Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

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foxychick
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Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by foxychick »

No sympathy for Specialized as they went direct sales to the public and charged the same price as what you would pay in a shop, they got too greedy and like a lot of bike companies their product are way overpriced. The price of gravel bikes is outrageous to say the least, dealers who have been with them over 30 years have kicked them in touch as dealers margins have been cut.They sell direct then if you have any issues they tell you to go to your local dealer to get it sorted. They had a problem with e-bike batteries failing two years ago and they wanted dealers to sort the problem out for £30 per bike and this was one of the reasons dealers kicked them in touch. Halfords bike sales also down 20%, that is very bad as they sell some very reasonably priced bikes but the service and assembly is not very good to be honest. Giant also recently requested more time to pay their suppliers.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/spec ... ry-changes




https://road.cc/content/news/halfords-c ... ear-298563
Last edited by foxychick on 12 Jan 2023, 3:55pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nearholmer
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Nearholmer »

I reckon Evans are struggling too, based on the amount of discounting that they are doing at the moment. It looks as if they’ve come to the end of the season with way more “last years” bikes left than they should have.

Strange world where we’ve gone from bike famine during the pandemic, empty shops and impossible to get stuff, to bike glut, in such a short time.

BTW, a bike selling boom, and a bike riding boom aren’t necessarily the same thing, so I don’t think all is gloom for bike riding.
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Audax67
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Audax67 »

Praise be: looks like there'll be a lot of second-hand bikes on sale.

Same goes for manual espresso machines a month after Christmas. People get them, realize it's a lot harder than they thought, flog them on the Interwebbing and go back to Nespresso.
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mattheus
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by mattheus »

Nearholmer wrote: 12 Jan 2023, 3:52pm BTW, a bike selling boom, and a bike riding boom aren’t necessarily the same thing, so I don’t think all is gloom for bike riding.
Exactly. The thread title is pretty daft!

(as long as bikes keep getting stolen, we'll know that cycling is in good health ... )
Last edited by mattheus on 27 Jan 2023, 9:50am, edited 1 time in total.
mumbojumbo
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by mumbojumbo »

What boom-it all dries up in a winter.
pwa
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by pwa »

It isn't just cycling, it is everywhere. Companies are looking at their books and trimming their workforces to make themselves leaner.
Stevek76
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Stevek76 »

It's probably not surprising, if a huge portion of cycling enthusiasts used lockdown as an excuse to n+1, even without wars and other issues we're now going to get a few years of lower than average n+1s just as standard.

Also prices for the higher end products did skyrocket to ludicrous levels so some reductions are simply 'corrections' back to normal levels.

Pre pandemic it was pretty standard to get replacement shimano parts like cassettes for 50-60% of the actual RRP.
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jb
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by jb »

If Halfords would sell bikes un-assembled we'd be quids in.
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briansnail
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by briansnail »

Disagree.On my road lots of kids cycle to school.Also as it costs approx £100 to fill a tank people are cycling for leisure.I know bike prices are higher but guess inflation hits everyone.Batteries are the Achilles heel on cars as well as e bikes.I am in no hurry as my average distance is 6 kms and will stick to my 5 pedal bikes.
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Bonzo Banana
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Bonzo Banana »

jb wrote: 27 Jan 2023, 10:08pm If Halfords would sell bikes un-assembled we'd be quids in.
I thought they did, if you buy online for delivery to your door without paying for setup then the bike is as it left the factory I think. Many people prefer this especially for more delicate/complicated bikes like CF road bikes and ebikes.

Even though the pie is smaller Halfords still take about 25p in the £ of cycling for the UK. They sell a lot more bikes than the independent bike shop sector put together (although with lower prices per bike of course). So it always feels unfair when people criticise Halfords as maybe up to 40% of bikes sold in the UK come from Halfords which is a staggering figure. I've only bought one bike from Halfords and it was very well setup and a complicated bike with a Nexus 8 hub. I had more issues myself from a independent bike shop.
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mjr
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by mjr »

There are some interviews with local bike shop managers at 1h17m30 into this show, available for 30 days at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0f70vsg - they say it was quiet for a bit from mid-January until the February half term and then really picked up, with half-term itself being as busy as a pre-boom summer week.

I fudged it a bit (I was using the latest-available annual statistics published August 2022), but my interview is 2h 19min into the recording if anyone wants that rubbish.

In our borough of West Norfolk, the number of people cycling for travel at least monthly was up 16% year-on-year compared to 2020, at least weekly was up 42%, at least 3 days/week was up 39% and at least 5 days/week up 53%. Compared to the 2016-2020 average, the numbers were up 2% / 26% / 53% / 104%. The current borough levels are 7.2% / 6.1% / 3.0% / 2.2% compared to the England averages of 6.4% / 4.6% / 2.0% / 1.1%. Nationally for England as a whole, travel cycling fell -5% / -11% / -16% / -18% year-on-year and -16% / -23% / -36% / -40% year-vs-5year.

There are very few of the 350ish English borough-level council areas showing all those indicators increasing: Middlesbrough, Blackburn with Darwen, Eden (Cumbria), Gedling (Notts), Wolverhampton, Ashford (Kent), Dartford, Bromley, Croydon and the City of London.

Leisure cycling in West Norfolk fell -28% / -7% / -24% / -46% year-on-year, to reach current levels of 11.8% / 8.1% / 2.2% / 1.1%. The 3rd lockdown and then uncertainty about booking cycle-touring trips might have a lot to do with that. Leisure cycling also fell on all measures for England as a whole (-26% / -30% / -35% / -39% year-on-year and -26% / -25% / -23% / -26% year-vs-5year), with no council areas increasing all indicators even year-on-year.

In the rest of Norfolk, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and their neighbouring district of Broadland also saw travel cycling basically up year-on-year but down on the five years (4-106% year-on-year increases with an exceptional 15% fall for 5 days/week in Norwich; 11-66% falls year-vs-5year), whereas two of the other districts (North Norfolk and South Norfolk) saw modest falls in both and Breckland district's cycling has fallen massively from an already-low level: the survey no longer found anyone riding 5 days/week there. So the county average levels of travel cycling mostly fell year-on-year: -2% / -7% / +5% / -17%; and all fall year-vs-5year: -21% / -28% / -35% / -41%. They now are 7.6% / 5.4% / 2.4% / 1.4%.

There's more national commentary at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... 21#cycling

I'd welcome anyone pointing at 2022 or even 2023 statistics if you know them!
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Nearholmer
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Nearholmer »

Good interview!

I struggle with strings of figures, but love a good graph, so homed-in on graphs.

This one seems to me to be one that tells us everything, but almost nothing, because I’d wager that very few people are likely to be anywhere close to average.
64D97C6D-E86B-4831-BC24-E54E1CCA215B.jpeg
My instinct is the nation divides into a large group of people who never go anywhere near a bike from one years end to the next, a smaller group who rid a bike occasionally for a short distance (maybe they are near the average??), and a tiny group of people who really rack-up the trips and miles. A plot that illustrated that, or whatever the real truth around that distribution is, and how it had changed over time, would be far more informative. A series of stacked bars probably.
mattheus
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by mattheus »

Nearholmer wrote: 27 Mar 2023, 2:02pm Good interview!

I struggle with strings of figures, but love a good graph, so homed-in on graphs.

This one seems to me to be one that tells us everything, but almost nothing, because I’d wager that very few people are likely to be anywhere close to average.

64D97C6D-E86B-4831-BC24-E54E1CCA215B.jpeg

My instinct is the nation divides into a large group of people who never go anywhere near a bike from one years end to the next, a smaller group who rid a bike occasionally for a short distance (maybe they are near the average??), and a tiny group of people who really rack-up the trips and miles. A plot that illustrated that, or whatever the real truth around that distribution is, and how it had changed over time, would be far more informative. A series of stacked bars probably.
Yes, averages are probably particluarly misleading in this case. We probably need to look at different sub-groups/tribes.

A bit like taking an average of car trips over the whole population ... when we know that millions of people don't even have a car. There aren't going to be many people driving 2-300miles a year!
Nearholmer
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Nearholmer »

Cars are even more complex, because at least with bikes the vast majority only accommodate one person. My mother, for instance, is a one person household with no car, but probably makes an average of about four car trips each month, as a passenger.
Tangled Metal
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Re: Looks Like The Cycling Boom Is Over.

Post by Tangled Metal »

Nearholmer wrote: 12 Jan 2023, 3:52pm I reckon Evans are struggling too, based on the amount of discounting that they are doing at the moment. It looks as if they’ve come to the end of the season with way more “last years” bikes left than they should have.
Didn't Mike Ashley buy Evans? So the discounting is his style along with selling tat under brand names that used to be good and respected. So Evans discounting doesn't mean much about how they're struggling I reckon. Standard business practice.
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