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news
2022 Endura Womens Pro FS260-Pro SS Jersey - gripper.jpgEndura posts huge £14m loss after “large reduction in sales” and inventory “impairment” – first time Scottish cycling brand has been in the red since 2019
In the latest worrying development for the UK’s cycling industry, British cyclewear manufacturer Endura – which in recent years had appeared to be weathering the storms devastating the cycling market more ably than most – has posted a huge £14m loss, the brand’s first time in the red since 2019.
Earlier this week, the Livingston-based company posted its annual accounts, first reported by Cycling Weekly, detailing a pre-tax loss of £14,119,000 during the 13 months leading up to February 2024.
The latest accounts mark a dramatic fall from Endura’s position the previous year, when they recorded a profit of £759,000 at the end of 2022, and way down on the £2.5m profits posted during the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, the company’s loss for the most recent financial period after tax was £13.84m, again down from a profit of £547,000 the year before.
That £14m loss was attributed by Andrew Long, the company director of the cycling clothing, helmets, and accessories brand, to a “large reduction in sales” – which dropped from £40.8m the previous year to £28.5m in 2023, while gross profit fell from £18.8m to just £3.7m – filtering into a “significant loss in the year”.
Some of the company’s losses also came, Long says, from “impairment” of inventory, with the value of its stock drawn down in value by £2.8m.
“The movement in the period is due to a reduction in sales, primarily in the United Kingdom region, which reflected challenging market conditions found throughout the cycling industry after unforeseen growth during the Covid pandemic,” Endura’s company director said in the accounts.
“The challenging market is even more evident in the turnover figures given we have an extended year end this year. This large reduction in sales has filtered down to a significant loss in the year.”
Long also noted that the loss has impacted the company’s net assets, which are now £2.845m, compared to £16.685m at the end of 2022.
“Cycle related products remain the focus for Endura,” Long said, “And we believe in the underlying benefits of cycling for transport, sport, and recreation, and have confidence that the merits of cycling will ensure that the global market for such products will remain robust long into the future.”
While Endura’s losses represent a steep decline for the brand after a strong start to the 2020s, parent company Pentland Group, the majority shareholder of JD Sports and owner of Speedo and Berghaus, confirmed in the accounts that it will “provide the support, as appropriate” to the cyclewear manufacturer, financial backing which is deemed “vital to the long-term success of the company”.
Pentland Group, meanwhile, recorded a post-tax profit over the same period of £339.8m.
“We know that during the pandemic, many people bought their cycling kit and it’s taken a while for the wider market to catch up,” Endura’s senior vice president Noah Bernard said in a statement this week, which reiterated that the Scottish company remain “positive” for the future.
“Pentland Brands operates a portfolio of brands in a number of categories, and is committed to Endura and the exciting growth plans we have in key markets around the world like the US, UK and Germany.
“We’re also doubling down on mountain biking and gravel – which lie at the heart of the dirt lifestyle we are notorious for.”
Of course, Endura isn’t the only UK-based cycling company experiencing a turbulent time of late. We recently revealed that fellow clothing manufacturer Rapha’s losses had doubled to £22.7m, the brand's seventh consecutive year in the red – while Evans Cycles also posted a £22.8m loss for the financial year ending April 2023, significantly worse than the £5.3m figure of the year before.
In more positive news, however, this week British bike brand Orro was saved from collapse following its acquisition by capital and investment company Baaj Capital LLP, a month after I-ride, the major UK cycling distributor behind Orro, had entered administration after an investor pulled out of a deal at the last minute.
Earlier this year, the Confederation of the European Bicycle Industry (CONEBI) told the bike industry to “survive until 2025”, with their cycling market report forecasting that overstock issues “might be resolved” next year, while the market intelligence agency Mintel has also suggested that the industry is “on the road to recovery”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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13 comments
Ah, Endura the company owned by the man who told his employees to vote against Scottish independence as it would result in Scotland having to leave the EU. Lo and behold Scotland had to leave the EU even though we voted to stay in the UK 🤔. Now they're losing money hand over fist, Schadenfreude as the Germans would say, or "get it right up ye" as we in Scotland would say
No offence to Endura, but same advice as to Rapha, I actually have all the kit I need, for probably several years. You need to go and win the next generation..
Another one Mike taking over for peanuts....
Sorry to see Endura struggling. They're based in Linvignston, not Edinburgh, which puts them very close to where I grew up.
I have quite a lot of their stuff - fleece, jacket, hoodie... Love the Hummvee shorts and trousers which at one time everybody I saw working in a bike shop was wearing. But as bigfoz says, not everything is a great fit... the Hummvees always come with a pair of liner shorts - to get them over my thighs they're HUGE in the waist (like maternity-wear huge), to get the waist to fit they cut-off the blood to my legs. Finding the right size is hit and miss if ordering online and I can never find much of their stuff in stock in high street stores (can't tell if they offer free returns on their website because it looks like they've updated it and it's broken). If Pentland also own JD, why isn't Endura stocked there?
The hummvee shorts are great, I just wear them with bibs underneath rather than the liner that came with them.
I've got the Humvee shorts as well - best bit of cycling apparel I've got actually - excellent quality.
Well, according to Endura's website, they make nothing that fits me. (which is interesting because my club skin suit, from Endura, is both too big (bottom) and too small (top)). SHame because I live in Scotland, would love to support a local company, and spent around £600 on imported kit this year... I wonder how many £600s they're missing out on either because of a poor website advice or by making road kit that fits only super slinky road racers
I'm not sure your experience is echoed by many. Our club clothing is made by Endura and seems popular (I've not bought any of the current iteration as I have quite a few items in the old design at the moment). We had great feedback when finalising the design but part of the reason we chose the brand was that they are a reliable, established UK-based company with good products.
I suspect that the company's difficulties are yet another victim of the boom-and-bust situation in cycling since 2020. I wonder whether the disappearance of Wiggle's dhb brand might help a little. It's difficult to see when or whether there will be an upturn and the doom and gloom talked about the Budget won't help retailers. According to this article in Bikebiz:
British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) and the Association of Cycle Traders (ACT) have criticised today’s Budget as “the most damaging for independent retailers in recent memory”.
Local bike shops are struggling. They must wonder when sales will begin to improve (and whether they will at all). Meanwhile central government gives active travel some crumbs while doing nothing to get people to drive less so there will be no significant change in transport patterns.
I actually thought they'd got out of the game years back when they stopped sponsoring cycle teams claiming UCI rules were too restrictive.
The consequences being they've no USP anymore & there's a stack of other companies making equally comparable generic kit taking their slice of the market.
Did Endura have a strong USP in the first place? They seemed to manage to do a good job of both MTB and road oriented clothing, decent quality and distinctive enough without being pretentious or overpriced.
I suspect that working with Movistar didn't do a lot for the brand while more recently what noise I've seen has been about expensive TT skinsuits (a very small and shrinking market over the last decade).
I'd suggest that the pro team thing was more Rapha's marketing style (Condor then Sky, for example).
Id argue they had decent brand recognition via the Movistar link up (didnt they sponsor Bigla too ?) and could use that to show they were leading the way on technical advances and aero kit as well, it was a big thing they prototype developed Dowsetts hour record kit, now every aero bit of kit looks like what they made.
but then they stopped doing that, shortly after they got taken over by that same group who own JD Sports, refocussed on what they thought was their niche, and up pop the Le Cols & NoPinz to fit the aero kit market, and the Pas Normal, Gobiks, PedalEds, Velobici for the high cost kit market, and the Chapeaus and Velochimps, Attaquer and all the rest of them that have flooded the market since the mid 20teens.
and now it is such a crowded market of course Endura are going to lose market share big style if theyve not really got anything other than hey remember us we're Scottish, as their main selling point.
It would be interesting to know but don't think that the rise of expensive brands necessarily impacted on Endura that much. Would people who buy Le Col or Pas Normal have worn Endura instead or before?
Yes it seems a crowded market but flashy marketing is not the same as multi-year turnover. I'm not sure Endura's woes are really due to market share otherwise why are a string of other clothing brands all publishing eye-watering losses?
And today's Live Blog has another pair of relevant headlines:
"The post-Covid bike market remains very challenging, particularly for standalone bike stores".
and
Bike subscription pioneer Buzzbike set to close at the end of the week due to "escalating costs and difficult economic conditions that have impacted the whole bike industry"
That's not due to competition from online sales and similarly priced brands, these things are all part of an industry segment struggling to make any money.
Their overshoe sizing table is completely wrong. My feet are not particularly big and I needed the XXL size to fit over some specialized BG shoes. Anyone with larger feet needs to shop elsewhere.