Recumbent - Any idea of total Bent sales

From time to time I've seen sales numbers on recumbents sold. I saw that in their best year, BikeE sold over 7000 recumbents. And I've seen numbers from Cannondale that indicated they sold about 250-300 bents in 2004 & 2005, but it fell off to close to 100 in 2006 as they cancelled production.

Given how many dealerships stock Sun bents - I've found at least one Sun dealer stocking their bents in every mid-sized city I've been to in the past 6 months. I've found them in cities with populations of 50,000 - that Sun must be selling a fair number.

Does anyone have any idea of roughly how many bents are sold in the USA annually?

Said to be less than 1%.

Said to be less than 1%.

While I've heard that number too, when I'm out on the trails sometimes I'll count the bents vs. DFs. It's not unusual to have about 6% of the traffic be some kind of bent. Some days though I'm the only bent out there. Somedays it feels like there are just as many bents as DFs. I know there isn't, but when you're not used to seeing that many, even 6% seems huge.

My local LBS owner feels that the 1% is pretty close to accurate. The reason, he feels, that it seems as though there appears to be a higher ratio of bents on the trails is because there is. In other words, while many less are sold a higher percentage of those sold actually get ridden and for longer periods. I would have to say that when my wife and I take off for a city bike path it does appear to be at least 5-10 percent are bents. Kind of amazing since the dealerships that I've gone to try their darndest to talk a potential buyer out of one.

According to the Bicycles Manufacturers Association, there were 13 million 20" & larger bicycles sold in 2004. Even 1% would be 130,000 recumbents.

But perhaps it is 1% of all bikes sold by LBS-type shops. So you'd have to subtract all the bikes sold by Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, hardware stores, Toys R Us, etc. That would wipe out a few million bike sales.

I wonder if as many as 40,000 to 50,000 bents were sold. I tend to think it might be lower than that. But don't have any real data to base that conclusion on.

I googled around a bit and found a blog where a couple of "in the know" people, one is a bike dealer who used to work at RANS & the other is publisher of "Bicycle Retailer & Industry News". They agreed upon a rough annual estimate of 20,000 nationally.

This particular bike dealer does a bang up business on bents, stating that he sold 600 bikes annually, with 1/3rd of them being recumbents.

From time to time I've seen sales numbers on recumbents sold. I saw that in their best year, BikeE sold over 9000 recumbents. And I've seen numbers from Cannondale that indicated they sold about 250-300 bents in 2004 & 2005, but it fell off to close to 100 in 2006 as they cancelled production.Where, exactly, are you getting your numbers?

Individual dealer numbers don't mean much since many dealers are inclined to embellish the facts, and others may only sell but one or two a year.

The numbers on the BikeE sales came from an article on the lawsuit between them and Giant. The numbers on Cannondale came from a recumbent newspaper editor who got them directly from the guy who headed Cannondale's recumbent business.

It was no wonder that Cannondale dropped their bent. They had a product that they marketed nationwide and in the last year, they were selling about 9 a month across the entire USA.

Here's the link to the BikeE sales. I had it wrong in my first post, they topped out at 7,427 units in 2001. Pretty good sales numbers. Too bad they were never able to turn a profit.

http://rideabike.com/page.cfm?PageID=58

It has been my experience that bike shops and manufacturers are both very guarded about their sales. My local shop that I've done business with for over 25 years, won't tell me their annual sales, either total units or just bents. Also, I've spent time with two different popular bent manufacturers that wouldn't reveal their annual sales. If you notice, a manufacturer may say his sales are up 10% or that his expectations for a model were higher or lower than expected, but that's about it.

If someone has seen other data, I'd like to see it.

It was no wonder that Cannondale dropped their bent. They had a product that they marketed nationwide and in the last year, they were selling about 9 a month across the entire USA.

The problem with Cannondale's recumbent was that it was heavy, overpriced, and of poor performance compared to its competition. In typical fashion for an upright bike manufacturer, they made the same mistakes that Trek did. The line of thought went: "Over-build it because all bent riders are Fat Old Guys (FOGs). Oh, now it's stiff. We'll give it dual suspension. Oh, now the seat is too high. We'll put teeny wheels on it. Hmm... the end product is overweight, over-complicated, and slow. But that won't matter - FOGS are slow anyway! We'll charge 50% more because of our name and the FOGs will flock to us!" The only thing Cannondale learned from the R200's demise was that SWBs are expected to be for performance, so they concentrated on CLWB, which are NOT expected to be fast. Unfortunately, CLWBs are also expected to be cheaper; while the Cannondale was more expensive than a lot of performance bents.

I looked at a used Cannondale, which is not a common thing to find given that they sold so few of them. It was 3 years old and he wanted $1400 for it. I looked it over and concluded that I would have to be daft to pay that much for a used, oddly-designed, heavy, slow, discontinued bent. It did have nice components on it and it was certainly a very comfy ride. I came away thinking that if it had had a different name on it that he would have been asking $700-$800 for it.