Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2011, and describes the market as of that month, including the claim that nobody was targeting nostalgic buyers and the $1,560 price with more than 250 reservations for the Einstein-model bike.
As some economics sage used to say, to succeed you sometimes have to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, and some entrepreneurs have probably already put that saying into practice. We live in an age of innovation, when the trend is to add high technology to every kind of device, and the bicycle business is no exception.
Yet in a market full of mountain bikes, road bikes for serious cyclists and electric bikes, nobody has tried to cater to the nostalgia market.
In the United States, some companies have started designing vintage-style bicycles or selling second-hand bikes, and the surprising thing is that they are doing well even though buyers pay a little more for these products than for a latest-model bike.
Just as happened with cars like the Volkswagen “Beetle” or the Mini, which today have dedicated collectors willing to pay large sums of money, the same seems to be happening with bicycles.
This is what I call innovating backwards: reviving a market that nobody works anymore but that could have strong demand if old products were brought back.
It would take an analysis of the Spanish market to see whether this kind of business could find demand in our country, since today’s models that imitate the old designs are sold as luxury bicycles. Can you imagine how much a replica of Einstein’s own bicycle could sell for? In the United States it sells for $1,560, and more than 250 people have already reserved one.
We would also like to highlight another bicycle-related business idea that is already succeeding in major cities around the world: bike rental.
Further reading
Featured image: Artem Beliaikin, CC0 1.0, via Flickr.
