More than 30 million bicycles circulate in Spain, of which approximately one million are electric, and around three million electric scooters. Maintaining and repairing such a fleet of vehicles of the so-called new mobility shows very interesting figures.
To get an idea, you just have to multiply the number of bikes and scooters by what it costs on average to do at least one annual maintenance: 50 euros for the muscular bike, 100 euros in the other two cases. They are 1,500 million euros for the first and 400 for the other two. And that if you don’t have to add some more expensive repair.
Such amounts have not gone unnoticed by the members of a sector that has got down to work to take positions and strengthen its presence.
The big brands have launched their own spaces in their workshops for these repairs; traditional workshops reinforce their staff and startups have emerged that have mobile workshops to fix the bike at home and that also repair the fleets of the companies that have them.
Euromaster, Norauto and Midas have created spaces in their centers to repair these vehicles
Among the first is euromaster, which has just opened its first workshop specialized in repairing bicycles, electric bicycles and scooters in Seville. It is like a pilot with which “Euromaster is going to study the development of this activity in the franchisee with the aim of extending this service to other workshops”, company sources explain.
Rafael Flores, owner of Dakar, the franchised workshop in Seville, has made an investment of around 60,000 euros in which he has had the support of Euromaster and has hired a person who is in charge of repairs. “It hasn’t stopped since we opened,” he says.
On Norauto They have been selling and maintaining these vehicles for more than 12 years, but it is now that “we have begun to modify the layout of our stores, giving more space to this type of product and we have already opened two specific repair workshops for bicycle maintenance and repair and scooters at our centers in Majadahonda (Madrid) and Aldaya (Valencia)”, explains Javier Viñals, head of the mobility market for Spain and Portugal at Norauto.
Both will serve as “pilot for a duplication plan to about 40% of our network in the future, and with one of our technicians dedicated exclusively”. The company expects from this project “an average return of 30% and an additional billing per point of sale of around 100,000 euros”.
Midas, for its part, created Midas City in Madrid in 2020, a pioneering workshop for the repair of these vehicles. This has been followed by another 9 centers spread throughout Spain that have adapted their spaces to attend to the new mobility. “The services linked to this type of vehicle already represent 14% of the volume of sales, with the prospect of growing to 20%”, figures that encourage “training more workshops to offer these services”, they report from the company .
Specialize and at home
Other smaller workshops have also noted the increase in the volume of business. Jesús Zarcero, owner of the repair shop bike with wings Madrid, has doubled the turnover of his business and has hired more staff to deal with a “work that has doubled in the last two years” due to the pandemic.
Now it is waiting for the market to stabilize to grow. “I have a plan to specialize in suspensions and home workshops,” he says.
El Guru de la Bici gives online courses to train bicycle mechanics
An idea that has been the basis of the business set up by Andre Jaramillo, Mybike Mobile, a startup created in 2018 and that has 15 mobile workshops that currently provide service in Madrid, Barcelona, La Coruña and Pamplona. This entrepreneur considers that “the bicycle world now represents what the car was 50 years ago” and that “bicycle repair is a gigantic opportunity”.
Initially, he focused his business model on the end customer, “on that father of a family whose children’s bike is broken and we go to his house to repair it.” But now he has taken another step and is dealing with the repair of the bike fleets of many companies such as El Corte Inglés, Wow Concept or Mouters. This part already represents 70% of his turnover.
Your company is currently immersed in a second round of financing. Its objective is to attract 1.5 million euros to cover all of Spain and Portugal with its service and enter Denmark.
Javier Reyero, also known as the Bike Guru, maintains that “there hasn’t been a time as intense as this to make a living from bike repairs.” He sets an example himself. He has had a repair shop for years that he sold two years ago and now he has an online school from which he teaches bicycle mechanics courses. “It’s a new profession, in its infancy, but it has a long way to go as a business,” he says. “70% of those who have taken one of our professional courses make a living from cycling”.
The century of bikes
Data, policies, mentalities and even external and unexpected conditions such as Covid-19 or the current crisis with skyrocketing fuel prices have allied to configure a reality that points to this being the century of bicycles.
In 2020, 1,565,233 bicycles were sold in Spain, 24.1% more than the previous year. Turnover grew by 39.39%, reaching 2,607.38 million euros. The increases were particularly intense in the sale of urban bikes, 46.4%, and electric ones, 48.9%.
“The electric bicycle is replacing the second car in many families and is becoming an ally for the household economy,” explains Jesús Freire, general secretary of the Association of Brands and Bicycles of Spain (AMBE), author of the report The bicycle sector in figures 2020.
“In Europe, more bikes are sold than cars,” adds Alejandro Pons, CEO of tuvalum, a website where bicycles are bought and sold, of which 85% are second-hand, appraised and reconditioned. “In 2021 we have billed 75% more than in 2020, 35% from abroad. They are almost 8 million euros and about 4,000 units”, he refers. The business has started this year “quite well, above the previous one”, a situation that has encouraged them to grow “on the international side with more equipment and, on the national side, with more stores in our ecosystem”.
Plans that reflect the strength of a sector that in Spain is currently made up of “3,500 companies that employ 25,000 people” and that shows “record figures in all magnitudes: 75% more production, 47% more more exports and an exponential growth of urban users and cycle tourism”, explains Gregorio Serrano, Senior adviser of sustainable, safe and connected mobility from the consulting firm EY.
In addition to having an increasingly extensive network to fix their vehicles, users also have an increasingly large network of bike lanes and for whose improvement and construction the Ministry of Transport and Mobility will allocate 400 million euros from the funds Europeans.
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