#bisforbicycles

IS THE ANSWER...

“The best numbers available suggest that today's American kids bike as much — if not more — than kids did in the mid-1970s.” - Michael Andersen (The Green Lane Project)

OR IS THE ANSWER...

“Since 1996 the number of children, age 7-17, participating in bicycle riding 6 days or more in a year has declined 12,097,800 or 54.6%” - Elliot Gluskin (The Gluskin Townley Group)

Great, now that we’re clear on that. 

Wait, what?! Let me get this straight. The first quote, lifted from a People for Bikes (P4B) blog post, says kids are potentially riding more today than they did in the 70′s. The second, sourced from the leading bike industry statisticians, says youth riding participation has fallen off a cliff. 

Here at Buddy Pegs, we simply want to get more kids on bikes since we believe that bicycles not only help build the fundamental building blocks of life long happiness, but they are a simple solution to the world’s most complex problems. No matter how many kids are riding today, we want to see more.

But do we have an endemic biking crisis in the US, or not. Do we as bike advocates need to be sounding the alarm, or just moving forward, steady as she goes?

First of all, I completely support the intention of the People for Bikes post (quoted above) to highlight that an increase in bicycling infrastructure correlates to a decrease in youth bicycling fatalities. Let’s keep communicating that! But what about the stats about the number of kids riding bikes in the US... are they accurate?

A few years back, I sat in on a Gluskin Townley Group webinar about the future of the bike industry. If you don’t know Elliot Gluskin and Jay Townley, they are arguably the leading bike industry analysts, hired by many big names in the bike industry to provide insightful market research. 

After reading the People for Bikes post, I was confused about how the data presented did not line up with data presented in the Gluskin Townley Group webinar. In particular, Elliot and Jay presented data from the National Participation Study (NPS), conducted annually since 1993 by the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA). This study defines ‘participation’ as the riding of a bicycle at least 6 times a year, and concludes that... 

youth cycling (between ages of 7-17), has declined from 22.1M in 1996 to 10.1M in 2014 - a drop of 54%!

In the People for Bikes post, Michael Andersen writes, 

“Every academic we checked with... agreed about the best available set of data on this question: the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Personal Travel Survey (NPTS) and its successor, the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS).“ 

Given this contradiction, I asked the Gluskin Townley Group for some clarification (academics not consulted for the P4B post). In his response, Elliot Gluskin explained that he feels the NPTS/NHTS are fundamentally flawed, and that the NSGA Participation Study should really be the benchmark. 

“The NSGA data is consistent and the methodology has been the same since 1987 when the association first started measuring participation in sport/team/recreational activities. It is this consistency of methodology that has us advocating for this participation study as being truer in pinpointing changes over time.” - Elliot Gluskin

At this point, my confusion deepens. Don’t worry if you’re not following the difference between all the acronyms: NPTS, NSGA, NHTS. The real point is, 

I’m not sure the bike industry has embraced the actual need for reliable participation data as a benchmark from which to discuss the state of our industry. 

If we have, then why am I just now bringing up this contradiction in reporting? Why is this not the keynote topic at the Bicycle Leadership Conference, The National Bike Summit, Interbike, and other industry conferences? If we were truly concerned about the number of kids riding bikes, wouldn’t one assume this topic would fly to the highest seats in the pantheon of industry leaders? 

Diving in deeper to the Gluskin Townley findings (for you stats nerds out there), the situation seems pretty grim.

“Since 1996 the number of children, age 7-17, participating in bicycle riding 6 days or more in a year has declined 12,097,800 or 54.6%. To provide context to this decline, during the same period the total number of bicycling participants declined 17,700,000 or 33.2%.  Also, on a national basis, the total number of children 7-17 years old in 2014 was 45,567,000 compared to 41,695,000 in 1996 for an increase of 9.3%. In 1996 the number of children 7-17 represented 15.7% of the total U.S. population but in 2014 this age group represented 14.3%. “ - Elliot Gluskin 

To put that in non-statistical language... all sharrows point to a doomsday scenario for US cycling.

In the P4B blog, they draw a conclusion that the proportion of American children's trips taken via bike has remained stable.  This conclusion is completely out of sync with the NSGA study, which obviously shows a gigantic decline in the number of children riding 6 or more days a year from ages 7-17. 

So what exactly is the message we want delivered to the bike industry? From where should our leaders lead?

On one hand there’s the message that we have a crisis because children are not riding as much (in hugely significant numbers).  

On the other hand, we have a message of, don't panic, numbers are staying consistent. 

One message has the potential to rally our industry together to find unified solutions to endemic problems.

The other has the potential to freeze the bike industry in a state of complacency about youth cycling participation... and the future of biking participation in general.

I would assume we all agree that to have a strong top, you need a solid base. Stones at the bottom of a pyramid were cut far thicker than those at the top. Construction crews spend way more time solidifying the foundation of a sky scraper than they do finishing the top floor.

With that in mind, if there is even a shadow of a doubt that our nation’s kids aren’t riding bikes as much as they used to, shouldn’t we send more construction workers in to do something about it?

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. -- Howard Thurman

As we said in our last last post, launching Buddy Pegs has been an interesting experience for us to say the least. The conflicting dynamic between focusing energy on a business idea that is fueled by passion, and the need to simply earn money, has been weighing heavily.

Sure, most business experts are now pointing to “passion for the idea” as a key tenant to the likelihood of long term business success. That is of course, assuming you can sell a bunch of what ever it is. Because what you want to offer the world, better be what the world really needs or wants! The reality of cash flow is a powerful force, and entrepreneurs are advised to heed that power.

So therein lies the rub with a social entrepreneur venture like Buddy Pegs. On one hand, we want to offer parents tools to connect their kids with the fundamental building blocks of success and happiness. On the other hand, what if there aren’t enough parents who actually want those tools?

To solve for this conundrum, do we spend months on market research to better understand the wants and desires of our target audience? Or do we use that time to develop more experiences for parents (write another book, build online training tools, etc.) instead?

I’m sure the answer lies somewhere in between, and that’s where we’ve been living. Jannine and I ran a focus group session with parents to better understand their deepest desires for their kids, and themselves. We sent around a parent survey to Mom’s outside our little mountain town community. And we continue to spend time researching parent behaviors online.

But research burns up A LOT of very limited resources - primarily our time! And in the end, does it change what we want to do? No. But do we want to fail at our new business? Definitely not. A friend of mine once said,

“You can’t out crusade capitalistic forces”

No James... you can’t.

But then there’s the quote at the top of this post... and I’ll tell you what makes me come alive. Helping kids light up with self confidence and sense of accomplishment when they ride a bike. I feel like the world is a better place when I see that. Like I somehow did my part.

Since we believe the bicycle is a simple solution to our world’s most complex problems, we want to help grow the number of cyclists. Oh, and by the way, the trend is going the other way.

In this slide, the Gluskin Townley Group puts the National Sporting Goods Association annual Participation Survey into some pretty easy to understand language. In case you missed it, let me boil down the data into the one take away that matters most:

There has been a 42.9% decline in youth cycling (ages 7-17) from the year 20000 to 2013.

Yeah, that’s a 4 followed by a 2, and then a decimal point. Weird, childhood obesity doubled in the same time period. Huh.

What do we want to accomplish with Buddy Pegs? We want to reverse that trend. Let’s work together to get those 7.5 million kids back on bikes.

Last week I had the title of this blog post sitting, as a subject line, in my inbox (thanks to one of those online business gurus I follow). And he’s 100% right.

To me, this picture sums it up. One kid dropping into the ‘big line’ while the other kid looks on and says, “are you sure about that?”.

That’s totally how we feel right now.

For almost 8 years, I have been thinking about starting a business that focuses on getting more kids on bikes. I’ve thought about revenue models, marketing strategies, product development, team building, fundraising, bootstrapping, etc. I’ve kept Jannine up at night with my obsessing over the idea.

And all that thinking has basically brought me back to one conclusion over and over again...

We need more time to figure it out, before we really launch.

As some backstory:

In 2014, we launched our first product through Kickstarter, the children’s book B is for Bicycles.

In 2015, we sold our bicycle store of 14 years to focus on this new company.

In 2016... we thought... we waited... we strategized... 

But in all that time, we haven’t really LAUNCHED - told you, told the world - here we are, and this is what we’re doing. 

I personally have been scared to actually launch. What if it’s not a good idea? What if I can’t explain it well enough to people? What products will we actually sell? How will we find the time to really dedicate to the business while working other jobs to pay the bills AND raise a family? What if the name isn’t great and the logo isn’t perfect?

Thankfully (I think), I got the email that reminded me of what I have been told over and over again by people I deeply admire - LAUNCH ALREADY!

OK, OK, I get it. LET’S LAUNCH!

Our Purpose:  Inspire a happier, healthier world

Maybe it’s better stated as (see, it’s little things like this which have kept us from moving ahead):

Inspire a happier, healthier world through bicycles.

Inspire more kids to ride for life.

Inspire a better world through bikes.

Connect kids with the building blocks of life long happiness.

No matter - I think we’re clear on the purpose, and for now, that will have to do.

How we do it: By sharing the power of the bicycle with families.

What we deliver: Shared experiences that enhance the human powered childhood on wheels.

Whew - that feels good.

So what about B is for Bicycles? What about us being children’s book authors? Yup, we are. And that book is awesome! But here’s the point. We just want to get more kids on bikes. Why? 

Because we believe bicycles are a simple solution to the world’s most complex problems.

Reading B is for Bicycles to your little one is just one example of a shared experience that enhances the human powered childhood on wheels. And when more kids ride bikes, they develop the fundamental building blocks of lifelong happiness, and the world is a better place.

B is for Bicycles is one example of products we want to create to power these shared experiences.  And maybe, just maybe, gets kids riding bikes more.

What’s next? Haha - that’s what we’ve been wondering ;) Don’t worry, we’ll keep you in the loop as we go! Stay tuned for how to videos, web trainings, and information about our second book - all coming soon!

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