BOULDER, CO (BRAIN)—Leisure Trends Group will release its first retail sales tracking reports for the bicycle industry by the end of the second quarter, according to Jim Spring, president of the market research firm based in Boulder, Colorado.
Last summer, Leisure Trends announced its entry into independent bicycle retail sales tracking.
“We believe if everything keeps going the way it is, by end of second quarter or June, we will have first retail tracking reports,” Spring said.
Leisure Trends has been tracking and benchmarking retail sell-through in several industries including snow sports, outdoor, running and apparel since 1992.
Spring said Leisure Trends has hired Charlie Cooper to handle sales of the new bicycle reports. “He’s a biker and has been in a lot of races,” Spring said. “We’re very bullish.”
Cooper, who officially joins Leisure Trends today, will specifically handle sales of the bicycle and running retail sales data, Spring said.
Leisure Trends will begin conducting retail interviews for its distribution study this week, Spring said. The study aims to provide a clear picture of the bicycle industry’s market size and structure in the U.S. Spring said a random sample of 420 IBDs from five census regions will be interviewed by phone over the next three weeks. Final results should be available within five weeks, he said. The study should provide a good approximation of sales by state.
“This will be good information for retailers, benchmark information to see how they stack up against 400 other shops nationwide and how they stack up against retailers in their region,” Spring said. “In addition to sales per square foot and yield per square foot, we will ask about number of brands carried, the product demand cycle, reorder cycles, about the supply chain, how much they pay employees and how much of business they represent as cost, about the Internet, how was last year and what do they anticipate this year will be like in terms of sales.”
Once this distribution study is complete, Leisure Trends will move ahead on its Cycling RetailTRAK, a monthly point-of-sales retail tracking service at specialty bicycle dealers.
Spring anticipates that a minimum of 200 specialty bike shops will report their sales. Currently, Leisure Trends counts about 150 IBDs in its panel, Spring said.
“We have a nice cadre of companies that have said they’re supporting what we’re doing and some of them are spending the money,” Spring said. “We’ve had very good industry support so far, and most importantly, the retailers.”
Leisure Trends initially expected to have its distribution study completed by end of last year and its first retail sales reports by beginning of this year, but plans were delayed.
“We didn’t realize July and August is a tough time because people are busy selling bikes,” Spring said. “We didn’t get going until September.”
—Lynette Carpiet
