My favourite local bike shop was called the Rider’s Guild, it extruded good coffee, sold great bikes and organised killer local rides. It did everything right… but that didn’t stop it closing: last week when I walked past I saw the venue now offers beauty treatment training instead.

The Guild closed back in 2019, but since then we’ve seen a massive hollowing out of our bike shops in towns and cities across the UK, with some famous names disappearing. Perhaps it’s not surprising, given that the cycle industry has hit a 25 year low in the UK in terms of bike sales, according to the UK’s Bicycle Association.

Stif also made its own – excellent – bike in the shape of the Squatch

Even the most historic shops are not immune

The biggest names went just this year, when Stif Cycles in Bristol and Yorkshire announced it will close from September; meanwhile in April we heard Brixton Cycles has also gone under after 42 years trading, blaming “a brutal economic climate and a million other small battles… Sometimes love and hustle aren’t enough,” it said on social media.

Stif was more than ‘just’ a bike shop too, and I’m putting that ‘just’ into inverted commas because I understand the value they bring to me personally, and to the local riding scenes generally. It made its own bike too, one that turned out to be pretty darned good, a hardtail in the shape of the Stif Squatch Pro.

“It’s been an amazing ride — from our very own Aladdin’s cave in Headingley, to the Covid boom, wild staff nights out, and everything in between,” Stif said. “We’ve had the honour of supporting riders of every level, from local legends to household names, and even making our own bike along the way.”

Why should we care though? Afterall, buying a bike and all the gear you need is mainstream now, and not the oddball choice it was when Canyon and YT first came along. Here’s the thing though – actually it’s only the first thing I’ll say on it – online retailers aren’t going to service your bike. And in the age of e-bikes, that’s a really big deal.

Sandy Plenty says e-bikes have put power back into the hands of bike shops

E-bikes have underlined the need for bricks and mortar support

“I’ve no problem with direct sales, but all e-bikes go wrong, every single one, and that’s a fact,” Sandy Plenty from The Trailhead bike shop in Shrewsbury told me. “E-bikes have empowered the bike shop once again, they demand a certain level of customer service that can’t be done by mail order.”

Toby sees a future in bike shops, with servicing and customer care front and centre

Toby Pantling from Ace Bikes in Guildford agrees: “We’re about as close as you can get to the YT Mill, but we still see people bringing in their bikes for service,” he says. “Now imagine what it’s like if you live in, say, Birmingham, you can’t just drop your bike to the Mill.”

YT says its customers can post their bikes to the Mill in Surrey for service and warranty, and there are centres in Europe and the US that also accept bikes by post.

I’m sure that chimes with our own experiences of e-bikes too. Almost all of us riding e-bikes will have had a motor go at some point, perhaps power cutting out mid-ride, or a dreaded error code popping up on the bike’s display. We’re not immune to this at mbr either: most recently the Merida eOne-Sixty SL 6000 I reviewed this year lost connection to its charging port; and most dramatically Polygon’s Siskiu T7e e-bike ejected its battery mid ride.

We ran the Polygon Siskiu T7E with a gear strap round the down tube, to stop the battery popping out on rough sections

And it’s electrically assisted mountain bike sales rather than traditional bikes that are keeping most shops alive in 2025, with e-bikes more popular than ever, and actually cheaper than they were in 2022. That’s according to online statistics website Statista, and separately from Ahrefs, which trawls the internet for search trends and picked up a 60% rise in e-bike searches this year.

The best shops are more than a retailer – they’re a social hub

There are plenty more reasons than repairs for visiting a bike shop though, and none of them require you to be an e-biker. Besides the expert advice, the last minute repairs or small purchases, and the decent coffee, they offer a form of social support for mountain bikers.

That’s an oddball way to term it, but bike shops really are at the heart of many local riding scenes, leading out rides, and in some cases hosting events and social nights. One of the lessons of Covid was that we disregard social networking and our mental health at our peril – at its very least a bike shop is a place to talk about a shared interest.

The cost of running a high-end MTB still comes as a shock to some customers

Social interaction isn’t the only undervalued service coming out of bike shops either. The big problem facing the LBS is a warped sense we all share in the cost of running a bike, and in particular an e-bike, according to Toby Pantling from Ace Bikes in Guildford.

“The big problem is that people bought these discounted bikes, with huge markdowns, and they aren’t prepared to repair them or maintain them,” he says. “A weird perception has been set that looking after the bike is also going to be cheaper, but of course it isn’t. People don’t realise that their fork needs £300 to service it.”

If people aren’t buying as many bikes as they were, and aren’t prepared to service them properly, is that the end of bike shops as we know them?

The Trailhead was voted best bike shop back in 2017 (Pic: Ruben Plenty)

“Currently it’s a forest fire, and we’re waiting for the new growth”

“We’re undergoing a forest fire and we’re waiting for new growth,” Sandy says. “The Covid boom has gone and it’s survival of the fittest,” which means building a relationship with customers and offering a better service. His advice is for people to spend some of their money in bike shops: “online is more convenient and important, but just spend a little at bike shops too,” he says.

I’m not sure that’s going to cut it though, given great shops renowned for their customer support like Soho Bikes have closed in recent years. I can imagine a future where e-bike motor brands run their own bike shops, with the Bosch Store Belfast offering a range of different bike brands, but of course all running either the SX or CX motors.

In effect we’ve already seen this in practice, with plenty of shops stocking just one motor brand – case in point, Ace Bikes, which is effectively a Bosch bike dealer. “Look at the shop, the only bikes we stock are Bosch, people want them because they offer good performance and great reliability and servicing,” Toby says.

Future bike shops could look more like this, with the eBike Motor Centre in the New Forest leading the way

I’d also argue that businesses like the eBike Motor Centre in the New Forest, where you can get your e-bike motor repaired, are becoming more important than bike shops themselves. What started out as a small time operation fixing or replacing motors out of warranty has boomed into an official service for Brose, Bafang, Specialized, with more brands to follow too.

Back in 2017, we ran a campaign to find Britain’s best bike shop, the winner being The Trailhead, as voted by mbr readers. Looking through the list of regional winners – from the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op in Scotland, to Slam 69 in the Forest of Dean – it’s morose to see that only eight of the 12 are still trading. These were the best supported, most loved bike shops in the UK, and garnered the best support in our daft little competition. If they can’t make it, who can?