During the interwar period, Tel Aviv grew from a tiny sleeping suburb of ancient Jaffa into the largest city and the dominant commercial center of the British Mandate for Palestine. The bicycle became the mainstay of blue-collar commute in Tel Aviv within a decade. Tel Aviv had more bicycles than all other means of transportation combined (ranging from camels to buses).
Tel Aviv’s flat terrain and easy winters, together with relative poverty, were ideal for widespread bicycle adoption by the many construction and factory workers. Several professions in Tel Aviv depended on the bicycle not only to get to work but for work itself: Milkmen, mailmen, delivery men of laundry services and newspapers, messengers, and policemen. High summer humidity, however, precluded some of the white-collar commute that characterized contemporary European cities such as Amsterdam.
The demand for bicycles was served by numerous businesses. Tel-Aviv importers brought complete bicycles and spare parts from Germany, the United Kingdom, and France through Jaffa’s port. They sold it to retailers in Tel Aviv and the rest of the country. Most retailers also provided repair services, and a few them also dealt in leasing bicycles to tourists. There were many workshops for repairing vehicles, some of which specialized in bicycles. There were few brief, small-scale attempts at local bicycle production. The only producer to survive the period specialized in the relatively simple task of producing bicycle frames.
In general, entry and exit into all levels of the bicycle trade were high, as typical in a boomtown and as can be expected in a place populated almost exclusively by recent immigrants. They enjoyed the new British environment that provided law and order, a fixed exchange rate with the British pound, and policies that favored international trade and free enterprize.