UPDATE: Reviews section refreshed, redesigned, searchable: Go take a look
Accell Group, the Dutch owner of Haibike, Ghost, Lapierre and Raleigh, has entered insolvency proceedings. Its UK arm has filed to appoint administrators.
Explains the lack of a "Girls on Ghost" factory XC team...
Accell owns some of the most well-known names in Dutch cycling – Batavus and Sparta city bikes, Koga touring bikes, and the Babboe and Carqon cargo brands – as well as Raleigh, Lapierre, and the German marques Haibike, Winora, and Ghost. It employs around 3,700 people in 15 countries.
Four difficult years
The company was publicly listed in Amsterdam until private equity group bought it for €1.56 billion in 2022.
It has struggled ever since the covid pandemic. Demand for bikes surged during the pandemic but parts were hard to get, and by the time supply chains recovered Accell was left with a mountain of unsold stock. Revenues fell 22% in 2024 to just over €1 billion.
They were hit hard by the Babboe cargo bike recall too where it turned out that Babboe had been fraudulently managing their quality control and literally tens of thousands of cargo bikes (Babboe and sub-brands like Raleigh) needed recall and inspection. Cost them an absolute fortune although it also serves them right. It was the bike industry equivalent of the emissions scandal in the car world although outside of cargo bike circles, not a lot was ever said about it.
Raleigh, I have mixed feelings about. The fact that they were once one of the biggest names in bike manufacturing doesn't necessarily buy them a get-out-of-jail-free card. Just shows that as with countless companies over the years they've failed to adapt and evolve and move with the times.
Feels slightly dirty to say this, but it’s Haibike I feel worst for. Yes 99% of the bikes were gopping but they stuck to their guns and have been a big part of getting e-bikes established (for better or worse). The rest of the brands I doubt I’ll notice vanishing
Sad times.
There are a few brands in the performance/leisure market there that are just a other brand. But in Raleigh and Batavus you've got two brands that if you cycled to work in the 60s 70s and 80s in the UK or the Netherlands you were probably riding one or lent yours again one in the shed.
Having said that does this Raleigh have anything to do with the Nottingham based Raleigh other than the name?
Is it actually bad sales or is it a case of borrowing a huge amount of money to buy companies and then not being able to service the debt?
Seems to be common whenever you mention private equity going under.
You mean like what happens just about any time private equity gets involved in buying some company that actually makes things? *cough* EA and the Saudi PIF...
Is it actually bad sales or is it a case of borrowing a huge amount of money to buy companies and then not being able to service the debt?
Seems to be common whenever you mention private equity going under.
Per the story
The short version: private equity bought the top of the market.
In 2022, a consortium led by KKR took Accell private in a deal valuing it at €1.56 billion, on the assumption that pandemic-era demand for bikes and e-bikes represented a new baseline rather than a spike. It didn’t.
That just seems spectacularly bad business/failure of due diligence and business sense.
it was announced in January 2022. It should already have been obvious by then that there was trouble ahead. By August that year there was massive overstock in parts of the industry - I was buying clothing at huge discounts because (as I understand it) companies were receiving both the previous year's stock (that had been held up in global shipping chaos) and the current year. There was a fire sale of Sportful, Pearl Izumi and others. The same was happening with bikes - stuff went from no discounts to big discounts very quickly as supply chains opened up again.
It seems kind of obvious that demand driven in no small part by a shitload of free time during lockdowns wouldn't continue as the world returned to normal and that an awful lot of people who wanted bikes had just bought them. The final lockdown in the UK was in July 2021.
Having said that does this Raleigh have anything to do with the Nottingham based Raleigh other than the name?
It's literally just a brand name now isn't it, I'm sure someone will buy the rights once the bones of Accell are left out to be picked over.
Can't say I'm at all upset about Haibike TBH but I'm not an E-MTB Fanboi.
I think what is probably sadder is the impact to the wider Cargo bike market of (potentially) losing Batavus and Babboe. Both should be worth someone picking up, Right?
Also Koga as a touring bike brand; didn't Mark Beaumont use Kogas for both of his round the World rides?
Feels slightly dirty to say this, but it’s Haibike I feel worst for. Yes 99% of the bikes were gopping but they stuck to their guns and have been a big part of getting e-bikes established (for better or worse). The rest of the brands I doubt I’ll notice vanishing
Yeah, agree with this. It's not that I'm into ebikes, it's just that it sucks when pioneers do all the hard yards and then it goes mainstream and they get left behind. Happens pretty much every single time, mind you.
A friend/ acquaintance works for Haibike doing their graphics. She's been there since finishing uni back in 2011..... It's about time she changed jobs. Guess this might be the push she needed.
Babboe dropped a proverbial when their frames started falling and they didn't want to warranty most of them. They deserve to go under just for that.
That just seems spectacularly bad business/failure of due diligence and business sense.
A lot of the other failures in the post-Covid era were due to shops running around begging any and all suppliers for stock and when 4 shops are phoning the same supplier going "have you got Bike X?", the supplier thought (wrongly) that it was 4 people asking for the bike, but it was actually one person asking 4 times.
So the demand was believed to be 4x higher than it actually was and by the time the supplies started coming through again, everyone who wanted a bike already had one hence loads of excess stock.
And in that tiny window where demand was perceived to be through the roof ad everyone thought "this is the new normal", KKR bought Accell at the top of the market; Accell included brands that were already failing, notably Raleigh, along with brands that were not mainstream, like Lapierre and Ghost. Then they threw money at it to keep it afloat and now it's become one of the biggest private equity losses in the entire industry.
Raleigh's fall from grace has been painful to see but they're an irrelevance now.
"Is it actually bad sales or is it a case of borrowing a huge amount of money to buy companies and then not being able to service the debt?"
It does seem to be a pattern that keeps repeating. Leveraged buyouts when times are good, then wrapping the company up when it falls on hard times. Someone must be making a lot of money here.
A lot of the other failures in the post-Covid era were due to shops running around begging any and all suppliers for stock and when 4 shops are phoning the same supplier going "have you got Bike X?", the supplier thought (wrongly) that it was 4 people asking for the bike, but it was actually one person asking 4 times.
Again, this does seem like a failure to understand the customer. That's natural behaviour that should be obvious to anyone familiar with the bike (or any other) industry. Have you got one of these? not in stock, but we'll check with the supplier.
Raleigh has been all but dead for years, Haibike and Ghost never seemed to gain popularity outside mainland Europe but the Lapierre Spicy was THE UK trail bike back in the day, it's quite a rags to riches to rags again story.
