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Taipei bike show attracts 86,000 visitors

The four-day Taipei International Cycle Show, which ended yesterday, attracted more than 86,000 visitors, up 91 percent from last year's 45,000, as a result of its new location and the concurrent hosting of another sporting goods show, the organizer said.

The bike show, hosted at the newly opened Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) Nangang Exhibition Hall, provided exhibitors larger booth space -- twice the size of that at the TWTC Exhibition Hall 1 in Xinyi District.

The new hall also helped attract international buyers, whose numbers grew by 17.8 percent, or 4,640, from last year's 3,939.

"As it is the world's third-largest bike show, a lot of international buyers were interested in checking out the new Nangang Exhibition Hall," Clark Kuo (郭忠達), public relations manager at the Taipei-based Taiwan External Trade Development Council's (外貿協會) exhibition department, said by telephone yesterday.

ORDERS

The top-five international buyers this year were from Japan, the US, South Korea, Germany and China, Kuo said, adding that each major bike company participating at the show had received orders valued at more than US$1 million.

Aside from having the advantage of providing larger exhibition space, the 2008 Taipei International Sporting Goods Show (TaiSPO) held at TWTC Exhibition Hall 1 helped boost the number of visitors at the Nangang Exhibition Hall, as the two shows were related and shuttle buses were provided between the two exhibitions, he said. TaiSPO also ended yesterday.

However, the lack of parking space near the Nangang Exhibition Hall was the major complaint by visitors, Kuo said.

The number of domestic and international exhibitors at the Taipei International Cycle Show this year reached 762, with a total of 2,842 booths -- a 10 percent and 24 percent increase respectively from last year.

SUCCESS

Meanwhile, the Taiwan Bicycle Exporters' Association (台灣區自行車輸出業同業公會) said that bicycle exports rose 16.97 percent year-on-year to 4.75 million units last year, while the total export value surged 25.63 percent year-on-year to US$1.05 billion last year.

"The local bike industry's average unit price rose from US$206.61 in 2006 to US$221.9 last year, which demonstrates that local bicycle manufacturers were successful at upgrading their technologies to produce higher value-added products," association chairman Yang Ying-ming (楊銀明) said on Thursday at the opening ceremony for the Nangang Exhibition Hall show.
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