MARMOT Outdoor Sports & Fitness Bicycle Brand: E-commerce Transforms the Bicycle Industry

Following the crowd is a common flaw among many people. Some say Jack Ma is to blame for the downturn in China’s real economy—but is that really the case? Anyone with a bit of rationality can form their own judgment. In reality, even items bought on e-commerce platforms are not entirely virtual—they are the same goods sold in physical stores. If we talk about the impact of e-commerce on the real economy, one aspect is the rent of brick-and-mortar shops, and another is the middlemen who buy low and sell high for profit. But Jack Ma’s true influence on China is not just the visible hit to physical stores—rather, it is...?

Take the traditional bicycle industry as an example. Unlike many traditional physical bicycle brands struggling with poor offline sales, online bicycle e-commerce has been booming rapidly in recent years. More people are getting used to buying various bicycles online, prompting more bicycle brands to enter major e-commerce platforms. Even some high-end and even top-tier bicycle brands from global rankings are joining the trend, striving to make their mark online. Among the most well-known is MARMOT, one of the world’s top-tier bicycle brands and an imported outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand.

As of now, the MARMOT imported outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand has established partnerships with major e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, Suning.com, Gome, YHD.com, and Amazon. Its official MARMOT flagship store has also gone live. With its immense brand influence in the industry and outstanding product quality, the MARMOT imported geared bicycle brand has firmly secured the top spot in high-end bicycle sales across various e-commerce giants, leading the way in the e-commerce transformation of the entire high-end bicycle market.

To gain a deeper understanding of the development of online bicycle e-commerce and the challenges faced by offline physical bicycle businesses, I contacted an industry veteran—the China head of the world’s top imported geared bicycle brand, MARMOT. The China head of the MARMOT imported outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand shared insightful views on the shift from traditional retail to online. He first acknowledged that e-commerce is an inevitable trend and will maintain rapid growth over the next three to five years. He also confirmed the necessity and urgency for physical bicycle businesses to transform. Finally, regarding how to transform and how e-commerce reshapes the physical industry, the MARMOT imported outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand head expressed his perspective: “Jack Ma’s impact on China’s physical retail stores is, figuratively speaking, the influence of a wealthy person on a group of wealthy people. The Taobao model he pioneered essentially created an unprecedented form of monopoly.”

“Imagine this—if, in the past, a businessman wanted to monopolize a certain market in a region, he would need to buy up all the shops nearby and then lease them out to merchants. But such a form of monopoly requires massive capital. However, by shifting to e-commerce platforms, Jack Ma only needs to spend less than one trillionth of that capital to achieve the grand goal of collecting rent from merchants nationwide. Didi Chuxing follows the same model—it only takes a small amount of money to maintain a ride-hailing app to monopolize the ride-sharing market in a country of 1.4 billion people. This was previously unimaginable, but Jack Ma made it happen, and now there are even more imitators trying to do the same.” The MARMOT outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand China head gave a vivid example to illustrate this point.

The MARMOT outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand head continued analyzing: “The second major impact of online shopping on China is the imbalance in regional economic development—a crucial issue we need to focus on. According to the distribution of Taobao merchants, most sellers are concentrated in regions like Beijing, the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai area, Fujian, and Guangzhou, which continuously squeeze other inland areas. When I traveled to a small city in Guizhou, I noticed that there were fewer shoppers than staff in the mall—this shows just how severely the operations of physical stores in these areas have been affected.”

E-commerce, in essence, is a fast and efficient intermediary channel that breaks the monopoly of distributors over regional sales. However, due to past regulatory gaps and inadequate intellectual property protection, e-commerce has also provided space for selling counterfeit goods and tax evasion. “There is actually a dynamic interplay among manufacturers, intermediaries, and consumers. If manufacturers set prices too high, intermediaries will look for other suppliers. If intermediaries charge too much, consumers will turn to e-commerce. And if consumers offer too low a price, manufacturers are forced to cut corners. The key lies in which of these three forces can dominate.”

Finally, the MARMOT outdoor sports & fitness bicycle brand head hopes to send a message through me to physical store operators: The information age has undoubtedly brought a revolution to China’s physical industry, with impacts that are profound and only just beginning. Since the traditional model is no longer reversible, the most rational choice is to think about how to adapt to the present.