Full Swing

Well the cycling season is now starting to get into full swing with longer days and nicer weather (we've not had any real rain for over a fortnight now!).

If you've kept up your riding through the winter you'll be relishing the faster trails now and feeling just a little smug about it. As the trails are drying its a good time to think about changing tyres away form those winter specific mud ones to something a little faster and gripper on firmer trails.

We're experiencing supply issues already rather frustratingly. Trek can't keep up with demand for Project One Madones so they've delayed production on other OCLV mountain bike frames to up production on the Madone. This means delays for anyone after carbon Fuel EX and Remedy frames and the Gary Fisher Superfly100, which when I last checked at the end of January I couldn't get a large until June if I ordered straightaway, and that's on a £4.5k bike! Even with increased production the Project One Madones are stating up to 84 day delivery times although I'm assured average is more like 35, how many people want to wait up to 3 months for a £3k+ bike though?

Its not just Trek though, Lapierre sold out of large size Dh720's really early and their Zesty 914, after getting a rave review, has sold out for 2010 in every frame size and the medium Zesty 514 has sold out too (we have one more coming in though).

It's not just high end bikes though, Gary Fisher have sold out of all their 29er hardtails for 2010 already so we know the 29er bug has bitten properly in Europe now. The Gary Fisher DualSports have also proven popular again and the gorgeous HooKooEKoo is gonna be hard to come by this year.

All this doesn't help a small independent bike shop, we don't have hundereds of thousands to invest in stock up fornt and don't have a massive warehouse so we rely on suppliers stocking models through the year but it's just as tough for them to forecast what they will sell.

The answer? Bike 2.0. We could really do with the industry getting rid of model years and running more like the car or motorbike industry where they just make a model and only change them when they have refined the design or new parts are available.

On the plus side road bike stock is looking a lot healthier than last year and Treks Fuel EX range looks good too so some of our main sellers should be okay.