People in the bike industry are not to be envied. Since the Covid pandemic, no stone has been left unturned. The corona boost has led to full tills and empty warehouses. Three years later, the situation was exactly the opposite: empty tills and full warehouses. The result: many companies are now on the edge of the abyss. From Chur to China, from small specialist retailers to global frame and component manufacturers.

The cause of this disaster is a primal human emotion: greed. The bicycle industry has succumbed to the allure of insatiability. After the pandemic, people believed that the trees were growing into the sky. And now they are paying the price.
In principle, greed is nothing more than excessive growth. And growth is vital for a company to be innovative, to develop, to improve. If growth turns into greed, it becomes a trap. And this has snapped shut in the bicycle industry.

Everyone could have seen the scenario, it was a crash with an announcement. But after the turbulent Covid sales, nobody wanted to give up a slice of the cake. Because if you didn't jump into the gap in the market yourself, the competition was just around the corner. That's why bike stores ordered too much and manufacturers produced too much. Nobody wanted to be at the back of the queue, and this inevitably led to overproduction and open-eyed disaster.

The unfortunate situation in the bike industry could have been avoided if we had all been content with healthy growth. But the post-Covid gold-rush mood made us sick. We didn't just want a little more, we wanted a lot more. And we didn't want to give up a piece of the pie. The virus that hit the bike industry during the pandemic was greed. And there is no vaccination against it.