Bicycle Association Seeks Government Support To Halt ‘Continuum Of Decline’ As U.K. Cycle Sales Slump To 39-Year Low

Bicycle sales are at a 39-year low, the latest statistics from the British Bicycle Association reveal, and without immediate government support, the collapse will intensify, the organization’s leaders have warned. ‘industry in a meeting only of members yesterday. [Thursday, 8 February].

I saw the PowerPoint presentation projected at the meeting; It will make for grim viewing for all industry executives hoping to hear that the worst of the post-pandemic downturn might be over.

The government has often touted London’s Brompton as a global success story, but sales of folding bikes are also down, falling by 22% in 2023.

Brompton CEO Will Butler-Adams agreed that 2023 was a terrible year for bike sales in the UK and EU, but that Brompton bikes were sold around the world, so the company was insulated to a certain degree.

One slide warned members that overall market volume “would remain well below 2019 levels in 2026,” and that a “long-term continued decline” is “likely without government intervention.”

The use of the cycle has also decreased, according to the statistics of the Department for Transport (Dft), with the “bicycle boom” of the pandemic that peaked in March 2021 and fell precipitously since. Participation has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the DfT cycle index predicts a likely decline.

Sales of expensive electric bikes – currently the most profitable sector of the cycling industry – fell by 7% in volume and 5% in value. Only 150,000 e-bikes were sold in 2023.

Inventory levels have been punishingly high. In 2022, UK suppliers imported 257,270 e-bikes, but only 161,000 were sold at retail. The storage of these bikes and their eventual sale at a loss is painful for the suppliers.

The cycling industry has had a tumultuous few months, with several high-profile business closures.

Recent failures include the demise of industry leader Moore Large, the administration of internet retailer Wiggle/Chain Reaction, and late last year Raleigh of Nottingham revealed it would be closing its parts business and long lasting accessories.

Isla Rowntree, founder of children’s bike brand Islabikes, cited struggles in a shrinking market when announcing the company’s planned closure.

The sale of cycling accessories and clothing has taken a resounding success, reveals the sales monitoring service of the Bicycle Association with an eight percent reduction in 2023 over the previous year in volume and a reduction of the value of 11%.

Cycling technology – such as bike computers, GPS navigation devices and heart rate monitors – fell by 12% in volume and 31% in value.

Overall, 1.55 million bikes were sold in 2023, the last annual low experienced in 1985 after the BMX bubble burst. With the introduction of mountain bikes, sales later recovered, with the UK industry typically selling over 3 million bikes a year.

The Bicycle Association has been seeking government support for the cycle industry for many years. In 2018, he commissioned a report that makes the “industrial case” for subsidies and government 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 more people. Cycling businesses generated at least £5.4 billion for the UK economy each year and supported 64,000 jobs, the report said.

The sale of electric bicycles should be subsidized by the government, the Bicycle Association has long argued. The organization also wants VAT removed from the sale of children’s cycles and funding to boost the UK cycling industry’s capacity to innovate.

Worryingly for the industry, sales of children’s bicycles have been on a downward trend for some time and were 8% lower in 2023 than the previous year.

Online searches for premium versus entry-level bikes showed the “most significant drop in interest was at the entry level,” Bicycle Association members learned.

With fewer novice cyclists, the slump will continue to worsen, members of the Bicycle Association said.

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 expensive triathlon bikes are down by 34% in 2023.

The presentation of the Bicycle Association revealed that sales during the pandemic bicycle boom could be good for those bicycle shops that could acquire warehouses, but that the suppliers were expanding. Just under 3 million bikes were imported in 2022, but only 2.13 million were sold at retail. This inventory glut is reduced in 2023, with supply catching up with demand, but many more suppliers will likely hit the wall in the coming months if the decline in sales continues.

The British government – which pivoted to a pro-motoring populist stance last year – is unlikely to support the cycling industry.

Earlier this week, a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank concluded that underfunding of active travel over the past decade has hampered cycling and walking in the UK United, failing to make them attractive as modes of travel. £35 per person per year is needed, urgently, for the foreseeable future, in the construction of the infrastructure and in other interventions, to realize the economic, health and environmental benefits of active travel.

In the period 2016 to 2021, an average of £148 per person per year was spent on motorists, IPPR calculates.

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 the promotion of active travel is no longer considered the priority that was for the former Prime Minister Boris. Johnson who, at the height of the pandemic, promised a future “golden age for cycling”.