IN BRIEF
British company VividQ says it has developed a hologram technology aimed at bike shops: the customer would pick a model from a catalogue, see it appear in three dimensions and be able to walk around it. According to Cycling Industry News, which attended a demonstration at a Cambridge office, pilots are already running in shops in the city. The company claims more than fifty patents and is targeting a room-scale version in around twelve months. For a retailer, the cost would take the form of a monthly subscription, on top of hardware comparable to domestic audiovisual kit.
A bike shop has only so much floor space and so much cash, whereas a catalogue comes in a range of sizes and colours. VividQ, a company that came out of Cambridge’s university scene, is proposing to answer that with holograms.
VividQ: bike holograms in a shop
“If the idea of your shop having accurate 3D holograms of 1,000s of bikes, that a customer can select and walk around while closely examining, seems like science fiction then that’s because it has been until this ground breaking development from VividQ”, writes Cycling Industry News. The British trade title spells out how hard the exercise is: “While film makers have been tricking us for years, it’s enormously difficult to make true holograms, with accurate depth, appearing in mid-air which you can walk around, happen in the real world.”
What the demonstration shows, and what it does not show yet
The journalist describes a set-up that is still preliminary: he was invited “into a darkened room in an office in Cambridge, where we stand with a lightweight pair of glasses, while a staffer fires up the software”. The room-scale version, for its part, is not there yet: “VividQ’s longer term plan to produce a room-sized hologram is about 12 months away, the firm believes, and it has a 25 m² plot in Hemel Hempstead where it’s putting together a demonstration area.”
On the technical substance, Darran Milne, co-founder and chief executive, puts the emphasis on software rather than hardware: “We use standard components off the shelf”, he tells the outlet, which writes for its part that the company holds more than 50 patents.
A sales argument: see before you buy
Darran Milne makes his case with a car comparison: “Even in a Porsche car showroom, it’s not often you get to see the exact car that you’re buying until you pick it up”, he notes. The source also mentions other in-store uses: “Bike shops could run evening events where a pro cyclist answers questions, appearing as a hologram.”
As for the business model, the source states that “for bike shops, the cost beyond the home AV hardware level costs would be a monthly subscription fee”. The outlet also notes that “VividQ is looking for AV installers to partner with”. The report, published on 9 September, does not give the amount of that subscription. Pilots are under way: “There are VividQ pilots currently operating in bike shops in Cambridge”, writes Cycling Industry News, which announces a public demonstration at its own trade show, CIN Live 2026.
