By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
While business in general has been slowed by the pandemic, demand has exceeded supply Sitka’s Yellow Jersey bike shop.
When the pandemic hit in the spring, there was a spike in the demand for bicycles, said Yellow Jersey shop owner Bill Hughes.
“They bought all the bikes we had and they also bought all the bikes in the United States!” Hughes said.
Yellow Jersey bike mechanic James Pelletier said the virus lockdowns led many people to buy new bikes and also to fix up old ones.
“Everybody is stuck inside and they figure that ‘I can get outside a little bit and exercise,’” Pelletier said, “Every bike in the country was bought out very quickly.”
He noted that once the supply of new bikes dried up, people began to rehabilitate older bicycles, which often require repairs to make them safe to ride.
“So people start digging out their under-the-ocean basement finds, these old bikes that need a lot of work, and all of a sudden parts start drying up,” Pelletier said.
James Pelletier, Yellow Jersey bicycle mechanic, is surrounded by cycles waiting to be repaired as he points to empty display racks at the Harbor Drive store. The main showroom rack, which can hold two dozen new bicycles, now holds only three bicycles (including an unclaimed special-order $5,000 electric mountain bike) for sale. A nationwide supply chain disruption of bicycles and parts is not expected to be alleviated any time soon. Pelletier has sometimes resorted to bartering with other shops for parts. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
He said that now, with spare parts hard to come by, he has resorted to bartering with other shops.
“It has come to the point where bicycle shops have been bartering with each other for parts. I’ll trade a tube for a derailleur kind of deal. There is no real clear answer as to when this is supposed to end. The past two months it has been far more acute,” he said.
The vast majority of bicycles and components in America are imported from countries such as Japan, China, and Taiwan. These nations all instituted strict COVID-19 lockdowns in the spring, thus reducing factory output, according to a September 6 statement by the trade journal Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.
“At the start of the second quarter (spring) this year imports were down due to delays at Asian factories as they responded to the pandemic...Unexpectedly, consumer demand for bikes exploded in late March and early April, and suppliers responded by ordering more bikes, which can take up to three months to arrive from Asia,” the report stated.
The industry report also confirmed that the parts shortage now impacting Sitka cyclists is a large scale problem.
“Many suppliers are finding that short supply of critical components in Asia – everything from saddles to low-priced derailleurs and pedals -- is slowing bike production,” reads the report.
Pelletier summarized the situation.
“You have greatly diminished production topped off with an incredible demand increase,” he said.
He compared the current state of the cycling industry to the infamous toilet paper shortage which occurred in the spring as people prepared for lockdown.
Pelletier added that, while parts are scarce, he has yet to “hit panic mode.”
Hughes noted with a laugh that the second quarter this year was stellar for his shop, as bikes flew out the door. Now, the shop has only four adult bikes remaining in stock. One of these is a $6,000 electronic bike, a special order which Pelletier joked may be the last one for sale in the United States.
“We’re just dead in the water here, we try to do repairs but we can’t get parts,” Hughes said.
He noted that he placed a $26,000 order for bikes back in July. So far, he said, he has received only a few, and those were not the ones he ordered.
Hughes recommends that people with older bikes in need of maintenance should not sell them until they are certain that a new one is on the way. For now, repairs and maintenance dominate shop business.
“You can bring them in and we can try to patch them together,” he said.
Pelletier said that from a fiscal perspective he’s concerned, but things could be worse.
“We’re obviously taking a hit, but we’re not doing as badly as some places. There are bike shops down south that are closed, not coming back,” he said.
With supply chains backed up and bicycle back-order lists double their normal length, Pelletier said, any return to normalcy will take months.
“I don’t see any real normalization until May, June,” he said.
