In the UK.

Up or down?
Anyone have the stats handy?

Ta in advance.

Dunno about anyone else but in our shop mtb sales are down 60% from 3 years ago (and if you take just bikes over 1k it higher than that!!).

I’m not surprised sales are down,so many people alienated over the wheel size’s.I was looking for a 26″ short travel FS to replace my ageing GIANT NRS,fancied a Giant Anthem,started looking round & all the hype is 29″ or 650B meaning all my wheels & tyres are scrap. Decided to stick with the NRS & if I get another bike it’ll be either a mint used 26″Anthem & upgrade it with my good stuff or get a CX.

I’m not surprised sales are down,so many people alienated over the wheel size’s.I was looking for a 26″ short travel FS to replace my ageing GIANT NRS,fancied a Giant Anthem,started looking round & all the hype is 29″ or 650B meaning all my wheels & tyres are scrap. Decided to stick with the NRS & if I get another bike it’ll be either a mint used 26″Anthem & upgrade it with my good stuff or get a CX.

Have you tried Paul’s Cycles? Last time I looked they had some Anthem 26ers left in stock.

I bet sales of road bikes have more than made up for decline in mtb numbers?

I’m in the market for a new FS, have been for a couple of years, but wheel size / ‘standards’ changes (1×10, 1×11 / 15mm thru, 20mm) meant i’ve held off. Also to buy a ‘better’ bike than my current one would cost me about £4k

so many people alienated over the wheel size’s

I don’t believe that – most buyers of mtbs will know next to nothing about wheel sizes and will just go with whatever the shop/mags tells them. They also won’t care about the change because they’re buying a complete bike and it’s likely to be their only bike. STW is not representative of the majority of bike buyers.

My understanding is that the success of Wiggo and Froome has lead to road bike sales going up a lot and mtbs paying the price for that and hence dropping (or at best staying very flat).

Downward trend in market share over last 6 years (trend has been that way since the LA-TDF days) but flat in actual numbers over last 3, maybe longer. ie, cycling has grown outside of MTB while MTB is stagnated.
Nemesis is right, I’d say only a fairly small percentage of buyers have been holding off or put off buying by wheel-size debates. Most go with the ‘norm’ – ie 26″, then 29″ for most, now 650B.

I have some UK bike trade numbers here if you have specific qs that they include but it’s more info on import than sales. Reliable UK-wide sales stats of higher-end bikes have always been near-impossible to get.

What I’ve found over the last few years is a lot of the ‘rank and file,ride every sunday at a centre’ crowd have defected to road bikes.Usually through buying a cheaper one through ride to work (n+1) and finding it easier/more convenient/more social/strava.Then finding themselves riding mtb less often and eventually buying a higher spec road bike.
There’s a core of mtb’ers who have no interest in ever riding road but they are disinterested in any of the mainstream brands and are very knowledgeable/picky in what they want (santa cruz/carbon/enduro!!) or very value/price conscious (YT/canyon/rose).In which case they are’nt going to buy from us!!
Road bike sales in the US have plateaued in a big way and brands seem intent on chasing smaller and more specialized niches (fat,gravel,fat gravel etc) rather than focusing on the huge interest in just bikes for riding.

Nemesis’ comments reflect what my LBS has seen over the last 24 months or so. The real high end stuff still moves pretty well though.

At the other end of the scale, the local ‘warehouse’ LBS seems to be doing a roaring trade in Mongoose and Ammaco bikes mind.

Here’s my theory.
The wheel size thing also means that a lot of “entry level” hardtails are ruinously heavy. If you check spec lists of a lot of sub £1k hardtails, especially 29ers, you’ll see that a lot of them weigh between 13 and 15kg. That’s heavier than most STWers Enduro Sled (regardless of bathroom scale accuracy) In the sub £600 bracket a lot of MTBs were previously sold to commuters and so on. An entry level 26er four or five years ago would have had a Tora fork and SLX kit, weighing around the 12kg mark. Not very heavy for your average Joe, especially as the first thing a lot of buyers do is pick the bike up to see how heavy it is. Now that bikes in that category seem to be spec’ing Alivio and Acera drivetrain and suntour/low-end RS forks, commuters will be put off by the sheer heft of the thing.

Also, because of the weight and quality of the components, folk serious abut MTBing think they have to have SLX/XT and air forks on the spec sheet. Bikes in that category are now well over the £1k mark, and you won’t sell those to commuters.

SO, today’s big wheel MTBs are heavy and poorly equipped at the same price point as the 26er hardtails of 2010-12. 29 has effectively ruined low-end choice by forcing Acera chainsets onto folk that deserve better.

Scapegoat +1

Currently looking for a new bike for 12 yr old son at yr end and with a planned budget of circa £700 its largely 27.5, Acera and Suntour and 13 kg 🙁

average Joe, especially as the first thing a lot of buyers do is pick the bike up to see how heavy it is

They then ask you ‘is it light’? (because they have no frame of reference) to which you reply ‘yes Sir/Madam’.And they reply ‘oh yes it is is’nt it’.
Inflation has ‘forced acera’ onto bikes because everything gets more expensive.

Also to buy a ‘better’ bike than my current one would cost me about £4k

+1

Every time I look at a new bike I just see a load of things that won’t work or I don’t like.

Repeat sales of middle & high-end MTBs must be minimal

Repeat sales of middle & high-end MTBs must be minimal

That’s why 27.5 was invented 😉

I find it hard to believe that wheel size has had a huge impact on bike sales. Tightwads are always looking for an excuse to delay spending. It will just be something else once wheel size stops being the excuse for some people.

angeldust – Member

I find it hard to believe that wheel size has had a huge impact on bike sales.

Pretty much everyone I know has put off buying a new bike, or bought a second hand frame and parts as a consequence.

The same thing is now starting to happen with road bikes as people wait and see which new standards will be piggybacked onto the change to discs.

Just anecdotal evidence, obviously.

My bike cost about £1500 9 years ago. There is absolutely no way that I could afford to replace it at today’s prices.

The day it dies will probably be the day that I find something else to do on a Monday night :-/

Also. As my shed is exactly the same length as the bike I’m betting that a 29er wouldn’t fit in it.

They then ask you ‘is it light’? (because they have no frame of reference) to which you reply ‘yes Sir/Madam’.And they reply ‘oh yes it is is’nt it’.

Whereas your honest reply should be “No, it weighs more than Hora’s Orange, and that was only a medium FFS”

It’s an interesting question actually OP, and the actual answer is probably quite closely guarded by retailers/manufacturers as it’s information that will drive their marketing strategies and forwards investment or the next couple of years…

A Brief Googling has yielded the following:

http://imba.org.uk/research-reports/uk-mountainbike-usage/

http://www.ctc.org.uk/resources/ctc-cycling-statistics

https://corporate.sky.com/documents/pdf/press_releases/2011/the_british_cycling_economy

none of which really answer your question, but do at least examine cycling uptake and participation, which you’d expect to indicate sales trends maybe?

There might be segmented data available from Mintel or similar organisations for bicycle retail, but you’d have to pay for that.

TBH the closest you are likely to get is something like usage data rather than sales figures, those should bare some relationship to sales. whether or not organisations like BC or CTC go into fine levels of detail regarding how many people do which specific type of cycling year on year I don’t know.

Usage data for MTB rides Vs Road rides could also come from Strava Metro perhaps? you could look at participation in organised events and races by type perhaps? and then general cycling trends could be extrapolated into sales trends possibly…

angeldust – Member
I find it hard to believe that wheel size has had a huge impact on bike sales.

The opposite for me, most of the people I know have rushed out to embrace the new wheel sizes, the trails are awash with Mach6’s, Troys, Bronsons and Nomads around my way and you never see a 26″ HT around, they are all 29ers.
However, feedback I get from the bikes shops around Hong Kong is that MTB sales are flat or down over the last couple of years as its mostly the same people buying MTB’s (a lot tend to upgrade yearly here).

I’m a member of BC and have not been asked about the types of biking I do or the proportion of each so I suspect that they might not have those figures.

Strava does have the ability for you to set up different bikes that you can assign to a category and log rides against each but I’ve no idea whether they aggregate that data. While not everyone uses Strava (I suspect it’s much more road orientated) it’s a large enough sample to be able to extrapolate.

Rorschach – Member

What I’ve found over the last few years is a lot of the ‘rank and file,ride every sunday at a centre’ crowd have defected to road bikes…

Yes, and another sector of mtb-ers have realised they don’t ride anything that can’t be done on a CX bike and have moved to that…

MTB has suffered due to the massive, massive rise in road bike riding since the olympics and Wiggins tour win. it is by far the most popular form of cycling now.

MTB sales decline has nothing to do with Wheel size issues, its just Road riding is in peoples faces a huge amount more, so people want to have a go at road riding, hence buying more of them and not MTB’s

Yes, and another sector of mtb-ers have realised they don’t ride anything that can’t be done on a CX bike and have moved to that…

Or some MTBers have gone back to something closer to the ‘ATBs’ that appealed many years ago – simple bikes that cover most non-tech (by current definitions) ground well, including miles of tarmac in between the trails.
Modern ‘enduro’ style MTBs are fantastic in many ways but also more capable through technology, so they’ve become quite complex (ie faffy/expensive/potentially frustrating).

I do agree road biking has grown quite a bit over the last few years which has led to many people moving away from the mtb. I did it for about a year myself as I’d started to get a bit fed up with the 2+ hour drive to get a decent trail for the mtb but I’m now back on the mtb having bought the frame and built one up from some old and new bits.

The wheel size argument is pretty irrelevant as it’s been around since 29ers came on the scene a few years ago, people will buy what the can afford, like the look of and the ride of (if they’ve demoed before buying). Price is probably the most deciding factor for many buyers these days given the big price increases seen in bikes at the very high end but also the lower end and the corresponding lower quality kit being fitted to get “entry” level bikes in to a certain price bracket. Going in to one of my two lbs’ they have either £3k+ big brand bikes or sub-£1k cycle to work type bikes, nothing in between.

If I’m a betting man my money would be on more of the manufacturers going to the direct sales model like Canyon, Rose and YT have to try and drive sales. You just need to look at Commencal as an example of this as I believe they’ve made the switch for 2014/15 bikes.

I certainly think direct Sales must be hitting shops sales

It also makes sense that as people buy road and CX bikes they have less money for an MTB

But I think that perhaps bikes are peaking. I have a fairly elderly Trek Fuel ex. The forks but a bit rubbish but basically it does the job. Never on a ride have I thought. “If only had one of the newer rear suspension designs”. For me it just works so even I had some money why would i but a new bike?

Well I must be the odd one out, because I’m about to buy a new high-end trail bike shortly 🙂

No idea on sales trends, but having been out of the game for a good few years I’ve noticed that top end offerings from the mainstream brands are a hell of a lot better quality than they were 10 years ago. Suspensions now seem to work efficiently with decent pivot bearings and frames are actually stiff enough to cope. Prices are obviously up too, but I’d rather pay more for a better bike.

Fox forks rrp, crackers and sums it al up.

I don’t believe that – most buyers of mtbs will know next to nothing about wheel sizes and will just go with whatever the shop/mags tells them

Possibly at the £500 market but if you are going to spend thousands on a bike you are going to know your stuff/ do your research.
Personally I think the industry has seriously taken the piss with change for the sake of it and I am neither playing nor paying.

Also all the 26 er stuff you had that you could sell is now worth a lot less than it was before so you need more cash to upgrade as well.

9 speed 26 er [ and a SS of course] till they die

A lot of my disposable income used to go on my MTB – replacing worn parts/upgrades etc. I was riding every weekend.

Then I got into road riding and I spend an awful lot less overall – a chain on my MTB might last me a year or so, on my summer road bike, more like 4 years.

I’ve no need to replace my MTB but as it’s 26 I’m inclined to keep it till it totally wears out now it has virtually no resale value. If 26 hadn’t been killed off, I suspect I’d have bought some new forks by now.

For MTB makers I’m a disaster – they used to get a few hundred quid + off me every year and now they get virtually nothing. Road kit doesn’t wear out so fast so my overall cycling expenditure has fallen thru he floor and at the same time I’m riding an awful lot more.

I suspect the fact consumers are struggling with debt and day to day living costs has had a big impact here too.

It’d be interesting to look at a breakdown of manufacturers’ target audiences and associated revenue/profit and compare enthusiasts with non-enthusiasts.

For e.g. Cotic’s market must be entirely the high end, frequent spending types, but Trek I suspect gets a greater % of profit from the mass market. Same for LBS’s. So diff companies will have been impacted in different ways by the shift towards road riding

I bought a rigid SS 29er because I was spending a fortune on forks, broken frames (a ham yeti), drive trains etc etc.

Spent nothing since I got my new bike.

Mountain biking all the way though!

Bit of all of the above for me. Wheel shenanigans have turned me off from mags and marketing, I’ve bought more stuff 2nd hand, i’ve started riding more road and I’m also more willing to make do. Overall I’m riding a lot more though 🙂

Audi have had a similar sales slump. Interesting.

When I purchase my mid-life crisis/40th birthday present (2 years away), it will be a [insert custom builder here, subject to change] steel frame, with [probably] 26″ wheels [and maybe even rear canti mounts], because that reflects the kind of riding I still do. And will probably always do – as long as I’m capable of riding a bike on singletrack, in the woods.

So chalk up + 1 for mtb sales, a couple o’ years down the line.

ive bought a 29er and a 650b enduro beast this year 😳

well from my view (mountain biker for 25 years / bike shop owner for 12)

i think that mountain bikers are getting older and are now moving in to more diverse cycling – road/cross mainly.
i think that the boom of mountain biking was never followed by such a boom in the next generation. (could be wrong)
see more downhill in the young riders but not the masses of xc racers like there used to be.
you can see it in the types of events. every week and weekend there is a road or cross race on, but no mountain bike events.
Road cycling is mainly club based and is more social, mountain biking is still small groups of mates.

from a shop point of view we started out mainly mountain bikes, but now we mainly service bikes and sell road/cross bikes. we have just in the last year dropped three big mountain bike brands as they only sell when discounted.
dont think the wheel issue had changed sales.

But to put it in to perspective since focusing on servicing and road our sales have quadrupled in the past two years.
next step is coffe/cake bike fit.

dont know what the future holds but i think a number of brands will go direct sales, and lots of shops that stock bikes will go to the wall.

Audi have had a similar sales slump. Interesting.

Golfing bat sales are on the up. Double interesting.

I’d say road bikes have caused a decline to MTB market because:

-£1000 road bike has better spec than £1000 MTB. £1000 MTB feels cheap. You need to spend decent money to get a quality MTB.
-road biking much more accessible, roll out of your front door, time is short = good ride!
-less wear and tear I.e. ongoing costs
-ageing population, wants lower risk during riding
-social growth, more people riding road = more riding buddies
-road is less technical, requires less skill, more fitness. Fitness easier to develop than skill.
-fashion/Zeitgeist, road is all over TV. Everyone knows Wiggins, Cavendish, Kittel, Froome. MTB? Not so…who is British MTB champion?

I used to think road bikes were expensive and then discovered MTB!!!

The wheel size nonsense definitely caused me to delay purchase.