Sector insights

Cycling and biking is enjoying an unprecedented surge in popularity throughout the UK, boosted by the successes of Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish at the Tour de France and the dominance of Team GB at the Olympics and Paralympics this year. However, this popularity spans across Europe and beyond, and appears to be more than just a passing vogue. In fact, in 2011 France announced a 6.5% increase in turnover in the bike market, marking the end of a 5 year decline and boosting it to 3^rd place in Europe in terms of sales with 3.2Mn bikes sold, following Germany’s 4.1Mn and the UK’s 3.5Mn (1).

But of course, we aren’t all at Olympian-standard fitness levels, nor do we all live in helpfully flat countries like the Netherlands, and that freshly incited zeal for cycling can wane when you faced with your first steep hill. Happily the electric bike, or e-bike, provides a ready solution and Europe is fast discovering it, as shown by its soaring popularity: sales more than tripled between 2007 and 2010 (2) and today one in 7 bicycles sold is battery-assisted (3). This phenomenal growth is expected to continue, with sales doubling or even quadrupling in almost every region of the world by 2016 (4). So it seems I am by no means in the minority in being put off by the effort involved in peddling up the local peak!

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