WE'RE now a quarter of the way into the 21st century, at a time when the digital world is reasonably mature: Digital has gone from being a desirable to a damn near essential for most businesses (and consumers). Even if your shop front is strictly bricks and mortar, it seems vanishingly unlikely that you don’t have to log into some online portal behind the scenes to pay a particular bill or fulfil a certain obligation.

Front of house, the unrelenting growth of digital has not yet peaked, according to the latest CIN Market Data. A huge number of independent shops – almost half (49%) – are doing more business via the internet, with a similarly sized proportion of 41% doing similar levels of online business to the previous year, while 25% are doing less business online. Meanwhile, 23% of independent shops are doing more click and collect numbers (64% are seeing similar levels of C&C business to previous years, and 14% less).

So, the resounding message is that digital is bleeding ever more into the cycling retail business…

In this issue we speak with the minds behind bike compatibility hub Bike Matrix, as clear an example as you could hope for as to how digitalisation can help bike shops and workshops (as well as brands and consumers). You want to remove uncertainty about whether x component is compatible with x bike? Bike Matrix’s software will solve that riddle for you within seconds.

Ironically perhaps, in this digital issue we have a sizeable gallery of images – larger than we could ever cram into a print magazine – taken during the Brooks 2025 factory tours, illustrating the joys of letting industry and consumers into a resolutely traditional production unit that eschews large scale automation and (as far as we saw) digitalisation in the production of making bicycle saddles.

Unlike the aforementioned, CIN was born in the digital age so it has always been a natural part of the CIN DNA. This step into digital issues is not – rest assured – a replacement for the print issues, but another way to bring the bike trade news/views/insights and the rest you expect from us, in a way that you might not have seen before. You could view the digital issues as being part of the broader CIN peloton, if you were so minded, joining the print mags, website, email newsletter, podcast and – another rider making its 2025 debut – CIN Live. We hope you enjoy.