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Covid breakout trend: Monthly average of 2,000 bicycles sold on Carousell since November 2020


Sales of bicycles on Carousell, one of the world’s largest and leading marketplaces, have been increasing since the fourth quarter of 2020, with the trend sustaining in the first two months of 2021. A total of 63,345 transactions were made in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia is the second top market on Carousell with almost 18,000 bicycles sold in 2020.  


As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe in 2020, demand for fitness items started to spike in March 2020, and hit a new peak in August 2020. Demand for bicycles followed suit and also broke out as the new trend regionally.  Average monthly transactions also grew by about 44% in the second half of 2020 compared to the first half, with an average of over 6,000 sold each month. The trend continues to show promising growth for users intending to list unused bicycles or merchants wanting to ride on this trend. Malaysia has been holding steady at over 2,000 transactions a month since November 2020. 


Total searches for bicycles in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore increased by 1.6 times to 18.5 million in 2020. Demand is still growing regionally, with an average of 1.6 million searches for bicycles each month in 2021. Malaysia makes over 160,000 searches a month, whereas Singapore sees the most interest at over 1 million searches. This echoes 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. The most popular bicycle type in Malaysia is the road bike, similar to Hong Kong. Mountain bicycles are second most popular in Malaysia, similar to Singapore.  American brand Specialized is most popular in Malaysia, while Singapore prefers British brand Brompton and Hong Kong prefers American brand Dahon.


Secondhand is strongly the preferred choice across the region with 70.29% of transactions. Malaysia exceeds the trend and tops regionally with 76.04% of transactions being secondhand, 

while Hong Kong is second with 72.46% and Singapore is the exception with 34.34%. With the strong demand for bicycles, prices have been competitive for secondhand bicycles on Carousell. For instance, this year’s model of road bike Giant TCR Advanced 1 Disc KOM retails for RM13,499, but can be found on Carousell for RM9,998. 


Tang Siew Wai, Country Head, Carousell Malaysia, said, “As a classifieds marketplace platform, the availability of listings are contributed by our users. Comparing how the transactions for bicycles have been steadily increasing on Carousell with the rapid growth in searches, we can see that demand currently exceeds supply. This means that there is still growth potential for casual users and business sellers to come to Carousell to sell their bicycles to the ready pool of buyers and earn some extra income.”









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