http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/lates ... 016-322337
Eddy Merckx Cycles has doubled its sales in the past two years – but has reported a multi-million euro loss for 2016.
The bike company, which the legendary cyclist handed control over to Diepensteyn NV in 2014, sold close to €9m of bikes last year, continuing the trend set in 2015 of increasing the number of bikes it sells. However, it expected to sell even more.
Overall interest in the road race market diminished, affecting the company harder than they anticipated. They thus generated a loss of €5.7m.
“The market for road race bikes dropped by 25 percent last year and a specialist in this category we were hit unexpectedly hard,” Bart Van Muylder, chairman of the brand and CEO of Diepensteyn NV, said.
“We were not able to compensate our decline in turnover in other bike categories as we are 100 percent dedicated to the road race market.
