Tern on cargo bikes: Growth expectations, DIN testing & diverse marketing ideals
PROFILE: The business of cargo bikes has, from niche beginnings, turned into an industry focal point with Tern Bicycles often the centre of attention. CIN explores why that might be with Founder Josh Hon, as well as discussing why Tern ensures the models it uses in marketing are diverse and why DIN testing (79010) should be a minimal requirement for the sector…
Many UK bike shops just five years ago would not have considered making room for cargo bikes. Many may simply not have the room, that much as an immovable fact. Others, meanwhile, have made it their business to make room and, invariably, done very well from a sector that has only seemed to capture more imagination as time has ticked on.
We do still operate in a complicated and turbulent environment, of course and the cargo bike business did not avoid the highs and lows of market euphoria to bust caused by a bullwhip effect of ordering and then softening consumer demand.
So, let’s get the tough talk out of the way first. How’s Tern coped on a global level with the post-Covid demand and supply chain organisation?
Josh Hon, the Founder of Tern Bicycles starts us off by saying: “All of our markets are spinning back up after the post-Covid drop in demand but it’s been uneven due to macro and micro economic factors. In general, the markets that were running the fastest during Covid ended up with more overstock, so they are a bit slower coming back. But from a micro perspective, we see that our distribution partners that were a bit more conservative have ended up doing much better. A lot of the issue that we see in the market is cash getting stuck as inventory. When this happens, companies have to do non-optimal things to get the cash back out.”
Josh is, as he always has been, still a firm believer in the mission statement taking a natural course, bucked by numerous mega trends to support the idea that the bikes his business sells will, from here on in, always have a rightful place in the transport and leisure ecosystems.
He says of the faith in Tern’s objectives: “In general, demand for our urban and cargo eBikes is healthy and we see this continuing to grow in the coming years. We continue to believe that for short trips in the city, urban and cargo eBikes are amongst the best ways to get around and our elected officials need to put in place laws that push us in this direction. We need more and better cycling infrastructure and we’re seeing the results materialise before our eyes in Paris.”
The infrastructure and political will of a bold Mayor are of course at the centre of the successful modal share revolution in Paris. That’s the dream for any country looking to sell more bikes, but there are other factors to help the bike industry get there. One of those is capturing the eye and imagination of the masses who have not really engaged with cycling previously.
In its bike design, accessory planning and subsequently, marketing, Tern has been one of the industry’s bright spots in advertising to demographics lesser served and seeing the results of that engagement.
“Cycling, traditionally, skews in a male direction. And it’s a certain type of male, right? Imagine the last cycling ad you saw and it’s probably a young, fit, male doing something rad on an MTB, or that same model type working really hard on a road bike and head to toe in lycra. Our goal at Tern is to bring all sorts of new people to cycling. So, we make a point to use models with diverse ages, ethnicities, body types and genders, and even to swap traditional gender roles in our imagery. We want to welcome everybody to cycling. The result is that we do see our demographic becoming much more diverse, though we still have work to do in certain communities,” explains Josh.
While Tern started with the folding bike and indeed still produces a deep range of both pedal and electric folders, it is nowadays arguably better known for cargo bikes, or at least a blend of the two, often literally. In launching the GSD around five years ago Tern had on its hands a cult classic and a bike that would, it’s fair to say, go on to become widely used as design inspiration. With the launch of the Orox, Tern is again shooting for another ‘original is best’ bike that will undoubtedly go on to be inspiration for a new category of off-road ready cargo haulers.
As ever, the Orox comes to market as a product of desire from a staffer. Notoriously Josh and other Tern staffers have always created the bikes they themselves imagine, going on to test the ideas on family and friends to see what strikes a chord. With the Orox, the idea came from the Head of Design based in Finland.
“He bikes everywhere, year-round. And the shortest and most direct path to the city centre is along a river, but the trail is a dirt path, which means that it gets muddy, icy and snowy when the weather gets nasty. The GSD’s smaller wheels just don’t work as well in these conditions. We’re constantly daydreaming about different bikes we’d like to design and ride. So, our Head Designer proposed making a cargo bike optimised for all the places GSD doesn’t work as well, i.e. off-road. After his pitch to the team, we all sat there, and said, ‘Man, with a bike like that I could…’ and there were a million crazy fun ideas. So we figured that there were plenty of people out there that would be just as excited as us to have a bike designed for epic adventures.”
Truth be told, it might be more than just epic adventures. Tern has started to ponder whether the Orox could be a replacement vehicle for farmers looking to access land without burning fuel, mountain rescuers on an inaccessible bit of backcountry and even off-road businesses like tree surgeons.
What, then, sets Tern apart when it pioneers or re-invents a product around a pedal-assist motor?
Josh says that it’s all about product testing and in light of the Babboe scandal in the Dutch press becoming a criminal investigation, now more than ever Tern should shout from the rooftops about the extra mile it’s going to ensure it has product fit for a market that stress tests bikes in increasingly new and diverse ways. Rather than give us a quick, forgettable response, Josh really drives home the point showing a passion that comes having dealt with the pain of a small recall once before.
“Standards have not kept pace with the growth of the cargo bike market. Current EN 15194 or ISO 4210 standards regulate the safety of single-passenger city bikes carrying a set of small panniers but do not take into account the added stresses cargo bikes face.
“The only existing standard is DIN 79010:2020-02, developed in Germany, specifically for cargo bikes. This standard scales up testing forces based on the weight of cargo that a bike is claimed to carry.
“When we introduced the GSD, this DIN standard didn’t exist but we were pointed to EFBE Prüftechnik in Germany, for testing. They proposed that we used the EFBE Tri-Test, which was an early precursor to the DIN79010 standard. So we made sure that GSD and its components passed the Tri-Test at 200kg. It took about five tries for our fork to pass the Tri-Test by the way and that’s why shipping of the GSD was delayed.”
In vindicating the efforts to get the GSD rated to 200kg and passing the EFBE tests, Tern has since witnessed many similarly styled bikes enter the market with similar load claims. Smelling a rat, Josh and his team have made sure there are no shortcuts to longevity and strength.
“Did these brands know something that we didn’t? We decided to put a few of them to the test and bought samples and sent them to EFBE for the same testing we did for GSD. The results were that often forks snapped before reaching 20% of the first fork test, frames cracked, seatposts snapped in half and stems fractured catastrophically. Very simply, we believe that any bike claiming weight capacity over 120kg should be third-party tested to meet DIN79010 at a very minimum.”
Though uncompromising, Josh and Tern’s vision remains focused on getting more people on bikes and to achieve that, in the UK more than most countries, pricing has to be in sharp focus. With the cost of cycling goods having largely risen down to pressures in the supply chain and inflation, will Tern be able to attack the pound signs on handlebar tickets any time soon?
“Actually, I would not expect to see eBike prices to rise in the next 24 months. There are some great deals to be had right now and even next year I’d expect to see prices stable. But cost is still an issue. An eBike that we consider safe is a fair bit of money, starting in the £2,000 range. We need to think about ways to help get those bikes into people’s hands,” starts Josh, before sharing his ideas on how to achieve wider accessibility.
“Of course with the cycle to work scheme, not everybody works for a large employer that can participate. There are too plenty of subscription programmes in the UK which make sense on lowering that entry barrier and helping people to test whether cycling fits their lifestyle without making a large financial commitment upfront.
“For our part, Tern is constantly looking for ways to scale and make our manufacturing more efficient. We tend to enter new product categories from the premium side, but as we gain knowledge, we work to bring our prices down. Our Quick Haul bike is an example of us bringing our product into the mid-range and there’s still more we can do. In short, we want to bring the prices down so that our bikes work for more people, but safety comes first and there’s a cost to using high-quality parts like Bosch, good engineering, proper product testing, fairly paid staff and professional factories,” he explains, almost echoing recent words by Bosch CEO Claus Fleischer, whose indication was that the eBike market had a lot of performance trickledown to achieve before it could really target price.
There is too the notion that cheap products are actually doing the electric bike trade no good at present; and that’s becoming a thorn in the market’s side in press headlines across the globe.
Josh flags this, saying: “The biggest issue we see is that with the absence of mandatory safety standards, companies are selling cheap, low-cost products that are unsafe to unsuspecting consumers. I think it’s on the government to establish mandatory safety standards so that the consumer is not left paying the price for buying unsafe products. Unsafe battery systems or DIY parts that are not designed to work together result in terrible fires and we’re starting to see that now in the market, along with resultant over-reaction from politicians. Unsafe frames and forks and components result in bikes that break apart under normal usage as we unfortunately see with the Babboe recall.”
Better to play it safe and professionalise the sector front the front, then. Tern is, after all, here for not just for the Quick Haul, but the long haul too.
