Walk into a bicycle shop these days and chances are you may get what you need, but not necessarily what you want.
Supply-chain disruptions affecting the availability of bicycles and bike parts have prompted many stores to seek out other options and products to meet demand.
“What we’ve done is we’ve really gotten into the world of ‘what else is out there?’” said Robert Ford, General Manager of Global Bikes & E-bikes in Arizona.
“I think we’re past the drama (of the pandemic). Now, it’s a question of managing what we can manage. That’s the reality now,” he said.
While the demand for bicycles “shot through the roof” in 2020, doubling—sometimes tripling—in volume, overseas manufacturers were shutting down their production lines due to the pandemic, Ford said.
According to consumer marketing analyst NPD Group, bicycle sales in the U.S. were up 57 percent, from March 2020 to April 2021. y account for $6.5 billion in sales across both large and specialty retailers, including electric bicycles, or e-bikes.
Strict COVID-19 protocols for imports have also hampered supply lines and delivery schedules, according to Ford.
A nationwide shortage of truck drivers has also contributed to the shortages due to delayed shipments and deliveries, sometimes lasting for months at a time, Ford said.
“ most immediate touchpoint is transportation—after that, it’s production,” Ford told Pezou. “Demand has leveled off, but it is still high. Parts continue to be back-order hell.”
“When the pandemic hit Asia all those factories shut down. Many of those factories did not start back up,” he said.
Ford said last year the challenge for many shops was to figure out where bicycles were still being made, and then plan and pre-order shipments accordingly, but with the expectation of longer-wait times for deliveries.
Orders that normally would arrive in three months, now take six to nine months to reach bicycle showrooms. Diversification into other product brands “was the only way we could get bikes,” Ford said.
Arnold Kramer, owner of Kent Bicycles in Fairfield, New Jersey, said transportation delays—both foreign and domestic—remain a problem.
Kramer said the average cost of a shipping container of bicycles runs around $5,000 with a contract. Each container that he receives holds around 450 bicycles.
As a high-volume, family-owned business founded in 1972, Kent Bicycles sells an average of three million bikes each year. But even before the pandemic, there’s been an “unbelievable shortage of truck drivers” to get those bicycles onto the sales floor, he said.
“It’s a matter of getting them” into the store, Kramer said. “It’s better than a year ago during the pandemic when the bicycle factories shut down.”
“ biggest problem is the ocean freight—though not for us. Our biggest problem is the shortage of trucks. supply chain is clearly broken.”
Before the pandemic, Kent Bicycles used to off-load eight truck shipments per day. Now, it’s down to just one delivery, he said.
Kramer said he believes the solution to the global supply chain disruptions and product shortages is a “high-vaccination rate.”
“ end of the pandemic and the supply (chain) are related,” Kramer said.
Austin Smith, General Manager at Flagstaff Bicycle Revolution in Arizona, said that since the beginning of the pandemic there’s been an inventory shortage of both parts and brand-name bicycles, although “some things are getting better, and some things are falling off.”
“re are a lot of variables to the broken supply chain,” Smith said. “It’s just really inconsistent. It just ebbs and flows.”
Pezou : Supply Chain Challenges Saddle Bicycle Industry With Delays, Shortages