Cycling Industry News regularly shares excerpts from our market data reports (purchase the full text here) featuring research from the independent bicycle dealer and workshop sector. In this article, we examine the investment priorities of bike shops and gather insight into current industry trends.
losers
61% of bike shops are reducing investment in inventory levels. Perhaps the biggest surprise in these pages is not the report’s second-biggest loss, investment in new bike lines (35% bike shop spending down). There are some obvious reasons for that. Many bike shops are likewise reducing their spending on storage of goods and expansion of premises. Belt tightening has also tightened in other regions, with epos (24%), cafe or food service (23%) and bike fitting (24%) all identified as areas where bike shops are making cuts. There is. However, the three picture points mentioned above are not conclusive, and opinions differ as to whether spending should be increased or decreased in these areas (see table below).
Key – Red: less spending, yellowish: same spending, green: more spending
winner
Without looking at the statistics, can you easily guess where shops are investing more? We held up our hands and found it much harder to predict than where the cuts would occur. I confess that. The big winner here is the online shop window. Is it possible to guess? perhaps. While the bike industry appears to be continuing to adapt to broader retail trends, there is a caveat here – the carefully worded question is about “online shop windows” and not necessarily online e-commerce. is. That being said, the trends in online retail are clear. Figures from Statista.com show that the value Brits spend online continues to rise regardless of coronavirus (although it is generally believed that lockdown has driven the increase further). ). In January 2016, Britons spent £854 million online. By November this had risen to £3.1bn. Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that bike shops prioritize investing in online shop windows.
Compounding this finding is that a similar percentage of bike shops spend on marketing and SEO. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to hear where that marketing spend was being spent – assuming California friends Facebook and Google were raking in the money for the UK bike industry – perhaps for CIN. It may be used in the next edition of market data.
Away from the virtual world, where are bike shops spending their cash? Workshop fittings and tools are the winners here, with almost half (44%) being spent in this area. Distributors and brands will definitely be interested in this. Is there ever a bad time to import tools and workshop related brands? If so, it’s not 2024. As a side note, Madison recently took over sales duties for GTechniq. GTechniq is a brand that can be integrated well into the genre of workshop services for conscious shops and workshops, and the market also seems ripe for other companies and brands in workshop and service related niches. You can open up the market.
Shops are also investing money into event production. Sadly, we also had the opportunity to dig deeper there, but for now we’ll have to speculate as to the exact nature of these events that will be spent, but it’s likely that we’ll be looking at demo days and ride-outs as well as in-store gatherings. Let’s try it.
Main points
Debt consolidation is a priority for a huge number of bike shops, with 54% spending the same and 28% spending more on debt reduction. Sadly and alarmingly, store security is an area identified as requiring further investment (40% of stores plan to do so), with 55% investing in this area. We stick to cash. It has been widely reported that retail crime is on the rise in the UK, and if you look around many supermarkets you will see innovative security tags on products. You can also see some locks in the cabinets for the kinds of items you didn’t need a few years ago. before. Again, this is a broader trend impacting the industry, but that doesn’t mean it can be ignored.
