BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

For the fourth consecutive year, Shimano Europe is organising the Shimano Cycling Concept Award, a pan-European search for the most innovative ideas to stimulate bicycle usage. Started as an alternative way of spending Shimano Europe's Christmas card budget, the SCCA has been a success in stimulating ideas to promote cycling. This year, entries will be welcomed from all parts of the cycling world, from hard-core mountain biking projects through to nut-cutlets-beards-and-sandals projects

Having an in-house designer with a flotilla of Macs and a pukka digital camera studio enables Moore Large to assemble a loose-leaf brand and product information catalogue that can be modified throughout the year. The new version is the company's most ambitious to date.

As well as droolsome, top-end road bikes and MTBs, many of the bike exhibitors at Cycle 2003 are sporting folding bikes. Most of them are made by Dahon.

Just like the FreeLock, featured on this site on 5th September, the Imobo ("bike security with a twist") is a lockable handlebar stem which, once locked, makes a bike unrideable.

It is if you want to sell high-end bikes. That's one of the conclusions you'd get from this year's trade shows. And just as consumers at the German and Italian shows have found, UK bike enthusiasts at London's Cycle 2003 are finding that frames made from stiff alu or ti bonded to carbon-fibre rear stays are all the rage. LeMond bikes popularised the trend but click inside for a peek at the Independent Fabrication version, as well a beautiful, full-carbon, made-in-China, frame from Kestrel