New Bikes Are Barcaloungers on Wheels
For Americans who are getting older and don’t like to exercise, the bicycle industry has a bike made for loafing.
What’s called the comfort bike is aimed at the crowd that probably will never go off-road--and might not go on-road unless it looks easy.
“It’s like sitting in a Barcalounger with a remote control and a margarita,” said bike designer Sky Yaeger of Bianchi USA in Hayward, Calif. “Nothing more comfortable, is there?”
Comfort bikes accounted for 13.5% of bike shop sales through August 2000, compared with 8.8% in the same period in 1999, according to the National Bicycle Dealers Assn.
Bianchi is among the companies with entries in the comfort bike category. With broader seats, upright handlebars, shock absorbers, wide tires and simplified shifting, these are the sedans of biking--meant to reassure, not to challenge.
The new ride grew out of the mountain bike and the hybrid, which is an adaptation of the mountain bike for road riders. Companies began to realize that buyers of those designs were immediately modifying their purchases--tweaking them toward cushiness and away from performance.
The comfort bike, which has developed over the past two or three years, aims to hit its target demographic right in the paunch.
“It’s basically people who want to ride fairly infrequently--weekend warrior types who do it more for recreation and health benefits than a real enthusiast who is devoted to the sport,” said Tom Armstrong, a spokesman for bike manufacturer Cannondale in Bethel, Conn.
“These people are not truly cyclists,” said Chris DiStefano, a spokesman for Shimano American, the component company in Irvine, Calif. These riders see themselves as just “out doing something,” not taking part in a sport, he said.
The comfort bike marks a change from the dirt-chewing trail rider and the gear-headed street racer--away from aggressive youth and more toward stolid middle age. It’s where America is heading anyway, Yaeger said: “The population is getting older and can’t run.”
These buyers also don’t want a bike that acts tougher than they are. The complexities of shifting among 27 gears pall on them, and they are put off by the displays of technology that enthrall serious bikers, Yaeger said.
Companies responded by hiding the components inside wheel hubs, Yaeger said. And for those who don’t want to shift for themselves, there’s automatic shifting, “to mimic an automatic-shifting car where people get in the car and it just goes,” she said.
The potential market for comfort bikes is big, even if potential customers simply replace the dropped-handlebars 10-speed that collects dust in a garage. In 2000, 53 million people rode recreationally at least once, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn., a trade group. But most adults don’t ride regularly. Fewer than 14% of people ages 18 or older got on a bike for the fun of it 52 or more days a year.
Comfort bikes could be one way to fight America’s epidemic of inactivity, said health scientist Rich Killingsworth of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Two hundred thousand deaths are attributed to inactivity as the primary factor each year,” he said. Inactivity is one of the American Heart Assn.’s prime risk factors for heart disease.
Comfort biking would fit the federal exercise minimum of 30 minutes of moderate activity on most days. And Killingsworth hoped that, if people find it comfortable, they might make it a habit.
But other fears still may keep these potential riders on the sidewalk. One is that they don’t want to play in traffic. Transportation and city planners need to make America more accommodating to bikes, Killingsworth said. Bike paths and bike lanes should be added so “we can bike and drive our car on the same corridor without being threatened,” he said.
