There are more people cycling in Italy every year, yet bike sales are not picking up. Many in the industry are waiting for the market to bounce back to what it used to be. According to Guido Rubino, it won't.

Rubino is a journalist, publisher, writer and photographer who has been covering bicycles since 1996 and is the editor of Cyclinside, where he looks at bikes from both a technical and a broader industry perspective. In this episode of From Bike to Business, Bikenomist's series on bikenomics hosted by CEO Paolo Pinzuti, he explains why the old market is gone, and what that means for brands and retailers.

Too expensive, or simply the wrong bikes?

"Bikes cost too much" is the complaint you hear everywhere. But the real question may be a different one: is the market focusing on ultra-high-performance bikes that most cyclists don't actually need?

You don't need a pro-level road bike to ride. The vast majority of cyclists have very different needs from racers: commuting, touring, riding with family, exploring on weekends. When the offer is built around the race bike, much of that demand is left unserved.

A responsibility shared by many

There is no single culprit, but three players have pushed the market in the same direction:

  • The media, which often presents the ultra-performance bike as a status symbol.
  • The hardcore enthusiasts, who want to ride the same bikes they see in races.
  • The manufacturers, who carry the greatest responsibility. They keep offering the same models, betting on road bikes or the latest technology, and hoping the market will return to what it was.

That hope is misplaced. As the episode makes clear, today's customers are very different from those of the past.

The bikenomics lesson

The numbers point in two directions at once: more cyclists, flat sales. That gap is not a crisis of demand but a mismatch between what people want and what the industry offers. Waiting for the old market to come back is a strategy based on nostalgia. The brands and shops that will grow are those that design, price and sell for the new, more varied public: people who ride to travel, to commute, to discover a place, not to race.

Watch the episode with Guido Rubino on Youtube and read the Italian recap on Bikeitalia.