Buying a bike in Hanover: long waiting times
The situation on the bicycle market remains tense even at the beginning of the third year of the corona pandemic. This is also noticeable at the dealers in Hanover. “The situation has tended to become even more difficult,” reports Holger Liebermann, Managing Director of the Schauerte Radhaus in Südstadt. Many manufacturers would no longer state “any binding delivery dates at all”.
Bicycles would have to be ordered with extremely long lead times. Short-term reactions to the current demand are hardly possible. It used to be customary to order in October for the next year. That is no longer possible. “We have to start planning for 2023 and even 2024 now,” explains Liebermann. However, because one does not know exactly what is actually needed, it is “a bit of a gamble”.
Components for derailleur gears are hard to come by
After all, the warehouse is “currently well filled”. There are also bicycles for sale. “But if the color you want isn’t available, you should choose a different one if you don’t want to wait very long for the bike,” advises Liebermann. The bottlenecks for e-bikes are particularly large. And components for derailleur gears are also hard to come by. This is due to the fact that production at a large global Shimano plant in Malaysia has been at a standstill for months due to the corona pandemic.
The Fahrradkontor in the list is also struggling with delivery problems. Managing director Susanne Dörr reports a “very difficult situation”. In some cases, there is still no delivery date for bicycles that were ordered in March 2021. You have to assume that it will take a year and a half before the desired bike can be delivered. “But there are also cases where it goes faster,” says Dörr hope.
E-Bikes: For some models, a waiting period of up to three years
It also looks like “a real problem”, especially with e-bikes, where you have to wait up to three years for certain models. An increased demand meets a scarce supply. This is also reflected in the prices. “Some of these change on a daily basis,” says Dörr. This is also due to the fact that steel and aluminum, for example, have become more expensive. The managing director of the Fahrradkontor has also noticed that it is currently particularly difficult to get parts for derailleur gears.
“The lockdowns in the Far East, some of which lasted for months, had serious consequences for the bicycle market,” explains Florian Böhme, Managing Director of Keha Sport am Steintor. The resulting delivery difficulties at Shimano and other manufacturers would have had an even greater impact than the interim blockade of the Suez Canal in March 2021, where hundreds of ships were unable to continue their journey after an accident. Numerous containers with bicycle components also got caught on these.
Bikes sold quickly three times as expensive as ten years ago
The massive rise in prices for petrol and diesel is by no means a major headache for all sectors. “Due to the resulting energy shortages and rising mobility costs, the Russian war against Ukraine is an additional motivation for many people to get on their bikes,” reports the German Bicycle Industry Association (ZIV), in which most German bicycle manufacturers have joined forces.
He sees the year 2021 as a “great success” – although even more bicycles could be sold if many goods and components for bicycles had not been so scarce.
The number of pedelecs sold has increased from 1.95 to 2 million in 2020. At the same time, the number of bicycles sold without electric assistance fell from 3.09 to 2.7 million. The bottom line is that the number of bikes sold fell from 5.04 million to 4.7 million. According to the ZIV, however, the values from the time before the corona pandemic were exceeded. The year 2020 led to a jump to “a new level”.
The association blamed “massively disrupted supply chains and delivery difficulties” for the decline. “The industry could have achieved a much better result if urgently needed parts had been more readily available,” reports the ZIV.
According to the association, the average selling price of the bicycles was 1395 euros. Within a decade, this “value has rapidly tripled”. The increase can be explained “in the article by the growing market share of pedelecs”. This is now 43 percent and will “continue to rise over the years”, predicts the ZIV.
What is being produced now has long since been sold
The manufacturers require that you order much earlier than was usual in the past. “We don’t know exactly what we need in 2022, but we have to order for 2023,” says Böhme. “Worldwide” the demand for bicycles has increased. What has now been produced is “sold a long time ago”. The current situation means that “in the short term there is only what we have already bought,” explains the Keha Sport managing director. Available is “perhaps not the desired bike. But there are probably bikes for sale.”
At Keha Sport, they stocked up on gravel bikes, among other things, a mixture of racing bike and cross bike that rolls well on both asphalt and dirt roads. Radhaus Schauerte and Fahrradkontor are also following this trend.
By ChristianBoenkamp