Bike industry slow down in 2023?

Too much inventory?  Slow down in demand?  How will the recession affect the bike industry (including BMX)?  Rob here give you his thoughts.

I'm way outside the actual bike industry, totally out of the loop on traditional industry insider news.  But I'm an amateur futurist, among other things, who's been blogging about a "the next Great Recession" since 2017 or early 2018.  I just geek out on economic and future trends.  Covid should have been the start of a LONG major recession, but The Fed (Federal Reserve), created $5 to $6 TRILLION dollars in 2020, and threw it at the economy.  Bailouts, "Quantitative Easing", super low interest rates, stimmy checks, PUA, PPP, and all sorts of other programs tossed loads of money at Wall Street, big banks ,businesses, city, state, and county governments, and most of us individuals.  Yep, even I got some.  We were all hood rich for about a year, when this current recession should have been happening.  All that money is why we have the current high inflation.  Big influxes of new money devalue a currency, and in 12 to 18 months, prices rise to adjust to the lower value of the currency.  Hey, the party was fun... while it lasted.  That's the nature of parties.  

But now The Fed (and other central banks around the world) is stuck.  They've been raising interest rates to fight the 40 year high inflation.  But that has caused a major drops in the inflated prices of stocks, crypto, and the downturn of the real estate market in many areas.  If they back off and create more new money, inflation takes off and goes even higher.  So they're driving us into a major recession, intentionally, to fight the inflation they caused by bailing us all out of the pandemic business shutdown crash.  So things are all out of whack, in nearly every business category, in nearly every investment category, in ost of the world.  Uh... bummer.  

The bike industry is small, pidly compared to the really big industries, like food, oil, chemicals, telecommunications, cars, and of course, high tech.  But it's still a decent sized industry, and employs (and sponsors) a lot of people.  It looks like we're in for a slowdown.  From my vantage point, this reminds me of heading into the early 1990's, which became a loooong recession/stagnant period.  BMX "died" in 1989.  Sponsors dropped nearly every freestyle team, except Haro and GT, as I recall.  

I know nothing of this youTube channel above, but Rob in the video makes a lot of sense, and does it in under 5 minutes.  If you ride, work in the industry, or are sponsored by anyone in the BMX, MTB, or other parts of the bike/action sports world, watch this video.  Then do some research with the industry people you deal with.  See how things are in your part of the industry, and if you need to make some changes in what you do.

I just found another video on this subject, recorded on Black Friday, November 25, 2022:

GC Performance- "The Bike Industry has a Big Problem Coming!"

Here's a written article in Bicycle Retailer, by Rick Vosper, from October 2022- "2023 may be new, but it definitely ain't normal"  

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