CIN Market Data: Tubeless, womens’ cycling, group rides & cargo bikes
Time for another of our regular snippets of information from Cycling Industry News Market Data, this time on the topic of trends that are driving customers into shops and proving talking points within retail environments.
Which of the following trends are in ascendancy with your customers?
Tubeless technology is still luring punters into bike shops, so if this is an area your shop has tended to avoid stocking then – judging by the number of years it has featured highly in this particular poll – surely here is a sound indication that it’s worth changing that. We’ve previously spent quite a bit of time talking about tubeless and how education on the sector is probably helping drive customers into shops (long may it continue), so – while we await another product genre that peaks customer curiosity and brings more footfall into shops – let’s dig into some of the other findings here.
Another trend featuring widely in bike shops is ‘women’s cycling engagement’. Whether you put that down to improved marketing, more visible women’s pro racing like Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, or another factor/combination, that’s an encouraging finding. Breaking through to demographics previously underserved by the industry is obviously vital for its future and expansion, and to see bike shops reporting this to be the case when they have no vested interest in doing so (one of the benefits of our anonymised UK bike shop market data) proves that headway is being made. Doubtless there is some way to go, but it’s worth dwelling on the point that bricks and mortar shops are a key conduit for customers, particularly those making their first steps into a sport or market. Previously, industry thinking may have been that new customers tend to head into ‘less intimidating’ retail set ups like Halfords, so based on these results you could maybe make a case for this accepted thinking to be shifting, or swallow the premise that Halfords and similar ilk are a stepping stone for customers heading into independent bike shops – part of the retail ‘journey’ if you like and food for thought.
A true bike shop stalwart shows up next: Group rides and clubs. While experiential retailing and similar may be buzzwords from the last decade of retail, the bike shop has long been an ‘experiential pioneer’ combining physical activities and engagement with customers that goes far beyond simply stocking product on shelves to retail. With selling more about relationships than just about any other factor, group rides continue to be a natural and maybe even vital area for the nation’s bike shops.
Next up we have utility cycling and – perhaps connected – cargo bike interest (for personal use) on CIN’s trend-o-metre. The cargo bike trend and the role that bike shops play has cropped up in some recent conversations CIN has had with shops and reps lately. As with eBikes, the UK has been slower to warm to cargo bikes than other European markets, but their floor space-hogging seems to becoming more of a fixture in Blighty.
