BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

Big H? No, not Halfords, Harrods. Cycles UK, a fourteen strong store chain, operate a cycle store within Harrods of London and have seen strong sales across mountain, BMX and hybrid GTs.

One year ago today, Nike and the Lance Armstrong Foundation launched the yellow wristband cancer-awareness campaign. BikeBiz.com reported on the launch on the same day. Nike produced five million bands and Lance Armstrong thought that was too many: "I figured we'd be shooting them at each other for years." Sales will soon go through the 50 million mark...

Long before it was a mainstream thing to do, Swobo of California made bike kit from Merino wool. Tim Parr founded the company in 1992, saw it go belly up and sold it to Santa Cruz in 2001. Parr left to travel and the brand slid from view. Now Parr is resurrecting Swobo. It will be available online from July 7th. Just don't try www.swobo.com...

A party of 36 hikers from Sandleford Ltd. of Taichung, SRAM's Taiwanese branch, walking on Mt Chilai in central Taiwan late last week were hit by a landslide. Three of the walkers were washed away and one is believed to have perished.

The fact that President Bush accepted a $2700 Trek MTB is known in the bike trade but it's now part of an official financial disclosure document, released Friday. Trek's John Burke also supplied Dubya with gloves and a helmet. The president accepted $26 000-worth of gifts last year.