The generally mild weather over the past month or so has Aurora area bicyclists hitting the trails a little earlier this year.
“I take advantage of warm days as well as the days that aren’t so warm,” said Jake Anderson, a bicycling enthusiast who lives in Aurora. “I’ve been riding at least once a week except for that spell where we had temperatures in single digits. I feel that in terms of riding there has been kind of a bonus this year. I do see more people out when I go.”
A new study co-authored by a University of Central Florida researcher found that “the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an increase of people willing to cycle in the U.S.”
The findings, which recently appeared in Nature Scientific Reports, were based on examining data from the COVID-19 and the Future Survey conducted by Arizona State University and here locally by the University of Illinois Chicago.
Local bike shop owners like Bruce Heidlauf of St. Charles, who has operated the Mill Race Cyclery in Geneva for decades, say they don’t need a university study to show how the interest in the bike industry has changed.
“I feel like COVID really kick-started a lot of interest and things have pretty much been going gangbusters ever since,” Heidlauf said. “The warm weather we’ve had this winter has been good and bad for us. Bike sales have been crazy busy and in February things just took off. It was the best February in the history of our store. It’s challenging because you have winter staff and April weather and it was really busy. Everybody wants their bikes for the weekend and you don’t have your full staff.”
Mike Farrell, owner of Prairie Path Cycles in Batavia, said he has been in business 32 years and agrees that foot traffic has been strong since the pandemic, including sales of e-bikes which he said “make up about 40% of our business in dollars – not units going out of the store.”
The repair business is also booming, he said.
“I’ll take a winter like this anytime. The Midwest dealers are always on edge – you’ve got four months of minimum-to-no cash flow but our recent weather made things more consistent,” Farrell said. “That’s always been the case. If the weather’s balmy, sales go up but because of all those COVID bikes that were sold, it affected the swarm of repairs we got this year. Repairs are way up the past two months.
“Two years ago, people might not have realized the need to bring their bike is for a tune-up but now a year or more later, they’re coming in,” he said.
Retailers like Mike Brackett of North Aurora, owner of Pedal and Spoke Ltd. in North Aurora, said manufacturers’ overstock has led to sales incentives on bikes like he’s never seen before.
“This has also been a good winter for us and while I haven’t looked at the numbers I’d guess that this February was also one of our best,” Brackett said. “As far as inventory and so forth, we kind of anticipated the need. For the past couple of years, it’s been hard to figure what it’s going to be. First, you can’t get anything, and now some have too much. Manufactures have a glut of inventory. We’ve never had as many manufacturer sales ever.”
Brackett said there has been a good amount of business this winter, mostly from regular riders.
“The people coming in and wanting things are those that have been riders already and are just anxious to get out,” he said.
E-bike sales, Brackett said, “are easily up 100% over what they were” but not the top-selling item.
“Right now, a recreational bike – our gravel bike, an all-surface riding bike – is probably our best seller right now. It’s a fitness, adventure bike,” he said.
For those who haven’t ridden for years, Brackett said new customers will find that bikes are “lighter, they’re faster, they’re more dialed in to what you want to do.”
“Years ago, you bought a bike for all different types of riding and now you have many different classifications – more specificity, so it’s more comfortable, more enjoyable,” he said.
Farrell said serious riders now often own more than one bike.
“The hottest bike today is a road bike – a gravel bike, which has experienced a real growth in exposure and is more versatile,” Farrell added. “Today there are more specialized bikes, and if people get into cycling, they’ll have at least two bikes. I’d say 50% to 60% people who are into it have two bikes today which was something we didn’t see as much 10 years ago.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
