BA releases first results from its UK Market data service

Following months of preparation and collaboration with Sports Marketing Surveys, The Bicycle Association is delighted to unveil the first insights from its UK market data programme.

The findings reveal that sales for the first six months of 2019 are down – 4.8% in volume against 2018. What is more promising is that value sales are broadly flat, at only -0.5% down, suggesting that the industry is successfully finding ways of growing the average transaction and product value.

The results are drawn from over 650 cycling doors across the UK and include totals for over 263,000 individual SKUs covering an estimated 35% of the market by value. The BA is targeting 70% market coverage by the end of the first year. The figures cover the full array of cycling equipment and services: bikes; e-bikes; parts, accessories and clothing; micro-mobility (scooters etc); services, repair & labour.

To generate the findings, participating retailers share results down to model level privately and securely with Sports Marketing Surveys, who aggregate and verify the results on behalf of the BA. Historic data has been collected back to January 2018.

Steve Garidis, BA executive director, notes: “We are delighted with the active support and encouragement we have had from so many brands, distributors and retailers of all sizes over the last 12 months. Today’s results are an important and exciting first step in revolutionising the cycling market for those supporters as well as the wider industry.

“Better data gives us more accurate and independent figures to build a stronger case for cycling at local and national level. We look forward to releasing the full, anonymised data set to all those who have supported us so far in the near future, and at the same time, we are welcoming more data providers and subscribers into the service every day, to help provide more and more robust findings.”

John Bushell, managing director of Sports Marketing Surveys added: “We are proud to have worked closely with the Bicycle Association to deliver this valuable advance for the UK cycling trade. We are in the final stages of checking the data at category, channel and regional level, and once that is done, we look forward to supporting service users to help them get the most benefit from the findings.”

The next step is the release of granular data to those data providers and buyers who have supported the service to launch. One of the key features of the service is the ability for users to easily benchmark their own performance against the market and their peers enabling the identification of previously unknown areas of underperformance and therefore opportunity. This analysis will be available within the interactive on-line dashboard that has been developed to provide a cutting-edge reporting tool for service users.

Simon Irons, associate director at the BA, said: “We are delighted with the interest shown so far and encourage those who have not yet signed up to register to access more detailed insights.”