The delivery bottleneck in the bike industry is over, and warehouses are fuller than ever. Meanwhile, inflation is dampening demand. If you’re currently looking to buy a bike, you can look forward to great deals.
The bicycle industry is booming in the time of COVID-19. Sales numbers and prices skyrocketed, sometimes resulting in long waits for new bikes. Those days are over. At the same time, manufacturers and sellers are having a difficult time. Never before has there been so many ups and downs, explains Markus Bachnik, a bike dealer from Metall near Frankfurt. He is the fourth generation to run the small bike shop Dillermut.
Demand is at an all-time high during the pandemic, but supply is scarce due to supply chain issues. Things are different now, Bachnik said: Warehouses are currently full, but people are keeping funds, or preferring to invest in vacation travel.
Orders are piling up
The result of poor sales: sometimes high discounts. Larger dealers can especially afford it – eg Frank Bering of Fahrrad Rückenwind in Friedberg. Containers filled with new bikes arrive at him almost every day. Orders for 2021, 2022 and 2023 are piling up in his yard, in his warehouse and in his sales room. He currently has about 1,500 bikes in stock, compared to an average of 150 during the pandemic.
Despite the sales pressure, Bering sees the whole thing as a positive, especially for customers: as a retailer, he has to give up some of his profits, but customers can currently expect offers that haven’t existed in a long time, and may not To exist again becomes.
electric bike sales driver
Bering’s mainstay of sales is pedelecs, or e-bikes, which have caught up significantly over the past eight years. Sales in the bicycle industry have almost quadrupled over the past decade, recently reaching 7.36 billion euros, thanks to sales figures for high-priced e-bikes.
The current market share of smart electric vehicles is close to 50%. E-bike sales will also increase by 10% to 2.2 million in 2022, while overall bike sales will drop by around 100,000.
Business bike rental business
Business bike rentals are also keeping the demand for pedelecs high: more and more companies, large and small, offer this service to their employees. A high-priced bike doesn’t have to be a lump sum, but employees can pay for it through monthly lease payments that are deducted from their payroll.
It is this model that currently saves many dealers liquidity: Bachnik, a bicycle dealer from Metal, says 90 percent of his pedelec sales are through lease contracts.
As such, the bike is still in demand, and customers can expect a discount or two thanks to the record-setting offers. Even if dealerships are less profitable as a result: there are ways to survive in the bike market through bike rental and repairs.