Return of the Easy Rider

Return of the Easy Rider looks at Shimano's efforts to get more people on bicycles:

The new "Coasting" bikes are a daring attempt by the bike industry to get some of the 161 million Americans who don't ride back in the saddle. Bike sales in the U.S. have been flat for nearly a decade, hovering between $5.5 billion and $5.9 billion since 1999, according to the National Sporting Goods Assn. Worse, the number of people riding bikes is falling. According to the sporting goods group, 35.6 million Americans over 7 rode a bike at least six times last year, down from 43.1 million in 2005 and 53.3 million in 1996. "We lost a lot more cyclists than we thought," says David Lawrence, senior manager for product development and marketing at Shimano America Corp., the Japanese bike component manufacturer behind the Coasting gambit. "It wasn't sustainable."

The bike industry was blinded by a blip in sales of high-margin, top-end road bikes after Lance Armstrong's remarkable string of seven Tour de France victories. Sales of those expensive, high-tech marvels of modern engineering stabilized revenues, even as unit sales slid.

And that was Shimano's motivation to come up with the Coasting concept and sell the idea to bikemakers such as Trek and Giant. For Shimano, Coasting is not just another new product. The company is the Microsoft of the bike industry. Manufacturers install Shimano's components — gears, derailleurs, crank arms, and the like — on the vast majority of bikes produced. As the bike business goes, so goes Shimano.
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In the process, Shimano learned why people stopped riding. It wasn't so much that they were out of shape, or too busy or lazy. It was because cycling had become intimidating, something for hard-core athletes who love all the technical minutiae. "Everything had changed in bicycling," says Shimano's Lawrence. "It had gone from fun to being a sport, and no one had noticed."

For boomers, bikes changed from the 10-speed rides on steel frame bikes to 30-speed carbon fiber and titanium machines. Costs rose from a few hundred dollars to thousands. Handlebars, pedals, tires, even seats came in so many varieties that consumers got overwhelmed. And bike shops, filled with workers who fawned over gear, had little time for customers interested in just plain bikes. Yet there was hope for Shimano. "Everyone we talked to, as soon as we talked about bikes, a smile came to their face," Webster says. And that nostalgia gave Shimano an opening.

With IDEO, Shimano developed a concept for a new bike that had a familiar look and was easy and fun to ride. In fact, riders of Coasting bikes never have to shift gears. To keep things simple, the bike uses Shimano's automatic shifting technology. There's a tiny computer on the seat post or tucked under the bottom bracket that triggers a gear change when riders hit 7 mph, and again at 11 mph. The processor is powered by the rotation of the front wheel. In addition to the back-pedaling Coasting brakes, some bikes come with puncture-resistant tires and a chain guard to keep the grease off cyclists' pants.
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And Shimano also moved to improve the shopping experience. Shimano put bike industry executives who have direct contact with bike-shop staff through empathy training. To understand how uncomfortable many customers feel in bikes stores, the male managers were sent to buy cosmetics at Sephora.