HELSINKI, Finland - The market has seen a surge in cargo bike manufacturers in the past few years, each taking their own approach. Finnish start-up Ouca claims to have built-up a new concept for cargo bikes from scratch. "We have abandoned traditional bicycle parts in all the critical places," says Ouca founder Tuomas Alapuranen.
PARIS, France - E-bike subscription service company, Motto, has raised €4 million from Founders Future and Cassius Family, two capital fund companies which have been involved in earlier financing rounds of the company. The investment will support the expansion of the start-up's €75 per month subscription service beyond Paris and into Europe.
SCHRAMBERG, Germany - Stating a challenging business environment, German high-precision transmission parts and components manufacturer hGears AG, saw its young e-mobility business unit swallowing a double-digit 15.4% sales decrease in the first quarter of 2022. However, the publicly traded company can look to the future with confidence.
MALLABIA, Spain - Basque bicycle cooperative, Orbea, reached a record sales volume of €282 million in 2021, with 81% coming from export markets. Last year, the cooperative also expanded its operational structure by adding 170 new jobs to its group and is very optimistic for the future.
MECHELEN, Belgium - Helmet manufacturer, Lazer, has gone back to the drawing board on impact absorption protection and developed a new patented new technology, KinetiCore. Inspired by the crumple zones in cars, the technology offers integrated rotational impact protection and provides what they call "next-level brain protection."
BERLIN, Germany - With EIT InnoEnergy SE, a new strategic investor and partner has joined Swobbee GmbH, the multi-vendor, multi-modal battery swapping station for all types of small electric vehicles. While EIT is putting €3 million of growth capital into the start-up, the current existing investor is also adding around the same amount on top.
PLOCHINGEN, Germany - It wasn't easy at first for the world's leading sports chain Decathlon to conquer the German market, but the French have learned quickly. For several years now, they have been reaping the fruits of their labor. With current expansion plans setting the tone, Decathlon Germany's 2021 financial figures underline that they are currently doing everything right.
The completely new PW-X3 drive system was developed specifically for the trend towards lightweight, sporty e-MTBs - it is even stronger, significantly lighter and above all more compact than its highly recommended predecessor.
TREVIGLIO, Italy - Bianchi announced an ambitious investment program to quadruple its production by August 2022. The new strategy not only includes an increase of capacity of both bicycles and e-bikes, but also the start of their own carbon frame production in Italy.
GELDERMALSEN, The Netherlands — Dutch Industrial design agency Modyn who designs for brands such as Gazelle and Quinny is partnering with Rein4ced and Covestro on a gravel e-bike concept, EGRVLR. With the design study partnership, the carbon frame gravel bike would be produced in Europe using Covestro's carbon fibre composite and Rein4ced's highly automated production process.
VILLENEUVE-D'ASCQ, France - Sports retail giant Decathlon United reported a 6% decrease in turnover in 2020 compared to 2019. Despite stores being closed for an average of 3 months, turnover reached €11.4 billion and net income remained stable at €550 million as online sales grew. "It was a one-of-a kind year," proclaimed CFO Jean-Marc Lemière about the annual figures.
DRESDEN, Germany - Bicycle chain store retailer Little John Bikes GmbH celebrated the opening of its 40th store on its home market Germany. The company aims to celebrate its 50th store opening in the fall of 2022. Besides the new store openings, the company is achieving rapid expansion through a unique IBD succession concept which offers a solution to the 'ageing' market.
WAMBRECHIES, France - In 2020, the French brand O2Feel registered a very busy year. Due to the huge growth in demand for e-bikes after the different European lockdowns, the brand sold around 25,000 units in Europe… up from 10,000 in 2018. This resulted in a 65% growth in turnover. The brand also placed a focus on additional stores and close to market production facilities.
BOCHOLT, Germany - In the past weeks this trade journal reported about the enormous cost increases for the industry. It becomes unavoidable for bicycle and e-bike suppliers to add at least a part of those extra costs to their sales prices. Many direct sellers like international operating Rose Bikes
KOPRIVNICE, Czech Republic - The recently sold and the country's largest manufacturer Bike Fun International (BFI) has presented its fiscal year report 2020. Despite some discrepancies in the time period of reporting company figures, the overall result is clear.
FSA has developed cable routing systems for road, gravel, aero, and MTB bikes which can be used for both internal and external cable routing. This patent-pending system combines FSA's knowledge bases in both headset and cockpit development as well as manufacturing.
LA-ROCHE-SUR-YON, France - Arcade Cycles is one of the biggest bike manufacturers in France with a production of 50,000 units (e-bikes included) per year. With a strong focus on rental bikes, the Covid-19 crisis has impacted Arcade Cycles' production, but the French manufacturer has succeeded in limiting the drop in activity and is now eyeing an increase of its turnover for the 2019-20 fiscal year as production ramps up.
REICHSHOF, Germany - Schwalbe has released its new tubeless valves in stem lengths of 40, 60 and 100 millimetres. The company states that fitting of the valves has also been made easier with detailed technical improvements to the valve base.
GIVISIEZ, Switzerland - Due to the corona-pandemic Scott Sports SA's e-commerce business reports a strong 48 percent (YTD) website traffic increase. On the back of this impressive number, the Swiss multi-sports company announced further e-commerce targets. Scott plans to expand its strategy "continuously interlocking consumers, retail and the brand" into further key markets - meaning that more consumers will soon be able to order products 24/7 online.
VILLENEUVE-D'ASCQ, France - The sports retail giant Decathlon reports an increase in sales of 9 percent in 2019. Turnover expanded from 11.3 billion euro in 2018 to 12.4 billion euro last year. Decathlon is very content with last year's financial performance as the company reported that "2018 has been disappointing".
