Saris Cycling Group to be sold as Covid whiplash effect mirrors

The Saris Cycling Group is set to restructure its business having suffered a similar spike and dive in demand to that which is widely reported to have caused Peloton problems. Peloton is likewise now rumoured for sale.

The indoor trainer market was at the front of the pack when sales took off during Covid’s early weeks, with consumers restricted to their homes investing big in the indoor exercise market.

Once the world normalised, so too did the sales patterns and as a result much of the indoor trainer market (and some parts of the broader bike business) is now sat on a surplus of stock. In many places, directly on the back of lockdowns, outdoor cycling was positively encouraged as a socially distanced exercise form and thus the indoor trainer demand subsided quickly.

The Saris Cycling Group has already filed a voluntary debt consolidation program via Wisconsin’s Chapter 128 with the Wisconsin Circuit Court.

Explaining the filing to US trade platform BR&IN, Founder Chris Fortune said “We have almost four times as much inventory as a year ago, primarily on our training product. Business was amazing in ’20 and ’21, then inventory filled up in all the channels everywhere, domestically and internationally on indoor training products.”

It is of course not just indoor trainers that Saris is known for and increasingly the infrastructure side of the business is making gains, alongside the bike rack trade. That means that the company’s founder is hopeful that the impact on the company’s 128 workers can be limited. That said, Fortune told the news portal “The process is to get the company ready to sell as quick as possible.”

The sale process has apparently already started to make progress and may be wrapped in as little as 60 days. The business will be sold as a going concern to guarantee its viability.