The shelves in Bill Lewis’ small shop in Albany, N.Y., are lined with water bottles and assorted bicycle components. Trek mountain bikes and road bikes stand in racks and hang from hooks in the ceiling.
Set apart is a yellow jersey, framed and mounted behind glass on one wall.
It’s a salute to the Tour de France and to Lance Armstrong, the man Lewis and others say is leading a resurgence in cycling–and sales of road bikes.
Call it The Lance Effect.
“If someone comes in here and asks for a road bike, I don’t have much left to show them,” Lewis says.
While bicycle sales overall have been relatively flat, shop sales of street bikes–mostly high-end products designed for long, serious rides–rose 8 percent in 2003, according to the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association. The industry group tracks sales in bicycle shops–not bikes sold at mass-market stores such as Wal-Mart.
At the same time, mountain bike sales–the biggest seller through the 1990s–fell off almost 22 percent.
Mountain bikes are still the bulk of sales at most shops and made up 51 percent of all units sold from a shop in 2003, according to the association. But that was down from 53 percent the year before.
Of course, Armstrong–the cancer-survivor who wrapped up a record sixth Tour de France win in July–is only part of the story of the road-bike’s turnaround, says Marc Sani, publisher of the trade magazine Bike Retailer and Industry News.
For instance, there are aging Baby Boomers, many of whom have disposable income and sore knees from years of hard-impact sports such as running.
And communities across the country are spending more on bicycle paths and bike-friendly road designs.
“It’s hard to really point directly and say that because of Lance Armstrong, we’ve sold this many bikes,” says Fred Clements of the National Bicycle Dealers Association. “But it’s maybe not a big coincidence that we’ve been selling more and more road bikes.”
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Edited by Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com) and Drew Sottardi (dsottardi@tribune.com)
