The summer holidays are over again. Last year, I wrote about my adventures with our car on the way to France. This time, we had the pleasure of spending our holiday in Curaçao, a Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles. Because you can simply speak Dutch there - my native language - the Netherlands can feel surprisingly close. In reality, of course, it is very far away. Despite all the Dutch products on supermarket shelves, Curaçao is much more oriented towards the Americas. And from a product compliance perspective, that makes for some interesting discoveries.

How Tenways, Fuji-Ta and the Accell deal are testing Asia's next role in cycling.

Chinese investors were less active in the bicycle industry in the past than it appeared from the outside. To date, there have been very few known investments by the Chinese in Western companies. Since 2015, corporate acquisitions by Chinese investors have mainly involved Asian companies, with the target firms mostly being bicycle component manufacturers. Why are there relatively few takeovers by Chinese investors in our sector?

Let's be honest: finalising pre-orders is the most stressful moment of a retailer's year. You commit a large part of your budget to a product you have often never seen, and then hope it arrives before the customer you promised it to loses patience - late deliveries deserve their own article. How can you enter conversations with brands as a strategic partner, rather than someone who simply takes orders?

The demise of Porsche eBike Performance came at a significant moment for the e-bike drive system market. The company was founded in 2022 by Porsche AG and the Pon investment vehicle Ponooc. After they entered the sector in 2022 through the acquisition of Fazua, Porsche communicated it would likely present its drivetrains in 2026. That never happened.

From pre-IPO acquirers to non-traditional investors and aftermarket economics, the next opportunity for bike startups may sit outside traditional cycling. After the capital reset, the cycling industry has been asking: when will investors come back? But maybe that is the wrong question.