Bicycle electrification: revealing the excellence of French bicycle workshops

A market that drives us to reinvent our offering

Back from Paris after presenting the PowerTrail Z8 kit kit to journalists. An opportunity to chat with the partner workshop that had installed the test kit. The discussion revealed a trend observed over the last few months among our 150 partners in France and Belgium.

The cycle market recorded sales of 3.2 billion euros in 2024, down 5.9% on 2023, with 1,956,000 bicycles sold, a 12% decrease. This contraction can be explained by the uncertain economic climate, which is prompting consumers to postpone their purchases of new bicycles.

For workshops accustomed to selling new products with ease in recent years, this is a challenge. But this discussion with our Parisian partner reveals that it’s also a fantastic opportunity to get back to what they do best: personalized support.

A return to technical fundamentals

What’s striking is the extent to which electrification fits in perfectly with the culture of bicycle workshops. Understanding the customer’s needs, analyzing their daily routes, discussing motorization and autonomy… It’s exactly whatthey’ve always known how to do when it comes to any technical improvement on a bike.

Customers who want to electrify their bikes often arrive with precise expectations. They’ve tested bikes around them, know the differences between a 50 Nm and a 120 Nm motor, and refuse to be offered a low-end kit that they won’t be able to repair or upgrade.

With electrification, the workshop can build a tailor-made solution. The

A win-win business model

For the workshop, this development offers concrete advantages:

Natural customer loyalty: Customers who have their bikes electrified will naturally come back for maintenance, unlike those who buy their bikes elsewhere. Today, three times more bikes are repaired than new ones are sold, with growth of +119% since 2019 for the repair sector.

Attractive margin: Electrification combines product and service. Starting at €107 for a complete kit with battery, the workshop generates a margin on the equipment plus paid installation time.

Enhancing expertise: Faced with the commoditization of entry-level bikes, electrification is repositioning the workshop as a technical expert capable of complex diagnostics and customized adaptations.

At Syklo, this relationship with qualified workshops is essential. This proximity to the customer helps us improve our products enormously. Their expertise in the field brings credibility, and they know their local market better than anyone else.

Electrification as a revelation of value

This trend reveals something fundamental about the French bicycle ecosystem. Despite the decline in sales, the comparison with 2019 reveals a 33% growth in the sector’s sales, confirming a move upmarket and an increase in market value.

Electrification fits perfectly into this dynamic of increasing value. Rather than seeing their customers go out and buy an entry-level VAE at €1,500 in a supermarket, workshops can offer to electrify their existing bike with a high-performance kit for an equivalent investment, while retaining the customer relationship.

A sustainable approach to the giants

In contrast to the proprietary solutions offered by the industry giants, which require you to buy a complete bike, Syklo gives a second life to existing bikes. To reach Germany’s current level, it would be necessary to add at least 8 million VAEs to the French fleet, which could represent an annual market in excess of 2 billion euros.

Rather than encouraging over-consumption, this approach helps cyclists transform their current bikes into high-performance electrical machines. This philosophy ties in with consumers’ growing concern for the circular economy and the fight against programmed obsolescence.

Cultivating balance

The most interesting aspect of this model is the balance between Syklo’s needs and those of the workshops. Syklo doesn’t have simple “points of sale”, but real partners who understand the products and challenge us to improve them.

These workshops now cover virtually the whole of France, including medium-sized towns and some rural areas. This network ensures a local after-sales service that is indispensable for technical products such as Syklo electrification kits.

Electrification is finally revealing what bicycle workshops do best: create value through technical expertise and personalized customer relations. In a market that is shrinking in volume but growing in value, this ability to advise and support is becoming their main competitive advantage.

At Syklo, working with these passionate professionals is a daily reminder of the company’s mission: to democratize access to high-performance, reliable and scalable bicycle electrification, while preserving French know-how.

This article is based on data from the UNION sport & cycle’s Cycle 2024 Observatory and feedback from 150 Syklo partner workshops.