I got a lot of comments on last month’s piece about dealer counts, mostly that some brands with the most dealers weren’t included. That’s because I neglected to mention that last month’s chart was only for the top 10 bike brands by sales volume, and I have to take ownership of that oversight.
So this month, I went back to Michael Forte at The Bike Shop List and he’s prepared a much more extensive sampling of which bike brands have the largest dealer footprint.
What follows is a far more comprehensive list, but it also requires a fair amount of nuance and interpretation. So, fair warning.
Top brands by dealer footprint
As you can see, the list shows nineteen bike brands with their dealer counts according to the brands’ dealer locators. (We should note that Beeline lists 2,201 dealers on their locator, but they’re not a bike brand so they’re not included in the chart above.)
In the end, these counts are only as accurate as brands’ dealer locators.
The first five are the usual suspects — Trek, Specialized, Electra, Giant and Cannondale. Salsa takes sixth place, followed by two e-bike brands, Rad and Aventon. But here’s where interpretation starts to come in to play:
- Aventon is listed for stocking dealers only. But Rad’s dealer count, according to Michael Forte, can be “Rad Retail, Stocking Dealer, Rentals, Service, Mobile Service or Test Ride” locations.
- For Enve, “stores can be Ride Center, Retailer, Demo Bikes, Bike Dealer, Wheels Dealer, Components Dealer, or ‘Carries Small Parts’”
- For Haro, “stores can be Haro BMX, Haro MTB, Haro Road, Premium BMX or Del Sol.”
- For Kink BMX, neither Forte nor I are sure what the status is of the dealers, or whether the dealer listed actively stock the brand. The same uncertainty accompanies most of the other brands listed.
- Velotric stores “can be Showcase Store, Sales, Test Rides, Service or Rental.”
Disclaimer: in the end, these counts are only as accurate as brands’ dealer locators. We further note that shops that have gone out of business can linger on dealer locators for months or even years. But for all that, these are by far the best estimates available to the industry at this time.
And what about brand-owned stores?
Make no mistake, three of the four Quadrumvirate brands are competing directly with their own “retailer partners.”
We know that three of the Quadrumvirate brands — Trek, Specialized and Pon/Cannondale — own bike shops in major markets. But the companies are pretty cagey about lists of these retailers. Nonetheless, Forte is willing to make some estimates.
Of Trek stores, their dealer locator “currently has 280 locations” with Trek in the store name, according to Forte, although Trek has previously stated that there are non-owned stores with Trek in their name and owned stores which do not include the Trek name.
For Specialized-owned stores, Forte lists 14 locations with Specialized in the store name. Plus the brand’s Incycle website lists some 45 non-branded owned locations, bringing the total count to 59.
All Pon/Cannondale stores appear to bear the Mike’s name, 21 of them, according to Forte.
So that makes a total of some 360 company-owned locations in the U.S., or a little more than 4% of the 8,650-ish shops on The Bike Shop list.
By itself, it doesn’t seem like such an imposing number. But when you take into account the fact that these stores are almost all located in key demographic areas, their significance becomes obvious. Make no mistake, three of the four Quadrumvirate brands are competing directly with their own “retailer partners.”
So what does this mean for retail business owners and suppliers? Two things. First, retailers remain the key to effective bike brand sales. And second, the huge majority of brands’ sales continue to come from brick and mortar bike shops. Just like they always have.
