Denmark 2005: Bike Sales Rock Steady

It’s a bit like in the other Scandinavian countries; bike sales that hardly goes up or down. A rock steady market; that’s the best way to describe the Danish bike market. However, a look at the 2005 figure for ‘domestic consumption’ of bicycles, or better said, deliveries to dealers, shows that the annual figure for the sale of new bicycles is slowly but surely getting to the half million mark.

Danish Bicycle Market 2001 - 2005 (in units)

The Danes love bikes. It is said that they use bicycles for daily transport even more than the Dutch! Also when looking at the population number in Denmark, which stands at about 5.5 million, it shows that one out of every ten Danes buys a new bicycle every year. And that’s a lot! To put things into perspective; the German population is about 84 million which should result like the Danes in a yearly sale of 8.4 million bikes. Reality however shows that in 2005 the Germans bought only 4.7 million bicycles.

Production & Sales

According to the figures supplied by Erik Odderschede, director of the Danish association for bike dealers ’Danske Cykelhandlere’, bike sales (or domestic deliveries) in 2005  stood at 499.063 units. About 15,000 more bikes were sold last year compared to 2004; a plus of 3.0%.

Bike dealers are the biggest sales channel in Denmark. Also in 2005 they maintained their market share which is estimated at about 57%. In Denmark the prices for bicycles that are sold through the dealer channel are higher than in any other channel.

The biggest and longest reigning bike maker in Denmark is Kildemoes Cykelfabrik A/S. A big majority of the total bicycle production in Denmark in 2005 – 143,066 units – came from the Kildemoes assembly lines. The Danish bike marker is owned by Cycleurope AB. Bike production in Denmark stood in 2005 at exactly the same level as in 2004. This indicates that production growth as it took place since 2001 has been stopped.

Import & Export

The flat production number is not expressed in the 2005 bike export of Denmark. One should expect that a stable production number indicates an export that shows a likewise trend. That did not happen; as a matter of fact the Danish bike export showed double digit growth of 14.1% to 98,423 units. However, it is said that this growth is partly thanked to re-export.

There’s a lot to do on the import of bicycles into Denmark. And understandably so because bike import upped by about 70% during the last five years to a total of over 550,000 units; even more than the yearly Danish consumption of bikes! However, according to the Danish association for bike dealers, the figures issued by the Danish Statistical Bureau are not correct. And a look at the 2005 Eurostat (the EU data bureau) bike import figures, shows that ’Danske Cykelhandlere’ is right. Not 553,000 bike were imported in 2005, but 519,450 of which 320,000 came from outside the EU and about 200,000 from other EU countries. The Eurostat statistics also show a re-export figure for bikes of about 67,000 units. Distracting that figure from the total import, brings the total bike import to the figure that is estimated by the Danish bike trade.

* The import figures from the Danish Statistical Bureau are considered inaccurate by the dealer association. They supplied the *figures on this page.