Trek’s spending and product plans
Trek planned to cut spending by 10% through changes to programmes and positions, with decisions due by 8th March 2024. President John Burke linked the action to slow sales, high wholesale and retail inventories and continuing discounts. January and February retail sales had fallen below Trek’s forecasts; Burke said monthly sales targets had been missed for 15 months.
Product simplification had a longer horizon. Model-year 2026 stock-keeping units were to be 40% fewer than in model-year 2024. Inventory, measured in days in stock, was to be 20% below the level before the pandemic bicycle boom. Neither target described a completed reduction. Burke maintained that Trek’s overall strategy remained unchanged. The published memo coverage appeared on 5th March 2024.
Shimano’s bicycle division in 2023
Shimano’s bicycle components business had already recorded a substantial annual contraction. Its 2023 sales reached ¥364,679 million, down 29.5% from 2022, while operating income fell 55% to ¥65,251 million. The final quarter contributed ¥75,236 million in bicycle sales, against ¥132,782 million a year earlier, a decline of 43%. These figures concern the bicycle division rather than all of Shimano’s activities.
The company’s regional assessment was uneven. Shimano described strong sales in Germany and the Benelux countries and good road-bike sales in China. In North America, it considered interest in cycling firm but completed-bicycle retail sales weak, with inventories consistently high. Across the group, which also sells fishing equipment, annual sales fell 24.6% to ¥474,362 million and net income fell 52.3% to ¥61,142 million. On 13th February 2024, Shimano forecast group-wide sales of ¥420,000 million and net income of ¥54,000 million for 2024. Those forward estimates were separate from the completed 2023 results and were not bicycle-division forecasts.
Fox: sequential improvement amid a yearly fall
Fox Factory’s bicycle-product sales in the first half of fiscal 2024 were $87.9 million lower than a year earlier, a decline of 39.3%. Within that half-year, second-quarter bicycle sales increased 52% from the first quarter. The comparisons cover different intervals: a quarter-on-quarter improvement accompanied a large half-year decline. On 1st August 2024, chief executive Mike Dennison said there were positive signals that bicycle manufacturers’ inventory reduction was approaching its end. He described the American market as still in transition and Europe as returning towards normal, while sales to e-bike manufacturers exceeded the company’s expectations.
The group’s division totals need their own boundaries. Specialty Sports Group revenue increased 5.9% in the half, but included $101.2 million from baseball and softball brand Marucci. Its established bicycle brands included Fox, Marzocchi, RaceFace, Ride Concepts and Easton. Company-wide net sales fell 14.8% to $682 million; powered-vehicle and aftermarket operations were also part of that total. The sports division’s growth therefore included a business outside bicycles, while Dennison’s comments remained management’s assessment of the inventory cycle.
Giant’s later annual results and stock impairment
Giant Group’s 2024 annual results, approved by its board on 14th March 2025, included consolidated revenue of NT$71.28 billion, down 7.4%. Older inventories and discounting accompanied an inventory impairment of NT$1.9 billion. The annual gross margin was 19%, compared with 22.1% in 2023; excluding the impairment, the margin would have been 21.7%. These later annual figures were published by BikeNewsOnline on 19th March 2025.
Operating expenses decreased, although their ratio to revenue rose from 15.9% to 16.4%. Operating profit fell 60%, and profit after tax declined 62.8% to NT$1.26 billion, or NT$3.22 per share. The final quarter was weaker than the full year: revenue fell 8.5% to NT$13.59 billion, with an operating loss of NT$1.04 billion and an after-tax loss of NT$910 million. Fourth-quarter gross margin was 13.5%, or 18% excluding impairment. The board proposed a NT$2.2 cash dividend per share for shareholder approval; the proposal was not an already completed distribution. Annual profit and the final quarter’s loss refer to their respective periods.
Accell’s October capital agreement
Accell Group reached an agreement with a majority of its financial stakeholders on 3rd October 2024 to change its capital structure. The planned transaction would reduce corporate debt by approximately €600 million, from around €1.4 billion to around €800 million in the operating group. It also provided for approximately €235 million in additional cash funding and an extension of recapitalised debt maturities to 2030. These were transaction terms, rather than bicycle sales or inventory values.
Implementation was expected by early in the first quarter of 2025, subject to conditions, approvals and final terms. Existing shareholders were to retain a significant majority controlling stake. Accell had engaged shareholders, creditors and banks from early July, and the relevant works councils had given positive advice. Implementation could proceed contractually or, if required, through a court process in the UK or the Netherlands. Chief executive Tjeerd Jegen and chief financial officer Gijsbert de Zoeten welcomed the agreement as a stronger basis for financing the business. Their expectations concerned the planned structure, whose implementation timetable extended into 2025.
Accell’s stock reduction and delayed accounts
By 23rd December 2024, Accell had finalised and filed its audited 2023 accounts. Revenue for that earlier year was €1,294 million, approximately 10% lower than in 2022. EBITDA excluding one-off items fell from €140 million to €12 million, while EBIT excluding those items was negative €13 million. One-off charges totalled €344 million, covering obsolete stock, restructuring and a cargo-bike recall. The resulting net loss was €390 million. The accounting period was 2023, despite the accounts’ publication during the following December.
The same business update provided a later physical inventory measure. Finished bicycles fell from 340,000 in November 2023 to 169,000 in November 2024. Accell described that level as normal for the period before COVID-19 and said most stock consisted of models produced within the preceding year. All brands used joint stock management, and parts and accessories inventories had returned to normal earlier in 2024, according to the company. Chief executive Tjeerd Jegen judged the recovery to be on track, while Accell still characterised the short-term market outlook as challenging.
Kona returns to its founders and dealers
Kona founders Jake Heilbron and Dan Gerhard reacquired the brand from Kent Outdoors in May 2024. They said consumer-direct sales would be paused and bicycles would be sold through shops. The preceding online arrangements had included an optional click-and-collect programme offering participating dealers a 15% commission. Retailers had also objected to a holiday buy-one-get-one-free promotion. Their reactions concerned the relationship between wholesale supply, shops’ own stock and competing consumer offers.
JC Lakey, manager of Headquarters Bike and Outdoor in Banner Elk, North Carolina, welcomed the founders’ return. Craig Friedrich of Asheville Bike Company also expressed enthusiasm about working with them again. In Boulder, Colorado, Full Cycle owner Russ Chandler said the change had prompted him to reconsider plans to drop Kona, while awaiting further details. Michael Roberts of Epic Cycles in Black Mountain was more cautious about winning retailers back and dealing with older inventory. Those were named dealers’ expectations after the ownership change, rather than measured results for Kona’s subsequent sales or evidence that its inventory problems had already ended.
Wiggle’s intellectual-property transaction
Frasers Group paid £3 million plus VAT for certain business intellectual property associated with Wiggle Chain Reaction Cycles, in a transaction completed on 22nd February 2024. The initial payment was £2.625 million, with the retained balance paid after the necessary intellectual-property transfers. Administrator FRP Advisory’s findings, covered by Cycling Weekly on 29th May, established the price and the asset scope. The consideration was for the specified intellectual property, rather than a valuation of the entire former operating business.
Wiggle had entered administration in October 2023 after parent Signa Sports United lost a €150 million financing guarantee. The administrators contacted 58 interested parties; 24 signed confidentiality agreements and seven met management. A private equity purchaser initially proposed a going-concern deal but withdrew on 19th December 2023, the scheduled completion date. A renewed process began in January. Three potential buyers expressed interest, but only Frasers pursued a transaction once the business was being sold on a gone-concern basis. The eventual intellectual-property deal therefore followed a different sale process from the abandoned proposal to preserve an operating concern.
Dealers adjust orders and shop stock
Individual shops described their approaches to 2025 ordering in August 2024. At Electric Avenue in Austin, Audrey and Mark Sze-To were increasing orders for tyres, tubes and accessories and reducing bicycle orders going into 2025. Gillian Forsyth of BFF Bikes in Chicago expected to order a little less to remain cautious. Jacob English of Mountain Road Cycles in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, wanted light bicycle inventory and more children’s bikes. These were individual retailers’ practices and plans, rather than a national count of unsold bicycles.
Julie Muyllaert of Methow Cycle & Sport in Winthrop, Washington, described returning to three to four inventory turns. Unplanned promotions had eroded 2024 margins; a couple of brands offered compensating credits, but some models still lost significant margin. At Seacoast E-Bikes in Newington, New Hampshire, Steve Gerhartz identified price cuts before the shop’s bills became payable as a difficulty. Win Allen’s Win’s Wheels in Carson City planned to continue its service-only model in 2025, without selling bicycles or frames. The shops’ product mixes, purchasing schedules and exposure to supplier promotions differed.
German revenue, prices and production
In Germany, bicycle and e-bike retail revenue exceeded €6.33 billion in 2024, against €7.06 billion in 2023, a decline of 10.3%. Across sales channels, gross average selling prices were €500 for non-electric bicycles, up from €470, and €2,650 for e-bikes, down from €2,950. Stationary specialist retailers accounted for 70% of the market, compared with 74% a year earlier. These country figures came from ZIV’s 2024 market data, released on 12th March 2025.
German production totalled 1.97 million bicycles and e-bikes, down 13.8%. Non-electric output fell from 726,000 to 641,000 units; e-bike output fell from 1.561 million to 1.33 million. Those are production quantities, distinct from retail revenue and average prices. Katharina Hinse, ZIV’s head of economic and industrial policy, described inventories as still high at many manufacturers and retailers. At the March 2025 presentation, chief executive Burkhard Stork expected market normalisation from 2026. That was the association’s outlook at the time, alongside completed measurements for 2024.
UK bicycles, accessories and service
The Bicycle Association’s assessment of the United Kingdom market, published on 11th March 2025, put the overall cycling market’s 2024 decline at 2%. Mechanical bicycle sales fell 4% to an estimated 1.45 million units. E-bike volume fell 5% to about 146,000, representing 9% of bicycle units. Higher-priced road and mountain bikes recorded volume growth within a weaker overall bicycle market. Parts, accessories and clothing, and workshop services, followed different paths:
- Parts, accessories and clothing volume fell 2%, while sales value rose 3%.
- Service volume increased 7%, while service value increased 5%.
The association’s Market Data Service collected information covering approximately 70% of retailer volume, supplemented by other sources and qualitative input. Data and insights director Simon Irons said excess stock and heavy discounting continued to pressure margins. For 2025, the association forecast 2% volume growth in bicycles and parts, accessories and clothing, 3% in services, and a further 1% decline in e-bikes. Those were forecasts made in March, separate from the completed 2024 estimates.
US channels outside conventional retail tracking
For the United States, PeopleForBikes and Circana data valued the conventionally tracked bicycle market at approximately $6.6 billion in 2024, down 8% year on year. Later research into direct-to-consumer e-bikes identified about 450,000 units worth roughly $800 million outside the channels usually covered by retail tracking. PeopleForBikes chief marketing officer José Maldonado presented those findings on 24th June 2026. The period measured was 2024, although the explanation of the missing channel appeared two years later.
PeopleForBikes also counted approximately 80,000 e-bikes changing hands through peer-to-peer marketplaces. Its broader figure of nearly one million e-bikes bought or sold during 2024 included secondary-market transactions. It was not a count solely of newly manufactured bicycles delivered to customers. Electric cargo bikes accounted for an estimated $100 million in sales and around 38,500 units. The figures describe different channels and product categories; the cargo estimate is not an additional market to add indiscriminately to the other totals. Conventional retail value, direct brand sales and resale transactions retain their stated coverage rather than forming a new combined total here.
Participation measures a different activity
Approximately 112 million Americans aged three and older rode a bicycle at least once in 2024, equivalent to 35% of that population. PeopleForBikes published the participation study’s findings on 11th April 2025. Participation was the highest in this survey series, which began in 2014. Among children aged three to seventeen, the participation rate rose from 49% in the previous study to 56%.
The estimates came from a nationwide survey of 16,000 adults using the methodology of earlier editions. Half of riders said they knew the cycle lanes, paths and trails in their area, while 53% worried about being hit by a car. PeopleForBikes president and chief executive Jenn Dice called for investment in connected, safe places to ride. The participation measure concerned riding at least once during the year; it did not count new-bicycle purchases or describe every participant as a daily cyclist.
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