Change Is Coming to a Bike Shop Near You

In the new book Leading Out Retail (March, 2014), Donny Perry offers an energetic and creative take on the world of bike shops, their continuing efforts to survive, and their prospects for the future.

Perry has a decade of bicycle retail experience and is now global development manager of Specialized Bicycles Components University (SBCU). He is also known on the Internet as the guy who has proposed better pay for bicycle technicians.

Perry believes the future belongs to “a different kind of retailer with a different mindset.” Much of his book is aimed at describing that difference, and offering strategies for positive change.

Perry opens with an analysis of a bike shop universe in decline. He points out that the number of stores has fallen from 6,195 in 2000 to 4,055 in 2013. He writes that in the future, “the drop in the number of bike retailers is not going to be linear, it will be exponential.” He suggests a 35% loss in storefronts in 15 years, and then adds “I believe the change will be faster.”

Perry says retailers will be hit from three sides: Internet competition, consumer-direct sales by manufacturers, and bikes that are simpler to assemble, use and maintain. The result will be

Is Bike Sharing Bad for Business?

New York City bike shops were in the news last week when Bloomberg (bloomberg.com) wrote that the city’s one-year-old bike sharing program (City Bike) was hurting sales at local bike shops.

The article called bike shops “the collateral damage” of a program that has attracted more than 100,000 people to rent bikes for short-distance use, picking them up and returning them to 324 bike stations for a fee (daily, weekly or annually).

Charlie McCorkell, owner of Bicycle Habitat, was an early proponent of the bike sharing program. He was quoted as saying he supports it “philosophically.” But he has lost sales in the hundreds of units at his SoHo store, located near a bike station, while his second location farther from bike share has seen continued growth, the article said.

Other area bike shops reported declining sales as well after bike sharing was implemented, including Hub Cycles, Echelon Cycles and Landmark Bicycles.

Bloomberg concluded, “the very institutions that should be riding the success of a newly bike-friendly city are getting doored by it instead. For the neighborhood bike shop, declining sales are an unintended consequence of a program that most people seem to love.”

So is bike sharing really harming bike shops? The evidence here is certainly limited,

Note to Children: Ride to Live

Bicycle riding was down in 2013, as 35.6 million Americans ages seven and older rode a bicycle six or more days, according to new information from the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA).

That represents a 9 percent drop from 2012, continuing a trend of flat or declining cycling participation in recent years.

There’s more to the story though. While adult cycling seems to be relatively stable, cycling continues to lose young participants at an alarming rate.

Despite an unexpected spike in adult participation in 2012 (to 28.5 million), adult cycling has remained at about 25.5 million participants since 2000. The 2013 number was exactly that: 25.5 million.

For the same period, the number of children (ages 7 to 17) declined 43%, going from 17.6 million participants in 2000 to just 10.1 million in 2013. That is the lowest participation number of the last decade at least.

The NSGA has been conducting sports research for 30 years. Its research has perhaps the longest history of any research program in the sports arena based on a consistent methodology. While we can quibble with some of the parameters