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Generally mild weather over the past month has caused cyclists in the Aurora area to hit the road a little earlier this year.
“I take advantage of the warm days as well as the not-so-hot days,” said Jake Anderson, a cycling enthusiast who lives in Aurora. “I ride at least once a week, except when the temperature is in the single digits. I feel like there’s been a bonus of sorts in terms of riding this year. I see more people outside when I go.”
A new study co-authored by a researcher at the University of Central Florida found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to an increase in people wanting to ride bikes in the United States.”
The findings, which recently appeared in Nature Scientific Reports, were based on a review of data from the COVID-19 and Future Study conducted by Arizona State University and locally here at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
St. Louis, who has operated Mill Race Cyclery in Geneva for decades. Local bike shop owners like Bruce Heidlauf of St. Charles say they don’t need a university study to show how interest in the bike industry has changed.
“I feel like COVID really sparked a lot of interest and things have been going almost gangsta since then,” Heidlauf said. “The warm weather we experienced this winter was both good and bad for us. Bike sales were very strong and business took off quickly in February. It was the best February in our store’s history. It’s challenging because you’ve got your winter team and it’s April weather and it’s been really intense. Everyone wants bikes for the weekend and you don’t have the full squad.”
Mike Farrell, owner of Prairie Path Cycles in Batavia, said he has been in business for 32 years and acknowledged that foot traffic, including e-bike sales, has been strong since the pandemic, saying “it accounts for about 40% of our business.” dollars – not units leaving the store.”
He said there was also a boom in repair work.
“I will spend such a winter whenever I want. Midwest dealers are always on the lookout; you have minimal to no cash flow for four months, but our recent weather has made things more consistent,” Farrell said. “It’s always been that way. If the weather’s nice, sales go up, but with all those COVID bikes being sold, it’s affected the herd of repairs we’ve been doing this year. Repairs have increased significantly in the last two months.
“Two years ago people might not have realized they needed to bring their bike in for a tune-up, but now they’re coming in a year or more later,” he said.
Retailers like Mike Brackett of North Aurora, owner of Pedal and Spoke Ltd. in North Aurora, said manufacturers’ overstocks have led to never-before-seen sales incentives on bikes.
“This has also been a good winter for us, and although I haven’t looked at the numbers, I’m guessing this February was one of our best winters as well,” Brackett said. “We were estimating the need for inventory and similar issues. It’s been hard to figure out what that would be over the last few years. First, you don’t get anything, now some have too much. Manufacturers have excess stock. “We have never had this much sales from any manufacturer.”
Brackett said there was a good amount of business this winter, mostly from regular cyclists.
“The people who come in and want things are people who have ridden bikes before and are dying to get out,” he said.
E-bike sales are “easily up 100% from what they were before,” Brackett said, but they’re not the best-selling product.
“It’s a recreational bike right now — our gravel bike, our all-terrain bike — it’s probably our best seller right now. It’s a fitness, adventure bike,” he said.
For those who haven’t ridden a bike in years, Brackett said new customers will find the bikes are “lighter, faster, more focused on 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 more comfortable, more enjoyable,” he said.
Serious riders now often own more than one bike, Farrell said.
“The most popular bike today is the road bike, which is a gravel bike that is experiencing real growth in exposure and is more versatile,” Farrell added. “There are more specialized bikes today, and if people start cycling they will have at least two bikes. I would say 50% to 60% of people interested in this today have two bikes, which is something we didn’t see that much of 10 years ago.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
