MARBLEHEAD — The COVID-19 pandemic has touched some small businesses in surprising ways, as one Marblehead bike shop owner has discovered.
“I’ve been here a long time,” said Marblehead Cycle owner and resident Dan Shuman. “The pandemic has brought a bike boom worldwide. There are more people out riding than ever before, so we’ve been very busy.”
Shuman, who bought Marblehead Cycle in January 2020, has been in the bike business for most of his life. He started as a teenage apprentice at the shop in 1986.
The father of two purchased his first bike store, Salem Cycle, in 2000 and has remained a steady fixture in the local cycling community ever since.
According to Shuman, when the coronavirus pandemic hit the North Shore in March, sales at both his shops skyrocketed.
An incentive for people to spend more time outdoors, coupled with this year’s unusually mild winter, has made for a perfect storm of factors resulting in the most frantic season of bike buying — and bike fixing — he’s ever seen.
“I don’t know how many repairs we’re doing every day, but we’re busy enough where it’s taken a week to 10 days to get them done,” Shuman said. “People are coming from all over for bikes. We have someone coming from Connecticut this weekend.”
A report published in September by market research firm NPD Group found that shortly after the coronavirus pandemic hit stateside last year, U.S. sales of traditional bikes, indoor bikes, bike parts, and other accessories grew a combined 75 percent, resulting in a nearly $1 billion increase in sales compared to April 2019.
“There are no bikes available anywhere in the world right now. They’re so hard to get. I can’t order more Redline (bikes) in any color,” Shuman said. “I have orders with a bunch of different suppliers. I placed a lot of the orders back in May, and most have just started to come in. For a lot of bikes, we won’t see any more until April, May, June, except for sporadically.”
Extremely high demand, plus global factory shutdowns, mean bike parts have become scarce everywhere.
“Manufacturers don’t have the parts to build the bikes because the people that manufacture the parts don’t have the parts,” Shuman said. “Because of the pandemic, factories have shut down.
“Most of the parts are made overseas in Asia, so they got shut down first, then they couldn’t supply the product to the bike companies to build the bikes, and then the shippers got shut down.”
He added that strokes of plain bad luck have also played a part: “A lot of the bikes come on big cargo holds across the ocean, and about a month or two ago, one of those freighters hit a big storm, and about 1,500 containers went over(board).
“It’s just one thing after another.”
Although he’s never seen such a demand during his decades-long career, Shuman said he does have colleagues in the industry who witnessed a similar spike in sales in response to the 1970s oil crisis, during which a petroleum shortage resulted in elevated gas prices that forced many to turn to cheaper modes of transportation.
“Usually when the world has issues, whether it’s a war or there’s a stock market crash or an oil crash, the bike business still does well because people need to get out and ride, and they need transportation,” he said.
However, current demand is already ensuring bikes are less affordable. Just this week, Shuman received a notification from one of his suppliers informing him the company’s prices had risen nearly 15 percent.
Thankfully, most customers have been understanding.
“They’ve been pretty OK with it because there’s nowhere else where they can find (what they need),” he said, noting he does still receive complaints about his business’ strict COVID-19 safety measures, which include asking customers to wait outside the store’s front entrance instead of going inside for assistance.
Although the strain of running two wildly popular bike shops have meant months of little sleep, Shuman said he’s simply grateful to see his business flourish.
“It’s a lot. I don’t get sleep or rest,” Shuman said with a laugh. “Both stores are busy. Usually service this time of year would slow down quite a bit, but it’s still been steady.”
Elyse Carmosino can be reached at [email protected].