Cycling Industries Europe (CIE) recently presented its annual Business Impact Survey to its Market Intelligence and Impact Expert Group.
The annual Business Impact Survey takes a holistic look at the state of the industry, with respondents representing various segments of the cycling industry, including bikeshare services, bike and parts manufacturers, retailers, and cycling ITS providers. This year’s survey builds on data collected annually since 2020 with the support of Sporting Insights and as a starting point, we were glad to see the number of responses increase compared to 2023.
More optimistic than anticipated
Amidst the gloom surrounding the state of the industry in 2023, the results of the survey have to some extent surprised us as they were more optimistic than anticipated. At least half of the respondents reported either an increase or similar revenues in 2024, with the bike share sector leading in revenue growth. Similarly, in terms of employment, at least half of the respondents indicated that they either maintained their workforce size or were actively hiring.
We were also glad to sense optimism among several respondents regarding future investment prospects, tying in with the positive long-term predictions for the growth of the sector. Recent sales figures from key markets like Germany and the Netherlands have also revealed more encouraging outcomes than initially projected.
Stabilizing supply chains
Supply chains remain a key concern, with overstock in the bicycle market still prevalent and impacting the price of sales, component orders and the renewal of models. Survey responses nonetheless tend to indicate that supply chains will be stabilizing over the course of 2024 and show expectations that sales will recover in the foreseeable future.
We see a further sign of resilience and cause for cautious optimism when reviewing responses on planned expenses and marketing budgets, with respectively 65% maintaining or increasing overall spending and 62% maintaining or increasing marketing budgets.
The survey results give us several reasons to see the glass half full rather than half empty. The question we find us asking ourselves is whether this relative health we found can be applied to all companies in the cycling ecosystem or, whether it is rather linked the fact that the survey is conducted towards CIE members only?
One could argue that the latter benefit from the possibility to collaborate on common industry challenges such as sustainability, learn about growing market segments, turn the networking opportunities our industry platform provides into solid business relationships, and gain extra insights to data and market dynamics, via the activities of our Market Intelligence and Impact Expert Group – to name but a few possible reasons.
Access to the full report
On that note, access to the full CIE Business Impact Survey is one of the many datasets and benefits CIE Members get. If you are curious about the extent of data we cover in our expert groups and the industry networking opportunities our platform provides, we warmly encourage you to drop us a line at info(at)cyclingindustries.com.
Technical notes
Fieldwork for the CIE Business Health Checks was carried out in January and February 2024.
The survey is an anonymized aggregation of CIE members responses, CIE does not know which companies participated. A list of CIE members can be found here.
CIE thanks Sporting Insights for carrying out these surveys and contributing to the success of the cycling business sector in Europe.