The Business of Cycling

If you've ridden a mountain bike in the last 25 years, chances are you've rolled on Kenda — whether you knew it or not. The Taiwanese tire maker produces close to 70% of the aftermarket tubes sold in the US.

This week I'm joined by Eric Yang, VP of Business Development at Kenda USA and grandson of the company's founder. Born and raised in Ohio after his father moved to open Kenda's US headquarters, Eric spent five years in the family business before walking away for a decade — Silicon Valley startups, a Wharton MBA, and angel investing — until he decided it was time to come home.

We dig into Kenda's 64-year history, the humility baked into Taiwanese manufacturing culture, the tightrope walk between being a B2B powerhouse and a consumer brand, and what it really means to step into a company with nine board members, a global footprint, and a DNA rooted firmly in the factory floor.

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Nikki Hawyes is one of the most private-equity-experienced executives in cycling. Across three PE-backed businesses—Fisher, Zyro Fisher, and now Whyte Bikes—she's lived through every phase of the cycle: rapid growth, near-administration crisis, secondary buyouts, and exits. In this episode she shares a refreshingly candid view of what actually works when private equity meets the bike business: why realistic growth beats hockey-stick projections, how focus drives turnarounds, and why she set the terms before signing on.

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Joe Benedict, Vice President of Category Management at Quality Bicycle Products (QBP), pulls back the curtain on America's largest cycling distributor.

With 5,500 retailers served nationwide and over 45,000 products in their portfolio, QBP sits at the center of the US cycling supply chain — yet remains largely invisible to the outside world. 

Joe breaks down how QBP actually operates, from their category-based business model to their four-warehouse logistics network, and explains why landing a distribution deal with QBP is just the starting line, not the finish.

For European brands eyeing the US market, this one is essential listening. We also get into the current state of the aftermarket parts business, what the industry looks like post-pandemic inventory crisis, and why QBP sees 2026 as a year to take control and move forward.

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Recorded live at Performance Days 2026 in Munich, this panel brought together three of the most influential ingredient brands in performance apparel — Polartec (Eric Yung), Elastic Interface (Gianluca Pellicciari), and Polygiene (Eva Doll) — alongside the design leads at Albion (Graham Raeburn) and Santini (Fergus Niland) to unpack a relationship the cycling industry rarely talks about openly: the strategic relationship between ingredient partners and brands. The conversation moved past the hangtag.

The panel dug into what real co-development looks like (hint: it starts with trust and a shared problem, not a logo), why so many brands fail to communicate the value their ingredient partners create, and how cycling still lags behind the outdoor industry in maturing this conversation.

The throughline: ingredient brands are an under-leveraged R&D arm sitting right there, waiting to be used better.

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In this episode, Sam Nicols returns to The Business of Cycling to break down one of the most consequential — and arguably under-reported — stories in the industry right now: the unraveling of Accell. Sam, who serves on the board of Propain Bikes and previously led YT Industries through the post-COVID downturn, brings a rare combination of operator experience and acquisition insight to the conversation.

We trace Accell's path from a steady, publicly-traded European conglomerate of brands like Haibike, Raleigh, and Lapierre, to its 2022 take-private deal by KKR at a $1.4 billion valuation — closed at the absolute peak of the post-COVID cycling boom. From there, we unpack the perfect storm that followed: collapsing demand in the entry-to-mid segment where Accell was strongest, the Babboe cargo bike recall, a hollowing-out of the middle of the market, and the brutal mechanics of a leveraged buyout when revenue drops 40%.

We also get into KKR walking away from roughly $1.1 billion in equity earlier this year, what restructuring is underway, and what it would actually take for Accell to find stable ground again. A candid, sober look at how a company can go from looking like the perfect investment target to a cautionary tale in less than three years.

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