BICYCLE ASSOCIATION Building for the future
The Bicycle Association Market Data Service launched in 2020 after two years of planning and research – the national trade body explains what the service has to offer the industry
T
he Bicycle Association’s Market Data Service was launched in April 2020 after a two year collaboration between the association, the UK
cycling industry members and service providers. It was a real first for the cycling industry, to be able to access game-changing retail sales market insights from the largest ever sample of retailers for a cycling audit in the UK. For the first time, Market Data Service (MDS) gave subscribers access to real, monthly sales data, only one month in arrears, across bikes, parts, accessories, and services, by brand, by price band and across the different sales channels and geographic regions. During what has been a positively tumultuous time for the industry in the last three years, MDS users have been able to keep up with the changing consumer trends driven by the pandemic, understand where their businesses have been gaining or losing share, letting them adjust their strategies accordingly to help them stay competitive. MDS has also started to give the Bicycle Association (BA)
powerful data to help influence Government on policies which support market growth, enabling the BA to use fact- led arguments when lobbying on policies such as 100% Bikeability funding, e-bike purchase incentives and more investment in cycling infrastructure. In London, for example, the BA has been able to identify
that over £160 million of cycling goods and services went through over 200 cycling retailer tills in 2020, supporting nearly 8,000 ‘green’ jobs in cycling-related sectors. The BA has positioned a compelling argument for continued investment in cycling infrastructure to hit the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s 2030 net zero carbon target, which could create an additional 25,000 jobs and around £5 billion of economic benefit as the local industry expands to meet the new demand.
Almost two years on from launch MDS, which is managed by specialist research agency Sports Marketing Surveys, now holds data on over one million products back to January 2018 and market coverage now runs at an unprecedented circa 70% of the UK industry. This includes around 350 specialist and independent retailers such as Rutland Cycling, online direct to consumer businesses such
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as Wiggle, Tredz and Sigma Sports, and over 1,200 generalist stores like Halfords and Decathlon. Alongside individual demos and team training sessions, the BA is now supporting users to interpret the data with monthly newsletters and twice yearly in-depth market reports that combine the market data with other relevant cycling data sources and insights from cycling industry leaders. This unique industry collaboration, along with collecting data from 70% of retailers, has also enabled the BA to calculate the value of the full market at category level and to produce forward forecasts for three years, enabling businesses to sanity check their plans against a credible industry benchmark. The BA is, rightly, incredibly proud of what has been
achieved through working with industry partners and SMS and after nearly three years of operation and listening to users’ feedback, is now looking forward to how the service can be developed over the next five to ten years as part of a project called MDS 2.0. Future changes for the MDS include cloud infrastructure,
new data sets like weather and cycling usage, tailored access from bite-sized reports to raw data feeds, and access to a BA ‘data guru’ who can help retailers interpret trends. Dating back to the 1890s, the Bicycle Association is a national trade body representing the UK cycle trade, with more than 100 members. n
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