Cycle sales are at a 39-year low, reveals the latest statistics from the Bicycle Association of Great Britain, and without immediate government support, the collapse will intensify, warned executives from the industry organisation at a members-only meeting yesterday [Thursday, 8 February].
I have seen the PowerPoint presentation projected at the meeting; it will have made grim viewing for any industry executives hoping to hear that the worst of the post-pandemic slump might be over.
The government has often wheeled out Brompton of London as a global success story, but even sales of folding bikes are down, reducing by 22 % in 2023.
Brompton CEO Will Butler-Adams agreed that 2023 had been a terrible year for bike sales in the U.K. and the EU but that Brompton bicycles were sold around the world so the company was insulated to a degree.
A slide warned members that overall market volume would “remain well below 2019 levels in 2026,” and that a “long-term continuum of decline” is “likely without Govt intervention.”
Cycle use is also down, according to Department for Transport (Dft) statistics, with the pandemic’s “bike boom” peaking in March 2021 and falling precipitously since. Participation is now back to pre-pandemic levels, but the DfT’s cycle index predicts a likely decline.
Sales of costly electric bikes — currently the cycle industry’s most profitable sector — are down by 7 % in volume and 5 % in value. Just 150,000 e-bikes were sold in 2023.
Inventory levels have remained punitively high. In 2022, UK suppliers imported 257,270 e-bikes, but only 161,000 were sold at retail. Storage of these bicycles and their likely eventual sale at a loss is painful for suppliers.
The cycle industry has had a tumultuous few months, with several high-profile business closures.
Recent failures include the demise of leading industry player Moore Large, the administration of market-leading internet retailer Wiggle/Chain Reaction, and late last year, Raleigh of Nottingham revealed it would be closing its longstanding parts and accessories business.
Isla Rowntree, founder of the children’s bike brand Islabikes, cited the struggles in a shrinking market when announcing the company’s planned closure.
Sales of cycle accessories and clothing have taken a resounding hit, reveals the Bicycle Association’s sales monitoring service with an eight percent reduction in 2023 over the previous year by volume and an 11 % reduction in value.
Cycling technology — such as bicycle computers, GPS navigation devices and heart rate monitors — is down by 12 % in volume and 31 % in value.
Overall, 1.55 million bicycles were sold in 2023, an annual low last experienced in 1985 following the bursting of the BMX bubble. With the introduction of mountain bikes, sales subsequently recovered, with the UK industry typically selling more than 3 million bicycles annually.
The Bicycle Association has sought government support for the cycle industry for several years. In 2018, it commissioned a report making the “industrial case” for government subsidies and support. The Value of the Cycling Sector to the British Economy report argued that the UK cycle industry was worth three times more than the UK steel industry and employed twice as many people. Cycling-related businesses generated at least £5.4 billion for the UK economy each year and sustained 64,000 jobs, said the report.
Sales of electric bikes should be subsidised by the government, the Bicycle Association has long argued. The organisation also wants the removal of VAT from sales of children’s cycles and funding for growing the U.K. cycle industry’s capacity to innovate.
Worryingly for the industry, sales of children’s bikes have been trending downwards for some time and were 8 % lower in 2023 than the previous year.
Online searches for premium versus entry-level bicycles showed the “most significant drop in interest has been at entry level,” Bicycle Association members learned.
With fewer newbie cyclists, the slump will continue to worsen, Bicycle Association members were told.
Sales of road bikes and gravel bikes bucked the trend, increasing sales by 8 and 11 %, respectively, but all other categories were down. Sales of costly triathlon bikes fell by 34 % in 2023.
The Bicycle Association’s presentation revealed that sales during the pandemic’s bike boom might have been good for those bike shops that could get stock but that suppliers overextended themselves. A little under 3 million bicycles were imported in 2022, but only 2.13 million were sold at retail. This inventory glut reduced in 2023, with supply catching up with demand, but many more suppliers will likely go to the wall in the months ahead if the slump in sales continues.
It’s unlikely that the UK government — which pivoted to a populist pro-motoring stance last year — will support the cycle industry.
Earlier this week, a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank, concluded that underfunding of active travel in the past decade has hampered UK cycling and walking by failing to make them attractive as modes of travel. £35 per person per year is needed, it urges, for the foreseeable future, in infrastructure building and other interventions, to realise active travel’s economic, health and environmental benefits.
In the 2016 to 2021 period, an average of £148 per person per year was spent on motorists, calculates IPPR.
Last year, the already low level of funding for Active Travel England was cut by £233 million and the rhetoric surrounding the government’s new “plan for drivers” has shown that promoting active travel is no longer considered the priority it was for former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who, at the height of the pandemic, promised a future “golden age for cycling.”
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