Fell The Power

A Seattle startup is leading the e-bike boom. Can it hold on?

- By Ira Boudway  

In March, as U.S. states began issuing stay-at-home orders, Mike Radenbaugh, co-founder and chief executive officer of Rad Power Bikes LLC, made a plan for lean times. The temporary shutdown of the U.S. economy, he figured, would be bad for his business, a Seattle-based startup that sells electric bicycles online. “We really started to batten down the hatches,” he says. “It was a lot around cash planning and preserving the business in case of it cratering.”

But by mid-April, Radenbaugh realized he’d miscalculated. Not only was Rad not hurting, it couldn’t replenish bike stocks fast enough. Sales tripled that month over the same period in 2019, he says. They haven’t cooled since. By mid-May, Rad had sold through its inventory. It’s restocked since then, but many models are still on backorder.

Bike retailers across the country are in the same happy predicament. With the pandemic disrupting vacation plans, exercise routines, and commutes, Americans are turning to bicycles in record numbers. Electric bikes, though a tiny slice of the market, have been especially hot, with sales more than doubling in the first eight months of this year over the same period last year, according to NPD Group Inc., which tracks bike shops and big-box stores but not direct-to-consumer brands such as Rad.