The Bikeconomics (Mega)Thread

Here's the official word from KHS:

KHS distribution to close (unless buyer found)

Published October 8, 2025

RANCHO DOMINGUEZ, Calif. (BRAIN) — The KHS U.S. distribution business will close at the end of the year as its founders, Wen & Susah Hsieh, retire after a half century of running the business.

The KHS and Free Agent bike brands will continue to be sold in other markets, and the brand’s Taiwan factory, United Engineering Corporation, founded by Wen Hsieh’s brother Jack, is a separate business that also will continue. Wayne D. Gray, vice president of the U.S. business, said the U.S. business is talking to several entities interested in buying the distribution business, the U.S. distribution rights to the bike brands, or both. Gray notified vendors of the closing in recent weeks and informed its sales reps earlier this week. The company has already agreed to sell its warehouse in Kentucky and plans to move that warehouse’s contents to its California facility this fall. 

“We will continue to operate as normal until the end of the year,” Gray said. “The reps are on contract until the end of the year and the B2B site will remain in operation.” 

He said after the first of the year the company will considering liquidating its remaining inventory at discount, unless a buyer for the business comes forward.

KHS is one of only two U.S. distributors, along with QBP, that continues to wholesale Shimano parts, along with Shimano’s direct U.S. sales. KHS also distributes dozens of P&A brands. 

The move comes a few week after California distributor Euro-Asia announced it was closing.

Gray said he plans to retire and resume riding his bike every day, unless a new buyer wants him to stay on during a transition.

https://www.mtb-news.de/news/jobrad-stellenabbau/

Jobrad, the biggest bike leasing company in Germany, is reducing it’s workforce. Bike leasing is HUGE in Germany due to the special model that they have there (by company leasing, the employee saves taxes and other work related expenses as does the employer). This means that they don’t see the market going back to normal in the near future…

Speaking of KHS and the comments of didn't they run Astro frames (which I remember too), why do they have a sibling manufacturing company but ran what looked like Astro frames? On the other hand I went to check Astro and all they seem to offer now is electric stuff... 

I know this is the bike econ thread... but it's great to see other outdoor industries doing their damn best to squeeze more money from the same customers. Well done all.

While skier visits are down, they’ve been able to price their products to the point where they’re still making more revenue than the year prior.

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2025/10/07/changes-vail-resorts-2025/

It's particularly relevant because you know they're going to do the exact same thing to their bike park offerings. Honestly I think Vail is destined to charge$150-200 CAD for a Whistler day pass, they just don't want to deal with the public perception backlash by doing it all in one go. 

But from a business standpoint, if they can get the same revenue from a significantly reduced number of riders, that's a lot less trail crew they need to pay for, fewer rental bikes to buy, less patrol to "pay", etc. . It's not like the village needs any help to stay busy from the bike park. 

Yes, I hate Vail resorts too, but you've touched on about 1000 different topics with the pricing of the epic pass, and I think this is a case of prices needing to rise to match market demand. For instance, Spomer posted this excellent video journalism on the Epic Pass in March of this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bfD4NiiMfo&t=410s

The cost of the epic pass has been way, away, way too low for years, which led to an absolute stampede on local resorts by out-of-towners during Covid whenever snow was good (or even okay). The Covid ski years were terrible in terms of traffic, lines, employee shifts, small town pain, etc. Lots of three hour lift lines during those dark days, and employees getting worked to death. I remember the epic pass cost something like 600 or $700 in 2021, but season passes from a single premium resort (Deer Valley, Vail, Steamboat, etc) used to go for as much as $2000 a year. The epic pass gets you into dozens of premium resorts across the country, and could've been priced three or four times higher in 2021 and still sold like hotcakes. Especially when a single day lift pass to those same resorts would cost $200-300. Super weird pricing going on by Vail resorts, without a lot of concern for how it would affect the people further down the food chain.

Especially when you consider that the whole motivation for the creation of the Epic Pass was climate change (how do you continue to generate ticket sales in an increasingly uncertain snow environment), but Vail's solution was to encourage average skiers to burn jet fuel to go skiing by selling a nationwide season pass for 3-4 times less than your local season pass.

Sources: https://parksandtrips.com/current-historic-epic-lift-pass-prices/ and https://www.epicorikon.com/price-history/epic-pass

Northstar has also upped the price of a ticket significantly. 

This this level of profit maximization seems extremely short sighted, I can imagine this having a negative impact on local racing and choking off future demand.

Has any major race series died off in the original time span of the thread? Registrations for CES races are certainly much easier to get lately.

 

A early bird loam pass is 130 less than my pretty small and mediocre local mountain and around 200-250 less than creek (price not out yet).

If I had the time and budget to travel that would surely be the way to go.  But it’s a long drive/flight anywhere on there and my job sucks for getting time off.

I feel like I've seen/heard this a few times from a few different people/places, but a small ski hill near me would make more money from ski lift passes over the holidays (maybe even only a few days worth) than they did for the whole summer of mountain biking. There was a place that was rumoured to make essentially zero profit from lift accessed DH (because ticket prices and rider numbers were low) but they kept it going because of the broader tourism/economic impact (e.g. you make no money on the lift pass, but lots on the food and beers). 

However, it feels like snow sports are only going to get more expensive to run as snow making equipment is required, seasons become shorter, and less terrain is available. Comparatively, the same resorts will have a lot more time to generate income from MTB as the years go by. It sort of makes sense that winter tickets will become more and more expensive over time as the whole ecosystem requires more to offer less. Summer prices will probably have to increase somewhat as everyone develops more infrastructure and more people join in.

The Epic pass was not to help climate change, but to help earn money in a business negatively affected by climate change. 

The pricing is really to discourage the purchase of day tickets and push people into the pass.  At most ski areas near population centers the skier experience went down significantly. 

I worked for an independent hill in the midwest that tried to start a bike park and I couldn't tell you how many times management let us know they make more money on new years eve/day than we brought in altogether. The problem we ran into was because of that and some other factors they essentially stopped investing any money at all in what was supposed to be a growing program from the get go and then wondered why they were making even less money than the previous year.

Long story short starting and operating a bike park the odds aren't in your favor and the costs add up fast.

My understanding is that other than Whistler, no traditional North American ski hill venue was really making money on a bike park directly. At plenty of resorts that aren't quite at Whistler level the real money is in real estate development (I'm not even convinced a bunch of these are profitable as ski resorts), and a bike park can lean into the whole "four season" marketing pitch to sell more condos and timeshares. 

 I hope that bespoke options like Coast Gravity Park and other bike-only products like Highland are the exception and they make enough to operate as-is. 

Agree with Jotegr. No actual knowledge but....

A knowledgeable individual told me that RCR (Resorts of the Canadian Rockies) is best viewed through the lens of a real estate company.

I also think summer operations can keep a few key staff employed year round but even then it's a fraction of winter. Presumably bikers also help keep restaurants etc open as well.

I figure the best feature for summer activities for resorts is employee retention for winter time.  That and I imagine the majority have lots of costs extrapolated in a monthly schedule so bringing in any profits in the off season helps with those.

Best way to become a millionaire in the bike industry is to start with two is probably even more true for operating a bike park.  Definitely need to be a lean operator and that’s not necessarily the forte of winter resort operators.

I imagine highland, ride rock creek/kanuga, and others are “profitable”.  But hard to imagine they’d exist if their founders weren’t starting with considerable capital from previous experiences.  

Thunder Mountain bike park a.k.a. Berkshire East in MA must be doing OK. They are always packed on the weekends, keep building fun stuff, invest in infrastructure, etc. Being close to both Boston and NYC must be working fine for them. IIRC they just acquired a stake in Burke mtn VT, too. 

I can only speak on the Northeast US. But being back into DH for 11 years..My 2 cents. Plattekill back in the late 90's-Mid 2000's was insane. Brought factory riders from all over the world to try it out. They for years now just do ski and weddings in the summer. Mtn. Creek does 4 days a week till late June and then 7 days a week as the waterpark is open till labor day. . It does not cost the much more to run the lift/Staff anyway since they are making bank on the waterpark. AND they do TON's of weddings! Highland is that "Mecca"..In that they are the only place I have ever heard of the uses the WHOLE Mountain for Bikes and have a lift..No ski. But because of it..They can whatever they want for Bikes. Thunder MTN. in Mass. has it's own thing between being SO popular with DH/Enduro peeps and having a GREAT bike shop/Rental fleet. But they also do kids camps, Camping..ETC. I could go on..But I can say that if DH in summer was NOT profitable..There is NO way all these awesome parks would be paying the insurance and doing it! That said, Figuring out what they make on it all..+ food/Drinks..Etc. Good luck. 

On most days at any given resort who runs both bike and ski operations in the West, there are more skiers on the bunny slope alone in the Winter than the entire mountain of mountain bikers in the Summer. 

I’ll go to Angelfire or somewhere to ride bikes and think “dang it’s busy today”. Then you take a ride up any lift in the winter and see a single 50 yard wide run peppered with 30-50 people making their way down at a single moment in time… and it puts it pretty in perspective that bikes have a long way to go to compare to the economics of a successful winter resort season. 

And that doesn’t even get into the rental numbers of bikes vs. winter sports. 

Reading the last few comments this is exactly what I was thinking about. And not from the money perspective. Purely from the perspective of how much people a ski resort can handle slope wise vs. how many riders can it handle trail wise. Or how many trails do you have to have for them to not be COMPLETELY blown out every day, be enjoyable to ride without it being a rider train, how much terrain you need for that, how much work, etc.

Making and grooming ski slopes is a completely different animal to handling mountain biking trails. Thinking about it I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the most economically viable venue would be a good road up a hill below tree line dotted with trails and being served with shuttles. That way the frequency of riding is lower (less trail load) , investments are much cheaper (an old van and a bike trailer) and it's easier to upsell a guide (much more often the trails of this kind are unmarked). This is what's going on in Finale, on Madeira etc. The area served is also much larger in this case, so the variety is bigger. 

I remember being in Whistler and being told that one day in the winter made more money than the whole summer.. Granted, this was 20 years ago and mountain biking can't be bad for them as they keep expanding the bike operations. 

Here in SoCal at Snow Summit, you don't see the overflow parking getting used in the summer like you do almost every weekend in the winter..

The family that owns Thunder has a son that, at least when I worked there, wasone of the top 10 earners in the “clean energy” hedge fund space.

Like some of my favorite southeastern bikeparks, Thunder is a wealth management scheme.  Their goal is to either lose x amount of money every year or break even, thus reducing the tax liabilities for the owners.

The bike park thing is interesting in that so much of it is location dependent. A local ski hill here ran for a bit, even bringing a contractor to build it out and then relying on mostly a team of volunteers to maintain it. The riders were 100% invested in keeping it going. Ultimately though the insurance issue crushed it. Liability is a huge expense for ops that are on private land, who can't be shielded the way county/state/national parks are, nor ski hills that operate in those areas. 

The other bit is bikes. They can be ridden anywhere there's a legal trail to do so. We don't need a lift, the same can't be said for 99.9% of skiers/snowboarders. (The teleskiers can keep their yaps shut. I see you and you are that .1%). Spirit Mountain in Duluth is an interesting case. They run lifts in warm months (unsure if just weekends or not), but there are also climbing trails should you wanna ride em under your own power outside lift days, and at no cost (at least that I know of). You see a mess of long travel trail/enduro bikes in that neck of the woods, and there are many trails outside the park where they're a perfectly reasonable tool for the job. 

This is all to say I'm unsure of the financials on operating a dedicated lift park, but some of it certainly has to be to offset any operating costs/losses through the year. 

One last bit. Looking at the cost of lift passes, I am pretty content with having ditched the snowboard habit I had. Those prices have gotta be figured into the 'why don't more folx ride parks?' during the summer months. Being an enthusiast in this activity is already a spendy proposition. Dropping a couple hundo over a weekend to ride likely isn't everyone's cuppa.

I can't speak for the other side of the Atlantic, but I've spent the last few summers on family holidays in Morzine and resorts near Annecy (with the bike of course). And sure, Morzine has a lot of bikes, but all the resorts are positioning themselves for families and "events" such as Harley owners meets. The lifts are promoted for hikers, and in some places actually exclude bikes. The towns have their pools, golf courses and tennis courts, as well as markets and kiddie play areas, and lots of them are really busy. Us mountain bikers are just a part of the business model

I was in Morzine/area for two weeks this summer and the number of non-riders who were still all over the mountain was quite striking vs in Canada. I'm sure part of that is population density, but I also think the way the lifts and towns and restaurants, etc are laid out make a big difference. While some ski resorts/bike parks have a "village" (Whistler, Sun Peaks, etc), many are stand alone operations separate from the town which makes it way less enticing for families who aren't into biking/skiing. In the alps, you've got the lift (located in the middle of town), which goes over top of 5 different privately owned restaurants, a dairy farm with a restaurant and then more restaurants at the top of the lift.

I'm also not mad at 35 euro lift passes which access the entire Portes du Soleil region, vs $75-90 passes for a single park. Pretty sure my entire two weeks in Morzine was cheaper than a week in Whistler would be (with better food. Lol)

No one has a goal to lose money. Tax write offs just decrease losses by the effective tax rate, they do not somehow make you money. This is a common refrain that the ultra wealthy somehow make money by losing money, but math says nope.

I think ebikes are also going to challenge the bike park business. Not all lifts can take them and why pay for the van style uplift when you have a motor (I'm fascinated to hear that Finale is still uplifting ebikes as I wonder why)

I think the problem with a bike park is that you need to open/start with enough fun trails for every ability to keep customers coming back from the get go.

If a park is established, it has to be way more cost-effective than winter operations. You have no grooming costs, no snowmaking, significantly less operational lifts, limited lessons/coaching compared to winter, less patrollers, no snow safety costs (avalanche mitigation), etc, etc.

The problem is that most American resorts/hills only dip their toes in. They build a couple trails, riders come try them for a day, then don’t need to come back. At the end of the season the book keepers look at the ROI for building those trails and don’t see the value. If the resort had started with 10-15 trails, people would likely come back regularly across seasons. Much bigger up front investment, but at least it has a chance of working. Starting with limited trails is almost guaranteed to fail.

I spent a lot of time in Whistler in the summers 2005-2010. Interestingly and different than most of you, I always heard the bike park was more profitable after operating costs than winter ops?

the 2 main mountains in whistler are private property with restricted access vs. free access all over europe. big difference…