In 2017, my bicycle shop, Summit Bicycles, acquired the trucks and franchise to operate the Beeline Bicycles mobile shops in the San Francisco bay area. It gave us an early view on the emergence of DTC fulfillment by last mile bike shops. The overall mobile landscape is challenging, and requires dedicated operators to make it work well. Since then, Summit has divested from the mobile side of their business. That doesn’t mean that mobile can’t be a successful model, just not for a shop like Summit. Lets take a look at how many mobile shops are remaining.
In contrast to the 7,000 – 8,000 Traditional bike shops, mobile shops are a relative minority. They make up only ~260 locations throughout the US. There are likely some more who fly under the radar by operating under referral only, with no website to monitor.
Surprisingly, Washington leads the country in the number of locations. I expected California to be high on the list due to population, but it is also surprising that Oregon has not seen more mobile shops in spite of being sandwiched between the two largest states in regards to count. If we adjust for population density, the map changes significantly.
Here we can see that the Washington market is more saturated with 244,153 people per mobile shop, restricting the available population to expand into. Mobile operators in the south appear to have more room to grow, so long as they can deliver value to their populations.
What can we take away from mobile shops?
Looking back on my experience with Summit and Beeline, we had success when we could get more than $100,000 in revenue per truck. Even if we generously assume 2 trucks, it seems that the mobile bicycle market likely has a revenue ceiling around $50m. Even that feels like a big number, and it’s probably closer to $20-$30m. So in the grand scheme of the bicycle market, it is a tiny niche. Nonetheless, high performing operators who can fly under the radar in the mobile market can enjoy relatively limited direct competition, depending on their location.