A Business History of the Bicycle Industry by Carlo Mari

Author:Carlo Mari
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030505639
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The time series has a gap between 1910 and 1912. The graph shows that Japanese population adopted the bicycle at an increasing rate from the 1910s through the end of World War II reaching 8,556,000 units in 1944. Afterwards, the diffusion of bicycles was relentless until 1977 when approximately 46,800,000 units were widespread in the country.

2.6 Conclusion

The bicycle industry is about 150 years old and has tackled many complex problems, particularly those impacting the technology of the bicycle. Despite some great outcomes over time, the industry has not developed yet a suitable system for recording its statistics. The problems with current data are almost the same problems as those of the nascent industry. How to proceed for improving the situation? The chapter highlighted that various organizations play a role in providing bicycle statistics and it seems clear that no one can afford to give up the contribution of the others in this endeavour. At the same time, it is also evident that there is a lack of coordination within those involved in gathering and compiling bicycle statistics. The coordination requires that the topic of bicycle statistics is included in the agenda of one or more of those organizations, as a priority to allow a more informed decision making within the whole industry. And the agenda setting, in turn, is based on the commitment to changing the way statistics are currently gathered. If no organizations express a strong commitment, the business as usual approach will perpetuate and bicycle statistics will still be affected by problems.

Gathering data can be a difficult and costly activity, however technology advancements such as the bar code and application programmes for mobile devices are a pragmatic course of action to address the problem of bicycle statistics. For instance, the trade organizations might promote the development of an International Standard Bicycle Number (ISBIN) similar to what is used in the publishing industry where each book has its own International Standard Book Number (ISBN). It is not an easy transition from the current system of bicycle statistics to a fully new approach. The technology is already available, what is missing is the commitment to change. Will any bicycle firm be willing to change its behaviour and declare how many bicycles were manufactured each year?

Another useful change regards foreign trade statistics. The chapter emphasized that one of the key problems remains the classification of goods adopted by customs agencies and developed by international organizations such as the European Union. These classifications keep changing and this is understandable since goods evolve over time, however a new edition should guarantee the comparability between same goods included in various versions of the classification. Moreover, code numbers to identify bicycle categories should be based on more digits, and should be harmonized all over the world, preventing the practice of each country to introduce their own code numbers. This change requires the action of international organizations, but it can be encouraged by trade organizations and their members, which might develop an agreed proposal to address the problem.

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