Early in the pandemic, there were several types of goods that saw big surges of demand followed by big dropoffs in the following years: Think kitchen equipment, furniture, hand sanitizer and N-95 masks.

After those peaks turned into troughs, the companies that made and sold those goods found themselves with too much inventory. That led to markdowns, and, over time for some industries, a general downturn — almost as though business never quite returned to even pre-pandemic normal.

That’s the story of the cycling industry. In the years since peak pandemic, many companies in the bike business have been adapting, just as tariffs on imported goods are starting to make business even more challenging for them.

Revel Bikes, a mountain bike company based in Carbondale, Colorado, saw that huge surge in demand early on in the pandemic, followed by that downturn a couple of years later. Then, it had to confront another challenge:

“Right at the peak of the demand cycle, money went from basically free to 7% or 8%,” said Ben Coates, Revel Bikes’ former CEO.

Coates said just before that peak, the company borrowed money to buy new inventory. When demand cooled off, those bikes — and those interest payments — started piling up.

“Those few things paired together really caused a cash crunch,” Coates said.

The company sold off much of that inventory. But higher interest rates, combined with all of the markdowns happening throughout the industry since the pandemic boom, made life tough for Revel. And then, when all of the uncertainty around tariffs added yet another headwind, the company basically closed its doors.

“I mean, it’s the main contributor to the fall of Revel,” Coates said. “The capital required to run it was not injected, because of the uncertainty in the macro market and the bicycle market.”

All of that uncertainty has a lot of companies in the bicycle market trying to pivot.

Jeff Cayley is the CEO of Worldwide Cyclery, a retailer in Southern California that sells high-end mountain bikes and parts. The company also owns an outdoor menswear brand called Ketl Mtn Apparel.

“We’re not a retailer there — we actually design and manufacture and do the whole thing much more vertically,” Cayley said. “So we have a lot more control over our destiny in that sense.”

He said the company’s been redirecting more time and resources into Ketl Mtn Apparel. And year-to-date, the brand’s sales have surpassed those at Worldwide Cyclery.

“That was a big milestone for us, and something we kind of anticipated would happen,” Cayley said. “Because making outdoor menswear is a lot larger total addressable market than just focusing on really high-end, niche mountain bike retail with Worldwide Cyclery.”

Navigating that tariff-induced uncertainty has prompted Stinner Frameworks, a bike manufacturer near Santa Barbara, California, to expand.

The company makes road, gravel and mountain bike frames out of steel and titanium. It used to focus on building custom, made-to-order frames. When the whole industry lost steam and demand plummeted, Stinner decided to start making mass-produced frames on a larger scale. And business took off.

“In 2022, we made 250 bikes,” said Aaron Stinner, the company’s CEO. “In 2023, we made 1,000 bikes. In 2024, we did 2,700 bikes. And we’re on track to exceed 3,000 frames this year.”

Stinner said he’s been investing in robotic welders, automatic wheel-building machines and new employees. The strategy is to boost production, achieve economies of scale and bring down the cost of every frame the company makes, so that Stinner’s products are competitively priced compared to stuff made in Asia. 

“We’re about 20% to 30% higher than a premium Taiwan manufacturer,” Stinner said. “And we think that as we continue to grow, we’re only going to get closer to be on par with those international costs.”

In Carbondale, Colorado, Revel Bikes has risen from the ashes. Since it shut its doors this past April, its founder, Adam Miller, has has resurrected it.

“I felt pretty confident that we could restart Revel Bikes in kind of a new modern era, a new age of the bike industry, with a few changes,” Miller said.

The company is aiming to adapt to the new reality of the cycling industry by bypassing retailers and selling complete bikes directly to consumers. It’s also going to ship bikes to its international customers directly from its warehouse in Taiwan.

“It’s kind of the best hedge against all these changing tariffs, to make sure customers are confident buying one of our bikes,” Miller said.

The bike industry’s COVID-era boom attracted a wave of new customers, Miller added. His hope is that by keeping prices under control, those customers will keep buying new bikes.