E-bikes sales continue to rise in Switzerland

Over the last few years, e-bikes have become an ever-growing product in the bicycle market. The e-bike market, as a whole, grew by nearly 17% in 2014 when compared with the year before and shows no signs of slowing. A total of 300,000 e-bikes have been sold since their mainstream introduction in 2005. The e-book is a bright light in an otherwise darkening market. Despite growing by 2.4% last year, the bicycle market is struggling and have seen sales fall by nearly 25,000 since 2013 from 350,000.

A contributing factor to this is the removal of a minimum rate by the Swiss National Bank, this now means that the Swiss Franc and the Euro are almost identical which has created a greater incentive to import products from abroad, leaving the Swiss market suffering.

The city bike has managed to maintain its market position as they saw a small 1% decline of sales. It is yet to be seen if the boost in sales of e-bikes will have a positive effect on the number of regular bike being sold but industry experts hope that this will be the case.

Off-road bikes are also struggling; since a high in 2011, the amount of this type of bike being sold has steadily fallen, dropping another 3% in 2014. The government has introduced programs in an attempt to vitalise the market but to no avail so far.

Independent Bike Dealers (IBD) are now responsible for over 80% of all e-bike sales in Switzerland. Despite that number rising since 2008, it still isn’t as high as some other European countries including the Netherlands where nearly 95% of all e-bikes are sold through IBD retail channels.

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