BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

The French brand - with road, cyclo-cross, MTB and freeride bikes - is distributed in 15 countries worldwide, but not yet the UK. Commencal has booked space at April's Bike Show and would like a distributor in place to pick up on the demand likely to be generated at the NEC.

The latest TV ads for Nike - to be broadcast in the US only - feature A-list, Nike-sponsored athletes switching sports. Lance Armstrong is shown as a boxer. The moral of the ads is that a great athlete has a will a win and would dominate any sport they chose to compete in. Hmm, Nike's ad agency hasn't seen BBC Superstars, then...

Interbike has released the findings from a survey done on its behalf by International Cycle Works, Inc. The majority of show visitors want Interbike to stay in Las Vegas not move to Denver. 86 percent of the exhibitors and 87 percent of visitors indicated that they plan on participating in Interbike 2004. As a result, over 80 percent of the available booth space at the 2004 event has been reserved, the most exhibit space Interbike has ever booked this early in the season, said show director, Lance Camisasca.

Most of the other big bicycle mags are either losing readers or failing to attract new ones. This is according to the latest official sales figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, a paid-for sales counting service.

Police chiefs in the bicycle-dense Chinese city had been planning to lever bikes off the streets in order to fit in more cars but the Shanghai city government has now said it has no plans to limit cycling and is, in fact, planning to build cycle routes. But is this a ploy to ghettoise cyclists in the run-up to the World Expo, due to take place in Shanghai in 2010?