The Swiss Bicycle Market Grows By A Quarter in 2020

The Swiss bicycle trade set its highest ever turnover in 2020. Sales of the Dynamot Bicycle Office (Winterthur) are just under 2.4 billion Swiss francs (2.2 billion Euros).

From 2014 to 2020, the sales growth of the Swiss bicycle trade.

Dynamot stated in its industry research Marktbulletin Velohandel Schweiz 2021 that this is equivalent to an increase of 24.4%. This is not inevitable, because the factor of the new crown epidemic has disrupted the global supply chain. Rosenbaum, managing director of Dynamot, said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, more Swiss people began to use "Velo" (Swiss bicycle term) or electric bicycles. In a study at the Technical University of Zurich, from March 2020 Since the beginning of the year, the use of bicycles has increased by more than 200% over the previous year.

Swiss trade ensures availability through warehousing

The main reason for this success is the successful seasonal planning of the Swiss bicycle trade. As bicycle sales have boomed in the summer of 2018, importers and dealers are hoarding inventory throughout the season of 2019. Dynamot calculated that approximately one-fifth of this inventory was carried over to the 2020 season. With these reserves, the bicycle trade can well meet the skyrocketing demand for bicycles and electric bicycles in the spring of 2020.

Swiss deliveries of (electric) bicycles (imports plus Swiss assembly) in 2020 fell by 0.9% to approximately 552,500 units. Especially in the spring, many manufacturers around the world had to shut down operations, the global transportation network came to a standstill, and there was a shortage of supply. Compared with the previous year, the number of completed vehicles delivered to Swiss retailers was made up by the previous backlog.

According to Dynamot, because Swiss retailers can ship from their domestic warehouses, a total of approximately 640,000 new bicycles with and without motors and S-Pedelec may be sold. However, if you are looking for a specific model or want to buy from a specific supplier, you sometimes have to accept a long waiting time or switch to another offer.

High demand for electric bicycles and children's bicycles

Electric bicycles will increase again in 2020. For the first time, more than 200,000 electric bicycles were delivered to the Swiss market. Compared with traditional bicycles in quantity, it is still a minority. However, in terms of sales value, electric bicycles are clearly in the leading position. In 2020, electric bicycles will account for 65% of Swiss bicycle trade sales.

Especially in the case of daily bicycles and mountain bikes, models with auxiliary drives can gain market share from bicycle models. Despite this, traditional bicycles have not died out. From a quantitative point of view, it still has a market share of 63.2%, of which children's bicycles have increased by 2.4%, and the electric bicycle category has even made significant gains.