If you're a company trying to fill a leadership role in the bicycle industry, you're dealing with a real information problem. Reliable salary data for the sector barely exists. Generic job portals mix bicycle OEM roles with unrelated outdoor retail positions — which helps no one when it comes to budget planning or negotiating with a strong candidate. That's the problem we set out to solve. How the benchmark was built The foundation is real conversations. With candidates, hiring managers, and...

In late March, I signed two mandates. Senior Sales Managers for two geographically and culturally challenging territories at a DACH premium cycling manufacturer: Western Germany combined with a parallel BENELUX market entry, and Eastern Germany in the premium segment. Both territories had to be built from scratch — no predecessor, no established distribution network, no revenue. Every additional week of vacancy cost the client immediate market presence. By early May, both employment contracts...

What a Head of Product in the cycling industry really needs to bring in 2026. I’ve supported several Head-of-Product searches in the cycling industry over the past few years. In quite a few cases, the candidates we presented failed at the same point — and it never appeared in the job description. When managing directors ask me today why the role is so hard to fill, I usually answer with a question of my own: what does your job spec say? The reply is almost always a variation of the same...