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Falling demand, falling prices, relocations, even bankruptcies: “The bicycle market is changing,” observes Burkhard Stork, President of the German Two-Wheeler Association (ZIV). In Germany, Europe’s leading bicycle market, as well as in neighboring countries, the little queen had gained many new fans after the Covid-19 lockdowns, so most retailers had stocked up as much as possible in anticipation of further sales. Enthusiasm.
Discount battle
Faced with falling demand, many professionals have no choice but to reduce prices, such as the Swiss electric bicycle manufacturer Flyer: at the Stuttgart bicycle fair in January, one of its managers explained that they had to reduce prices. its rates from 10 to 15% in the last six months. The resellers themselves are involved in this fight for discounts, testifies Andreas Gutacker, who runs a store and an online sales site, in the same program. The site uses a “repricer” program that adjusts prices directly to those of competitors. The algorithm looks for a specific product and “automatically lowers our price to the bottom,” he explains.
He assures that the discounts are up to 20% on electric bikes and even 30% on traditional bikes. In the first five months of 2023, sales of classic bicycles in Germany fell by 20% and those of electric bicycles fell by 12% compared to the same period in 2022, according to the ZIV association. Its president expects a “difficult” year in 2024. There will be fewer new models because brands are extending the lifespan of unsold series.
Growth too fast
This poor economic situation is already claiming victims, such as the German brand Ghost Bikes from the Dutch group Accell-Group, which has been producing sports bikes in Bavaria for years. Citing “the difficult market environment,” the group announced that it would relocate the assembly of Ghost bicycles to the group’s factories in Hungary and Turkey. The biggest bankruptcy happened last summer at the Dutch manufacturer Van Moof, whose connected bikes with a futuristic look were on everyone’s lips among young city dwellers.
The young brand’s model of combining the purchase of a high-end bicycle with the purchase of digital services is “not yet profitable,” says Burkhard Stork. “When the crisis broke out, the banks stopped following,” he explains. More bad news for the industry: the bankruptcy filing of the German group Internetstores, one of the leading providers of bicycles on the Internet, which led to the demise of its parent company, the Austrian real estate giant Signa. Behind internet stores are large online shops such as Fahrrad.de, Bikester or Probikeshop, the French number 1 for online bicycle sales.
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