Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
Once had someone tell me that it’s not an issue since a few percent joined the upper class.
Jeff’s barbell theory applies to more than bikes.
Here’s the same data with the 2023 bar scaled by 62% to show population growth.
Each segment grew. I’m not sure I see a connection.
Or that only 3% moved to lower class and 8% moved to upper class. Is that not a better situation than back in the day?
I guess the scarier thing is what happened to the missing 1 percent in the 70s? Chart literally totals 99%. Not sure if there is a specific reason for it. Don't see any other indications.
Kinda trying to understand the thresholds they set for the 3 categories. To me what I saw is basically that the upper income category seemed to include dual income families, and that accounts for the large increase from the 70s. But those dual income families are basically what you have to be to own a house in the bigger cities/nicer areas/etc. If the MEDIAN is 250k.
And they are saying the median income of middle class is 100k. Uhhh I'm not sure cuz then that means, many people on the lower end of that spectrum, I guess on the threshold, are either not owning homes or making various sacrifices to do so.
I dunno. Is that really the metric we want to set. That basically everyone below the median of middle class basically can't own a home? Or if they want to do so has to sacrifice everything lol. No vacations no toys no nothin
That sounds like a low income lifestyle to me.
My grandfather was a bus driver and local side hustle handy man. His wife was the cafeteria lady at the local high school. Retired comfortably at 60 with vacation money. Owned a home kn their late 20s. Everyone of their 4 kids own a home. Was a city councilman for several years.
My brother in law is a doctor. But 500k in student loans at 7ish percent means it will be a looooong time before he and my sister’s life actually feels upper class. Add to that the some 30 grand out of pocket they spent on ivf. Do student loans and hcol areas mean that much of the “upper class” is actually living far closer or even less than a middle class lifestyle of yesteryear. Some 20 percent of “high income earners” live paycheck to paycheck. Where 95 percent of their income is spent on necessities.
Let’s also remember income and wealth are entirely separate categories. If that graph showed wealth instead it would look extremely diffirently. The top one percent has approximately 1/3 of Americas wealth. Top 10 percent has approximately 70 percent of Americas wealth and close to 90 percent of s&p 500 and 80 percent of the overall stock market. Meaning 90 percent of Americans are basically worth barely more than their paycheck and maybe their home. At the same time our nation’s government is in catastrophic levels of debt. I believe the numbers for the world as a whole are even more depressing. I have no idea about Europe’s but I’d imagine it’s generally better with a few exceptions.
to bring this conversation back to topic, if the majority of Americans don’t have a lot of income and can only spend a few percent of that on bikes. Is it shocking that the mtb industry is in such dire straits now they aren’t forced outside and subsidized with a Covid stimulus.
To add a bit to the deraillment, houses here on Slovenia, around where I live (let's say the more expensive part of the country) are now well past 300k for a 30+ year old fixer upper where you need about 200k to remodel it to modern standards, or past 500k if you're starting with nothing and buying a grassy field. Apartments of around 70 square meters are... Well 300k-ish. Average net salary in the country is roughly 1600 €, almost 1700 in the public sector and about 1500 in the private sector. The median is much lower than that.
Without earning BIG bucks, saving and investing smartly (bitcoin 10+ years ago), inheriting or all of the above, it's hard to imagine even affording a place to live, let alone having hobbies besides that.
Netflix is buying Warner Brothers.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-warner-bros-deal-hollywood-1236443081/
Edit to clarify, only Warner Brothers is being bought while Discovery becomes Discovery Global with sports included.
Just saw something on FB about Ducati jumping into bicycles next year.. Will we see something cool or just generic bikes with Ducati logos?
Just a timely reminder that finance does not equal economics, and that there are many disciplines of economics, many of which do a much better job explaining the human condition and the condition of the planet.
Development Economics and Ecological Economics are both valuable heterdox disciplines that give us more tools to understand the world.
A recent integrated multidisciplinary approach is the Donut Theory- it allows you to visualize real costs and carrying capacity of systems instead of just dollar signs. The global bicycle industry is fundamentally broken from a first-principles perspective Corporations, like Governments will need to re-make themselves if civilization will continue.
The California Donut Economics Coalition has done a great job with their visualizations.
https://caldec.org/ca-doughnut-snapshot/
https://doughnuteconomics.org/themes/business-enterprise
https://www.rideapart.com/news/780520/ducati-high-end-bicycles-coming-2…
For those speculating on Felt bringing along some cool mountain bikes in the near future, don't count on it.
"Felt’s relaunch centers on reducing complexity and maximizing excellence. Full focus. The brand is fully committed to high-performance drop-bar bikes, road, triathlon, track, and gravel. It’s a return to the discipline and places where the company has historically shaped podiums, won gold, and set speed benchmarks.
Beginning Spring 2026, dealers will see the first results from the new Barcelona-based R&D team: two all-new platforms in aero road and gravel, engineered from the ground up to push category benchmarks in handling precision and aerodynamic efficiency. Every model in the 2025 line will be refined for 2026/27, including a new design language, visual identity, and racing-driven geometry."
Sponsored content article, so it is free to everyone: https://www.bike-eu.com/51194/felts-new-strategy-dealer-partnerships-an…
They've done some pretty cool stuff in the past, would be cool to see them pushing boundaries again:
Of course finance is only one lens for understanding complex systems, and I don’t think anyone believes it’s the only valid one. But models like this still don’t pass the sniff test for me, and it comes down to the limits of forecasting.
Even in small businesses, where the variables are relatively contained, forecasting a KPI more than 12 months out becomes highly unreliable. Errors compound quickly. I’m studying this formally right now in a post-grad ML/AI program at UT-Austin, and even with sophisticated models, uncertainty escalates fast as you push out the horizon.
When we take something far more complex, environmental impact across entire economiesm and try to turn it into precise, long-range cost estimates, the compounded error becomes enormous. At that point, the outputs end up being used more to drive narrative than to make decisions. One group sees them as proof we aren’t doing enough; the other dismisses the numbers as unrealistic. The result isn’t productive dialogue or effective action... it’s "thanksgiving table carnage" and polarization.
Don't misread, this isn’t an argument against environmental responsibility. Companies absolutely shouldn’t operate without regard for ecological impact. But meaningful progress tends to come from clear, targeted policy and enforceable regulation, not from academic world-models that aren’t built for real-world decision making. These frameworks can inform discussions (and be used in part by legislators), but they’re not something a business can practically run on, especially in highly competitive global markets.
A recent example highlights why I’m cautious: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/business/economy/study-climate-damage-retracted.html
This study was cited thousands of times to justify climate-related economic projections, yet the underlying data was flawed enough that the entire paper was (just) withdrawn, kind of showing my point here.
To be clear, I’m glad Mickey shared this, the topic is important. I just (probably predictably) don’t think this particular modeling approach gets us closer to solutions that can actually be implemented.
RE: The consumer
First, credit where it’s due (I love you guys, man! lol) - this group is reading the consumer better than most. I’ve had consumer health as the number one driver going into 2026 for a while now. I was actually on another podcast last week trying to raise the topic (I’m turning those data points into a Substack post), and the host brushed it off as “too soft.”
From my POV, y'all are exactly right that 2026 and beyond will hinge on the strength of the consumer. The smartest brands will identify where that strength is concentrated and lean in, while also recognizing areas of weakness and adjusting the product pipeline accordingly.
In a way, this lines up naturally with the barbell mental model. We tend to forget how fundamentally wealthy this sport is, but if we want to achieve the CAGR numbers often mentioned in this thread, a confident, “rich-feeling” "middle class" (and younger lower class) consumer is critical.
Jeff,
As a human who gets paid to help people sell bicycles, I am much more interested in the metrics that relate to human flourishing, not ecological carrying capacity. Consumers can’t consume if they are precarious- and the precarity of the American Consumer is hard to deny.
It takes more than looking at GDP to understand consumers- dashboards like this are imminently useful for understanding the economic fricitions that are creating the overwhelming suffering and lack of opportunities for consumers.
I hear you, understanding consumer precarity matters, and I agree that headline metrics like GDP don’t capture the lived reality for many households. Consumers absolutely can’t participate in discretionary categories like cycling if they feel unstable.
Where I diverge a bit is in the framing of “overwhelming suffering and lack of opportunities.” I don’t want to minimize anyone’s challenges, consumer stress is real, and unevenly distributed, but relative to almost any point in history, opportunity, access, and quality of life are still comparatively high. That context matters. If we overcorrect the narrative, we risk drawing conclusions or building models that don’t accurately reflect how consumers actually behave nor the benchmarked reality.
That’s also where these broad flourishing/carrying-capacity dashboards fall short for me. They’re directionally interesting, but again, they abstract so much complexity that the signal becomes hard to interpret. Rolling ecological, social and economic indicators into a single worldview makes it harder, not easier, to understand what’s actionable for a bike brand.
In practice, I’ve found that companies get clearer insight by focusing on concrete, measurable behaviors: cohort spending patterns, income stratification within the category, financing usage, elasticity at different price points, shifts in participation, etc. Those tend to map far more directly to decisions that actually move the needle.
So yes, consumer stability is 100% critical (see my above point and get ready for my deep dive substack post). I just think we need to be careful not to let the narrative outrun the data, or we risk losing the nuance that makes analysis useful.
I'm genuinely curious how the economics of e-bikes may differ from that of acoustic bikes. As in, do they stress a company more on the supply side by tying up capital for longer, with less potential revenue for that risk.
I think you have to release an ABYSMAL product to have an ebike be a risk right now. From what I've heard, eBikes have been a great way for brands to stay afloat through all this pain and suffering. It SUCKS to think about but... It's probably the normal bikes that are the bigger risk still, particularly if you're trying to do mid range builds or trying to compete in the budget bike market, in the age of D2C. I feel like almost every conversation kinda ties back into the barbell theory from Brines. The bikes I see most out on the trails are like fox factory carbon ebikes... And base alloy Stumpys. And I think our lens for that gets skewed by being enthusiasts. Where we totally have a bunch of friends who own 4k-5k mid range bikes. But even a large survey like Vital's will be a drop in the bucket of the GLOBAL market, if you will.
That said I'd love to hear about a brand that did release a terrible ebike that didn't sell, and it bit them in the ass. Cuz it seems like you can sell any ebike (given how some of the commuter models look) right now... But the people buying normal bikes are much more picky. And much more likely to shop discounts. I could imagine, statistically, people even looking at e-bikes are people already comfortable with buying MSRP. To get the exact bike they want.
It would have been funnier if you posted a bike Tim designed and called it uncool, just to mess with him. Oh well.
From the finance side its pretty much the same. Yes, you are tying up more capital, and there are some additional logistics headaches (heavier box, batteries), and yes you need to add some (expensive SKUs) to inventory for support, but the reality is you are selling a more expensive, more in demand (often) product at a higher net price, where margins are usually still in line with non-eeb varieties. Hence, you are making more net dollars per sale.
TL;DR - they don't really add stress, unless of course you can't move them. Then, its no different than not being able to move any other product...except you've probably tied up more capital. (see also: KTM going bankrupt)
Higher unit costs = requirement to access more capital if you want move the same number of units. The CAPEX/OPEX side changes slightly but not significantly compared to regular bikes; you're still selling what is essentially a bicycle albeit a more expensive one.
it's like when cannondale made motorcycles but in reverse.
Ah, I was curious if the net was actually scaled according to value for an e-bike, or in the interests of competitive pricing they ran a per unit target profit. Hence my assumption that manufacturers were tying up more money for longer, without realizing an equivalent profit to cover their risk.
🤔 what happened in 1971? 🤔
I have always wondered if that could've worked out a little better if they had gone with a motor from a company like Rotax...
I don't know if you're just being sarcastic and already had an answer in mind, but "what happened in 1970" is one of the most hotly contested questions in macroeconomics. Was it automation? Globalization and trade? Women entering the workforce en masse? Taxation and income policy? New capital markets? Money in politics? Greater reliance on government deficits?
Answering this question is super important for raising the quality of life of the median person, but unfortunately if you ask two macroeconomists right now you'll get five different answers, and no one's really winning the argument. I have an opinion on the right answer to this question, but you won't be surprised to hear that my economic theory aligns with my political beliefs (like everyone else).
Note: this graph is only data for US real wages and producitivity, but the same pattern applies across OECD countries
1971 Nixon announced he was visiting China. 1972 it happened. An event so landmark it even spawned a John Adams Opera. I'd argue that the opening up of China to the geopolitical stage was landmark, mainly because China (unlike the other 2nd world powers at the time) was willing to leverage the power of its government, resources, and labor, for the benefit of Capitalistic countries. Globalization soon came after, and most 1st world countries economies became increasingly untethered to the actual production of goods. Couple that with the pushback against unions and strikes and you have a new found societal pressure of "we could offshore your work" that I do believe made people more passive in accepting income inequality.
I'm not here trying to take a stance on globalization, more just highlighting that it happened.
I don't really have much to add that I'd want to type out into a mountain bike form tread. All I really wanted to do is say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty is a pretty good read. I'd recommend it.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
I immediately assumed this.
...and no, I really don't know what happened.
Got it, wasn't aware of that site. I guess we can add "the end of the Bretton Woods system and the final nail in the coffin of the half-dead zombie gold standard" to the list of theories of what happened in 1970 (or 1971).
Every time I come to this thread I learn things.... (Which is a good thing to be clear)
Post a reply to: The Bikeconomics (Mega)Thread