What happened to the mountain bike industry?

Why is the mountain bike market so depressed?
Sporting success
Cycling in the UK has had a renaissance over the last decade with its national and international profile being raised through the efforts of the British Cycling team, with stars such as Victoria Pendleton and Chris Hoy cleaning up on the track at the Olympics, and Bradley Wiggins winning England’s first ever Tour de France. This success, initially on the track, was largely due to the increase of funding from Sport England, followed by the creation of Team SKY and its aggressive recruitment of British stars by Sir Brailsford. All this increased sporting success and its subsequent media exposure has brought cycling back into the public conscious.
Around the same time that Sport England started seriously investing in cycling the UK government launched the cycle to work scheme to incentivise people to adopt sustainable transport as part of its Green Transport plan. These two factors among other such as the congestion charge in London, have had a huge effect on the popularity of cycling.
Retail sector
The UK has seen a substantial leap in sales within the cycling sector from around 2.3 million bikes in 2002, to 3.7 million in 2003, where it stayed for the next decade (see graph). More impressively the value of all this activity has risen from £600 million in 2002, to £1.15 billion in 2012, an increase of 44%. The “great recession” of 2008 does appear to have had a small negative effect in 2008-9 on sales, however the common trend of recession increasing cycle sales seems to have had an overall positive effect with a big rise between 2009 and 2010.

With nearly all retailers noticing that a lot of sales being diverting from mountain to road bikes, can it be true that are our national athletes having this much effect on our buying habits or is there more behind the decline of mountain biking?
Mountain biking has now established itself as an Olympic sport, is receiving money from Sport England, and millions have been spent sustainable facilities such as the seven stanes in Scotland, yet in terms of medals is being beaten by the far less accessible discipline of track cycling, why? It could be the increase in salaries for our home grown talent if they ride road compared to MTB, with it being reported that Sir Bradley Wiggins currently earns approx £1.5 million per annum.

Technological revoloution
Technology has been a great driver in cycling and non more so than in mountain biking. The sport has evolved from the heavy “clunkers” of the late 70’s, to the first dedicated frames from the likes of Tom Richey and others in the 80’s; then the lycra clad weight weenies of the 90’s pushed the technological boundries and started to introduce materials from road cycling such as carbon fibre. The 00’s brought suspension and drew from motocross and Dakar racing to give us pedalling platforms and high speed compression circuits. So what next?
Gary Fisher floated an idea in the 90’s that a bigger wheel size would be better for mountain biking and with the help of Trek bikes he started producing a line of bigger wheeled bikes. These were slow to take off even with favourable reviews and many obvious benefits.
Mountain bikes had evolved to a point where they could be ridden all day in comfort and up and down virtually any terrain due to their complex suspension systems and low weight. It was becoming increasingly difficult to make a bike more capable without using fragile and expensive materials like carbon fibre to reduce weight and gain performance advantages, so manufacturers started to look again at alternatives such as the wheel size.
Bikes with 29 inch wheels were definitely more capable yet the public didn’t like the looks and were still hung up on old negative theories such as slow handling and flimsy wheels, which had been ironed out in the decade of development that they had received. The bike industry was desperate to push 29ers as the next greatest thing yet the public wasn’t buying, so after looking into the cycling archive another wheel size was found, 650b. This was similar to a 26in wheel in looks, yet was slighter bigger so could benefit from the investment made in marketing the 29 inch wheel size and its associated benefits, and as everyone knows if you’re unsure what to buy, go for the middle option! This could be the perfect stepping stone for people wanting to try out a new wheel size, however, manufacturers didn’t want to produce tyres, forks, frames for three wheel size options so thought they would force the issue and swiftly dropped 26in in the belief that everyone would go out and buy a new 650b or 29er mountain bike.

So why have we all not bought into the new wheel sizes?
Now as with energy, money cannot just be created (unless you’re a banker), it must change form. Currently there are thousand of customers who would dearly love to own the new latest greatest 650b or 29 mountain bike, their main problem is cash. What they have done in years gone by is sell their 2 year old bike, frame, fork or wheels on Ebay,Singletrackworld, pinkbike etc and release the cash for their next bike related purchase. BUT, and this is the crux, as the bike companies have done such a good job informing us that 26inch wheels are useless and old fashioned, so much so that they have stopped producing them, nobody wants 26 inch wheeled bikes and the used market has collapsed. There is a huge amount of money tied up which is proving extremely difficult to release. This has left a lot of people with very expensive bikes that they cannot sell even if they wanted to. I have recently seen an extremely capable 2013 Orange 5 pro which retailed at £3000 being offered for only £1000, a ridiculous depreciation of 65%.
Bike shops are still seeing moderate or static growth at present and this appears to mainly in the road sector. I put a lot of this down to the fact that a lot of mountain bikers are unwilling to sell their expensive bike for peanuts and have decided to keep hold of it and treat themselves and join this new cycling craze, road cycling.
In my opinion mountain bikers have a few options. The new wheel size of 27.5 is very marginally grippier and faster so there really is no need to buy one if you currently ride a good 26 inch wheeled bike, if you have the 2012 mountain bike of the year how bad can it be now? There is also a large amount of very cheap 26 inch components for sale to keep your bike running great.
If you are considering a new bike then I can heartily recommend a 29er, they are stable, quick steering, roll over stuff better and are faster allround. Its a shame that customers are just now getting used to the idea of “big wheels are best” at the same time that the bike industry is again trying to narrow the amount of products they produce and are reducing the number 29ers in favour of the “next big thing”, FAT bikes!
Your third option is to go with the flow and buy a road bike, it will get you fitter, last longer and its far more accessible as we all have roads outside our front door. However they are just about to have a revolution regards disc brakes on road bikes, so if you want to avoid all this controversy then how about a new sport, golf anyone?

It’s Hora, he pisses right about with market forces.

Welcome to the rest of the forum.

Also, what did the kittens do to you, eh? You heartless bastard.

Well Chad, you sure put a lot of effort into that but
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Why is the mountain bike market so depressed?

We’re skint.

Your problem is in the title.

I remember when we said mountain community.

It doesn’t matter what you ride. Anyone who is fixated enough to worry about that gas missed the point entirely.

none of my mates have given up mountain biking but most have stopped buying mountain bikes, they have realised what they have will do and have been through the road bike, nicer road bike, more comfortable road bike cycle in the last 3-4 years.

A lot more people have taken up road, rather than MTB though.

Happy with my 26 inch wheeled mtb ,can`t justify a new one and not bothered about it being grippier or faster mind you it is now 13 years old

Oh and as far as kitten-killing posts go, fair play if you’ve written all that yourself from scratch!

Just to light the touchpaper, for 95% of folk that kerb-crawl being a ‘mountain-biker’, 26″ is just fine.

*runs away*

It says see graph but I can’t see a graph. Vexing.

You mean that was just a cut-and-paste? Looks like no one else could be bothered reading it all either.

It says see graph but I can’t see a graph. Vexing.

Ok, did anybody read this?

Ok, did anybody read this?

I’m halfway through ‘War & Peace’ so no, I didn’t.

Does it matter? Just argue FFS 🙂

If your market assessment is correct (I’ve honestly no idea), then IMO:

What has happened to mountain biking is that it became a market – or rather they marketiZed it

They’ve **** about, changing fundamental things that made next year’s frames incompatible with last year’s parts & spares – they’ve gambled on people continuing to buy the new shit, and the retooling has increased costs that they needed to recoup, so prices rise.
There’s now so much bullshit marketing around that I suspect newbies are put off by it all, and at least some of us old folk are pissed off by it

They took people for granted and they **** it up

(and the signs seem to be that road bikes are next on the target list – I’m in favour of disc brakes but wait & see how many new hub standards wo get through in 2-3 years)

There is no ‘community’, apart from the one we make ourselves.

The rest is just people trying to sell you stuff.

Shut up Bear

You’re wrong

They all got so depressed reading that sh1t they’ve turned into hardcore macrame fans.

Has the posh gits castle fell into the river yet?

Joe public see Olympic & TdF success on the telly
Wannabes buy road bikes
Road bikes don’t get you dirty
Road bikes are easier to maintain & stuff lasts 10x as long as on an mtb
You can get a decent road bike for £400
£400 mountain bike is basically a BSO

Shut up Bear

You’re wrong

*sobs*

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/when-did-it-all-start-to-go-downhill-for-mountain-biking-9202637.html

£400 mountain bike is basically a BSO

I reckon for your average cyclist, you can get an enjoyable and perfectly capable mtb for £600

All my own work and if you want the graphs then ask nicely

sobs*

Sorry

Man hug?

In the eye of the greater public, MTB is seen as dangerous and it’s our road and track guys who dominate the pro sport rather than MTB – so that’s where the newbie riders have gone to IMO. Also, a road bike is far better for commuting which is another growth area as far as I can see.

As for me, for the first time since 1995 I have no MTB.
I MTBd so much for so long that I slightly overdid it and got myself a road bike and got into that instead. I’ve also broken 3 bones since 2007 falling off my MTB which has rather put me off.

As a result I’ve been riding MTB less and less. Then 27.5 came out and spares for my beautiful and expensive Soul looked scarce and the value of the thing has fallen through the floor so I decided to get rid rather than leaving it unused and potentially in a couple of years unsellable…

I think the MTB has badly shot itself in the foot with the whole 27.5 thing – it was obviously cynical after 29 didn’t quiet work how they expected. Their biggest misjudgement though was doing it at a time when earnings are static and we’re all balls deep in debt – and expecting us to be happy to replace our 26ers en masse (especially when they have such a low 2nd hand value) has been a massive fail on their part in terms of understanding customers’ needs and willingness to pay…

All my own work and if you want the graphs then ask nicely

Show me the mother ******* graphs you god damned **** ******

Every post makes me ashamed I’m adding to this thread.

But yes, a hug would be nice.

Because it’s really **** muddy and you’d have to be weird to enjoy it. 😉

disc brakes on road bikes is to road biking what 650B did to MTB’ing, Only the people on Forums give a shit, the other 97.5% of the population dont give a shit,

MTB’ing has moved on over the past 10 – 15 years, to ride decent trails you have to be fortunate enough to live where there are decent trails. We used to ride from our door locally in the woods through the valleys up the hills but as bikes have evolved to cater for the more challenging terrain it has made riding them locally a chore, I’ve found that if i want to ride anything decent i’ve got to pack my car up and drive somewhere, which is great….. then you have to drive home…. which is a chore.

There’s a lot to said for pushing your bike out of the door and nipping off 40 miles in the time it might take you to drive to Wales, or Scotland for instance.

I;m not taking anything away from the Roadies BUT Rachel Atherton has done plenty for UK cycling, And Steve Peat amongst others.

Ok go to the Redbull Best of Bike 2015 video playlist. Watch the two BMX guys, then DH at Whistler. The DH guys just look a bit gay really.

Does anyone here actually know the state of the industry? Is there a genuine decline? If there is, is it a reversion to the mean after a succesful phase? It certainly doesn’t feel like an industry in distress.

I think the industry’s thinking is certainly diseased but I’m not convinced that’s led to industry-wide problems. Individual bike owners have been shafted, aye, but plenty of others have drunk the kool-aid and queued up to buy the latest “standard” as soon as it came out (you have to; if you leave it 5 minutes it’ll be obsolete)

rOcKeTdOg – Member

£400 mountain bike is basically a BSO

This is rubbish, though.

£200, not a BSO
http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/calibre-crag-mountain-bike-p349189
£250, not a BSO
http://www.halfords.com/cycling/bikes/mountain-bikes/carrera-vengeance-mens-mountain-bike-2015
£250, not a BSO
http://www.decathlon.co.uk/rockrider-520-mountain-bike-id_8293188.html

TBF what would be a problem, would be if potential new riders ask for advice and get told “You can’t get a proper bike for £400”.

‘They took people for granted and they **** it up’.

Absolutely spot on.

And not one dissenting voice in the whole of the British bike media.

The DH guys just look a bit gay really.

Asshat

What about there are so many standards that the public is holding out to see what it settles on. I mean road bikes are all much of a muchness in comparison to mountain bikes.

sirromj – Member
Ok go to the Redbull Best of Bike 2015 video playlist. Watch the two BMX guys, then DH at Whistler. The DH guys just look a bit gay really.

THis

You would say that 😀

As above I blame the manufacturers/media, they’ve said we should have the latest version of bike because it keeps sales fluid. Trouble is only so many people want to ride off-road, and components can be replaced as they wear out,so when said market is saturated how do you keep sales fluid? Reinvent what we’re already riding, make components incompatible with each other,it all gets rather tiresome,I just want to ride my bike!!

They took people for granted and they **** it up

This.

I had a very poor experience with trying to buy a new 2012 (ish) Pivot Mach 5.7 C last year from one particular online shop……the sales dude was so insistent almost to the point that he virtually refused to sell me the bike on the grounds that it would be impossible to buy parts in 12-24 months & he was “doing me a favour”.

Long story short bought the same bike from another shop & that nunpty lost a sale because he was a d1ck & forgot to listen & respect the customers needs & wants.

I’ll certainly NEVER buy anything from that large ish SE dealer & I’m VERY happy with my new bike. I’ve managed to build up a well specced bike by not buying into the latest fad. If I had, the price would have near another grand!