As you would expect, based upon our calls to one bicycle shop in each state, business is picking up around Australia now that warmer weather and longer days have finally arrived.
If you’re particularly observant, you’ll notice that I called two shops in South Australia this month. This was not deliberate, let’s just put it down to too many drugs to counter some sickness that I soon hope to be rid of!
This month I asked a very topical follow up question. Being the day that Malcolm Turnbull was sworn in as the 29th Prime Minister of Australia I asked, “What would you like our new Prime Minister to do to help the bike industry in general and your shop in particular?”
Belinda Farley of Active Cycles in Raymond Terrace, which is a small town just next to Newcastle, NSW said:
Business is going a lot better now that the weather has started to warm up. We were pretty much in the epicentre of the floods that hit in April. We had our ceiling collapse and a bit of stock damage. The massive flood shut down the township for a couple of days.
Then we got hit with the cold winter after that, but the last month has picked up quite well.
It has been interesting watching the 2016 models coming through and seeing how the Australian dollar has affected that. Some companies have done well to buffer that and other companies have just had to go with it, really.
Under the $500 mark we like to keep Malvern Star, they’ve done really well. Above $500 we tend to do more Trek bikes, but we do a few other brands. We do Fuji, we’ve got access to Apollo. We do a lot of BMX brands as well, a lot of Haro and SE.
Being a slightly smaller store and not a concept store, we have a lot of access to different brands. A lot of clients come in with a particular budget they want to stick to, so we have the option to offer older stock bikes, but a lot of people have accepted the fact that the new bikes have gone up.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) Oh God… not wear Speedos! I think that would be the top priority.
Newcastle is a funny town. It’s getting there, but it still needs a lot more work as far as the cycleways go. But I believe it will get there eventually. There’s still a lot of ignorance as far as the drivers are concerned but I think that probably happens in every city as well.
We need to have a seriously good look at what New Zealand’s doing. They seem to have nailed the bike industry… as far as bike infrastructure has gone, as far as bike tourism has gone, they’re killing it. It is worth looking to see what other countries are doing.
Dianne Bennett at Bennett Page Cycles in the inland regional city of Toowoomba, Qld said:
For us business is going really well actually. There seems to be people interested in all styles of riding which is lovely. You see more and more people wanting to ride now, which is great.
There are four bike stores in Toowoomba. The industry is becoming more popular.
For us, we’ve seen substantial growth I would say in the last, even 12 months.
There’s more urban riders. There’s certainly more interest in road bike riding. There’s certainly more interest in mountain biking. And there’s so many more events that people can do.
And children’s bikes… for us because we sell Giant bikes. They have a great range so that’s why we see all these different styles of riding. I think people are more conscious about being visible on the road, looking after their bike better now, actually appreciating their bike more, so it’s pretty good.
Everybody has their own style of doing things. For me, I chose this direction in my professional life so the store needs to be a reflection of myself to some extent and what I enjoy doing. I’ve just got to be real. This is who I am. I don’t profess to be a road racer or anything like that, but I’ve certainly been lucky and had the opportunity to ride all the different types of bikes and that’s what I enjoy doing. So I’m lucky that I get to do what I enjoy. That’s key for us.
(Referring to Giant’s Liv brand of women’s bikes and accessories…) Liv is going really well. We’re certainly seeing more women riding. I think it’s a great name. It doesn’t matter what bike you ride, when it comes to accessories they have really good quality, they’re well priced. They’re actually made for women. Sometimes things are just made in the smaller size, whereas Liv is true to what women want, so I think it’s working really well.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) That’s a hard question considering we have a new Prime Minister today… I don’t have a comment. I think everybody needs to do their own thing and if you want to wear budgie smugglers, go for it. Just don’t ask me to!
John Bishop of Bicycles Mount Barker located in the Adelaide Hills about 25 kilometres east of the city said:
For September, we’re only half way through the month, but it has picked up a bit. It has still been pretty cold over here. Last weekend was the first weekend that we had sunshine and business did pick up. Having said that, it has gone cold again in the past few days and business has levelled out again.
There’s a glimmer of hope, definitely, but at the moment, the best you could say is ‘steady’.
The thing that’s kept us going is kids having birthdays. So I’m thankful for birthdays through winter. It’s about the best part of our business through winter.
This year winter has been not particularly wet, but particularly cold. It has even stopped some of the very hardy riders from continuing.
The bike product mix for us up here, in winter time, winter / spring is still downhill and cross country mountain bike. Road is slower in winter of course, but as the warmer weather comes road bikes increase in sales.
We’re seeing an increase in ladies bikes. Not just hybrid but hybrid cross trail and vintage style bikes. Here we need vintage style with plenty of gears on them. There’s more interest in general ladies cycling, flat bar roadies as well.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) I’d like the new Prime Minister to ensure that the GST goes onto internet sales, particularly for overseas companies selling into Australia.
In particular, in our area, I would like some funding for the Amy Gillett track to be finished.
It’s got a bit to go. I think another 20 kilometres would go a long way to finishing it.
It runs from before Woodside almost to Birdwood. It doesn’t go through Mount Barker but there is talk of joining it to Mount Barker in the near future so some funding for that would be great.
Bunny Lim of BB Cycles in the north western suburbs of Perth, WA said:
Business has been up and down but it has been pretty good. In one area we’ve gone dead in the past 18 months but in other areas we have picked up.
The area we’ve gone dead in is road bikes. Now we’re selling only one or two a month. Our street BMX and race BMX has gone up from about 8% of our turnover to about 15%. So that has covered us, not only for road bikes but for the winter months.
With BMX race bikes, they race through the winter, so at least we don’t have too much down time in the winter because of that. We do a lot of building wheels and custom bikes for high end BMX racers.
Our biggest category of bikes for turnover would be recreational and mountain bikes from around $500 to around $3,500. We’ve picked up in the $2,000 to $3,500 range of dual suspension range mountain bikes for weekend warriors and racers.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) We do a bit of importing because I’m a wholesaler too. I often import from America. To get things out in small quantities is a lot of headaches with a lot of taxes.
If I import $10,000 or $20,000 that’s fine because then I hire a customs broker, which is a set fee. But on smaller amounts, that’s something I have to look at.
I know they’re going to reduce the low value threshold on GST for imports by consumers. I know they say the administrative cost is going to be high, but why can’t they just get the post office to collect it on their behalf?
Mike Walsh of GR8 Ride Cycles in Devonport Tasmania said:
It’s been good, but patchy. We’re a sports shop as well as a cycle shop, so we’re just coming off the sports side of things and now the cycle part of it is just starting to ramp up with the good weather.
It will be alright. We’ll get there. But in summary, since you spoke to us two years ago, the answer would be, ‘patchy’.
In our area, on the north west coast of Tasmania, there has been lots of doom and gloom. We’ve only been here five years ourselves and in that time a towel factory called Tasman Weaving Mills has closed down, a carpet manufacturing factory has closed down, a pulp mill closed down, an engineering mob in Burnie closed down. Forestry is poor. There’s been a lot of that doom and gloom. A lot of job losses have happened so a lot of people are holding onto their money.
We’re still hanging in there. The biggest percentage of our business is mums and dads. Even though we sell right up to $10,000 road bikes, that would be 2% of our business.
The majority of the bike riding here is for general purpose. That has always been the natural demographic around here.
We’re selling more high end mountain bikes than we used to because there’s been some new trails opened up around here. But that would still be a small part of the market.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) Tax the internet purchases. That’s one of the biggest difficulties that the retailers face today. Someone can import something from overseas for less than I pay for it. That’s a real hurdle.
I know they’ve said the GST threshold will drop, but how will they police it? I reckon they’ll go undetected. I can’t see how they’ll stop the average person unless the post office becomes the policing agency because so many people are importing so much stuff.
The sellers are a faceless community a long way away. They could be fairly elusive I reckon, when it comes to getting the tax out of them.
Jack Young of About Bikes in the Adelaide Hills town of Woodside, SA said:
Business is steady. We’re more than just a bike shop. We’ve got our bike tours as well… About Bikes and Bike About. We had a very quiet June and July, both with Bike About and the shop, but we’re pretty busy again now, so that’s good.
We though that Bike About might have fed the shop, but the shop stands alone. They complement each other.
For us our main sellers are hybrid bikes because we’ve got the Amy Gillett bikeway going right past our front door. Then we’ve got the mountain bike park, so it would be hybrids and mountain bikes.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) Number one, leave the GST where it is (as in not increase it to 15%). And as for funding, because I’m up in the hills, I’d like to see more funding go towards road verges and giving cyclists more verge to ride on. (meaning smooth sealed shoulders on country roads).
They’re putting a bit more money into bike paths, but for the roadies, I think we need to have designated roads. There’s signs on some roads that say ‘Caution Cyclists’ but then we’ve still got no verge.
And some of the verges that we do have, they’ve just spray sealed them and they’re just shocking. I’d like to see a decent hot mix go out a bit wider and give us a good area to ride on.
We’re all about safety. We just want to make sure that we’re safe on the road. That’s a high priority of mine.
Andrew Steele of AvantiPlus Croydon, an outer eastern suburb of Melbourne, Vic said:
Business is finally picking up, after probably the quietest winter I can recall since the Victorian recession in the early 1990’s. It was pretty quiet through winter. I don’t think people were out riding their bikes or spending much money.
I’ve been in this store for coming up to six years but have worked in bicycle retail for 25 years and it’s the quietest and worst winter I’ve seen.
But it has turned the corner. The weather has improved and sales have picked up.
We’ve moved to be mainly a family store. Everything from mountain bikes, hybrids, kids bikes and flat bars. Previously we’ve done a fair bit of road, but we’ve found that to be the market that has suffered the most.
We had quite a few road bikes we stocked up during the Tour de France that were all at amazing prices but it seemed like you couldn’t give them away no matter how good the price they were at. There was just no-one looking.
You can certainly cover a much broader span of bikes if you were invest ‘x’ amount of dollars in a road bike, that can buy you five or six hybrids to fill the shop up.
(Regarding the new Prime Minister) First and foremost, reducing the GST threshold for imported items. Hopefully even with the change of Prime Minister, that will still happen. I think that will help the industry immensely because the amount of people buying accessories and things offshore…
It won’t fix the problem but it will bring it closer to a level playing field.
Apart from that, if they can generally improve the economy, that would be great too. I think all people in small business were hoping that the Liberal government would improve the economic situation and help small business, but at this stage we haven’t seen much of that, but hopefully that will change with Malcolm Turnbull as PM.
