OPINION: A cycling industry manifesto for the next 5 years

As part of his regular column in Cycling Industry News Magazine (if you don’t already, you can subscribe to the magazine today) industry journalist Mark Sutton has looked to the future of the industry. Here, replicating his column in the latest (issue #3) edition of the magazine, Sutton provides his pick of areas that the bike industry should be striving to change and lobby government for…

In my last column in this series and only by the choice of Cycling Industry News’ excellent sub editors, an enlarged quote urged a strategy shift for the bike industry, a shift from playing defence to moving to attack. The context in that piece, which urged closer relations with Europe, retains some bearing on this piece because some things I will write here have been done or said before somewhere, either here in the UK or in the EU; often they just need shouting louder.

With the current walking and cycling budget outstripped more than four-fold by the annual budget for fixing potholes, you can’t help but get worn down trying to be diplomatic. Nonetheless, money talks, and if you can make a data-backed case to the Government they’re more likely to listen, especially if your cause – as ours does – is packed with positive externalities that firmly align with existing goals for the Ministers in power.

So, before I outline my cycling industry manifesto for the next five years, a hat tip is first required in the direction of the European Declaration on Cycling and the Bicycle Association, who likewise had the idea to put together a manifesto pitched at Government a few years ago. The revisions I pitch here are based on interactions with the public, our trade and politicians over the past few years.

As ever, I’d be very happy to hear your additions, so log on to our Facebook Group – Cycling Industry Chat – and let’s pick up the discussion there.

VAT reduction on service work enabling wage growth

When the Conservative Government pinched from the French the Cycle Repair Voucher scheme idea during Covid it was a smash hit, crashing the websites upon release of the vouchers, such was the demand to get bikes working again.

While that demand from the public side may have eased, what is hard not to notice is the immense transition of the bike retail market to a service-led economy in the past five years since 2020 and even before. Stay tuned for a future issue analysing just this trend of shop door transformation.

As with any retail business, bike shops find themselves in a rock and hard place situation on wages, where the National Minimum Wage has, fairly, risen, yet arguably still doesn’t push compensation into comparable leagues of other skilled service jobs. The average salary for a semi-skilled car mechanic is apparently just over £32,000. Needless to say, few can earn this much in a cycle workshop, and accounting for inflation over the past 10 years, you’d have to earn £38,768 now to match up to £25,000 in 2014 money. Salary growth, almost certainly, has come nowhere close to that as the cost of living has rip-roared and workshop mechanic average wages are often lower, despite advancingly complex skillsets. If you perhaps think that salaries are as good as they can reasonably be, consider that, according to the book Against Landlords in 2022 alone rent increases in Manchester topped 20% and 16% in London, while no single region in England had rents affordable for a single woman on median earnings. Meanwhile, there was a 181% increase in house prices from 2001 to 2019.

This is more of a problem for the bike industry than most may think. Cycle mechanics training houses have, over the years, repeatedly warned of skills shortages in the industry, and there’s no reason to believe that the trend will change without some give in what shops are able to sustainably offer skilled workers who have the patience for internal headset cable routing.

That leads me to believe that if there is a case for VAT reduction anywhere as a priority, it is on workshop services. This will support the cycle trade’s realignment around workshop profitability and improve the scope to charge appropriate prices front of house and retain the fullest possible margin, all the while offering strong value to the consumer. It will support properly paid, skilled jobs and provide a foundation for the industry’s future, which from a Government standpoint would seem a wise investment on account of cycling’s cost to benefit ratio for investments. More importantly, as people shift to electric bikes this part of the industry is absolutely vital and it is a point around which we can professionalise and reduce the customer’s expectation of discounts who have tended to say so far “It’s just a bike.”

It is worth a note to say that the Bicycle Association’s manifesto instead pitches VAT off all children’s bikes, as is enjoyed on some other sporting goods for kids. That’s a fine idea too, because we must generate the next generation of cyclists and improve access to bikes for low-income families. It has also previously, in 2020, pitched the idea of a VAT holiday on repairs. Europe already passed laws in 2021 on the back of advocacy work by the European Cyclists Federation to reduce the VAT rate to make bikes and eBikes more accessible.

Collaborative industry marketing

Not since the #BikeisBest campaign was broadly supported on Covid’s upslope has the bike industry’s collective goals been widely represented in a timely marketing campaign. Since that moment, we’ve needed reactive campaigns like never before as the onslaught of misinformation about electric bikes has warped the public’s view of the products we sell. Like multiple deer in the headlights, as this threat has approached the bystander effect has seen us collectively fail to intercept a threat to us all.

The next best time to bang our collective heads together and redress the balance is now. We have so many positive messages to sell and clever ways in which we could execute reactive messaging, now more than ever. One thing is for certain in my mind on the back of decades of slander against cycling and now electric bikes, we cannot rely on the media to tell our story anymore; we have to do it ourselves.

Of course, there’s a sticking point. This will cost money and bike industry marketing departments are slimmer than they perhaps once were. Nonetheless, we are at a junction with a decision to make. We either revert back and do as we have always done and market to a
very narrow pool of enthusiasts who probably already have bikes. Or, we take an all ships rise together approach and really put some wellie behind a campaign that demonstrates to the masses why bikes are important forms of transport. That message, in the midst of a cost of living and climate crisis, should cut through better than ever if executed well.

I will let you in on a badly kept secret: getting exposure in the press can cost money, or at least it helps. That’s not always the case, but it is often, in some way the case. So, unless there’s an excellent guerrilla marketer in our midst, we should probably get the BikeIsBest gang, or similar, back together.

Disability and mobility support

Over the years, I’ve written as much as I possibly can about cycling with a disability, believing it to not be the niche activity some suspect it is. Last year, this outlier belief was vindicated before my very eyes in the most surprising of ways. I am part of the team that organises the Cycling Electric Demo Days and in organising this series of events wanted to deliver a depth of bikes to suit all abilities and mobilities. Roll into frame Jorvik Trikes, a brand that on our test rack in Bath became the star of the show, pulling a crowd of its own. I’m immensely pleased they’ll be back on all four occasions this year.

Anyway, shameless plug aside, this was a moment of great clarity. The electric trike (and sometimes bike) represents a ground-breaking tool for keeping those with health issues fighting fit. There is more than one major complication, though and in the days prior to my writing this column, life for those with disabilities just got harder again on account of the Labour Government’s rug pull of £5 billion in disability benefits claimed by 3.6 million people.

From the people I have spoken with over the years who do suffer a disability, let me tell you they are in no way financially able in many instances to afford by themselves on any income they do make eBikes and mobility trikes. Yet these are the tools that could and do offer life support for making appointments and being able to attend any work they can secure.

For this reason, to achieve the outcome the Labour Government apparently wishes to, that is to have as much of the population working as possible, disability or not, some form of e-mobility subsidy or VAT relief as a compromise feels only the right thing to do.

New builds: Infrastructure as standard

Urban sprawl is evident everywhere we look and you might conclude that it’s near impossible to build at this speed without futureproofed and sensible supporting infrastructure, be that the mandating of cleaner energy and insulation, or the seemingly innocuous addition of EV chargers on many new builds. Well, as the saying goes, build it and they will come. If you normalise and bake in a new infrastructure, habits will, more often than not, shape around such things. The same goes for cycling infrastructure, which falls far further down the optional extras shopping list that developers give a cursory glance. Yet, with the acceptance of EV chargers at home without calls to provide other clean transportation infrastructure, we are sleepwalking into a society of further car dependence.

The car industry has done a spectacular job of delaying its inevitable peak, while the bike industry must do more to pick itself up off the floor and demand that it is taken seriously as a transport form from the doorstep. Positive steps are being seen with lowered residential speed reductions and, actually, these have lowered car insurance premiums by around £50 where they have been implemented, so everyone’s a winner. Yet we must do more to demand secure cycle parking as a mandatory build requirement and infrastructure veins that feed into central arteries toward urban centres. If it is not safe to cycle from the front door, parents will never raise the next generation of cyclists and we will suffer a poor footfall replenishment rate.

Cycle to work per mile allowance and legislative reform

Belgium’s cycling and electric bike markets are thriving in what are a fairly unique set of circumstances for Europe. These are an infrastructure for leasing sales, one that is now responsible for more than half of all electric bike sales and a cultural shift in how people commute, plus there’s a tax-free mileage allowance once you are cycling for employees that pays public administration and organisation employees up to €0.21 per km cycled per day, up to a total of 15 km per day or €3.15 per day on their salaries. Over the course of a year that could be worth as much as €664.65 per person. Employers don’t lose out either as they are granted a tax refund.

Creating market conditions that carrot and stick incentivise an outcome with a goal that seeks the betterment of society, well, that can pay huge dividends over time. As we’ll all be aware, the current Government is seeking further drastic savings in the NHS and prevention would seem the best cure. In my view, the cycling industry, particularly in view of the need to rework the cycle to work scheme, would do well to keep these two ideas in mind as a next-generation solution to incentivising cycling en-masse in a way that’s especially effective in a down economy.

Recently, the Co-Founder of bike subscriptions firm Blike outlined in a research paper the merits of an ’Active Travel Leasing Scheme’. This would apparently not be tied to income generation and ‘would help harmonise the benefit available across both schemes at an average of 39%.’

The paper by Steve Ellis suggests a 150% tax deduction roughly equivalent to an average saving of around 39%, or a similar saving to the upper reaches of the current Cycle to Work scheme, yet in this scenario everybody would benefit from the rates available to higher
income earners, regardless of economic status or age. This could open the scheme to the UK’s 10 million or so unemployed, potentially giving them new mobility and options to find work, which to remind, seems to be a Government priority to which the cycling industry could again align usefully.

Bike share: the next step

One thing that has become extremely evident in cities with bike sharing is how the ridership growth is expanding at a rate that is positively exponential when compared to the nationwide modal share growth. This has its pros and cons for the cycling market as in one camp there are those that believe these riders will never buy a bike and in the other there are those that argue that they may not have been exposed to cycling at all without it.

Now, it’s fair to say many other factors are in play when we seek to explain why the urban bike surge is not happening at a retail level to the degree we might have hoped, having switched the broad industry marketing message from solely targeting enthusiasts to a more mass appeal. There’s inner city  living conditions getting smaller. Again, to reference Against Landlords, renters now have seen their average flow space shrink from 43 m2 to 36 m2 in 20 years. This, along with some landlords now flat-out banning eBikes, is a major blow. Then there are theft concerns and the cost-of-living crisis, making eBikes seem expensive.

Yet, you’ll soon tally up the cost of an eBike if you’re a regular user of hire bikes. I know from experience and my bill has rarely been south of £5 per ride in London for fairly efficient use. That’s too much; why wouldn’t I just use the tube? So, if prices are to continue to rise, we will lose those riders again, and that would be a great shame given that even out in Hereford users have racked up over 1 million kilometres of cycling via one scheme alone. 46% say they now use cars less, which is huge news. While we are unlikely to convince bike share operators to send customers to our shops, because doing so would run contrary to their continued use, in a way they are regardless. In Vienna it was well documented that when more people began cycling and e-scooting as a result of hire availability, it was this factor that forced the Austrian city to build a much larger network of cycling infrastructure. Cycling infrastructure is, of course, our stimulant for more cycling and generating a critical mass where everyone feels safer. So, whatever your feeling before, I’d like to make the case that bike sharing should be subsidised, just the same as other far worse for society transport forms often are. The returns in this case are positive, so which sensible politician could argue against entertaining the idea if the operators pledge to up their game on policing geofenced parking in return? A win-win, I think.

Have your say by emailing us at [email protected] or heading to our Facebook Group – Cycling Industry Chat.