Italians are getting on their bikes as the country’s economy goes into top gear, and Mirco Gualdi is having a hard time keeping up.
“We are on course to sell 4,000 electric bikes this year and the waiting list is up to 18 months,” said Gualdi, the sales manager at Brinke, a bicycle maker in Lombardy, northern Italy. “People want to get outside and think about their health after the pandemic.”
That is a complete turnaround for Gualdi, a former professional cyclist who lost his father to Covid in March 2020 when his home town of Leffe, near Bergamo, found itself at the centre of Europe’s first deadly cluster.
Nineteen months after army trucks removed the dead from Bergamo, his firm expects revenue to soar
