German online sports retailing giant, SIGNA Sports United (SSU) has announced the purchase of two established mountain bike and cycling e-commerce entities: Wiggle and CRC.

Most mountain bikers have navigated to purchasing from CRC at least once. It has established a significant presence and scale in the off-road cycling e-commerce realm. Wiggle traditionally serviced a broader online cycling customer, including road riding and triathlon.

Read more: buying direct 

A world way beyond CRC’s numbers

Wiggle acquired CRC back in 2016, creating a powerful presence in the cycling e-commerce world, covering virtually all segments and disciplines. This new deal with SSU delivers enormous scale, with an audience of 7m active users and more than 1000 brand partners.

Germany has been a strong driver of direct sales marketing and service fulfilment in cycling. YT and Canyon are two authentic bike brands that embraced the customer direct model, without creating generic bikes, devoid of character.

Combining SSU, Wiggle and CRC creates unrivalled purchase power for the new group. That means potentially larger discounts, for online shoppers, as the pre-ordering volumes will be huge.

Using scale and data

For mountain bikers who prefer to do their build, frame and component shopping online, this new deal can only be beneficial.

There are some interesting business and product development possibilities too, as the combination of SSU, Wiggle and CRC will provide a massive and authentic source of browsing preference and customer feedback.

Data is 21^st century gold and with its massive audience and active user community, this new online super retailer could help identify trends, by analysing customer demand and buying patterns. Will mountain bike brands find these customers preferences useful? Only time will tell.

Enduro racing fans will be hoping that the terrifically successful CRC EWS team, continues in an unchanged format, despite the new corporate structure.