By Charlie Lunan and David Clucas
When outdoor retailer REI launched its bike brand in 1983, it chose to name the business after the Italian city of Novara, playing on that country’s strong association with the sport of cycling more than 30 years ago.
Today, the sport hardly needs an introduction and has evolved in more than a few directions. And so has REI, which now stands as the country’s largest specialty outdoor retailer.
At the annual Interbike trade show in Las Vegas this week, the Seattle-based retailer announced it was pulling the plug on its Novara brand and introducing a new bike brand: Co-op Cycles.
“There was not a clear brand identity established around Novara,” Steve Gluckman, director of product for REI’s private-label cycling brands, told SGB at the show. “Novara became more urban centric. We wanted to put adventure back front and center. So we embarked on consumer and membership research. We did ride-alongs and spoke with people in our bike shops. We knew we were servicing the novice really well but the feedback was that once people reached a certain level, we did not always have much to offer them.”
In response, REI committed to upgrading its shops, brands and models. In 2014, for instance, it announced it had secured exclusive U.S. distribution rights to the German mountain biking brand Ghost. REI’s research showed its members still wanted a separate bicycle brand.
“The bike industry is very good at segmenting, so we wanted to do a better job of curating what was out there,” Gluckman said.
The review was part of a broader assessment of REI undertaken by Jerry Stritzke, who was named REI’s CEO in 2013. One of Stritzke’s first decisions was to realign REI’s marketing and private brands with the company’s roots as a co-op dedicated to celebrating adventure. The strategy included REI reincorporating “Co-op” into its own logo.
The new Co-op Cycles brand and products that REI exhibited at a media reception September 20 at Interbike featured matte black finishes with more subdued graphics. While the look might be more modern and urban, the brand will be “built around riders who enjoy trail, mixed surface and longer touring adventures,” officials said. Co-op Cycles “will take a ‘trail-first’ approach,” offering adventure, mountain, city and youth bicycles, plus a core apparel line.
“We are taking the best of what Novara does and bringing it forward. We still have a $499 hardtail but we will go to higher price points, maybe as high as $3,000.”
Novara has not offered a bike above the $3,000 price point since the late 2000s when it offered the Squadra, an all-carbon road bike with Shimano’s top-of-the-line Dura Ace components. Today, its highest-priced bike is the $1,300 Gotham Commuter, featuring a Nu Vinci internal hub.
The Novara brand will sunset as a brand this year and the Co-op brand will hit stores sometime in the spring. In addition to its Co-op Cycles brand, REI will also continue to sell vendor brands Salsa, Cannondale, Ghost and Diamondback.
REI officials said the retailer serviced 180,000 bikes in 2015, and it educated nearly 37,000 people with cycling classes through its REI Outdoor School. The retailer also claims a strong cycling presence online, recently acquiring crowd-sourced site The Mountain Project, including MTB Project, which features photos and descriptions of more than 80,000 miles of biking trails, officials said.
Photo courtesy REI/Co-op Cycles
