BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
With Halfords renewing its focus on the high-end bicycle market and national supermarkets ramping up their presence in the bike retail sector, BikeBiz asked independent bike dealers whether they felt that competition was affecting their businesses.
“I’ve never paid attention to what other cycle retailers are doing,” Steve Baskerville of Belfast-based Real Cycles told BikeBiz. “If they want to worry about what we’re doing that’s up to them, but it’ll never be the other way round. We do what we do, and we do it well, that’s all that matters.”
Tony Grayson of Lane End Cycles, Manchester, said: “There’s a Tesco not far down the road from us, which provides our stiffest competition. But I’m not concerned, because at 40p for a puncture repair kit you really do get what you pay for.”
Cycles UK’s Alan Gifford believed the effect of increased competition was two-fold on IBDs: “Competition opening up on your doorstep can be worrying, although it can be a good thing and definitely keeps you on your game. Where this has happened to us in the last couple of years we have found our own business has increased.”
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