Editor's note: For a feature in Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, Retail Editor Ray Keener spoke with 14 leaders on the supplier side of the industry. Ray spoke with leaders of major bike brands, component suppliers, e-bike startups, accessory makers and more. We will be running sections of that article online this month.
BOULDER, Colo. (BRAIN) — It’s been a hectic and unprecedented several months for our industry and many others. Fortunately for our companies and retailers, hectic has meant managing demand rather than fighting for survival.
Now that the season is waning, inventories are catching up (in some cases) and suppliers are catching their collective breaths, we reached out to a cross-section of suppliers and service providers to get their take on the future.
Nicole Johnson, Co-Founder, Boyd Cycling
The COVID silver lining is the riding boom we've all hoped for since the '80s. Here in Greenville, South Carolina, we've seen families and kids getting out on the Swamp Rabbit Trail in casual apparel on their shiny new bikes.
We've been very fortunate in terms of timing. We received two large shipments before the Chinese New Year so we were stocked and ready before COVID hit. The first two weeks in March was a really scary time, things got really quiet. Fortunately it's been straight up for us since then; we've grown 20% over 2019.
We're about to release a new wheel series called Prologue. (Company founder Boyd Johnson) has been working to develop this for the last few years. It's three lower-priced road carbon wheels, two for disc and one for rim brakes.
The demographic we're going after is riders new to the sport who are interested in carbon but don't have the budget for higher-end stuff. We've always planned to do this. Our 250 retailers have asked for it, and now COVID makes it even more likely to succeed.
Our high-end business has been very consistent and our budget alloy Rouleur line is turning faster than in the past couple years. A lot of companies aren't addressing rim brakes. We're going to continue to offer them.
