demographic, you’ll hear presenter Arleigh Greenwald quiz our editor on just why the bike industry cannot seem to sustain specialist consumer websites targeted at female cyclists, among other audiences.

With discussion centering on just where new business opportunity exists within the bike business, electric bikes kick off a chat that quickly broadens to assess just what kind of shopper will be entering bike stores in the near future.

“The millennial generation and those following will have grown up alongside technology; that makes staff training immensely important,” says Sutton. “There’s little worse than walking into a store and knowing more about a product than the staff on hand to assist. This generation enters a shop having done research, so it’s crucial that your staff can offer greater detail and be trained to sell effectively. Otherwise there is a real risk of the customer not seeing the local bike shop as a necessary stop on their shopping journey.”

You can follow the series by searching #betterbikebusiness on social media, or by registering for our bi-weekly round up of industry news and trade opinion here. You can also pitch in to the discussion on our trade-locked Facebook group at Cycling Industry Chat.