Admittedly, my news article "Don't worry about empty bike stores" contains a steep thesis: "If you've shopped wisely as a retailer, you should probably make it through the 2022 season well in terms of bike sales". This may or may not be true. It very much depends on the individual situation in each bike store. There are manufacturers who can deliver better in the current year. There are manufacturers for whom the logistics card house is literally folding up and there are thousands of bikes almost fully assembled in the warehouse and the few essential parts that are still missing are still waiting without a delivery date commitment. Ultimately, this means that depending on the supplier composition in a bike store, it can look very different whether the shelves are well stocked or whether there is a sheer emptiness.

And: The delivery situation remains unpredictable. Promised delivery dates are still optional. Experience in my bike store shows that bikes that we ordered 18 months ago often don't arrive at all or arrive even later.

As the manager of a bike store, your hair can stand on end when you look at the list of outstanding orders. Or your heart can drop when, from one day to the next, the delivery deadlines for the so-called pre-order slip from the end of March to the end of July or even into the next year. Sometimes I think the most honest thing would be for manufacturers to stop communicating delivery dates altogether. Even that is a reality today, the delivery date of January 31, 2099 actually occurs with our suppliers.

My reaction to this uncertain situation: I try not to panic in commercial terms. I don't think it makes sense to order x times as many bikes in the hope of receiving at least a fraction. Because if they are actually all delivered, there will be an oversupply, which could lead to a price collapse. What has worked so far: I have deepened and improved our supplier relationships, you could call it consolidation. Thanks to many years of collaboration and personal contact, it is easier to estimate what a delivery date is worth.At the same time, I fully support the article "Don't be afraid of empty bike stores". Because there is definitely something to the self-fulfilling prophecy. When many media outlets write that bikes are constantly sold out, many people believe this prediction. At the end of the day, nobody will go into a bike store to buy a bike. And nobody wants that.

About the author: Tobias Gütlin has been managing director of a bike store since 2003. He has been on board as an editor at Ride since 2010. In the blog, he writes about topics from the specialist bike trade and product developments.