Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
Welcome to Velo’s Taipei Cycle Show coverage, where we share our favorite things we’ve found at the 2024 show. Bikes, components, accessories, and more: if we think it’s cool, you’ll see it. See the rest of our coverage here.
One of the best parts of attending bike shows as influential as the Taipei Cycle Show is the ability to see what the future of bicycle technology will look like. It’s almost a cheat code to see what manufacturers can cook up for enterprising bike and component brands, and an early look at what people want to buy.
Throughout the show, we had the chance to talk with people in the bicycle industry from all over the world. We saw everything cool that might come to our markets, and importantly, where cycling might be going in 2024.
Below are the four things we learned from the Taipei Cycle Show, from industry, consumers, and more.
Bottlenecks are everywhere in the industry
Read more: 3 of Our Favorite Cargo Bikes: Taipei Cycle Show 2024
Now is a great time to buy a bicycle.
That’s doubly so when compared to the bike boom from just a few years ago. But look for more specific things, and you’ll find that certain items often have shortages. One specific tire variation is perpetually unavailable. A derailleur that sells out regularly. Based on talking with suppliers and manufacturers at the show, few mass-market products are reliably available. And if they are, it’s because nobody wants to buy them.
Some distributors are over-leveraged, meaning they have too much money in inventory that isn’t selling. As a result, they’re not able to buy the stuff that people want to buy. They might not have that set of pedals that dropped last month, but they’ll almost certainly offer 30 percent off an older style.
Some companies as a whole are over-leveraged, having ramped up ordering or production because of bike boom demand and then not having the means to keep the gravy train flowing (a technical term). The story is the same here. You might not be able to get the hot new colorway of a bicycle, but that’s because they still have a warehouse full of last year’s bikes waiting to be sold.
Shipping and logistics are still more expensive than they were pre-pandemic. The big brands can negotiate and find their way into better deals, but it seems like the small and medium-sized brands still feel the squeeze here.
What does this mean for you, reader? There are deals to be had, and the deals will likely continue even through the peak cycling season when we historically have not seen sales. More likely than not, you’re going to find a great deal, you just can’t be quite as picky about having this year’s colorway.
Taiwan is ready to bring their own products to market
Read more: Randoms, Part Three: Taipei Cycle Show 2024
Taiwan is a hub for bicycle manufacturing, be it for frames, components, or accessories. That manufacturing has often been about factories being contracted out by Western brands to build products.
For 2024 and beyond, however? It looks like those manufacturers are ready to go to market.
A big reason I suspect the manufacturers are set to go to market is due to the aforementioned bottlenecks. There are factories here with know-how that aren’t receiving the orders they were just a few years ago, and they’re ready to share that experience with anyone willing to look at a non-Western bike brand.
There’s also a sense of a changing of the guard amongst the long-time factories here. As the older generation leaves the family business to the next generation, those younger folks are ready to diversify their earnings and leverage their know-how. Previous generations were content with just making things and calling it a day. It seems that this new generation wants to create things.
One such example I found was K Plus, a Taiwanese helmet and apparel company. Their display at the show was Euro-clean, with apparel falling in line with the solid colors and sans-serif fonts we see on kits today. The helmets also looked properly distinctive, with technology that looked similar to popular helmet brands.
Look on the other side of their massive display and you’ll find a much more modest showing for helmet manufacturer Kuji. They’ve been making helmets for well over 30 years at this point for companies like Giro, Smith, and a myriad of others, and now they have their own brand to take advantage of their manufacturing expertise.
I suspect this shift won’t affect big brands much at all, particularly as Taiwanese manufacturing still relies on the biggest bike brands to continue ordering. But the smaller brands will have to find creative ways to combat the scale and sheer experience these companies have to offer.
High-end bikes and components will keep on coming
The bike market is constantly dropping new gear.
Giant took to the show to display their latest road bike, the 10th-generation TCR road bike (that we had a chance to ride in nearby Taichung). Their premium component arm Cadex showed off a new set of Cadex Max 40 wheels with a duo of one-piece handlebar stem combos. Vision previewed their new 5D EVO bars. Dutch wheel company Scope previewed their own set of extremely high-end aero road wheels.
Taipei Cycle Show isn’t quite known for having tons of product releases, but rather as a place for manufacturers and factories to share their wares, find new customers, and renew connections in the industry. That there were several products previewed and released here is good to see, and it shows that there’s no lack of new products coming into the bike world.
The problem here, then? All of these new products are concentrated on the high-end side of road and gravel. We’re accustomed to all of the cool tech and coverage being around high-end gear, after all. But for the entry-level and mid-range gear? It seems like folks are content to sit on their laurels. Or rather, they’re sitting on existing inventory and need to sell that before dropping new gear.
Brands have an eye on sustainability
Read more: 5 Cycling Products Looking Toward Sustainability: Taipei Cycle Show 2024
One of my favorite developments at the show was the number of tires made using novel ingredients or construction methods. These methods ranged from using recycled carbon black – the stuff added to rubber that makes your tires black – to outright using organic materials, to not using any rubber at all.
My favorite example of this was from Vittoria, the tire company better known for providing rubber to Jumbo-Lease a Bike and a large percentage of the pro peloton. Their new Terreno Pro T60 Mixed gravel tire follows in that vein of high performance, claiming additional speed, puncture resistance, and grip over their existing gravel tires. But what should catch your attention is that the tire is made of 92 percent renewable and recycled materials. The result is a tire that isn’t black, largely because there’s no carbon black used here at all.
Schwalbe’s new Marathon commuter tire uses recycled carbon black among other things to offer smarter construction. ReTyre makes their tires out of thermoplastic urethane (TPU) and claims it is fully ready to be recycled into new tires many times over. That’s on top of the multiple examples of components using recycled materials at the Taipei show.
These new developments do not mean we’re going to solve climate change by buying different bike tires. But whereas previous years’ efforts felt like greenwashing, these developments seem like truly innovative ways to cut down the waste that comes with making and selling bike parts.