Market Data

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Investors in cycling
Market Data Service
Welcome to the Bicycle Association’s Market Data Service (MDS), powered by Sporting Insights Limited (SIL).

The Market Data Service provides the only accurate, up to date and usable UK cycle market retail analysis. It polls sales monthly from 70% of the market, from the largest chains to the smallest specialist stores, including both bricks-and-mortar and online.


Market Data for business & advocacy

MDS is a powerful tool both to help businesses improve their bottom line performance and to help the Bicycle Association, as the industry’s national trade body, influence national and local Government on policies which support market growth. 

MDS is run on a not-for-profit basis by the Bicycle Association for the benefit of the UK cycling industry.
MDS now holds data on over 1m products and market coverage now runs at an unprecedented ca. 70% of the UK industry.
MDS data contributors include the biggest bricks and mortar chains, the most prominent online retailers and leading specialist stores.

Why is this data so valuable?

To help businesses become stronger

Over the past decade, the cycling market has largely been static with larger chains growing at the expense of smaller independents.

Then in 2020, Covid-19 related measures caused an unprecedented cycling boom across the world, with a complete change in customer buying behaviours and a subsequent major shock to supply chains, exacerbated in the UK by Brexit.

In a “normal” market, reliable market data is a useful tool to help everybody raise their game and grow the market but during periods of turbulence, such as we have seen recently, it is an essential compass to help businesses navigate through unchartered waters and make informed decisions.

Market data helps businesses understand real underlying consumer buying patterns better and through benchmarking, enables opportunities and issues to be identified, right down to a granular level where it’s needed.

Buying, Forecasting, Sales and Marketing teams can all make better informed decisions with market data to hand.

Understanding your performance versus the market is key to growing sales and improving your profitability.

To be influential

For many years national and local government have been coming to terms with three big societal challenges: congestion, pollution and obesity.

Cycling is uniquely placed to tackle all three and the urgent need to decarbonise our economy has only accelerated the importance of raising cycling levels to play a substantial role in the transport mix.

Yet in comparison to the road and rail lobbies, we’ve historically struggled to gain the attention which the cycling case deserves.

Good data and quantitative insight has a huge role to play here, supporting our wider advocacy work which is underpinned by the 1000+ businesses who support our advocacy programme as Investors in Cycling.

The high quality, real-time insight offered by the Market Data Service has already made a huge difference, opening doors for cycling by enabling us demonstrate the value of the cycling industry to the economy, and thus to make the case for major infrastructure investments – both regionally and nationally – to grow cycling.


How MDS works

Every month sales data is polled, completely anonymously, direct from participating retailers. For retailers with a compatible till system (Abacus, Ascend, Citrus Lime, Cybertill and Seanic) this is a completely automated process.

However, MDS is also simple to use for those with other, or even no, EPOS system and sales are collected and verified each month from over 2,000 stores.

MDS logs sales down to detailed sub-category level, meaning that four weeks after month-end, subscribers have access to an updated market overview, showing value, volume, and average selling price performance for the UK cycle retail sector.

From overall market trends all the way down to detailed analysis of sub-category, channel, regional and brand performance, users can slice and dice the data to provide the insights that matter to them and make a profitable difference to their business.

API Docs MDS User Manual Category list for Dashboard

Upcoming events

8th February Bicycle Association Annual Conference 2024The key bicycle industry event. Hear what is happening and why, future plans to grow the industry and network with your industry peers.

The Bicycle Association’s Market Data Service is managed under contract by Sporting Insights Ltd (SIL).

SIL is a specialist research agency with global reach and 35 years’ experience. SIL’ full range of quantitative and qualitative approaches provides comprehensive analysis in more than 100 sports and leisure activities. The resulting insight and strategic recommendations support some of the biggest brands, retailers, events, venues, federations and governing bodies around the globe to grow their business and get closer to the people who matter.

SIL operates the BA’s Market Data Service, as well as similar US programmes in tennis, running and surf / skate. SMS also regularly measures participation, consumer perceptions and the purchase process. In doing so it applies rigorous, modern research techniques and reporting methods designed to create actionable insights.

SIL is trusted by some of the most respected institutions in the world, including Wimbledon, The Open and the Olympic Games.

Please visit www.sportinginsights.com or contact the team at [email protected] to learn more.

The market data service was designed by the BA, in conjunction with SIL, and reflects best-practice learnings from food and other sectors, uniquely tailored for the cycling industry.


Who’s in

The Market Data Service includes most of the UK’s leading retailers, including over 350 independent bike dealers (IBDs) contributing data, with some of the key brands shown below.


Demo the Service

You can now test ride the full functionality of the BA’s Market Data Service dashboard by logging in below.

Please note it is entirely made-up “Demo Data” in every screen so nothing should be inferred or interpreted from any of the numbers!*

Once logged in, click on the Interactive data tab top left to access all of the available views within the dashboard, use the Starter Guide & FAQs to understand how it works and click on the latest categories to see on a page the breadth of sub-category coverage the service offers.

In the interactive data tab, you can compare the growth and market share performance of our made-up cycling business called “My Business” – this could be your business if you choose to subscribe!

Please use the login details below:
User: 1691
Password: Dz53M8rG

Login to Demo Dashboard

For any questions to to find out more, please fill out the form below and a member of our Market Data Team will be in touch

    Name *

    Company name *

    Position

    Email address *

    Phone number *


    Future plans

    The current market data service launched in April 2020 and has provided industry users with access to unrivalled insights to support better business decisions as well as enabling the BA to approach government with fact-led arguments when lobbying on policies such as 100% Bikeability funding, e-bike purchase incentives and more investment in cycling infrastructure.

    We are now working on MDS 2.0, which will create the foundations for the service to develop over the next 5-10 years in a way that will really benefit all that access the service.  The three main areas we are working on are:

    • Serving up the data in a more flexible way based on how users want to see it. For example, this could mean simple, bite-sized, action-focused reports at one end of the spectrum to fully integrated data feeds into users’ own systems at the other.
    • Better data visualisation and reporting for those that need it e.g. trend analysis, pie charts etc.
    • Integration with other related data sets to enable comparisons for example of cycling sales with stock data, weather, cycling usage patterns, retail finance etc. 

    All MDS data has now moved into the cloud and accessing market data via an API feed is now possible! Watch out for more exciting news throughout 2023.


    Exclusive deals on compatible till systems

    Our aim is to work with all the EPOS till providers that our bike shop members use in order to enable the transfer of data and to develop the service in the future.

    If you are looking to install a new EPOS till system, we are delighted to offer the following BA exclusive deals from our EPOS till partners:

    Please select an EPOS provider from the tabs above to view their exclusive offers for Market Data Service participants.

    Abacus is a well proven and popular cycle trade specific EPOS system backed by over 35 years of development. It includes data feeds from the major brands and offers a fully integrated e-commerce website, workshop and marketing software to improve stock turn and cashflow and help maximise profits.

    Abacus is offering Bicycle Association partners the complete Abacus EPOS software suite, installation and training for half price, plus a 10% discount on all hardware.

    Learn more at www.abacusonline.net

    Ascend is a cycle specific retail management system designed specifically by Trek. Our 40 years in retail & manufacturing combined with Ascend only supporting bike shops gives us the advantage of understanding our industry better than any other system provider and with new releases every 3 months as a part of your subscription we can react fast to changes in our industry.

    As part of our shared commitment to the Bicycle Association all members receive a third off their Licence Fee and three months free subscription. At Ascend we like to be as clear and transparent as possible so unless you’d like to buy some new computers you’ll find NO other hidden charges.

    Learn more at www.ascendrms.com

    Citrus-Lime are specialists in providing Retail Systems to the Cycling Industry with proven success for IBDs like you. Working with major suppliers in the industry to facilitate better relationships between Suppliers and Retailers, to improve customer service for the consumers. Cloud POS is the only end-to-end retail solution available in the Cycling Industry. As well as Supplier Integration, we also cover, Workshop, Customer Rewards and Cloud Reports, designed to increase Achieved Margin, through efficient stock turn and weeks cover. We also offer a fully integrated Ecommerce platform, with the option of some Automatically Activated product from your top Brands. Would you like to launch an Ecommerce site, which automatically activates product for you?

    We are working with the Bicycle Association to achieve their goals, and have a fantastic offer for their customers. *No HW, Training or Set Up Costs, with a Cloud POS License starting at £51p/month. Please give Grant or Marc T a call today to discuss on 01229 588628, email [email protected] or visit www.citruslime.com

    *T&Cs apply.

    Abacus is a well proven and popular cycle One of the world’s first cloud-based EPoS and retail management platforms, Cybertill enables a real-time single view of stock, sales and customers to retailers across all touchpoints including integrated systems, branded and pop up retail shops, mobile point of sale, click and collect points, franchise stores, concessions, and e-commerce. Cybertill has over 700 general retail, charity, and visitor attractions customers that use its RetailStore and CharityStore platforms across over 7,500 locations globally. It is the leading cloud-based retail management software provider in Europe.

    Cybertill is pleased to offer any Market Data Service retailer signing up a 10% discount.

    Please go to www.cybertill.com to find out more, or make contact via [email protected] or call on 0800 030 4459 to find out more.

    Established in 2001, Seanic Retail has provided Cloud based EPOS software to bike stores. All our development has been customer led and bike store specific with seamless integration to i-bikeshop websites.

    The system has all the functionality necessary for a bike shop including workshop and supplier product information. It is easy to use, intuitive and comes with 24/7 telephone support. We also offer a free 60 day trial to make sure the system works for you.

    There is no setup or installation fee and no tie in contracts, just a monthly charge of £86 per month per store. We offer BA members 25% discount on your first year’s support. Your initial monthly cost will be £64.50 plus VAT. Call Sean on 01926 338932 or 07813 674018 for a chat or email [email protected]


    Contact us to find out more

    If you’d like to find out more about the Market Data Service, or to discuss how your company could best benefit with one of our team, please just contact us – or if it’s active (see icon at the bottom of your screen) you are welcome to use the web chat feature for a near-instant response from one of our colleagues.

    Alternatively, please just click the appropriate link below for the next steps in the on-boarding process: