That's not to say that it's not changing...but, frankly, it's at snails pace
and has only really picked up in the SE in the last five years or so...and
not at all elsewhere in the UK.  

Having inhabited bikes shops in that area for the last twenty years or so I
(and others) have often been frustrated not just by the lack of availability
of parts and accessories but also the lack of knowledge of bike shop staff
of anything outside of their particular interest (too often just mountain
bikes).  

My father owned a shop (not bikes) and, if he'd waited for his customers to
decide that they needed a particular product, he'd have lost their business
to whoever of his competitors put it on the shelf before he did.  The fact
that he was as successful as he was in part was due to listening to what his
customer's needs were and then finding new products that satisfied that
need....he didn't wait for them to do the homework and then tell him they
wanted such and such product.  Yet that's the way the bike industry in this
country seems to (want to) operate.

That said, what I find very interesting is that the UK cycle owners are
becoming more sophisticated (at least in the SE, and maybe even more so than
the bicycle retail industry) and are becoming more choosey about the type of
bikes they own and ride, many now having specific bikes for specific
purposes....much more like the continent.  This change has really only more
generally taken off in the last five years or so.  Before that
multi-ownership was more the province of the really keen and committed
cyclists.

It would be interesting to examine how the UK's cycle owners have changed in
recent years as means to better define the requirements for provision in the
future (I'd note that BBC TV SE asked just this question yesterday evening,
whilst highlighting that on one or two routes in the centre of London,
cyclists now outnumber cars at peak hours).

Cheers

John Meudell

ps:  Returning to the theme of women cyclists.  I just (about an hour ago)
had a conversation with two women cyclists on a trip to the coast.  This
took place in Dorking and they proudly mentioned they had already cycled
from Kilburn (about 50km which, given this conversation took place at 9.00am
in the morning, meant they'd cycled through London at the peak of the rush
hour).  But they were on their way to Worthing, about another 75km, on
really not very suitable bikes (one a full mountain bike and the other a
heavyweight hybrid with balloon tyres).  They had only a vague idea of the
route....they were planning on using the A24 based on a dodgey printout from
Google maps...(not a nice route south of here) and had very little in the
way of gear on their bikes (such as water bottles, tools, pumps, etc.).

On the one hand, whilst not to decry the "go for it" attitude, it does
highlight the lack of knowledge within the cycle owning community and
weakness of the  supporting knowledge base on how to go on a bike ride.  The
ride planning was about the level I used to do when I was a teenager (in the
60's) and even then we had tools and drinks with us.

(Note: I did the decent thing and gave them my favourite route in that
direction, along with a couple of good café stops along the way.)



-----Original Message-----
From: Cycling and Society Research Group discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Mann
Sent: 22 June 2011 09:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bicycling's gender gap: It's the economy, stupid | Bikenomics |
Grist

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 9:30 AM, john meudell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> That said, and having spent a major part of my career living in the 
> Netherlands, in respect of the wider utility function of a bicycle a 
> lot can be put down to (at least in the UK) a very limited and 
> uninspiring range of accessories to make utility tasks easier along 
> with a lack of knowledge, and/or confidence to use knowledge, of how 
> to adapt a bike to many utility transport tasks.

I think the lack of accessories is a result of lack of demand, not the other
way round. There are plenty of bike-seats and trailer bikes (and trailers
and tandems, even the odd cargobike, tricycle and tridem) in Oxford (and
probably in a few other places too).