K2 Sports Hopes to Serve Broader Bike Market with K2 Bike Licensee…

K2 Sports entered into a multi-year agreement with World Wide Cycle Supply to license K2 Bikes. As part of the agreement, WWCS will design, manufacture, market and distribute K2 Bikes. K2 Sports will discontinue all bicycle operations and transfer the existing business and inventory to WWCS. WWCS currently holds licenses for The North Face and Columbia bicycles and also owns the Iron Horse brand.

Sandy Liman, K2 Bike’s brand manager, told SEW that the main motivation behind K2’s decision to license out this part of the business was simply because K2 Sports is not working with the same business model as much of the bike industry. The fact that the company has only one warehouse in Seattle made shipping and warrant issues difficult, while customer service was spread across several brands and made this a challenge as well. WWCS will have a bike-specific sales force, customer service team, and solid infrastructure to grow the brand more efficiently.

Liman also said that K2 Bikes, as a brand, held more cache with the outdoor community than the core bike community. REI was the brand’s largest account, in addition to 400 to 500 independent bike dealers across the country. WWCS is also producing four times more volume than K2 was in bikes, giving them much better economies of scale. WWCS said they have an existing infrastructure that can service any bicycle dealer, from big box sporting goods stores down to single store IBDs and the Iron Horse brand has a large presence in SuperGo and other high-volume direct retailers.

During K2’s second quarter conference call it was stated that there were declines in the K2 Bike business, but the magnitude was not discussed because the size of the division was “immaterial” given the size of K2’s current portfolio of brands.

K2 Sports Hopes to Serve Broader Bike Market with K2 Bike Licensee…

K2 Sports entered into a multi-year agreement with World Wide Cycle Supply to license K2 Bikes. As part of the agreement, WWCS will design, manufacture, market and distribute K2 Bikes. K2 Sports will discontinue all bicycle operations and transfer the existing business and inventory to WWCS. WWCS currently holds licenses for The North Face and Columbia bicycles and owns the Iron Horse brand.

Sandy Liman, K2 Bike’s brand manager told BOSS that the main motivation behind K2’s decision to license out this part of the business was simply because K2 Sports is not working with the same business model as much of the bike industry. The fact that the company has only one warehouse in Seattle made shipping and warrant issues difficult, while customer service was spread across several brands and made this a challenge as well. WWCS will have a bike-specific sales force, customer service team, and solid infrastructure to grow the brand more efficiently.

Liman also said that K2 Bikes, as a brand, held more cache with the outdoor community than the core bike community. REI was the brands largest account with 4-500 independent bike dealers across the country. On top of this, WWCS is producing four times more volume than K2 was in bikes, giving them much better economies of scale.

WWCS said they have an existing infrastructure that can service any bicycle dealer, from big box sporting goods stores down to single store IBDs and the Iron Horse brand has a large presence in SuperGo and other high-volume direct retailers.

During K2’s second quarter conference call it was stated that there were declines in the K2 Bike business, but the magnitude was not discussed because the size of the division was “immaterial” given the size of K2’s current portfolio of brands.

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