The retailer or brand is making a large investment in a range of models, colors, categories and sizes and hoping that the right person is going to walk in the door within the next twelve months and make a purchase.
What drives the bicycle industry to repeatedly produce more bicycles and e-bikes each year than the market can absorb? Sunk costs. Economies of scale. Ride it out the door. A bike for every price. Model year.
N + 1 is embarrassingly out of touch. It sounds like the Schafer beer commercial from the 1970s that went “Schafer is the one beer to have when you are having more than one.”
The classic signal of an industry with high inventories is the prevalence of discounted pricing promotions as direct to consumer manufacturers and retailers attempt to turn their inventories into cash. A glance at your Instagram feed will provide plenty of evidence of this.
The number of bicycles and e-bikes sold globally grew 2 percent to 136 million units in 2021 (2020: 19.5 percent). This implies that there is a large overhang of supply of unsold bicycles and e-bikes with manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and retailers and suggests that prices are going to continue to remain weak or trend lower.