BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
The Bicycle Association (BA) has announced the soft-launch of its market data service, offering UK sales data covering bikes, parts, accessories, and services.
Users will be able to compare their own data to market and sector averages down to a category, sub-category, and SKU level in some areas, and data can also be filtered by price band, by channel, by region or retailer-type.
BA executive director Steve Garidis said: “Customers, trading conditions, and market trends in cycling have never evolved faster.
“And the cycling industry has never been more diverse and competitive. Cycling is changing and growing: for sport, for leisure, for health and for transport.
“Now our industry needs accurate market data more than ever – to underpin our advocacy work, and to strengthen UK cycling businesses.
“That’s why the Bicycle Association has developed this service – on a not-for-profit basis – designed to be as low cost and accessible as possible.”
The total cost, underwritten by the Association on behalf of the industry, will be recouped through BA members subscribing to the service, with the more members subscribing, the lower the costs.
It will be free to bike shops with a turnover of under £5 million, and the BA has spent eight months building the support and infrastructure needed to offer the service.
It has recruited by competitive tender a specialist data partner, Sports Marketing Surveys (SMS), who will produce a detailed monthly reporting service available via a dynamic online dashboard.
SMS will handle all the raw data on behalf of the Association and ensure with a wide range of measures that all data will remain anonymous, accurate, and reliable.
BA associate director, Simon Irons, who was previously Group Cycling Director at Halfords and has led the project, said: “We have developed the service taking the best of what we have seen from other sectors like UK Grocery, where market data has long been established as an essential benchmarking tool to help businesses improve their sales and profitability performance, but also most importantly by working closely with a number of our members including independent bike shops, brands and large multi-store retailers so we can ensure that the Service is both high quality and completely tailored to their needs.”
The service already has support from leading retailers, brands, and distributors within the BA membership, and the soft-launch period, January to March, will be used to recruit further afield.
The service will be free during the soft launch period and anyone who signs up to the reporting service prior to 31st March will get a lifetime free upgrade to the silver level version of the dashboard.
The Association has said it is targeting 70 per cent coverage of the market by the end of the first year.
