Product Code Database
The bike boom or bicycle craze is any of several specific historic periods marked by increased bicycle enthusiasm, popularity, and sales.
Prominent examples include 1819 and 1868, as well as the decades of the 1890s and 1970sthe latter especially in North Americaand the 2010s in the United Kingdom.
During the next 43 years, chiefly in England, inventors continued to explore the concept of human-powered transport, but on vehicles with three or four wheels (called "" and "quadracycles" respectively), which were thought to be more stable since they did not require the balance necessary for two-wheeled vehicles. But none of these achieved much popularity.
Again, England was the only place where the concept remained popular during the early 1870s. But the design changed drastically, with the front wheel becoming larger and larger, and with many other improvements making the ride more comfortable. This type of bicycle was known in its day as the "ordinary", but people later began calling it a "penny-farthing" because of the resemblance of its wheel sizes to the largest and smallest English copper coins of the time; it is also known as a "high-wheel". Front-wheel sizes quickly grew to as much as , and the bicycles were considered by the general public to be quite dangerous. In addition, they were expensive, and thus riders were mostly wealthy young men who formed an elite brotherhood. However, bicycle races were staged and well-attended by the public, which spread interest for the high-wheeler worldwide because of the far-flung British colonies, by the end of the decade. Albert Pope purchased Lallement's original patent and created his "Columbia" bicycle in the U.S. in 1878, and went on to manufacture thousands of bicycles.
September 13, 1892 saw the opening of a Bicycle Railroad between Mount Holly, New Jersey and the H. B. Smith Manufacturing Company in Smithville, NJ during the Mount Holly fair, with 3,000 riders its first week (for amusement instead of commuting).
Coney Island wanted one, and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured one. Several others were built for amusement in Atlantic City, Ocean City and Gloucester City, NJ (the first two in 1893 and last in 1894). In the year 1896, there was simultaneously an increase in bicycle popularity and a severe economic depression. Bicycles were one of the few areas of the economy where sales were growing; people were buying bicycles "whether they could afford them or not". This attracted hundreds of manufacturers into the bicycle business. This increase in production resulted in a downward spiral of market saturation, over-supply and intense price competition. Many bicycle manufacturers, faced with excess inventory and prices too low to make a profit, went out of business. Several dozen bicycle companies consolidated into the American Bicycle Company in 1899.
The application of the internal-combustion engine to the bicycle during the 1890s resulted in the motorcycle.
The boom received a kick start in the mid-1960s with the advent of the Schwinn Sting-Ray and other . Sales reached 4 million units per year for the first time. At the height of the boom, in 1972, 1973, and 1974, more bicycles than automobiles were sold in the U.S.
Factors contributing to the U.S. bike boom included affordable and versatile 10-speed derailleur gears becoming widely available, Bicycle Glossary by Sheldon Brown the arrival of many post-World War II baby boomers at adulthood and demanding inexpensive transportation for recreation and exercise, and increasing interest in reducing pollution. The 1973 oil crisis, which increased the cost of driving an automobile, making bicycle commuting a more attractive option, is commonly assumed to have propelled the bike boom, but in fact, bicycle sales had already peaked when the crisis struck in October, 1973.
The United Kingdom experienced a mountain bike boom during the 1990s. Road bike customers were seen as reluctant to spend money, while the mountain bike market offered new features such as suspensions and materials such as carbon fibre, aluminum and titanium. The market declined coinciding with the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, which made mountain biking more difficult due to land closure. Since then it has barely recovered to the level of its prime years.
In 2016, Simon Mottram of the cycling clothing brand Rapha traced the boom back to the after-effects of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, which closed parts of the Tube and encouraged many commuters onto bicycles. Two years later, the Tour de France started in London on the anniversary of the attack, and the following year Team GB dominated cycling at the Beijing Olympics. He also credits the financial incentive of the Cycle to Work scheme (introduced in 1999), and the increasing emphasis on health and congestion. British Cycling, the sport's governing body, claimed that over "two million people across the country now cycle at least once a week, an all-time high". Halfords, responsible for a third of bikes sold in the UK, reported an increase of sales of 11% up to March 2015. Many customers are younger men, and the most rapidly growing group is women. One of the older men, the architecture writer and cycle campaigner Peter Murray, described how business relationships are created and nurtured during longer rides; the BBC referred to cycling being "the new golf" in this sense." This led to the construction of cycle lane networks in Greater London and later Bee Network.
With the development of technology, the 2010s also saw the rise of bicycle-sharing systems around the world, as well as a surge in popularity for , or e-bikes.
2020 saw a bike boom when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. People looked to bicycles for something to do during quarantine, exercise and as an alternative to public transportation that allowed for physical distancing to minimize the risk of infection. The increase in demand and the impairment of bicycle production worldwide led to shortages of the vehicles. This lasted up until March 2021 with the industry collapsing to 1970s level, commencing with closure of shops caused by rising costs and revenues from manufacturers declining.
21st century
In 2008, some industry analysts saw signs of surging bicycle popularity. The British press cited 2012 as a bike boom, fuelled by the successes that summer of UK cyclists in the Tour de France and at the London Olympics, Bradley Wiggins and Laura Kenny in particular, and the subsequent success in the Tour by Chris Froome.
See also
External links
|
|
