How British & European Bike Brands Are Adapting to the Brexit Trade Deal
Cotic's full suspension bikes, which are sourced from both the UK and Taiwan, are not for sale in Europe until further notice.
The last time Pinkbike covered British trade, the clock was ticking for the UK and the EU to figure out how to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Now, an agreed trade deal, signed into law less than 24 hours before it took effect, has left companies scrambling to adapt. The deal prevents the imposition of tariffs on some British and European goods and helps mitigate the abrupt fall out of the EU that seemed imminent for Britain, but some companies are still splitting hairs to figure out whether their exports benefit from any protection from tariffs.
The deal eliminates tariffs on European and British goods that would have applied if the EU and the UK defaulted to using the World Trade Organization rules in a No Deal Brexit, but non-European and non-British products are not protected, so some companies have found themselves in the awkward position of figuring out what it means to make a British or a European product.
Cotic, a UK bike company, has suspended sales to EU customers until they sort things out. Cotic designs, engineers, and tests their bikes in the UK. Much of their building and machining happens in the UK, however, linkages and some rear triangles are built in Taiwan. Are those bikes British? It’s complicated.
Under the new trade deal, products have to contain a certain percentage of materials or the more esoteric “value” from the UK or the EU to be considered British or European, respectively. Cotic, in a statement on its website, wrote that the company is trying to figure out just what that means, and in the meantime, has halted sales of those mixed-origin bikes to customers in the EU. If Cotic designs bikes in Britain, manufactures parts of the frames in Taiwan, and assembles them in Britain, the exact origin of those bikes is tough to define.
 | The upshot of all this is that for this week at least and maybe longer, and until we know exactly what the duty situation is, we are not shipping anything to customers in the EU. We want to give ourselves time to understand and apply the new rules correctly, and then be able to explain them to customers. There will be increases in shipping prices as well due to the couriers having to clear products through customs now, so once we have all the costs understood, we will be in touch to agree any cost increases with you. |
Update Jan. 12 2021: Cotic has resumed shipping to customers in the EU and has posted an update about about import duty that will be applied to some of its bikes.
Nukeproof, designed and based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has declared that its bikes do not qualify as European products. The company wrote in a Facebook post that it had to increase the suggested retail prices for their bikes, thanks to tariffs imposed on non-European goods.
Nukeproof has decided its products do not meet the requirements to avoid tariffs, so it has increased SRPs.
The post read:
A large proportion of Nukeproof bikes are assembled in European factories and our hope was that a trade deal would allow these bikes to pass between the EU and our UK warehouse tariff free.
Unfortunately, the new UK-European trade deal only allows tariff free trade on products that have either an EU or UK origin. To achieve an EU origin at least 55% of the value of the complete product must be manufactured in either the UK or the EU.
In the case of Nukeproof, because most of the bike's value, e.g. frame and components, are manufactured in Asia, the complete bike is not classified as a European product (even if the bike is assembled in Europe). Our bikes, therefore, attract additional import duties between Europe and our UK warehouse. Combining this with price increases with rising raw materials, labour and current exchange rates we have already seen, it leaves us with little option but to increase our SRP's.
Whilst we have always tried to fend off unnecessary/ unwanted in-season pricing restructures in the past, these are unavoidable costs in unprecedented times, and we are forced to reflect the update with immediate effect.
We understand these are difficult times for many of our riders and we truly appreciate your support and understanding.
Kind Regards,
The Nukeproof Team
Unfortunately, the new UK-European trade deal only allows tariff free trade on products that have either an EU or UK origin. To achieve an EU origin at least 55% of the value of the complete product must be manufactured in either the UK or the EU.
In the case of Nukeproof, because most of the bike's value, e.g. frame and components, are manufactured in Asia, the complete bike is not classified as a European product (even if the bike is assembled in Europe). Our bikes, therefore, attract additional import duties between Europe and our UK warehouse. Combining this with price increases with rising raw materials, labour and current exchange rates we have already seen, it leaves us with little option but to increase our SRP's.
Whilst we have always tried to fend off unnecessary/ unwanted in-season pricing restructures in the past, these are unavoidable costs in unprecedented times, and we are forced to reflect the update with immediate effect.
We understand these are difficult times for many of our riders and we truly appreciate your support and understanding.
Kind Regards,
The Nukeproof Team
As previously reported, YT and Canyon face similar problems, with bikes designed and assembled in Germany but manufactured in Asia. YT has announced likely price increases, while Canyon has temporarily paused shipments to the UK. Rose Bikes, also German, had a pop-up on its website as of Dec. 21 stating that the company was unable to fulfill orders from the UK, but the pop-up has since disappeared. Given that Rose had previously stopped selling to the UK, citing laws that dictate on which side each brake lever should be installed, the company seems unlikely to resume UK sales.
Not even British companies selling goods within Britain itself are immune. Brooks England has made their saddles domestically at their Smethwick factory since 1882, but the company has been owned by Italian manufacturer Selle Royal since 2002, and they ship all their saddles to Italy for distribution – even the saddles that will end up right back in the UK.
In a notice published on its website, the company wrote, “At Brooks England, we continue to produce each leather saddle in our West Midlands factory in more or less the same manner as we have for over 150 years. However, upon their completion, since some time these saddles are shipped first to our logistics centre and from there to Cyclists around the world. Due to this, the ongoing changes in the Brexit situation have made it necessary to temporarily suspend all new orders from brooksengland.com to the UK at this time.” However, Brooks' UK distributor Extra UK clarified that this only applies to customers buying directly from Brooks' website and that it will continue to deliver product to Brooks dealers.
Campagnolo, bike-discount.de, and other companies have also paused distribution to the UK while the situation remains in flux.
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Fixed it.
Fixed it more.
They are not just mates, they are part of the brotherhood.
www.canyon.com/en-gb/road-bikes/race-bikes/ultimate/ultimate-cf-slx-9.0-di2/2408.html
£7349 inc VAT
If you go to the very bottom of the footer you can change your region to Germany.
€6799 inc 19% German VAT = €5720 ex VAT = £5173 at this weeks exchange rate.
Now add 20% UK VAT = £6207
So theres over a grand (18%) been lumped onto the price purely for 'customs' and 'disbursements', plus there's still shipping to add. I doubt very much they'd try and make money out of this, that'd make them even more uncompetitive. Its just nuts, and all in the name of 'sovereignty' (racism).
I didn’t even consider the rules of origin factor in movement of product - Is it therefore correct that unless you make your product in the EU or UK you fall outside of the tariff free arrangement and duty is charged - so that’s 14% on bikes 4% on parts? - that’s huge if so.
Not sure about the N Ireland thing though....
I used to work for a well known UK outdoors clothing and equipment manufacturer. They sold sleeping bags; the shells were made in China, the down was from Hungary and they were filled and stitched ready for sale at the headquaters in the UK. They successfully argued for a ‘made in UK’ label. I’d be interested what it takes in order to obtain this label as I wasn’t party to the conversations.
Essentially full bikes may all now eligible for tariffs, even a UK orange if the build kit is more than 45% of the value, not to mention raw material as that will be from overseas too.
Seems like this is huge and about as far from a FTA as you can get - clothes, electricals, anything made outside of uk / EU and imported for resale between the two is eligible for tariffs now.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
Bang on, shits going to hit the fan.
The NI thing could be interesting as Briain says things get complicated there and as we know CRC have warehousing out there.
There is also a lot of confusion still so some companies just haven’t got to the point of discussing the charges up front, e.g. you may order the product and pay no more for it until it arrives at your country and you are stung with tariffs etc.
None of the mainstream stuff comes even close, even if built with European brand parts most of them are still made in Taiwan etc originally.
We're on a long journey and have significant price drops ahead of us as we up our volumes with the big suppliers, so while we will have a short term squeeze on margin in the EU, we can make that back by hitting those next targets through maintaining our growth. As those new pricing tiers kick in our EU bikes will return to normal margins (as well as reducing our EU required parts value) and our UK bikes get more profitable.
Oh, wait...
Turns out neglecting education is not a good thing, hopefully the rest of the world gets it
And no, Trump may have been a bit of a troll and an egomaniac but Biden is quite literally a dysfunctional old man who has a history of racism, plagiarism, and wholesale corruption by using his position for personal gain. He is a mouthpiece for private interests (which most politicians are) without any redeeming qualities that might take us away from our current system of total bipartisan private interest lobbying. He's just a return to the normal status quo of "keep washington people in washington who know the game, don't bring anyone in who might disturb the natural order"
I fear you may not quite have understood the subtlety of this particular post
Any way you've got enough issues to deal with over that side of the pond.
Enjoy the rest of the year
Only one third of the country's populace voted leave... Gov did what they wanted regardless. Brexshit is NOTHING to do with the will if the people
Went to put them in my basket, website says “not for sale in your country due to legal reasons”.
Thanks Boris you tw@t!
Yea we might be making our own forks out of swordfish bones at this rate.
You know your country has hit 3rd world status when you can’t buy any bike parts and you’re passport is worth jack sh1t.
I suspect thats probably 99% of their UK sales.
Just looked at your profile and couldn't help but notice that Canadian import Banshee that you were selling back in September.
The one thing we did do ourselves (financial services) has been compromised for a bogus deal about fish (0.1% of economy)
Bummed by Nukeproofs news, was debating between mega and meta AM, guess there is a clear winner now
With these rules even an Orange could fall foul to the rules, once you build a full bike with overseas parts they may come to more than 45% of the products value so incur the tariffs.
We can’t go from a nation that manufactures very little to almost everything overnight, it’s going to be a slog going forward for sure.
How do you know forks shock etc will be a low enough cost to come in below the required percentage?
I’m not sure (are you?) how the value is calculated - will they allow you to certify the cost of the frame as being £xx - how will you prove its ‘value’ after manufacture from raw material and you haven’t taken into account raw material costs which come from overseas.
It’s not going to be simple, at all.
Then we get into complicated products like electricals, cars, motorcycles, other forms of vehicle and scientific products etc - high tech stuff we may assemble here from parts around the world.
Wether you are a brexiteer or remainer is irrelevant, this is a huge problem.
Good stuff, I own a manufacturing business here in the UK (not bikes though we do sometimes so favours) and trying to put this together for our exports to EU.
What do you understand in terms of adding value then in this type of scenario. E.g. how do you define a component of a bikes value (the frame in this case)
I guess this means you guys are going to feel it for exports to EU moving forward as your stuff is I assume made in Taiwan.
In all cases you'll need to get it certified so it's that person you convince of your costs.
As for us frames etc the duty is not a problem. Complete bikes it's a bit steep, but we have a plan. I hope to be selling on DDP terms at current pricing by the end of the month (shipping costs not withstanding) but it will be a more limited, EU content heavy set of build options.
I think we will be in a simpler position being sub £100 parts almost entirely UK machined - getting things certified will no doubt add cost and complexity though.
I think your right about the specific operation required to qualify being ambiguous at this point - will be interesting to see how they define this.
I hope it works out for you guys, nice bikes and like the company, no bullshit gear.
Orange would be largest and are absolute minnows in terms of figures.
We can’t expect uk riders to ditch affordable imports for boutique steel single pivots, brazed hard tails and £3500 carbon frames.
Besides, this doesn’t stop UK brands selling frames from Taiwan, it makes it harder for them to export them to the EU and make a profit, where is the benefit in that?
@justanotherusername: I think Brompton is by far the biggest frame manufacturer in the UK.
Hope use modern CNC machinery with plenty of automation - the company I co-own os similar albeit much much smaller, we can have one person tend 3 machines with ease and hope have machines that can run almost unattended for a weekend - labour in the UK is expensive remember.
You have to ask yourself, why wouldn’t someone do it pre Brexit? And why would they do it post Brexit now it’s LESS cost effective / profitable to do so due to tariffs into your closest and largest market?
As Ben says, this will likely increase EU manufacturing and deter UK production, not help it.
It seems Brexiteer positivity and optimism can’t remove the effects of hard facts after all....
Hope do very well for themselves but they are nowhere near the size of SRAM, Shimano, Trek etc. If you ride in the UK you'd think they were, go to Europe and it's less prominent. North America you see the hubs but it's rare to see anything else. From my memory of a few years ago, I don't think one shop sold hope brakes in Vancouver, Whistler, Squamish, Bellingham. I asked one shop who sold the hubs why and they said they are too expensive and there just isn't the demand.
At the end of the day, if you live in a well developed country, it has a high cost of living which works against mass production costs unfortunately for things like bike manufacturing.
Our ancestors certainly did there bit for globalization with the British empire and trading/expanding all over the world, it might explain why Curry's are so popular in the UK.
The UK designs and manufactures some of the most high tech equipment in the world, F1, Motorsports, space, weapons etc. Where you command the cost to cover production, lower cost is harder to do. If it was that easy to do, companies would already be doing it with our without being part of Europe. We've left the biggest free trade group in the world and are trying to figure out what we do now. Take a look at Wikipedia and see what free trade agreements Europe has, the government has to equal or ideally better that which will be pretty much impossible unfortunately.
If you want cheap labour to manufacture, that'll have to come from abroad and we just cut off the supply somewhat from European countries like Poland. Maybe it's a good job the government has increased the visa numbers from outside Europe, in the future we might have less Europeans and more Botswana's.
Manufacturing loves stability and that's exactly what we don't have just now. How that changes in the future no one knows. People voted to be free of the restraints of Europe, to control borders and immigration and for extra money for the NHS. The problem is that no solid plans were ever put in place to show how this would happen and no measures were set. Basically the politicians will say it was a success but with no facts or figures behind it.
(as I wrote this statistic on the Internet it's now fact as long as you agree with it as per Internet rules)
My business will not ‘fold’ due to Brexit - we make things in the UK - just like you want people to do so quite hilarious you would wish that! I am literally doing what you want the British to do, but I am expressing the reality of it now being more difficult to sell to the EU.
The ‘guy from bird’ was quite helpful actually, and put me on the right track to getting our product into the EU in the most effective way - I can’t talk on his behalf but I doubt he thinks the deal we have is particularly helpful for business either, but it’s Ok, you the triumphant brexiteer sill save us all with your encyclopaedic business knowledge and endless optimism.
Producing a competitive priced and spec'd bike/component in the UK to sell world wide is hard if you want to have a reasonable profit margin. The UK has high living standards and costs, it is what it is. That gets factored into production costs. Hope automate a lot of the production which helps, machines and raw materials have a fairly consistent cost regardless of where they are in the world. It's all the other costs that add up to cause the problems. Hope it at the upper end of the cost scale for every component, some sell well abroad, some do not. Other companies own a big chunk of that price point in those markets, industry nine hubs, Chris king hubs, race Face cranks and bars etc. These companies are natives in that area, don't have the import duties and have the home grown support that hope enjoy in the UK. Let's be honest they are all desirable products. Some companies in the Western world have a wage cost of 50% of the total operating cost although you would look for around 30% for manufacturing. That cost for a I'll company compared to a Chinese/Taiwanese company makes a big difference to your profit margin.
Many would argue we have a more skilled and productive workforce, which is sometimes true, although there is plenty of skill in other parts of the world, hence why most alloy frame are made in Taiwan.
To sell something you have to be competitive through a combination of price, performance, advertising, social media, warranty etc. Cost is only one aspect but also a vital one and that's the main one brexit is effecting at the moment through unknown tariffs, so much so that companies are unwilling to trade in case they get hit by fines or lose a load of money. Once they figure out the costs and complexity they'll trade again but will the market be smaller/same/larger than before? If it's the same product/quality etc as before but cost changes that that will decide the sales, cheaper=higher sales, expensive=less sales.
Operations are not ready to scale up, e.g. Press fit bottom brackets, correct canyon warranty issues, pole bikes, trick stuff to make but a few. It takes a lot of manpower and know how to scale up if you don't want to f*ck up. It can be done but if you underestimate the task it will bite you like all the examples above.
Like I said Hope do very well but sales abroad aren't massive abroad due to the competition they face. It's very possible to have a successful business post brexit but depending on what you're selling and where, it might be harder or easier.
Out of all of the trade deals and outcome of brexit so far makes you confident of British success or not confident?
For the record I was for brexit but voted against it. That might sound strange, but there was never a plan to make it a success, just an idealism. From my experience if you don't have a plan you're screwed, if you have a good plan you have a chance but it's still not guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed, not even for multi billion pound companies.
Bit hard to adapt to something when we only know exactly what the situation is a few days before the rules change, don’t you think?
I did discredit what he said as his first post was a little brief and I took it as if he was saying it’s all easy and nothing to about, my mistake - he knows his shit as I stated, you on the other hand have nothing to add but opinion and anger.
Back to your topic, you still struggle with the basics, the EU is a bigger market than the UK, take it off the table and the potential UK manufacturer makes less profit, hard to understand? And yet again, it’s MORE difficult now than before to manufacture in the UK, not less and people didn’t do it before, so why now?
Don’t believe be - the ‘guy from bird’ said a similar thing, just look.
Nighty night bab, enjoy having an opinion from a place of absolutely no involvement, expertise or experience.
In case you haven’t noticed. This whole article is about companies suspending / altering trade due to these changes - all dummies! Oh, just had a read an email from a machine supplier regarding spares we need from the EU, they won’t even send them to us now (have to come direct from Japan now) due to the new rules, dummies!
Silly remoaners, we should have been mind readers but we were too busy being closed minded little men instead of blind optimists.
Out of interest. What’s your job?
No I totally understand what you mean. There were for’s and against’s for me, but essentially I decided same as you that our politicians would make a complete hash of it so it was unlikely to be a success. I’m of a view now that its happened and we need to look to the future, no point crying over spilt milk. All the arguing and negative doom and gloom talk doesn’t serve any of our best interests.
Additionally, I'd like to know how much of even Orange or Hope's products are sourced in the UK. I don't know where they source raw material from but I imagine they order aluminium and steel block and tubing, if that is imported the costs will likely go up and may cause issues for even UK based manufacturers. Not to mention any of the servicing or running of the machines they use.
Regards your comment on 'remoaner dummies failing to prepare' - the deal wasn't agreed until Christmas eve, which gave very little time for businesses to prepare. Some businesses are small and agile and may have been able to do this work over the festive period while working to covid restrictions with reduced workforces but other businesses are large and complex and it will have been a challenge even with 6 months or longer of implementation period.
But we do agree that making products for the same cost as the far East is very hard. I think hope are doing it right with their bikes, it's top end stuff, hope everything on it, looks great and honestly I think it's good value compared to a specialized, Santa Cruz etc. To try to compete with cheap frames would be incredibly hard. I think you have to go high end/high tech or high value/volume.
55% of a bike must be made in country 'insert-name-here' under country-of-origin rules.
You also have to do non simple assembly (so Taiwan packed bikes like bike shops assemble wont cut it).
So in theory if you jack your price high enough and meet the assembly rules you don't need any local parts, but good luck getting that wheeze past your local certifier.
William Shatner's web-store/company [so, Canadian] tweeted about this a few months ago. Being a small web-store they wouldn't do the volumes of trade to justify the four figure sum per year to register & file the UK's VAT for them so the net effect was UK customers need not apply.
" In the case of Nukeproof, because most of the bike's value, e.g. frame and components, are manufactured in Asia, the complete bike is not classified as a European product (even if the bike is assembled in Europe). Our bikes, therefore, attract additional import duties between Europe and our UK warehouse. Combining this with price increases with rising raw materials, labour and current exchange rates we have already seen, it leaves us with little option but to increase our SRP's."
"Under the new trade deal, products have to contain a certain percentage of materials or the more esoteric “value” from the UK or the EU to be considered British or European, respectively."
"In the case of Nukeproof, because most of the bike's value, e.g. frame and components, are manufactured in Asia, the complete bike is not classified as a European product (even if the bike is assembled in Europe)"
So essentially buying / selling full bikes between the UK and EU is going to be much more expensive.
For example anybody can go onto eBay now and order a frame made in the same factories as the 'brands' direct from the manufacturer in China for £150. Therefore if you're a UK brand selling a frame made from the same materials and in the same factory as the £150 direct jobbie but selling it for £500 then where is the extra value coming from? If the UK design, marketing, demo days, warranty, product availability, local distribution etc have no value then why would anybody pay £500 over £150?
E.g. purchase frame for £150, paint for £100 in uk = no good.
The things you mentioned add nothing to the product as an entity, just to the service.
This will cause huge issues, even orange will struggle to sell a full bike as made in uk due to components being all from outside of EU.
Political views aside. I do really not see how a Taiwanese Product arriving at the UK border will be charged duty (just as it would if arriving at the EU border direct from Asia) and then when exported from the UK to the EU will then be charged duty again.
If the UK import tariffs are lower than the EU on the same goods, then this is a 'problem' for the importing country. But practically to my knowledge the exporting firm would effectively not pay the duty showing that it has being exported (claim the border duty back).
VAT is a side point. A bike delivered to the EU from UK will be sold with 0 VAT, the VAT being applied at EU country customs, seems fair to me. Thing that is pissing me off at the moment is that the firms I have noticed are adding on HUGE amounts to export either side of the channel for some reason. Extra fee's yes, but not in the hundreds, let alone thousands
@Ralston88 & @Stinfmered - I would look very carefully into this, if Polygon don’t manufacture in the EU for rules of origin you could see a hefty charge levied upon import.
@peskycoots - I’m not sure about that, you are usually charged upon import based on the value of the item, I don’t see a current mechanism whereby you can escape this because you paid pre Brexit. I think realistically you should ask Propain to refund you the VAT and re invoice Net VAT as per current rules, I would certainly ask the question and for their assurances on the matter either way.
Talk to Propain, right away.
I'm planning on emailing and calling Propain to ask what's up, and if possible request that I can pay them a bit more to convert the German VAT already paid to UK VAT, and to pay for them to increase the shipping to DDP - hopefully this would mean an increase of only about 15% (+1% to cover the difference in UK/German VAT, +14% in fees and duty), rather than the 34% for UK VAT (considering we already pain German VAT at 19%), fees and duty. I'd be interested to know what you think of this as an idea?
/s
"Europe Sales - Unavailible currently. Due to the complications of the Brexit deal we are unable to ship items to Europe. We are hoping the situation will be clarified over the next few weeks and will update as we know more."
This is messed up.....:-(
Top and bottom of it is that all complete bikes and any frames that have come from Taiwan attract duty. The UK made model lines have enough UK content to qualify for 0% tariff.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-consumer-worker-protections-brexit-b1783331.html
not be a over night thing but long term I can see some benefits for both. anything that removes the dependence on China.
It has caused costs for businesses to go up, not down. Before this we had integrated standards across the UK and EU and no tarrifs or checks to trade.
Doesn’t matter. Whatever issues there were with being in the EU, or whatever issues you’re having now, are government inflicted. I suppose you can’t remove all of it, but in my opinion, the less of it the better. It’s up to you “chaps” to figure out what the acceptable level of that is. It doesn’t affect me too much. I’m just saying you guys are handling a rattle snake and are now surprised that it turned around and bit you.
The result of 'smaller government' in the UK is regulatory divergence from the previously agreed EU regs - that means tarrifs and customs.
Your argument for smaller government doesn't take into account relationships with other partners outside of your sphere of control. Perhaps this is less of an issue in the US as your domestic market is very large. A few weeks ago our 'domestic market' stretched from Iceland to the Turkish border and now it is drastically smaller - this is a problem (and an expense) for British companies.
There are people on both sides of the continent that want to buy each other’s product. Presumably, there are people in Germany, France or wherever who would like to buy a Cotic. Presumably, Cotic would like to sell to them. So goes for Rose. There’s only one thing standing in their way — the governments.
And somehow people here are telling me they want more of that? Ok, it’s your world, but I don’t understand why you’d want more of it.
A push towards deregulation in the UK has caused this, it does not help this. Having synced up regulations with your neighbours aids trade and business, and there needs to be a body that administers that.
Where is the logical end point for your small government argument? How do you feel about roads or drinking water standards for example?
In this case brexit, which has always been a push to "free Britain of EU red tape" and deregulate our economy and manufacturing, turns out to actually add red tape as other countries tend to say 'oh, have you got a form to say that item has been manufactured to the correct standards and can you pay the correct import tax please' when you cut yourself free from their market and rules.
I mean who would have guessed it wasn't as simple as they were claiming.
Your people might have been told there would be less government, but you were either misled or those who headed the effort were mistaken. Whatever the case, it appears you actually got more. But make no mistake, government is the issue here, not the companies wanting to sell and not the people wanting to buy.
This creates red tape *between* international trading partners.
As @peskycoots says, this is the reality of minimising government, we've spent 40 years working to reduce friction across the EU and one country's push to regulate itself less creates barriers between it and it's partners.
Is the bike industry the only one affected?
Not to mention there's so much more to the whole EU-Brexit debate than just some bike bits coming in from overseas.