I first the proposed that the U.S. cycling industry had entered a new era — one I call Bike 4.0 — way back in February of 2023, and linked it to three previous eras of the bike business dating back to World War II. These I labeled Bike 1.0, Bike 2.0, and so forth.
Then in September of that year, I wrote a follow-up piece refining the model slightly and summarizing how the Bike 4.0 market is fundamentally different than anything that has gone before. This difference shows up in 4 different ways:
- Dilution of the IBD and the proliferation of alternate retailing models; specifically, direct-to-consumer sales by brands like Canyon and many e-bike labels.
- The traditional sales channel is replaced by an omnichannel sales "ecosystem" where buyers can purchase bikes through any channel they choose.
- Complementary to the previous two points, we now have direct sales to consumers by traditional bike suppliers (either through D2C or Click & Collect dealer fulfillment), and
- Vertical integration of suppliers and retailers (bike brands literally buying retail bike shops, as opposed to bike brands merely acting as retail bike shops) by at least some of the largest industry players, as we've seen with Trek, Specialized and the Pon group.
As we come into the spring of 2025, regardless of what your personal politics may be, we are clearly in a national climate of nearly unprecedented economic uncertainty. I say "nearly" because I propose that we had similar levels of turmoil during the global Great Depression of 1929–1939. To be clear, I'm old enough that my parents lived through those years and I don't mean to suggest that times now are anywhere near as tough as they were then (at least not yet, but who knows), merely that the levels of economic chaos are comparable.
As I said at the time, "What's different about Bike 4.0 is not the fish in the ocean, but the water in which they swim." And now, as the cycling industry struggles to adapt to (nearly) unprecedentedly chaotic economic conditions, one thing is certain: in the emerging market reality, "Business As Usual" definitely won't be.
One more time: are bike shops really failing in record numbers?
A 6% closure rate over two years is hardly the tsunami of shuttered businesses that popular opinion would have us believe is currently inundating the IBD landscape.
Part of the effects of the Bike 4.0 business model and current market conditions are that the number of traditional, full-service bike shops appears to be in decline. I've written about this question on several occasions, most recently just a few months ago, in January. It certainly seems that I'm hearing about shops (and suppliers, too, but that's a subject for another time) going out of business a lot more in recent months, but hard evidence has been difficult come by.
Part of the problem, I wrote back then, is that when shops close, they tend to do so quietly, and the news seldom goes beyond the local market that is affected. But thanks to social media, local events can now easily be shared among the larger population. So are we just hearing about it more, or is the industry losing retail businesses at an unprecedented rate?
At the time, I concluded "It certainly seems possible, and, depending on how you read the available evidence, perhaps even likely" that more shops are closing post-covid than has traditionally been the case.
Call that "a definite maybe," if you must, but it's the best I could do at the time.
For sure, there may be other factors at work, First and most important among these being an entire generation of retail business owners about my age who started shops as part of the Bike Boom of the late '60s/early '70s, or the Mountain Bike Boom of the '80s. Now those founders are approaching (or even well into) retirement age. And, unless yours is one of the several hundred businesses lucky enough to be bought out by Trek, Specialized or Pon, a bike shop — even a healthy and successful one — can be a darned hard thing to sell, and all the more so in financially uncertain times.
Like, um, now, for instance.
As I said at the top of this section, hard evidence is difficult to come by. But I recently made the acquaintance of Dave Iltis, who is the publisher of a couple of free-to-consumers magazines, Cycling West and Cycling Utah.
Founded in 1993, the two publications have enjoyed steady success and currently print and distribute some 15M (that's publishing lingo for "thousand") copies in 11 western states, Iltis told me in a phone conversation. And all this during a time when U.S.-based print cycling pubs are down to 10–12 in number, he says, and all other free (what the publishing business calls "controlled circulation") cycling titles have fallen by the wayside completely.
Iltis's magazines are distributed in 425 bike shops in the western US plus 150 coffee shops, libraries, and assorted other businesses.
Here's the point of all this: While other reports of bike shop closures are largely anecdotal, Iltis's have literal hard evidence behind them. This comes in the form of UPS returns of magazines as undeliverable, then subsequently verified via websites or emails. Another source is from distributors or the company itself actually going by to drop off bundles of magazines at bike shops and finding the location permanently closed.
Because these closures are both well documented and taken from a statistically significant sample base (425 dealers out of the approximately 7,700 bike shops nationwide (about five and a half percent), I believe they give us the best evidence to date about bike shop closures, at least in the Western U.S.
Even better, Iltis maintains a list of bike shops that he confirms have gone out of business in the past several years. A word of caution, though: only the first 27 locations (through Roam Industry) were Cycling West/Cycling Utah distribution points from 2023 forward, and those are the only ones Iltis can personally confirm. Consequently, they are the shops used in the piece you're reading now.
Others on the list have been reliably reported by members of the cycling industry Facebook group and other sources, but have not actually been confirmed. Finally, Iltis plans to refresh the list regularly, so you might want to check back from time to time.
But on to business.
"In the past two years," Iltis estimates, "it seems like double the number of shops have closed compared to previous years, maybe more."
But let's take a look at the numbers behind those numbers. Twenty-seven retailer locations out of the Cycling West/Utah Cycling dealer base is just slightly more than a 6% closure rate over a period of about two years. To be sure, many of these are prominent and longstanding business leaders in our industry, such as Bill's Bike and Run in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which closed after 77 years of continuous operation. And some of these are individual locations that are part of larger and still ongoing retail businesses. But a 6% closure rate over two years is hardly the tsunami of shuttered businesses that popular opinion would have us believe is currently inundating the IBD landscape.
Of course there are new bike shops still opening every month. But Iltis estimates these new dealers are only coming on at a ratio of one for every 5–8 shops that are closing. We've previously discussed in this space how many of these new shops are what we might call "nontraditional," that is, existing retail businesses that don't normally sell bikes but have recently taking on a few e-bike units and therefore now appear in those brands' dealer locaters. But all this notwithstanding, the best evidence available to date is that the massive die-off of bike shops is a matter of perception, not reality.
And that's the last I intend to write on this topic for awhile. Meanwhile, the long, hard winter is finally over. And it's time to get on with the long, hard spring.
