11 ms·

The great bicycle boom of 2020

189 points by dll 6y ago

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. The demand was huge, but due to side-effects of the corona pandemic, bike production in Asia was running on at most 80% capacity. Some assembly lines were stopped for several weeks, and distancing rules means reduced throughput. The problem: all orders with the big manufacturers are placed a year in advance. This means that if you were too late to place your orders in 2020, you will not get any inventory for 2021. Any by "too late" I mean "the same time as in 2019". People want to buy, but stock is depleted and production reduced, and many small dealers won't survive 2021 for lack of inventory.
- Manfred 6y ago
  Do you mean they only got 80% of what they ordered in 2019 for 2020?
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    No, 2020 is unaffected. 2021 will be problematic.
- enriquto 6y ago
  So true. I went to a local bike shop in november and they had no bikes to sell. The guy, almost in tears, desperately showed me the waiting list on the provider website: next bikes expected by April 2021. He had sold all his stock a couple of months before, and had a lot of people willing to buy him bikes, yet he had to close the shop at the end.
- FreshFries 6y ago
  Here in Switzerland it has been a good yeah however. During the Lockdown the sales have increased by 25%. People use their bikes more too. And the both the in and export of e-bikes has increased. Sorry, all in German: https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-schweiz-wegen-corona-krise-news-der-woche-ld.1559393 https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-sc... https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-grosser-dynamik/ https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-gr...
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    The year 2020 was good in terms of sales. But its effects in 2021 will lead to vendor consolidation.
  - disabled 6y ago
    True. In Switzerland, it is expensive to even hold a driver’s license. Driving in general is expensive. While public transportation is phenomenal, clean, and can be relied on, it’s a pandemic. So, it makes sense that people are riding their bikes.
    - Leherenn 6y ago
      I disagree, driving is cheap in Switzerland. It's cheaper than public transports unless you really want to drive that Porsche Cayenne in Geneva and your employer pays for your GA.
- fredley 6y ago
  By extension: it seems to have been a great year for bike thieves, in the UK at least. Anecdotally, bike theft is through the roof.
  - KraftKacke 6y ago
    Business idea: Make something like the iPhone's snitching low power bluetooth thingy for bikes. I am sure bike owners will glad run an app which monitors the surrounding for stolen bluetooth beacons. Make it work so it can be barricaded in the seat tube or integrated into the frame, not easily removed or destroyed. Make stealing cheap bikes risky and troublesome. Nothing will protect a 5k$ sports bike.
    - fredley 6y ago
      > not easily removed or destroyed So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all). Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        No, a lock is easy to remove/destroy. It's at most a minute with the right tool (angle grinder), and the bike itself is left unaffected. A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
        usrusr 6y ago
        > The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike. Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?). What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.
- walrus01 6y ago
  For some news on this from the perspective of the individual bicycle retail stores, there's a vertical/trade journal for them: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ If you go through the past news articles there, lots of info about import data, sales boom and sell out of in stock inventory during 2020, etc.
- learnstats2 6y ago
  Do bike dealers not also make money from increased demand for services?
  - notesinthefield 6y ago
    Ive experience with three shops, given the lowish margins, transaction costs of stock and sometimes reduction in mechanics - its not nearly enough to make up the deficit. The most lucrative services, fittings, are not something every shop does or is equipped for. Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. Many will let you order parts through the shop but prices are almost always more expensive than going to the vendor site.
    - learnstats2 6y ago
      > Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. As another commenter has said - why don't shops charge according to the increased demand? This situation benefits them.
      - notesinthefield 6y ago
        If youve only so many mechanics, who do you really benefit increasing the price when most people will end up on the wait list anyway? Then you run the risk of losing them to the next shop.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Supplies of spare parts have been constrained as well. It took two months to get some replacement tyres for my bike.
  - dfgdghdf 6y ago
    Servicing (except perhaps puncture repairs) is a very low margin business. This is why online retail has hurt the bike industry so hard: the servicing was subsidized by bike and component sales. Now, local bike shops are expected to service bikes purchased online.
- whalesalad 6y ago
  I emailed 7 shops in my state of Michigan recently about a fat bike. All but one emailed me back with a sad face and said everyone is screwed until summer due to no supply. I got really lucky and found one a 2 hour drive away. Now it’s an appreciating asset in my garage if you can believe it. I ride it of course but ever have I seen this kind of demand for bikes in my entire life. I hope this is going to serve as a global correction on our need to be more self sufficient. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we took two steps forward with globalization and tech and we probably need to take one step back. Pretty much every bike and bike part is made in Taiwan or China. I’d love to have a made in the USA bike just as much as I’d imagine folks in the UK, South America, etc... feel the same.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    You got emails back!? Here, in NYC of all places, I have 0 returned emails and even having cast a wider net. Of course there's plenty of cheap e-bikes with junky components.
    - whalesalad 6y ago
      It took a while for some of them. I actually just got one reply yesterday and this all happened before Xmas.
      - busterarm 6y ago
        My problem is mainly with looking for specific components. I want a decent commuter with belt drive and higher end components. Disc brakes. I can get the cheap versions of this all day but not really the best stuff unless I possibly order it built by Maxx or get a Riese & Müller e-bike. Still looks like waiting until at least April though.
        Filligree 6y ago
        I got the Riese & Müller, and I don't regret it. Just make sure you get the high-speed version. 25 km/h is not very fast.
- KraftKacke 6y ago
  In my yard I can see about 6-10 bikes rotting away. Shop owners could make upcycling a business. Anyway, I think it's getting really cold the next months, so demand will probably go down a bit.
  - kasey_junk 6y ago
    No they can’t because they can’t get parts. Even things like patch kits were hard to find for a big chunk of the year.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  "Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. " Well, that depends on who you ask. Several local stores here saw it coming, and places enormous orders with their distributors when there was still inventory. My local did WELL -- they were aggressive and basically maxed their credit buying bikes from $400 to about $1200 (ie the sweet spot for casual riders), and sold every single one they could get their hands on. They're now the go-to joint in inner Houston for e-bikes, too. So there was a play to be made, and a way to surf this thing, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that this shop in particular was one of the few to really do it right.
  - jacurtis 6y ago
    Well my experience talking to all the local bike shops in my area is that they actually have less inventory to sell than previous years, compounded with the problem of increased demand. My local shop that is a Trek Dealer said last October that they were only just starting to get the bikes that they ordered back in February (pre-pandemic). Meaning that their standard inventory for summer never arrived. I just talked to this shop again this weekend because I was in there for ski service (like many bike shops in the Rocky Mountains, they are ski shops in the winter and bike shops in the summer), and the guy showed me their list of pending orders. They are expecting an order of bikes from Trek by the end of January that will complete the order they placed LAST APRIL. So at least for Trek, that is how far behind they are. I have also visited 2 different dealers that sell Specialized ("Specialized" is the brand name). One of them (the smaller one) told me that they have $100,000 worth of bikes and accessories on order and have been waiting for over 5 months on them to arrive with no update on any changes. The other Specialized Dealer is a big dealer in this area and they only have one bike in stock, a Peter Sagan edition Race Bike priced around $10k and 2 child sized bikes. They said they are still waiting for their orders from April to arrive. One good sign was from a local shop that sells Santa Cruz Mountain Bikes. They apparently are only about 2 months behind. But that shop has still struggled to keep bikes in stock. So their demo fleet for people to take up to the ski resort (for downhill mountain biking) last summer was all previous model-year bikes because they couldn't set aside bikes for their demo fleet because they were selling as fast as they arrived. In fact he told me that they have been selling bikes off a waiting list for people 4-5 states away who are driving 12-24 straight hours to pick up bikes because this shop has been able to keep some in stock.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  There's probably a gap in the market for bike shops in Denmark (and the Netherlands too). Everyone here already owns at least one bicycle, so there was no need to purchase another. The shops still have plenty of stock, and a quick look a the website shows 10-15% "January" discounts. However, none of the four online shops I tried deliver outside Denmark.
- trentnix 6y ago
  Former bike dealer here (I've written about it briefly for anyone who might by be interested: http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-beginnings http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-begin...). You are correct that dealers have been unable to capitalize on the boom to realize big profits. There's plenty of service business but the labor part isn't really profitable (in my experience). The ability to sell parts with service can be profitable, but the distributors and manufacturers don't have any parts to sell. One positive is that those dealers drowning in older, unsold stock have been able to turn a lot of that into cash. That's allowed a few of them to restore some financial health to their business and get out from under some of their debt to vendors and other creditors. But even so, the bike business is so commoditized and the supply chain is so lose that bike shops (and manufacturers as well) have a pretty low ceiling of profitability. Even in the midst of a boom, the economics of the bike business restrict it to a lifestyle business at best. For some shops, this (likely temporary) boom probably presents the best window of opportunity to close their doors.
  - usrusr 6y ago
    Bike shops absolutely need to turn themselves into workshops, in other words increase hourly rates until repairs become a worthwhile business on their own. Even if only because internet. The idea "I could do some bike work on my own, so bike work can't be expensive" has to die, simple as that. People can pop open a beer at home just fine, nobody expects bars to sell beer at a similar price. If shops insist on offering workshop services at a loss for bikes bought at the establishment, they are free to offer huge rebates as a hardware sales argument.
    - trentnix 6y ago
      Some in the bike industry have been asking for that very thing for years. The most common answer is, "you first".
      - usrusr 6y ago
        I really don't get what they would be missing though: "foreign" (e.g. internet) brands would usually be rejected before that price hike anyways (unless workshop capacity is desperately idle) and preferred customers (qualified by bike purchase) could still be offered arbitrary service discounts. Is it really just the old bait and switch of offering to service a clunker for the price of a hamburger and then suddenly realizing that the bike is impossible to salvage if the customer happens to be not utterly wrong size for that unloved bike that has been clogging inventory for three years?
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  It might be a lousy year for sales, but it should be an absolutely killer year for repair and tuneup work. The required bits for most tuneups are limited to lube, tubes, cable, and housing. Those four things will get you a long way with most bikes that "ran when parked" 10-20 years ago. There is a vast number of bikes in the US that meet basically that description. Source: was a volunteer bike mechanic at the Ohio City Bike Co-op. They got a lot of donations in that were at most 60 minutes of work from being rideable. https://ohiocitycycles.org/ https://ohiocitycycles.org/
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Brake pads aren't on that list? That's the other obvious consumable I can think of. And for what it's worth my mechanic ran low on chains and sprockets at some point. I don't know if that was just him or larger supply chain issues though.
    - mauvehaus 6y ago
      Brake pads wear out after thousands of miles. Most of the neglected bikes in the US got parked long before they accumulated enough miles to wear out brake pads. I've got maybe 4000 miles of mostly urban commuting (i.e. much harder on brake pads than rides in the country) on my nice road bike and I haven't changed them yet. For casual cyclists, brake pads are a lifetime part. Possible exception: glazed brake pads, but still relatively uncommon. Cables and housing are much bigger wear items for most bikes. Mostly because they aren't stainless at the low end and rust. Chains will also rust, but it's pretty hard to end up with an unsalvageable chain unless a bike has been left outside for a long time. Source: left my beater road bike outside at the curb for 9 years in Boston, including winters. Lubed the chain a couple times a year. It still runs.
      - midnightclubbed 6y ago
        Maybe on road bikes but MTB brake pads are definitely a non lifetime part. Replaced my rear pads at the weekend, maybe 0.2mm remaining after around 800 miles or so of riding. Getting oil on pads is also fairly easy to (accidentally) do. Learnt to be less liberal with the spray oil the hard way! Unfortunately for bike shops replacing disk brake pads is trivial. Bleeding the Hydraulic system not so much, if it wasn't for the stopping power I'd trade back to brake cables any day.
- usrusr 6y ago
  But the reduced availability surely enabled dealers to sell a far bigger fraction (likely very close to all!) of what they sold at list price or reasonably close, whereas a typical season will see a considerable part of inventory being pushed out at wild discounts. The entire pricing structure is built for a high margin/high discount pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if some would be able to earn more than usually even on less than half the inventory, and the upstream availability surely didn't collapse that hard.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  In a moment of inspired genius, one of the local bike shop owners stuffed a big chunk of savings into bike inventory back in March/ April. He had bikes stuffed into every corner of the shop and was pretty much the only shop with decent inventory for most of the year. But now even his inventory is bare. Maybe I should sell one of my bikes to help relieve the pressure. Hmm Nah.
- Triv888 6y ago
  Around here, even Walmart has no bicycle inventory... had to go to the flea market and buy a used one.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
There are (somewhat awkward, but English) statistics for Berlin at https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/verkehr/verkehrsplanung/radverkehr/weitere-radinfrastruktur/zaehlstellen-und-fahrradbarometer/karte/ https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/verkehr/verkehrsplanung/radver... (No way to link to configured maps, unfortunately). Some numbers. These are total monthly counts of riders observed at the same 17 measurement points: 2019 2020 Sep 1,670,000 2,387,000. + 43 % Dec 900,000 1,100,000. + 22 % That's quite an increase year-over-year! The December number are lower, but possibly more impressive considering it was rather lockdown-ish and general mobility fell somewhat. It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather. It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good): People avoid public transport and any single one might opt for a car instead. But because road capacity is fixed (that's income in the analogy), more of it needs to be devoted to the most efficient option, i. e. bikes. So the city converted car to bike lanes, and car traffic is actually down.
- jamil7 6y ago
  I'm hoping that some of the pop-up bike lanes we had around the city during the summer due to the lockdown will either return this year or drive some decision making around bike infrastructure in the city, although it always seems too little to late and to move so slowly. With an increase in cyclists last year we also sadly had an increase in cyclist deaths.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  > It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather. That statistic only observes a change in behaviour. It doesn't explain why it changed. So, I think that claim can/should be falsified: If there's an increase in bike usage, that's not because people feel the weather - in it's own regard - is less of an impediment to prefer biking over public transport. It's because people choose enduring changing weather conditions over accepting serious risk to their health for the sake of convenience. > It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good According to Wikipedia [1] > There are three necessary preconditions for this situation to arise:[citation needed] > the good in question must be an inferior good, > there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and > the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such > a substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal > goods are consumed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good So, if the only other close alternate to bicycling was public transportation, and other options (car) are because their costs outweigh the benefits, then biking would be a Giffen good. This can be explained either because the perceived costs of the alternative - public transportation - became prohibitively expensive in terms of an increased health risk and the potentially associated costs that come with that risk (death, disabilities, healthcare costs, income loss,...). Or because people are now more willing to accept changing weather conditions (per your claim). Of course the only way to confirm this is to actually do a survey and gauge the motivations that prompted a population to change their behaviour. As an anecdotal aside: I was a heavy user of public transportation. I switched to going on foot, or taking my bike to get around exactly because of the pandemic.
thorin 6y ago
Generally the UK leisure/outdoor industry has done pretty well this year, lots of people buying bikes, kayaks, canoe, SUP, and other sporting gear. They are definitely selling as many as they can get. I guess any UK based manufacturers will have been able to sell as many as they can make, maybe more local fabricators or at least assemblers will be able to start up as a result. Of course the 2nd hand market for all this stuff has been booming too, physically as well as on fb/ebay. People have been paying new prices for old goods. I could have made a bit of money buying and selling kayaks this year!
ivan1783 6y ago
Interesting, I have heard this already many times from bike shop owners here in Germany but in my personal experience I have not seen/felt more crowded bike lanes (and I ride a lot). Purely anecdotal, however.
- lorenzfx 6y ago
  I observed much more crowded bike lanes (in Hamburg), especially during the morning commute between 8 and 9. There were bicycle traffic jams in places where none were last year. Also, I observed lots and lots of blue-tired rented bicycles during the summer, though their numbers seems to have reduced a lot since the weather got wet and cold.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    The blue-tyred bikes are long-term rental bikes from https://swapfiets.com https://swapfiets.com . They're a good deal for someone who is only living somewhere for ~6 months or less.
hadrien01 6y ago
Version without ads (works outside the UK for some reason): https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/the-great-bicycle-boom-of-2020.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/the-great...
IMTDb 6y ago
It will be interesting to see how the bike usage will survive post-pandemic. Anecdotal experience in my social circle: Many people bought a bike just to keep active during the pandemic measures. Many justified the "somewhat impulsive" spending by hoping to use it for short commute/transportation needs in the future. Most bike have been collecting dust in a garage for several month, after the first three "bike excursion", the conversion rate is close to 0%.
- walrus01 6y ago
  Bicycle enthusiasts I know predict that there will be a glut of barely used, higher-end road bikes and components for sale in 6-12 months from now, after people realize that their impulsive $3500-6000 purchase was not the best idea ever. I'm not even talking about really high end stuff, basically what you would get if you walked into a Trek, Specialized or Giant dealer in spring 2020 and bought a full carbon frame road bike with mechanical 105 groupset on it. No Di2 or whatever.
  - 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
    I live in a big city with a lot of tech workers and white collar professionals so plenty of disposable income. Just from talking to people out riding this summer it seems like a lot of people bought bikes they could technically afford but were way above their preferred price range simply due to availability. What people wanted was $500 bikes but there were only $2500 bikes so that's what they got. It's not like they're stupid or even necessarily made a bad choice. They wanted a bike and got the bike they could get.
    - midnightclubbed 6y ago
      I wonder if this will negatively impact mid-tier bike sales in 2-3 years time? Some of those riders would have bought a $500 bike, realized how much fun they were having and then upgraded. A $2500 bike is unlikely to be upgraded for a good while longer. Not being able to dine out, take vacations, or go to concerts has put a lot of disposable income in the hands of a good chunk of the population this year.
gonzo41 6y ago
The most important part about being locked in my house for a month was the hours of dog walking, and hours of exercise I got to take. If, on the flip side of this pandemic we end up with people who use their car less, then that's a good thing. For the environment, for infrastructure, for other car drivers. Bikes, and electric bikes make a lot of sense these days and they are way more CC friendly than a cybertruck.
- DebtDeflation 6y ago
  Totally agree. I just placed an order for an eFatbike last week. I've spent the last 9 months hiking every possible hiking trail within an hour or so of me. Now it's time to explore all the MTB trails and fire roads. Getting outside on weekends is the only thing that has kept me sane since the pandemic started. I haven't been to my company office, client sites, gym, restaurant, etc. since mid March. Other than to go grocery shopping every other week and hiking on weekends, I rarely leave the house at all.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Similar phenomenon has happened with Nordic (cross-country) skiing and backcountry skiing gear this winter. Sudden spike in interest, stores out of stock of equipment. I suspect most of this is purely aspirational, both those activities require large amounts of training & skill and access to particular conditions/terrain that most people don't have. But it's still interesting to watch.
- geephroh 6y ago
  Can't wait to pick up an aspirational splitboard for cheap in the spring!
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    I have several aspirational backcountry & telemark setups here now. They look very nice. But now I can't travel. Not even regionally, really. Province-wide lockdown. And all lift served skiing shutdown, too. Also no snow in local area, so can't even hit that. 2020 continues on sucking, right into 2021
exabrial 6y ago
Usually big cities try things like bicycle lanes. This has moderate success for brave bicycle riders but probably is not a safe for less brave riders around cars that aren't used to bicycles. I keep trying to point my local government, since they've already taken my money anyway, towards the Bentonville model. Instead of building bike lanes, build single track that runs through the town. This has been incredibly successful for them. Instead of building sidewalks they build dirt paths. The other option is streamway buffer trails which completely remove bikes from traffic and provide shortcuts without red lights through the city.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  The real problem in the US is that we aren't building protected bike lanes networks that treat riders as first-class users like the Netherlands does. Most of our "bike lanes" are nothing more than narrowed painted lanes on the road sandwiched between fast moving traffic and parked cars (with potentially opening doors). Non-experienced cyclists will rightfully not feel safe using these lanes because they aren't safe. But build better infrastructure and even children can use it safely.
  - u801e 6y ago
    The only good infrastructure makes use of existing rail right of way or paths near rivers. If they provide a way to get to various destinations around town or a fast way to travel between towns, then they'll be used and prove useful. Protected bicycle lanes is a misnomer. Protected, in traffic engineering terms, refers to something like a protected traffic light phase where one stream of traffic has exclusive access to the intersection (e.g., a protected left turn arrow). The barrier separated lanes reduce the visibility of cyclists from the motorists' point of view and vice versa. When both get to an intersecton and the motorist needs to turn right, it's not possible for them to see the cyclist well enough in advance to actually yield to them. The same thing happens to cyclists because they can't easily see approaching traffic due to visual obstructions. The safest solution is to have cyclists follow the same rules of the road that all other vehicle operators follow and allow cyclists full use of the lane they're in. That is, get rid of laws that require cyclists to ride as far right as practicable regardless of the presence of marked lanes or use a bike lane (e.g., https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234).
jwr 6y ago
Sadly, this seems not to be happening so much in less developed countries in Central/Eastern Europe, notably Poland. My educated guess is that it's because a car is still a status symbol here, rather than a (very) costly tool for moving around. Don't get me wrong, bike usage in Warsaw (where I am right now) is increasing, but it isn't nearly the revolution other EU cities have seen, and the support from authorities is lukewarm.

189 points by dll 6y ago

Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. The demand was huge, but due to side-effects of the corona pandemic, bike production in Asia was running on at most 80% capacity. Some assembly lines were stopped for several weeks, and distancing rules means reduced throughput. The problem: all orders with the big manufacturers are placed a year in advance. This means that if you were too late to place your orders in 2020, you will not get any inventory for 2021. Any by "too late" I mean "the same time as in 2019". People want to buy, but stock is depleted and production reduced, and many small dealers won't survive 2021 for lack of inventory.

Manfred 6y ago
Do you mean they only got 80% of what they ordered in 2019 for 2020?
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  No, 2020 is unaffected. 2021 will be problematic.
enriquto 6y ago
So true. I went to a local bike shop in november and they had no bikes to sell. The guy, almost in tears, desperately showed me the waiting list on the provider website: next bikes expected by April 2021. He had sold all his stock a couple of months before, and had a lot of people willing to buy him bikes, yet he had to close the shop at the end.
FreshFries 6y ago
Here in Switzerland it has been a good yeah however. During the Lockdown the sales have increased by 25%. People use their bikes more too. And the both the in and export of e-bikes has increased. Sorry, all in German: https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-schweiz-wegen-corona-krise-news-der-woche-ld.1559393 https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-sc... https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-grosser-dynamik/ https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-gr...
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  The year 2020 was good in terms of sales. But its effects in 2021 will lead to vendor consolidation.
- disabled 6y ago
  True. In Switzerland, it is expensive to even hold a driver’s license. Driving in general is expensive. While public transportation is phenomenal, clean, and can be relied on, it’s a pandemic. So, it makes sense that people are riding their bikes.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    I disagree, driving is cheap in Switzerland. It's cheaper than public transports unless you really want to drive that Porsche Cayenne in Geneva and your employer pays for your GA.
fredley 6y ago
By extension: it seems to have been a great year for bike thieves, in the UK at least. Anecdotally, bike theft is through the roof.
- KraftKacke 6y ago
  Business idea: Make something like the iPhone's snitching low power bluetooth thingy for bikes. I am sure bike owners will glad run an app which monitors the surrounding for stolen bluetooth beacons. Make it work so it can be barricaded in the seat tube or integrated into the frame, not easily removed or destroyed. Make stealing cheap bikes risky and troublesome. Nothing will protect a 5k$ sports bike.
  - fredley 6y ago
    > not easily removed or destroyed So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all). Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      No, a lock is easy to remove/destroy. It's at most a minute with the right tool (angle grinder), and the bike itself is left unaffected. A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
      - usrusr 6y ago
        > The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike. Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?). What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.
walrus01 6y ago
For some news on this from the perspective of the individual bicycle retail stores, there's a vertical/trade journal for them: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ If you go through the past news articles there, lots of info about import data, sales boom and sell out of in stock inventory during 2020, etc.
learnstats2 6y ago
Do bike dealers not also make money from increased demand for services?
- notesinthefield 6y ago
  Ive experience with three shops, given the lowish margins, transaction costs of stock and sometimes reduction in mechanics - its not nearly enough to make up the deficit. The most lucrative services, fittings, are not something every shop does or is equipped for. Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. Many will let you order parts through the shop but prices are almost always more expensive than going to the vendor site.
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    > Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. As another commenter has said - why don't shops charge according to the increased demand? This situation benefits them.
    - notesinthefield 6y ago
      If youve only so many mechanics, who do you really benefit increasing the price when most people will end up on the wait list anyway? Then you run the risk of losing them to the next shop.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Supplies of spare parts have been constrained as well. It took two months to get some replacement tyres for my bike.
- dfgdghdf 6y ago
  Servicing (except perhaps puncture repairs) is a very low margin business. This is why online retail has hurt the bike industry so hard: the servicing was subsidized by bike and component sales. Now, local bike shops are expected to service bikes purchased online.
whalesalad 6y ago
I emailed 7 shops in my state of Michigan recently about a fat bike. All but one emailed me back with a sad face and said everyone is screwed until summer due to no supply. I got really lucky and found one a 2 hour drive away. Now it’s an appreciating asset in my garage if you can believe it. I ride it of course but ever have I seen this kind of demand for bikes in my entire life. I hope this is going to serve as a global correction on our need to be more self sufficient. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we took two steps forward with globalization and tech and we probably need to take one step back. Pretty much every bike and bike part is made in Taiwan or China. I’d love to have a made in the USA bike just as much as I’d imagine folks in the UK, South America, etc... feel the same.
- busterarm 6y ago
  You got emails back!? Here, in NYC of all places, I have 0 returned emails and even having cast a wider net. Of course there's plenty of cheap e-bikes with junky components.
  - whalesalad 6y ago
    It took a while for some of them. I actually just got one reply yesterday and this all happened before Xmas.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      My problem is mainly with looking for specific components. I want a decent commuter with belt drive and higher end components. Disc brakes. I can get the cheap versions of this all day but not really the best stuff unless I possibly order it built by Maxx or get a Riese & Müller e-bike. Still looks like waiting until at least April though.
      - Filligree 6y ago
        I got the Riese & Müller, and I don't regret it. Just make sure you get the high-speed version. 25 km/h is not very fast.
KraftKacke 6y ago
In my yard I can see about 6-10 bikes rotting away. Shop owners could make upcycling a business. Anyway, I think it's getting really cold the next months, so demand will probably go down a bit.
- kasey_junk 6y ago
  No they can’t because they can’t get parts. Even things like patch kits were hard to find for a big chunk of the year.
ubermonkey 6y ago
"Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. " Well, that depends on who you ask. Several local stores here saw it coming, and places enormous orders with their distributors when there was still inventory. My local did WELL -- they were aggressive and basically maxed their credit buying bikes from $400 to about $1200 (ie the sweet spot for casual riders), and sold every single one they could get their hands on. They're now the go-to joint in inner Houston for e-bikes, too. So there was a play to be made, and a way to surf this thing, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that this shop in particular was one of the few to really do it right.
- jacurtis 6y ago
  Well my experience talking to all the local bike shops in my area is that they actually have less inventory to sell than previous years, compounded with the problem of increased demand. My local shop that is a Trek Dealer said last October that they were only just starting to get the bikes that they ordered back in February (pre-pandemic). Meaning that their standard inventory for summer never arrived. I just talked to this shop again this weekend because I was in there for ski service (like many bike shops in the Rocky Mountains, they are ski shops in the winter and bike shops in the summer), and the guy showed me their list of pending orders. They are expecting an order of bikes from Trek by the end of January that will complete the order they placed LAST APRIL. So at least for Trek, that is how far behind they are. I have also visited 2 different dealers that sell Specialized ("Specialized" is the brand name). One of them (the smaller one) told me that they have $100,000 worth of bikes and accessories on order and have been waiting for over 5 months on them to arrive with no update on any changes. The other Specialized Dealer is a big dealer in this area and they only have one bike in stock, a Peter Sagan edition Race Bike priced around $10k and 2 child sized bikes. They said they are still waiting for their orders from April to arrive. One good sign was from a local shop that sells Santa Cruz Mountain Bikes. They apparently are only about 2 months behind. But that shop has still struggled to keep bikes in stock. So their demo fleet for people to take up to the ski resort (for downhill mountain biking) last summer was all previous model-year bikes because they couldn't set aside bikes for their demo fleet because they were selling as fast as they arrived. In fact he told me that they have been selling bikes off a waiting list for people 4-5 states away who are driving 12-24 straight hours to pick up bikes because this shop has been able to keep some in stock.
Symbiote 6y ago
There's probably a gap in the market for bike shops in Denmark (and the Netherlands too). Everyone here already owns at least one bicycle, so there was no need to purchase another. The shops still have plenty of stock, and a quick look a the website shows 10-15% "January" discounts. However, none of the four online shops I tried deliver outside Denmark.
trentnix 6y ago
Former bike dealer here (I've written about it briefly for anyone who might by be interested: http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-beginnings http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-begin...). You are correct that dealers have been unable to capitalize on the boom to realize big profits. There's plenty of service business but the labor part isn't really profitable (in my experience). The ability to sell parts with service can be profitable, but the distributors and manufacturers don't have any parts to sell. One positive is that those dealers drowning in older, unsold stock have been able to turn a lot of that into cash. That's allowed a few of them to restore some financial health to their business and get out from under some of their debt to vendors and other creditors. But even so, the bike business is so commoditized and the supply chain is so lose that bike shops (and manufacturers as well) have a pretty low ceiling of profitability. Even in the midst of a boom, the economics of the bike business restrict it to a lifestyle business at best. For some shops, this (likely temporary) boom probably presents the best window of opportunity to close their doors.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Bike shops absolutely need to turn themselves into workshops, in other words increase hourly rates until repairs become a worthwhile business on their own. Even if only because internet. The idea "I could do some bike work on my own, so bike work can't be expensive" has to die, simple as that. People can pop open a beer at home just fine, nobody expects bars to sell beer at a similar price. If shops insist on offering workshop services at a loss for bikes bought at the establishment, they are free to offer huge rebates as a hardware sales argument.
  - trentnix 6y ago
    Some in the bike industry have been asking for that very thing for years. The most common answer is, "you first".
    - usrusr 6y ago
      I really don't get what they would be missing though: "foreign" (e.g. internet) brands would usually be rejected before that price hike anyways (unless workshop capacity is desperately idle) and preferred customers (qualified by bike purchase) could still be offered arbitrary service discounts. Is it really just the old bait and switch of offering to service a clunker for the price of a hamburger and then suddenly realizing that the bike is impossible to salvage if the customer happens to be not utterly wrong size for that unloved bike that has been clogging inventory for three years?
mauvehaus 6y ago
It might be a lousy year for sales, but it should be an absolutely killer year for repair and tuneup work. The required bits for most tuneups are limited to lube, tubes, cable, and housing. Those four things will get you a long way with most bikes that "ran when parked" 10-20 years ago. There is a vast number of bikes in the US that meet basically that description. Source: was a volunteer bike mechanic at the Ohio City Bike Co-op. They got a lot of donations in that were at most 60 minutes of work from being rideable. https://ohiocitycycles.org/ https://ohiocitycycles.org/
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Brake pads aren't on that list? That's the other obvious consumable I can think of. And for what it's worth my mechanic ran low on chains and sprockets at some point. I don't know if that was just him or larger supply chain issues though.
  - mauvehaus 6y ago
    Brake pads wear out after thousands of miles. Most of the neglected bikes in the US got parked long before they accumulated enough miles to wear out brake pads. I've got maybe 4000 miles of mostly urban commuting (i.e. much harder on brake pads than rides in the country) on my nice road bike and I haven't changed them yet. For casual cyclists, brake pads are a lifetime part. Possible exception: glazed brake pads, but still relatively uncommon. Cables and housing are much bigger wear items for most bikes. Mostly because they aren't stainless at the low end and rust. Chains will also rust, but it's pretty hard to end up with an unsalvageable chain unless a bike has been left outside for a long time. Source: left my beater road bike outside at the curb for 9 years in Boston, including winters. Lubed the chain a couple times a year. It still runs.
    - midnightclubbed 6y ago
      Maybe on road bikes but MTB brake pads are definitely a non lifetime part. Replaced my rear pads at the weekend, maybe 0.2mm remaining after around 800 miles or so of riding. Getting oil on pads is also fairly easy to (accidentally) do. Learnt to be less liberal with the spray oil the hard way! Unfortunately for bike shops replacing disk brake pads is trivial. Bleeding the Hydraulic system not so much, if it wasn't for the stopping power I'd trade back to brake cables any day.
usrusr 6y ago
But the reduced availability surely enabled dealers to sell a far bigger fraction (likely very close to all!) of what they sold at list price or reasonably close, whereas a typical season will see a considerable part of inventory being pushed out at wild discounts. The entire pricing structure is built for a high margin/high discount pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if some would be able to earn more than usually even on less than half the inventory, and the upstream availability surely didn't collapse that hard.
ogre_codes 6y ago
In a moment of inspired genius, one of the local bike shop owners stuffed a big chunk of savings into bike inventory back in March/ April. He had bikes stuffed into every corner of the shop and was pretty much the only shop with decent inventory for most of the year. But now even his inventory is bare. Maybe I should sell one of my bikes to help relieve the pressure. Hmm Nah.
Triv888 6y ago
Around here, even Walmart has no bicycle inventory... had to go to the flea market and buy a used one.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

There are (somewhat awkward, but English) statistics for Berlin at https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/verkehr/verkehrsplanung/radverkehr/weitere-radinfrastruktur/zaehlstellen-und-fahrradbarometer/karte/ https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/verkehr/verkehrsplanung/radver... (No way to link to configured maps, unfortunately). Some numbers. These are total monthly counts of riders observed at the same 17 measurement points: 2019 2020 Sep 1,670,000 2,387,000. + 43 % Dec 900,000 1,100,000. + 22 % That's quite an increase year-over-year! The December number are lower, but possibly more impressive considering it was rather lockdown-ish and general mobility fell somewhat. It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather. It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good): People avoid public transport and any single one might opt for a car instead. But because road capacity is fixed (that's income in the analogy), more of it needs to be devoted to the most efficient option, i. e. bikes. So the city converted car to bike lanes, and car traffic is actually down.

jamil7 6y ago
I'm hoping that some of the pop-up bike lanes we had around the city during the summer due to the lockdown will either return this year or drive some decision making around bike infrastructure in the city, although it always seems too little to late and to move so slowly. With an increase in cyclists last year we also sadly had an increase in cyclist deaths.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
> It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather. That statistic only observes a change in behaviour. It doesn't explain why it changed. So, I think that claim can/should be falsified: If there's an increase in bike usage, that's not because people feel the weather - in it's own regard - is less of an impediment to prefer biking over public transport. It's because people choose enduring changing weather conditions over accepting serious risk to their health for the sake of convenience. > It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good According to Wikipedia [1] > There are three necessary preconditions for this situation to arise:[citation needed] > the good in question must be an inferior good, > there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and > the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such > a substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal > goods are consumed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good So, if the only other close alternate to bicycling was public transportation, and other options (car) are because their costs outweigh the benefits, then biking would be a Giffen good. This can be explained either because the perceived costs of the alternative - public transportation - became prohibitively expensive in terms of an increased health risk and the potentially associated costs that come with that risk (death, disabilities, healthcare costs, income loss,...). Or because people are now more willing to accept changing weather conditions (per your claim). Of course the only way to confirm this is to actually do a survey and gauge the motivations that prompted a population to change their behaviour. As an anecdotal aside: I was a heavy user of public transportation. I switched to going on foot, or taking my bike to get around exactly because of the pandemic.

thorin 6y ago

Generally the UK leisure/outdoor industry has done pretty well this year, lots of people buying bikes, kayaks, canoe, SUP, and other sporting gear. They are definitely selling as many as they can get. I guess any UK based manufacturers will have been able to sell as many as they can make, maybe more local fabricators or at least assemblers will be able to start up as a result. Of course the 2nd hand market for all this stuff has been booming too, physically as well as on fb/ebay. People have been paying new prices for old goods. I could have made a bit of money buying and selling kayaks this year!

ivan1783 6y ago

Interesting, I have heard this already many times from bike shop owners here in Germany but in my personal experience I have not seen/felt more crowded bike lanes (and I ride a lot). Purely anecdotal, however.

lorenzfx 6y ago
I observed much more crowded bike lanes (in Hamburg), especially during the morning commute between 8 and 9. There were bicycle traffic jams in places where none were last year. Also, I observed lots and lots of blue-tired rented bicycles during the summer, though their numbers seems to have reduced a lot since the weather got wet and cold.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  The blue-tyred bikes are long-term rental bikes from https://swapfiets.com https://swapfiets.com . They're a good deal for someone who is only living somewhere for ~6 months or less.

hadrien01 6y ago

Version without ads (works outside the UK for some reason): https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/the-great-bicycle-boom-of-2020.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/the-great...

IMTDb 6y ago

It will be interesting to see how the bike usage will survive post-pandemic. Anecdotal experience in my social circle: Many people bought a bike just to keep active during the pandemic measures. Many justified the "somewhat impulsive" spending by hoping to use it for short commute/transportation needs in the future. Most bike have been collecting dust in a garage for several month, after the first three "bike excursion", the conversion rate is close to 0%.

walrus01 6y ago
Bicycle enthusiasts I know predict that there will be a glut of barely used, higher-end road bikes and components for sale in 6-12 months from now, after people realize that their impulsive $3500-6000 purchase was not the best idea ever. I'm not even talking about really high end stuff, basically what you would get if you walked into a Trek, Specialized or Giant dealer in spring 2020 and bought a full carbon frame road bike with mechanical 105 groupset on it. No Di2 or whatever.
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
  I live in a big city with a lot of tech workers and white collar professionals so plenty of disposable income. Just from talking to people out riding this summer it seems like a lot of people bought bikes they could technically afford but were way above their preferred price range simply due to availability. What people wanted was $500 bikes but there were only $2500 bikes so that's what they got. It's not like they're stupid or even necessarily made a bad choice. They wanted a bike and got the bike they could get.
  - midnightclubbed 6y ago
    I wonder if this will negatively impact mid-tier bike sales in 2-3 years time? Some of those riders would have bought a $500 bike, realized how much fun they were having and then upgraded. A $2500 bike is unlikely to be upgraded for a good while longer. Not being able to dine out, take vacations, or go to concerts has put a lot of disposable income in the hands of a good chunk of the population this year.

gonzo41 6y ago

The most important part about being locked in my house for a month was the hours of dog walking, and hours of exercise I got to take. If, on the flip side of this pandemic we end up with people who use their car less, then that's a good thing. For the environment, for infrastructure, for other car drivers. Bikes, and electric bikes make a lot of sense these days and they are way more CC friendly than a cybertruck.

DebtDeflation 6y ago
Totally agree. I just placed an order for an eFatbike last week. I've spent the last 9 months hiking every possible hiking trail within an hour or so of me. Now it's time to explore all the MTB trails and fire roads. Getting outside on weekends is the only thing that has kept me sane since the pandemic started. I haven't been to my company office, client sites, gym, restaurant, etc. since mid March. Other than to go grocery shopping every other week and hiking on weekends, I rarely leave the house at all.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

Similar phenomenon has happened with Nordic (cross-country) skiing and backcountry skiing gear this winter. Sudden spike in interest, stores out of stock of equipment. I suspect most of this is purely aspirational, both those activities require large amounts of training & skill and access to particular conditions/terrain that most people don't have. But it's still interesting to watch.

geephroh 6y ago
Can't wait to pick up an aspirational splitboard for cheap in the spring!
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  I have several aspirational backcountry & telemark setups here now. They look very nice. But now I can't travel. Not even regionally, really. Province-wide lockdown. And all lift served skiing shutdown, too. Also no snow in local area, so can't even hit that. 2020 continues on sucking, right into 2021

exabrial 6y ago

Usually big cities try things like bicycle lanes. This has moderate success for brave bicycle riders but probably is not a safe for less brave riders around cars that aren't used to bicycles. I keep trying to point my local government, since they've already taken my money anyway, towards the Bentonville model. Instead of building bike lanes, build single track that runs through the town. This has been incredibly successful for them. Instead of building sidewalks they build dirt paths. The other option is streamway buffer trails which completely remove bikes from traffic and provide shortcuts without red lights through the city.

CydeWeys 6y ago
The real problem in the US is that we aren't building protected bike lanes networks that treat riders as first-class users like the Netherlands does. Most of our "bike lanes" are nothing more than narrowed painted lanes on the road sandwiched between fast moving traffic and parked cars (with potentially opening doors). Non-experienced cyclists will rightfully not feel safe using these lanes because they aren't safe. But build better infrastructure and even children can use it safely.
- u801e 6y ago
  The only good infrastructure makes use of existing rail right of way or paths near rivers. If they provide a way to get to various destinations around town or a fast way to travel between towns, then they'll be used and prove useful. Protected bicycle lanes is a misnomer. Protected, in traffic engineering terms, refers to something like a protected traffic light phase where one stream of traffic has exclusive access to the intersection (e.g., a protected left turn arrow). The barrier separated lanes reduce the visibility of cyclists from the motorists' point of view and vice versa. When both get to an intersecton and the motorist needs to turn right, it's not possible for them to see the cyclist well enough in advance to actually yield to them. The same thing happens to cyclists because they can't easily see approaching traffic due to visual obstructions. The safest solution is to have cyclists follow the same rules of the road that all other vehicle operators follow and allow cyclists full use of the lane they're in. That is, get rid of laws that require cyclists to ride as far right as practicable regardless of the presence of marked lanes or use a bike lane (e.g., https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234).

jwr 6y ago

Sadly, this seems not to be happening so much in less developed countries in Central/Eastern Europe, notably Poland. My educated guess is that it's because a car is still a status symbol here, rather than a (very) costly tool for moving around. Don't get me wrong, bike usage in Warsaw (where I am right now) is increasing, but it isn't nearly the revolution other EU cities have seen, and the support from authorities is lukewarm.