The pandemic caused a surge in global bike demand, wiping out retailer stock, distributor stock and put pressure on the supply chain.

Component lead times are stretching way out into the future for new orders: 

 

Fox will no longer quote a lead time
Rock Shox quote 250 days
Suntour and Tektro quote 210 days                         
Shimano stating July to October ‘21 with many dates already in calendar year ‘22

With this level of uncertainty there is no clear indication when MY22 will arrive. 

Whilst the factory shut it’s MY21 order book in August, they’ve agreed we can order more MY21.  Many bikes would have been run on models with a different colour and a minor spec tweak.  The issue for everyone in the supply chain is having something to sell.  These orders have been uploaded to the system hence why bikes have become available again.

Expected dates are a long time in the future.  The factory has accepted the order but stated production dates are all subject to component availability, a huge unknown at this stage.

We appreciate that there’s huge uncertainty for you, you are having to adapt to working in the dark.

The factory can’t tell us when we are getting bikes if component suppliers can’t tell them when they are providing the parts.  So we are trying to give the Area Managers as much advanced notice of bikes arriving as we can, currently we can tell you 6 weeks ahead, hopefully stretching to 8-10 weeks to help you manage the flow of bikes as best we can. 

Thanks for your support, and rest assured we are doing everything we can to get bikes here as quickly as we can.