Bicycle peddlers race to fill sales
Adam Potter, owner of Planetary Cycles on West Loop South, has been in the business since 1983. He’s never never seen sales volume of this magnitude.
Sales at his shop are up around 50 percent over the same period last year, he said. “It’s been pretty much nonstop busy almost from the onset of the shutdown.”
When the pandemic shut families indoors in March, people turned to bikes both as a way to exercise and socialize. The resulting surge was more than the industry could handle, Potter said. His store once boasted an inventory of some 400 bikes, but it’s now down to 10. Manufacturers can’t make them fast enough, he said.
“All of a sudden, just the entire supply chain got emptied out,” Potter said. “Bicycles are the new toilet paper.”
The cycling market showed historic growth in April, according to NPD Group, a market research company. April sales for tra
ditional bikes, indoor bikes, parts, helmets and accessories hit $1 billion, 75 percent greater than the year-ago figure. April sales typically range from $550 million to $575 million, according to the group’s data.
Bicycle factories reside largely in China and Taiwan, said Wiley Mosley, a Houston-area account executive for Giant Bicycles. So American tariffs dealt the supply chain its first blow. Then, when the coronavirus started hitting Asia at the beginning of the year, the factories were already shut down for the Chinese New Year.
“Then we saw just the surge in popularity,” he said. “It’s hard to keep up with that demand, especially after supply has been disrupted for several months already.”
Johnathan Kimble, a sales associate at Southwest Cyclery on Fondren, said the shop’s shelves had been emptied, with demand focused on bikes priced at around $1,000 and less. Many riders coming in are either new or rusty and looking for lower prices, he said.
Before the pandemic, Arica Christopher, 39, of Manvel, used her son’s old bike to go on the occasional ride.
Once the virus slowed life down, the fitness professional said she joined more group rides and realized the bike she had couldn’t keep up. So she sprung for a Scott Addict 30, which retails for around $2,000.
“Once I started this group we were able to go out and still social distance and still be social, while exercising and doing something that I enjoy,” she said.
Shannon Rosette, 47, of Houston, said he’s 6 feet, 9 inches tall, which makes purchasing a bike difficult.
When going out for the occasional ride with his wife and children, he’d use an old bike with no gears that didn’t fit him properly.
But now that the virus has him home more often with the family — and riding all together twice a week — he said it was time to invest in his first real bike, a KHS 3X frame mountain bike, which retails for around $1,900.
“They’ve all had bikes but we’ve never really been all together enough to do it,” he said. “I had looked about two years ago and never pulled the trigger.”
The surge in interest extends to parts and repairs, shop managers said.
Andrew Peterson, a mechanic at West End Bicycles, said business at the Blossom Street shop started to spike about nine weeks ago and his service department is now backed up between three and four weeks.
Meantime, volume has more than doubled, he said.
Demand has held steady, though sales may have started to drop off in recent weeks because inventory is sparse.