Brits are spending more on bikes - but buying fewer of them

Without info on price by volume this article simply generates useless speculation about what's happening.

I haven't bought a new cycle since the seventies. In fact, I can't think of a single member of my family who's ever bought a new bicycle from a shop, and yet we all cycle regularly without Mintel ever knowing about it

Personally, I think the best gauge of cycle useage in the UK would be to look at tyre sales, a far more accurate reflection of cycle useage than just the sale of new bikes.

Would be interesting to know what the median is, guess it's about £150, if so then the majority of new bikes are still cr*p.

When we have £50 catalog crap at one end and the recent boom in the mid life crisis brigade dropping up to 5K in one go on carbon it's hard to see how an "average" is a proper indicator of how much people are spending because of the extremes skewing the figures so much.

£233 to £300 how ever will not get you complete rubbish and it's just as usable as some very expensive kit that gets replaced every year by those with deep pockets. Fixed and single speed also skews the figures as perfectly usable bikes are much cheaper in this part of the market.

I am using a cheapy EBC fixed to commute on at the moment, it has in fact saved me money over a geared bike with discs, leaving me with more money to spend on my own kit and lights.

I don't think they need to be cheaper, I think the quality of the really cheap bikes needs to be improved, even if the cost goes up it would make people realise that if you're buying a complete adults bike for £100-£200 you're not likely to get a particularly nice bike to ride.

It's difficult to really draw any valid conclusions from this. Clearly, the average price is heavily weighted by kids bikes and cheaper end tat. The fact that the average has increased by a relatively high percentage could be a sign that higher priced bikes are being sold in greater numbers and pushing the average up (but then again, it might not!).
I'm also a little surprised by the stats on numbers of cyclists - "35% of Britons are cyclists" - really? What classes someone as a cyclist? Anyone who has been on a bike in the last 10 years perhaps?

Quite sobering when used to all these over-specced MAMIL machines to note how much the average Brit actually considers a reasonable amount to spend on a bicycle. They need to be even cheaper if we're going to to encourage more people out of their cars or off their sofas.

Quite sobering when used to all these over-specced MAMIL machines to note how much the average Brit actually considers a reasonable amount to spend on a bicycle. They need to be even cheaper if we're going to to encourage more people out of their cars or off their sofas.

It would be be interesting to know the stats for the average lifespan of a cycle purchased in the UK. However this figure is likely to be hard, if not impossible, to discover.

In this context, I recall a curious factoid in relation to amateur power tools: the typical usage time for an amateur's electric drill is 20 mins before it is junked. No idea how this figure (US stat) was arrived at.

Some of us have some very old bikes, serviceable even if seldom used now. But I doubt that today's £233 bicycle will see much use before it is scrapped.

Well I sell 10-20 second hand ones a week with an average price of maybe £50, there's around a dozen other people in my local area doing the same. Mintel haven't asked me for any figures.

Around 300 notes would be sufficient for a perfectly adequate hybrid or basic Specialised Hardrock for occasional leisure use. That sort of thing tended to be the volume seller where I worked.

It wouldn't blow your mind but it'd be fine, and massively better than the auld shyte from supermarkets. Factor in kids bikes to lower the average down to what it is, and it's not all bad.

It's been 6 years since I worked in the industry but I recall that after years of largely static pricing, bikes all of a sudden went up by a reasonable percentage a few years back, blamed in part on high metal prices due to Chinese demand (but then bikes were arguably too cheap anyway)

For the average to increase despite Internet discounting is a good thing, no?

Second gkam's query... If £233 is an average price, with the figures presumably including a fair number of C2W sales around the grand mark, just how cheap are some people buying bikes, and from where, to still get the average down so low?!

Sad news in a sense, reads to me that a lot of people are probably just buying BSOs and then not particularly enjoying the experience, so probably not carrying on with cycling for very long. Still, you get what you pay for.

Bikes sold through cycle to work schemes would appear as full priced sales as the discount comes from the salary sacrifice of the person buying the bike, not from a discount applied in store.

I'm guessing the figures include kids bikes and that is why the average value is down at £233?

Try finding ANY adult road bike for that price...

Also, does it include the sales of "Cycle to work" bikes in the factoring?