Halfords profits approach £100 million as cycling sales continue to boom

They have closed a lot of stores and laid off a lot of staff as a result, even at stores they kept open.  This could be a dead cat bounce.   Next year will be more interesting. 

Who knew there were such things as ebikes? And not the road bike with a motor deal, Halfords sell electric bikes and have done for years. so there is a distinction. 

 I think ebikes still count as mechanical, don't they?

Pretty sure ebikes still involve mechanics.

Electric cars still have mechanical moving parts too but they are still referred to as electric are they not? 

Electric as opposed to petrol, diesel, moonshine.

Not sure what your point is there. Nobody talks about 'mechanical cars'.

There are electric cars and ICE cars (and hydrogen cars, and steam cars, and...) but they're all mechanical.

There are ebikes and human-powered only bikes, but they're all mechanical. 

Being Halfords, they also need to distinguish between pedal cycles and motorbikes. Although I agree that "mechanical" bikes probably isn't the most useful choice of terminology with which to make that distinction!

exactly, its not my terminology. But I at least grasp the point they were making with the distinction between traditional bikes and ebikes. We refer to electric cars as such because they are outside the norm of what we are used to with petrol/diesel fuelled cars. But a pedant will always look for an argument

It's not pedantry, you've completely changed your argument. Nobody is saying ebikes shouldn't be called ebikes, and electric cars shouldn't be called electric cars.

The original poster queried the use of the term 'mechanical bikes'. Your car analogy is irrelevant, because although we say 'electric cars', we do not say 'mechanical cars'.

No, your analogy was broken.

Pedants Just tell them to fuck off even if they are write, as they are in this case. 

Issue is, if you ride a bike you're probably fit enough to climb the stairs without being out of breath. 

We had a Halfords superstore open up a few years ago locally, and as you walked in you turned left to get to the car stuff and right to get to the bike stuff. Worked really well. My most local one does the loads of car stuff on the ground floor, bit of cycling stuff on the mezzanine. 

That said, Halfords takes a lot of grief on sites like this, but I have always found their stock levels and prices for general accessories and consumables to be excellent, and their staff helpful if lacking in specialist technical knowhow (although there are a couple of very knowledgable guys in my local one). 

Never bought a full bike from there though .

Smoggy Steve wrote:

Issue is, if you ride a bike you're probably fit enough to climb the stairs without being out of breath. 

Yes, but how does anyone buy their first bike? If you put all the car stuff upstairs and they can't manage to get up the stairs, maybe they'll buy a bike whilst downstairs and next time will be fit enough to get up the stairs and buy their car bits.

The Halfords did a refit and put the bikes on the ground floor. However, they burnt down a short while ago, and I don't know if they kept the same layout after re-opening.

Any other jokes you want to kill off? 

But to be honest, Halfords is still automotive as its primary role as far as its customer base is concerned. There are lots and lots of independant bike shops all over the country and I would very much prefer they were allowed to have the majority of the market share and Halfords concentrate on cars etc as there are fewer alternatives for that particluar market. I dont quite like the idea of a national conglomorate putting small independant shops out of business due to a restructuring focussed more at cyclists

But they do sell very keenly priced and specced bikes too - the Boardman and Voodoo ranges review very well among the UK cycling press, as a rule.

Agreed, I would rather buy from my LBS but there are times when only Halfords are open and the click & collect can be useful. In the one nearest to me they are utterly clueless on bikes but quite good at cars and pleasant enough people. I wouldn't want them to stop doing bikes as it may remind a few carists that there is an alternative, so I feel bad that I am snobbish about the place.

I just wish the shop didn't smell quite so pungent though. Is it mould release agent? Or minicab air freshener? Couldn't they get some Castrol R instead?

It always reminded me of fresh car rubber mats.

And dodgy car air freshners.