BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
There’s been a steady stream of press releases capitalising on the Tour de France and the UK Grand Depart this year, with one claiming that helmet sales are on the up.
According to MetaPack, seeing Mark Cavendish and Chris Froome pull out of the Tour de France because of injuries has led to consumers stumping up for helmets. MetaPack is an ecommerce technology company that coordinates online deliveries worth £6 billion pa and works with ‘the UK’s top retailers’.
The company said sales of bicycle helmets are up 27% following the early stages of the race held in Yorkshire, the East and South East of England and Northern France.
Comparing sales for 10th June – 13th July this year and in 2013, the data reveals a national average increase of 28% in volumes of cycling products shipped from online retailers to UK consumers.
There’s localised data too, which may be of interest to the bike shops along the route: In Yorkshire towns where the Grand Depart passed through, percentage increases are slightly above average – in York there was a 50% increase, Harrogate 33% and Huddersfield 32%.
The press statement admits this there isn’t conclusive proof, but does add that these national and localised percentage increases suggest a positive effect on cycle retail thanks to Le Tour.
“Through how we coordinate and see ecommerce traffic among retailers, delivery carriers and customers, we have a unique insight into what consumers are buying and where and when deliveries are being made here and overseas," said Richard Orme, CIO at MetaPack, leading the company’s data analytics team.
"In recent years, the UK has gone cycling mad and there’s a huge volume of cycling products bought online every year from our retail brand clients.
"The power of the Tour de France should be to get people onto their bike and we’re seeing evidence of that in our data. What’s really interesting is how watching our cycling stars falling off their bikes may have made more of us think more carefully about cycle safety too."
MetaPack says it works with over 80% of the top online UK retailers.
