BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
The great and the good of the press (and BikeBiz) convened for the launch of Boardman Bikes yesterday (October 2nd) on the day the brand revealed it would be sticking with Halfords for the next decade.
As well as unveiling the 25 bikes that make up the 2014 Boardman Bikes line-up, the event saw Halfords reveal its plans to push the brand that it first partnered with in 2007.
Halfords said it sold one million bikes in the last year, the equivalent of one in every four in the UK.
Halfords’ head of cycling Karen Bellairs fleshed out the detail on Halfords’ store plans: 100 cycle departments are going to be refurbished this year and there will be 37 Boardman Bikes centres of excellence. Those 37 will feature lifestyle graphics, high end displays, screens and a touch screen catalogue.
In total, 446 Halfords stores will now stock Boardman product, with order and collect available online to any store. That’s an increase of 119 stores, which will have a tester range of three bikes.
The Boardman Bikes range itself sees two cyclocross, five road bikes, seven MTBs, four hybrids, two MX bikes, a track-specific bike and four new female specific bikes.
For MTB, Boardman has turned away from 26-inch and now offers 650B and 29er wheel sizes. The firm hailed the growth of cyclocross and said the sector was had been one of the highest percentage growth performers.
At the launch, Boardman himself said that there were four or five ingredients for a successful bike brand: "Something different, something innovative, good specs, good price and – in the case of Boardman – my name, but that’s the least important ingredient."
We’ve a gallery from the launch on our Facebook pages.
More detail on the new bikes can be found on the Boardman Bikes site.
