BERLIN/BIELEFELD (dpa-AFX) - The Corona boom for the German bicycle industry is over. The warehouses at the dealers are overflowing, the manufacturers can assemble far more bikes than seem to be saleable on the market after supply chain problems have been overcome. This became clear on Wednesday at the joint press conference of the associations of the bicycle industry (ZIV) and the bicycle trade (VDZ). Interested customers can now rather expect inexpensive offers after three years with scarce supply and hardly negotiable prices. The experts expect demand to remain strong only for e-bikes.

The situation of scarce goods with extremely stable prices has changed into the opposite from fall 2022, reported Thomas Kunz from the VDZ trade association. Domestic manufacturers as well as importers delivered "abruptly" large quantities of bikes, so that models of the 2021, 2022 and partly already 2023 vintages were now simultaneously in the stores. Only in "very isolated cases" were dealers able to cancel or defer their orders. They ultimately had to take delivery of everything they had initially ordered in vain in the Corona years. According to the ZIV, 820,000 more bikes were delivered than sold in Germany last year.

Kunz describes the consequences of the bike flood: after the extreme shortage, retailers now have inventories and binding pre-orders that far exceed the actual annual demand in 2023. "As a result, space and liquidity problems set in at almost all dealers," the association reports. Sales with relatively high discounts had initially started at online suppliers and had now also continued at specialist retailers over the turn of the year.

Particularly in the case of non-motorized bicycles, dealers do not know where the journey is to go with buyers' tighter leisure budgets. Last year, almost every second bicycle sold in Germany had an electric motor. 2.2 million e-bikes represented a 10 percent increase and a sales record, while conventional "bio-bikes" fell by 300,000 to 2.4 million units. The sales record of around 5 million bikes from the first Corona year 2020 thus remained.

The industry's hopes are increasingly resting on e-bikes, which may overtake conventional bikes in sales figures for the first time this year. More and more bike leasing offers through employers are also contributing to this. The stock of motorized bicycles has already grown to more than 10 million units out of a total of just under 83 million bicycles in Germany. They are a "central driver" for a market that continues to grow, says ZIV Managing Director Burkhard Stork. Mountain bikes with powerful e-drives are currently in particularly high demand.

"Leasing has been very helpful in establishing the bicycle as a high-quality means of transport. In the meantime, the e-bike is a status symbol and is often preferred to a sports car," says Volker Dohrmann from bicycle manufacturer Stevens Bikes. Accordingly, customers are willing to pay a lot for their new companions: specialist dealers quote an average price of 3570 euros, while the industry puts the figure at 2800 euros across all sales channels.

The offer at the dealers is more extensive than ever, reports VDZ Vice President Tobias Hempelmann. "Prices have remained extremely stable, so customers will find a very good offer." The dedicated retailer from Lippe does not fear a dampened consumer mood in view of the war, inflation and heating worries. "There are no savings on cars, vacations and bicycles in Germany." Bottlenecks like in the Corona years are not likely to occur, he says, so more discount campaigns can also be expected again at the end of the season. "There we will return to the level of 2019."

The two-wheeler industry in Germany, a high-wage country, has long since drawn the consequences and in 2022 was already building almost twice as many e-bikes (1.72 million units) as conventional bikes (0.9 million) in this country. Most of the latter come to the German market from Asia and fetch an average price of 714 euros at specialist retailers./ceb/DP/mis