I love my bike. One of the best parts of the day is the ride from home to the station or, even better, from home to the market on a Saturday morning.
And I’m not the only one. My car is just one of many that’s sitting idle these days, as the credit crunch has seen 3.3 million extra bikes out on the streets. Halfords – a name most often associated with oil filters, tyres and new car stereos – is cashing in, and breaking out its existing bike business into 50 dedicated stores.
It’s a gutsy move, but a stroke of brilliance in a time of uncertain petrol prices and general frugal belt-tightening. They’ll run under one of two brands: Cycle Republic and Bikehut, which sound so much better than Halfords.
The Times covers the move in full, and quotes the national cyclicts’ association’s belief that us cyclists are only going to get more numerous: ‘It predicts the economy will increase the number of miles cycled in Britain by 40 per cent, based on data after the oil price rises and recessions of the 1970s.’
Me? Well, much as I welcome the news, I don’t think I’ll be heading to a Bikehut any time soon. Chelmsford has three excellent independent bike stores that I plan on supporting for a good long time yet.
As an aside, why all the secrecy? If you go to the Bikehut homepage there’s no mention of Halfords – not even in the underlying code. Yet if you dig it out of the online archive, you can see that just last year it was covered in Halfords branding. And if you apply for a job there, the dedicated recruitment site doesn’t include any Halfords branding, either, and it’s using a specialist recruitment agency, PPS with no mention of the Halfords name.
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