Cycling now makes up just 25% of Halfords’ business

Huge motor and cycle market retailer Halfords is seeing the cycling category contribute less to its overall financial performance.

Cycling was down -2.7% like-for-like in the Halfords business 20-week trading update (to 18 August 2023), while overall revenue was up 14.1% driven by “needs-based” categories autocentres and retail.

Cycling now represents just 25% of total revenue for the Halfords business. By Cycling Industry News’ calculations, cycling – in pre-pandemic times – was closer to contributing 40% Halfords total revenue, clearly representing a significant drop. It would, however, be stating the obvious that the market has seen disruption and change since 2019. Therefore, it seems reasonable that cycling will regain some ground at Halfords when the market ‘normalises’. The fallen proportion may, however, be more useful as an indicator of the cycle market in general in Q3 2023.

Halfords said that more discretionary areas like cycling were “adversely impacted by unfavourable weather and low consumer confidence”.

B2B sales, an area that Halfords has previously targeted for growth, contributed 29% of Group revenue (+5ppts YOY), with particularly strong performance in Cycle2Work and Commercial Fleet Services, Halfords said.

The firm has also (pre-pandemic) noted that focusing more strongly on services will help it weather headwinds that retailers face.