Billy Joe la légende

Plummeting profits, declining sales, layoffs: the word cloud that surrounds major bike brands right now makes for rather dreary reading.

In the last couple of weeks, two of the industry’s biggest companies have shared worrying annual results; Giant’s post-tax profits slumped 42% year-on-year in 2025, while Canyon’s EBITDA (a benchmark of profitability that stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) fell 34% in the same period.

Stories about other brands paint a similar picture. Trek’s 50-year anniversary this year has come not with celebration, but concern about the brand’s future, according to a report in Escape Collective, with sales targets slipping and notices of redundancies. Likewise, Shimano, the world’s most popular bike components brand, has endured three years in a row of tumbling profits across its cycling range.

These figures provide a snapshot of a market in distress. So what’s the context behind it all? Why are bike brands struggling so much at the moment?

Read the full explainer through the link in the comments.

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The Twin Bridges from the southbound lanes on the Albany side of the Mohawk River.

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