Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2013; as a news item from that month, its figures on bike prices, expected 15% annual growth and 28 million units a year, and China’s position as the world’s largest car manufacturer, date from then.
Wealthy Chinese are buying bicycles that cost between 16,000 and 35,000 dollars, more than a Chinese citizen would earn in 3 years. China is currently the world’s largest car manufacturer, and now sales of high-end bicycles are expected to grow by 15% a year, as these bikes are starting to become a status symbol for “well-off” executives.
They are the Rolls-Royce of bicycles: classic and practically handmade. Several marketing agencies in China have worked to associate this luxury product with an executive who cares about his health and wants to improve his lifestyle by leaving his luxury car for one of these bicycles, which cost more than a small car. Along the way, he is also being kind to the environment and reviving an age-old tradition.
Businesses offering this kind of product have found their own gold mine, because wealthy Chinese have begun to lose interest in luxury cars and watches, an industry that until now enjoyed strong demand among this select group.
Zhou Jiannong, general manager of Rbike Networks in China, says he has received an order for 1,000 high-end bicycles from a financial firm to give its employees as a year-end bonus. The fashion brand Shanghai Tang didn’t want to miss out on this profitable business either, and has teamed up with a Dutch manufacturer to supply bikes to the Chinese market, estimating demand at 28 million units a year, although in this case they are not quite so high-end.
Terry Liu, an analyst of the Chinese market, says bicycles in China are more than a means of transport. They are a recent and growing fashion, and certainly a sector with a great future that could soon start expanding around the world.
Clearly, learning how much money the Chinese rich spend on these bicycles must have caused outrage among the population, although over there people can’t complain too much.
Further reading
- The secret of millionaires, told by millionaires
- The most expensive private jet in the world
- The 10 countries with the most millionaires per capita
- The most expensive house in the world
Featured image: timquijano, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
