Bike share growth blamed for slow retail sales in Shimano financials

The proliferation of bike share schemes has been blamed in part for poor retail sales of complete bicycles within Asian markets in Shimano’s latest financial summary.

Ubiquitous in Asia and with launches this week in London and Cambridge, dockless bike sharing is increasingly being blamed for the evaporation of entry-level bike sales, with knock on effects among component manufacturers.

Within the results Shimano’s bike division has posted a 2.7% decline in sales within the first half, a similar trend to that seen in the first half of 2016. Operating income for the division dropped by 11.5%.

Sales of bicycle related goods totalled $1.15 billon (129,080 million yen). The firm’s fishing division faired marginally better in performance, rising 0.6% to 33,799.

Mixed weather in Europe in the first half didn’t impact Shimano’s forecasts for the region and sales were as expected.

Meanwhile Southeast Asia and South America remained stagnant against 2016’s numbers, though distributor’s inventories stabilised against last year’s overstock.

Across the entire business, net sales decreased by 2% like-for-like to 163,079 yen, while operating income fell 9.9% to 30,832 million yen.

The full summary is accessible here.