Malaysia was the second biggest market for bicycles after Hong Kong on online marketplace Carousell last year, with almost 18,000 bicycles sold. Singapore came in third, with a total of 63,345 transactions made in the three countries.
According to Carousell, demand for bicycles spiked following the COVID-19 pandemic, with an average of over 6,000 bicycles sold each month in the second half of 2020. Since last November, Malaysia has been holding steady at over 2,000 transactions a month.
Coming into 2021, demand for bicycles is still sky-high, going from the volume of searches on the platform. Malaysia makes over 160,000 bicycle searches a month, while Singapore searches exceed a million.
Carousell noted that this parallels overall search trends in Malaysia, where Google reported a 250% increase in searches for the term “bicycle exercise” in their ‘Year in Search 2020: Malaysia’ report.
Like in Hong Kong, the most popular bicycle type in Malaysia is the road bike. Mountain bicycles are the second most popular in our country, similar to Singapore. US brand Specialized is the most popular in Malaysia, while Singapore prefers British brand Brompton and Hong Kong prefers US brand Dahon.
Secondhand bicycles are strongly preferred across the region, representing 70.29% of transactions. In fact, both Malaysia and Hong Kong exceed the trend with 76.04% and 72.46% of transactions being secondhand. Singapore, however, is the exception with only 34.34%.
Carousell’s numbers certainly track with local media reports on the sudden upsurge of interest in bicycling. According to The Star, one bicycle retailer claimed a sales increase of 300% during the conditional MCO.
(Source: Carousell, The Star. Header image: Engin_Akyurt / pixabay. Text image: Carousell.)
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