Is cycling marketed for women in the wrong way?

[srw]

@ttcycle - very good article. I hadn't made the connection between the online person and the name on the article when I read it. I thought your calling-out of Assos was entirely appropriate when I clicked through. Someone needs to take their marketing manager aside for a quiet talking-to.

Of course the problem isn't unique to cycling - just about anything that's marketed at women gets a pink swirly makeover (remember the debacle with the Bic female-specific pen?)

I'm not normally a fan of his, but in this case @ComedyPilot has hit the nail on the head. We just don't do utility cycling in this country, and it's utility cycling that will attract women (and, for that matter, unsporty men. I say that as someone who for 30-odd years was purely a utility cyclist.) As a man it's quite easy for me to pootle to work in a suit, but typical female office attire isn't perceived as bike friendly, and there's still the expectation that women, even senior women, make an effort to primp themselves up in a way that men don't have to. Perhaps as offices get more casual and egalitarian that will change.

I'm also heartened by the younger generation. In central London over the last week, despite the weather, the number of cyclists of both sexes has increased a lot - and many of them are just wearing ordinary clothes. It looks like the new student intake are even more open to the possibility of riding than previous generations.

 

[Linford]

Agreed. Running and cycling are definately booming women-wise, good to see people getting exercise out of the gym too.

I can't do the gym....tried and failed. exercise bikes are soo hard to ride any distance, and the legg press just stopped me in my tracks (knackered knee)

Motorists seem to be able to manage to spot black cars, funnily enough despite their complaints about non high-vis cyclists. But lights are tremendously useful on dull days. A Moon Shield on flash (or on strobe, if you're feeling particularly vindictive!) at the back is hard to miss - the sort of thing that can only be missed by the sort of plank who'll miss seeing you even if you do dress up as a day-glo lemon. A Hope 1 on flash is very handy at the front.

Well I run with lights day and night. Front low powered one on strobe, and rear poundland special blinking as well.

As many cars are now running superbright DRL's, I feel it wise to do something similar for those who struggle to see anything less....my motorbike runds with lights on all the time in any case. I can't switch them off if i wanted too.

 

[Sandra6]

Why does it have to be men's cycling and women's cycling anyway? Can't it just be cycling??
I quite like pink, but I don't want it to be my only choice when I go to buy something for the bike/to wear on the bike, but as has been said previously -it's not just cycling where this happens. It starts in the nursery when even if you want to buy your daughter a garage you'll be offered it in pink!
I do get annoyed when you walk into a bike shop and they have a whole plethora of men's bikes and one token ladies specific bike in the corner. I ride a man's bike - by choice, but it would be nice to have a wider choice, especially where road bikes are concerned.
At work we have just one ladies road bike ffs! (and yes it has been "pinked")
But, that said, I do see women having a different view of cycling to the men. Women tend to be looking for a bike to go to the shops on, take out at the weekend for some light exercise -and the men want to wrap themselves in lycra and do 100 miles in a couple of hours.
Instead of debating the differences I think we should be pushing for better choices for all cyclists.

 

[Linford]

Why does it have to be men's cycling and women's cycling anyway? Can't it just be cycling??
I quite like pink, but I don't want it to be my only choice when I go to buy something for the bike/to wear on the bike, but as has been said previously -it's not just cycling where this happens. It starts in the nursery when even if you want to buy your daughter a garage you'll be offered it in pink!
I do get annoyed when you walk into a bike shop and they have a whole plethora of men's bikes and one token ladies specific bike in the corner. I ride a man's bike - by choice, but it would be nice to have a wider choice, especially where road bikes are concerned.
At work we have just one ladies road bike ffs! (and yes it has been "pinked")
But, that said, I do see women having a different view of cycling to the men. Women tend to be looking for a bike to go to the shops on, take out at the weekend for some light exercise -and the men want to wrap themselves in lycra and do 100 miles in a couple of hours.
Instead of debating the differences I think we should be pushing for better choices for all cyclists.

Would very much agree with this sentement...Chatting to my daughter, she said she wanted a retro Pendleton bike to go to college on (would get nicked or vandalised in a couple of days for sure )

On the other hand, everytime I see another (MALE) cyclist on the road (bloke), they get uber aggressive/defensive and tear off at 100mph to prove that they can stay ahead of me (cos I ride a roadie)

 

[Peter Armstrong]

OMG did you see that video under the article "Video: the moment when a Nottingham cyclist was knocked off his bike by a car before being abused by the occupants, who were en route to a funeral. Police later said the incident was at least partly his fault"

 

[Spinney]

er, how is that relevant to this thread?

 

[Peter Armstrong]

Its on the link he put......

 

[Cheddar George]

Still time to edit that.

 

[GrasB]

Get a second opinion? If you don't like it, get a third!

OT: This is what we do with one of our managers. Ask them the same question every meeting, as we'll invariably get a different answer, until we get the 'correct' answer, document it & never mention again... they've not worked it out after 3 years

 

[Boris Bajic]

I thought it an interesting piece. It led to some thinking.

Nonetheless, I do not see it as the job of the industry (retail or manufacture) to market cycling, any more than I see it as the job of the publishing industry to get us reading.

My children are avid readers in part because they were brought up around books. They all cycle (both sexes) in part because they were brought up around bicycles.

I did not bring them up around rugby or origami... If they get into that, it will be their own business.

There is a LOT of cycling going on these days, which is a wonderful thing. I see more men and more women on bicycles than I did ten or twenty years ago.

By and large, the women I know are less able to maintain their bikes than the men I know. I sometimes think I've spent so much longer teaching oily stuff to my daughter BECAUSE a sort of knowledge-grasping inertia in this area is widely perceived by Joe and Mrs Public.

On the matter of marketing, I notice a general trend in cycling that I've seen developing in other leisure pursuits more and more in the past decade: The pushing and selling of really quite unusually posh, inappropriate and upmarket and specialised equipment, which is justified with that bizarre, almost Thatcher-era mantra "You've worked hard and you deserve the good stuff". Somehow we are doing ourselves down if we buy midrange Campag...

I met a woman in the summer (friend of my wife) who was going (on a tight budget) to buy a first road bike, having not ridden as a child, got into a short commute a year ago and wanted to have a pop at some gentle triathlons. Two shops were pushing her into £1450 bikes with carbon everywhere and 105 doo-dahs. Her current machine was a £500 commuting hybrid. She had become so pumped with data about toptube length and tyre pressures that she had no real idea where she'd started or what she wanted.

When I talked her down from an (unaffordable) spend, she said that nobody 'in cycling' had said that to her. She had somehow been sucked into seeing cycling as something very hi-tech and geeky where you have to have all the right stuff. It was just not her, but there was no alternative voice. I think men (broadly) tend to be drawn more to the up-speccing carbon geekery of cycling, which is not a geek thing at all... just a convenient way to get about.

But is the marketing the issue? I think not. I think it is faddism, bikeporn lust to upgrade and a yearning to fit some bike-magazine fantasy, coupled with generations of children either not brought up to cycle or brought up to think of cycling as some sort of Jedi kit fest of cadence and wattage and heart rate... when those of us who grew up to love it in our own, sweet time were just offered it as a way to get to the local pool.

 

[Spinney]

A sensible post from Boris!

Some good points there.

 

[Fnaar]

exercise bikes are soo hard to ride any distance,

Bolted to the floor?

 

[Pat "5mph"]

@ttcycle here are some more comments about your article - hope the link works.

 

[srw]

Nonetheless, I do not see it as the job of the industry (retail or manufacture) to market cycling, any more than I see it as the job of the publishing industry to get us reading.

If they don't, they have no future as an industry. That is not good business sense.

But is the marketing the issue? I think not. I think it is faddism, bikeporn lust to upgrade and a yearning to fit some bike-magazine fantasy

And what drives that lust? Yes - marketing.