- Welcome to 128.bike!
- In this blog post I will try to help you better understand what is behind the Corona Bike Boom. Although there are many complex reasons behind people turning to bicycles during the lockdowns there are some obvious reasons and some that are not.
- First to mention the obvious reasons.
- Lockdowns caused lack of options for exercise and along the way the desire of people for open spaces. These two factors made the bicycle a perfect tool to solve both desires.
- Some people whose incomes have been impacted in the last year found it a perfect way to save money.
- Then because many people were working from home the traffic in the cities was much more enjoyable for bike riders. Some cities even went to expand the infrastructure for bike riders and make it even nicer to commute.
- There are now first-time cyclists who discovered the simple joy of riding just because of the reasons I mentioned now. Base of bicycle users has just expanded like never before.
- Now not so obvious reasons:
- Many people became more aware of the sustainability and better quality of air they experienced during the lockdown periods. All of them would certainly like to keep it that way. And isn’t there a better way than to keep it that way and to enjoy the benefits than to riding a bicycle?
- With the stores being empty there was a kind of panic buying effect taking place and then everyone wanted to have a bike. So a bicycle became a very desired product all of a sudden.
- To add to all of this political climate became favorable because bike industry employs many people in Europe now and is one of the few industries with a growth perspective. Alongside that as Europe to prepares to be carbon neutral, bicycles and e-bikes are obvious choices for micro mobility. So a lot of government support has been seen in the recent months. This is only to intensify in the future.
- So all of these reasons started a domino effect of a bike boom we are seeing now in the bike industry and the demand from the customers.
- What we are experiencing is a kind of a hype around cycling going on like when new Iphone is about to go out.
- It is definitely a good thing for cycling but we must be more than careful now to live up to the hype and keep the cycling in its rightful place.
- What can we do to make it so:
- Our productions need to be sustainable. It doesn’t make sense to talk sustainable transport if we ourselves are not.
- We must be very flexible to satisfy the demand. During this bike boom we saw how our industry is fragile and not organized well. We were talking about all kinds of tech but in real life many factories are stuck in old system of order Far East- sell our market as cheap as possible. This should change now and more production must take place here where assembly factories are.
- We as industry must invest so that cycling is pleasurable, safe and easy. I was recently reading how Tesla invested huge amounts of money into charging stations before even starting to sell cars in their target markets. This strategy is what we as an industry must do in any way we can!
- So to conclude, even though we are experiencing huge increases in order we must think and start acting now to have a bright future and help out world be a better place!
- Make cycling future bright with 128.bike!
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