As electric bicycles explode in popularity, the category is poised for shakeups as e-bike brands and retailers volley for relevancy and vie for consumer trust amid a crowded and fast-changing landscape.
Seattle-based e-bike brand Rad Power Bikes and refurbished bike sales platform Upway are working to build on the recent excitement around e-bikes while establishing themselves as trusted brands within the category as it grows. To do that, they’re using a combination of traditional marketing and basic awareness to get their messages to e-curious shoppers.
Nearly half (48%) of Americans are interested in buying an e-bike in the next five years, according to new data from an Adweek-Morning Consult survey. And there’s some white space following the recent bankruptcy of trendy, buzzy Dutch manufacturer VanMoof.
“Two years ago, when I started at Rad, we were tracking maybe a dozen competitors,” Nicole Fisch, vp of marketing at Rad Power Bikes, told Adweek. “Now there’s over 200 in the same space.”
Selling fun
Rad Power Bikes, which was founded in 2007 by Mike Radenbaugh, is one of the largest e-bike companies in the U.S., with over 650,000 riders—though it remains a very fragmented industry. To differentiate, Rad Power focuses more on the simple joy of the ride over the specs.
“We really tried to focus this year more on building an emotional connection with customers,” Fisch said. “Every person that takes a test ride gets this huge grin on their face like they’re a little kid. We really believe that’s a big part of what why the whole e-bike industry is going to be successful. Because they are not only sustainable, not only efficient, they’re super fun.”
Primarily a direct-to-consumer business, Rad Power Bikes has 10 retail locations across North America (nine in the U.S. and one in Vancouver, B.C.). In addition to a digital strategy that includes search, social and streaming, Rad Power also runs out-of-home ads in its retail markets. The company wouldn’t share data related to sales or profit.
Building reliable resale
Both veterans of Uber, Toussaint Wattinne and his Upway co-founder Stéphane Ficaja launched their platform for “pre-loved and professional refurbished” e-bikes in 2021 in France. It now operates in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in Europe, and launched in the U.S. in March. Since then, its U.S. business has been growing by over 20% month over month and has processed over 2,000 bikes to date.
While non-electric bikes have a robust secondhand market, the more complex tech in e-bikes means riders are more reticent to buy used, Wattinne explained. By refurbishing the bikes and offering a yearlong warranty, Upway aims to ease that anxiety while keeping more used e-bikes in circulation for longer.
Upway has focused its marketing on “tailored and specific partnerships,” as it builds brand awareness in the U.S., with placements in newsletters from outlets like The New York Times, Business Insider and The Donut.
Newsletters let Upway “punch above our weight, or, make sure that we have immediate access to a qualified audience at a lower price,” Wattinne explained. The company is also investing in social and search and will shift to more top-of-funnel brand marketing on streaming platforms.
Electric growth
E-bike sales have skyrocketed in recent years, jumping 269% between 2019 and 2022, according to data from market research firm Circana and reported by ABC.
But there’s still huge potential for growth. Just 10% of Americans own an e-bike so far, according to the Adweek-Morning Consult survey. And nearly 6 in 10 non-electric bike owners are thinking about upgrading to an e-bike in the next five years.
According to the Adweek-Morning Consult data, over half (57%) of people are most concerned with the safety and cost of an e-bike.
“That’s pretty typical when you’re talking about new tech,” explained Julia Martinez, energy and auto analyst at Morning Consult. “I see this with electric vehicles as well—consumers are the most worried about safety. They’re just unfamiliar with the technology.”
Of those most interested in buying an e-bike in the next five years, maintenance and range were also top concerns for a majority (59% and 60%, respectively), while size and hauling capacity were top priorities for about half of those surveyed.
“We’re at somewhere between 30 and 50% penetration of e-bikes at the moment of total bikes,” Kersten Heineke, partner in McKinsey’s Frankfurt office and co-lead of the firm’s Center for Future Mobility, told Adweek. “That’s ultimately going to go all the way up to 60, 70, 80. […] We are super excited about the future of the industry.”
