Adrien Roose, Tanguy Goretti and Karim Slaoui want to expand with their e-bikes.
Munich The bicycle industry is currently very popular with investors. The Belgian e-bike specialist Cowboy is now also benefiting from this. The start-up raised another $80 million in a new round of funding. Co-founder and CEO Adrien Roose is convinced: “The e-bike boom is just beginning.”
Cowboy was founded in Belgium in 2017 by Roose, Karim Slaoui and Tanguy Goretti. The company was one of the first providers to develop chic e-bikes for wealthy city dwellers. “Electrification is the big game changer in the industry,” Roose is convinced. The sharp increase in demand for e-bikes is not a corona-related flash in the pan. The trend started before the pandemic.
With the e-bike, completely new customer groups could be developed, such as people who have not cycled since childhood. “The industry can thus grow to a whole new dimension.”
New technologies and services should also contribute to this. Cowboy customers can network via an app. Cowboy Care, a home maintenance and repair service in 22 cities, is now available for EUR 20 a month.
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The new round of funding is led by Siam Capital, HCVC and Exor. In total, Cowboy has raised $120 million so far. The company has not yet released sales figures.
>> Read about this: This is how the year 2021 went for the bicycle industry
Cowboy CEO Roose is convinced that the cards in the industry will be reshuffled with the triumph of electromobility. “The traditional manufacturers stopped innovating a long time ago.” Cowboy could therefore become a dominant brand in the industry and sell millions of bicycles in a few years.
The prospects are good: In Germany, sales of bicycles with electric motors rose again in the first half of the year by nine percent to 1.2 million euros, according to the German Bicycle Industry Association (ZIV).
Without the shortage of parts that the entire industry is struggling with, the growth would have been significantly stronger. “We too could have sold twice as many bikes last year,” said Roose. Supply chain management is currently the biggest challenge for all providers.
Billion deals are changing the industry
Investors are confident that manufacturers can fix the problems and are taking an increasing interest in the sector. Most recently, the German online retailer Bike24 also went public.
The Dutch group Pon Holdings took over the bicycle subsidiary of the Canadian conglomerate Dorel Industries for 700 million euros. Pon (“Gazelle”, “Urban Arrow”) thus secured brands such as Cannondale and Schwinn and doubled sales in the bicycle business to around 2.3 billion euros.
A few days ago, the financial investor KKR announced the takeover of the Dutch manufacturer Accell Group with brands such as “Batavus” and “Sparta”. The offer is around 1.6 billion euros.
>> Read about this: How the billion dollar deal with KKR is changing the bike industry
The e-bike manufacturer Vanmoof also collected 108 million euros last autumn. The Dutch compete directly with Cowboy and also sell designer bikes for urban users. There are already 10,000 reservations for the new high-speed Vanmoof V e-bike. The e-bike, which requires a license plate, is said to reach speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour and is optimized for long commutes.
“Such a high number of reservations in such a short time shows how great the public interest is in a serious car replacement for the urban area,” said Vanmoof co-founder Ties Carlier.
The Cowboy Hero1 should become a bestseller worldwide.
Vanmoof already has offices in a number of major cities. Cowboy also wants to improve here. The first German flagship store is scheduled to open in Berlin in February, followed by the first French store in Paris in May.
The design and production capacities are also to be expanded with the proceeds from the financing round. The goal is to produce more than 50 percent of bicycle parts in Europe, said Roose. This is also a remedy for the delivery difficulties.
More: Bicycle industry grows out of the niche: “It was a crazy year”