Since 2012, Lane Willson’s bikepacking business in Salida has handcrafted some of the best bike bags in cycling. Last week she had 16 workers – she calls them “stitch witches” working 20 machines – in downtown Salida, churning out all sorts of Oveja Negra frame bags and backpacks for long-haul cyclists.
This week Willson and her partners – husband, Monte, and co-owner Stephanie Perko – had to lay off seven trained sewists and move two workers into part-time contracting. She spent years teaching those workers how to design and sew Oveja Negra bags.
“The American dream is being destroyed by this administration,” Willson says.
Down the street in Salida, Mike Harvey had a container of his Badfish river boards shipped from China. He’s been working on the new board designs for a year with trusted manufacturing partners.
So he’s importing them under a 155% tariff imposed by the Trump administration.
“It’s a margin-killer,” says Harvey, who cofounded Badfish with Salida surfboard designer Zach Hughes in 2010, pioneering the then-nascent sport of river stand-up paddling. “We’re now facing only bad choices – either eat the cost and make little to no profit, raise prices on our customers, or some painful combination of both.”
Bike shops in Mexico, Canada, Australia, the U.K. and South Africa have canceled orders for Oveja Negra bags.
“They are saying ‘Nope, we don’t buy anything from the U.S. anymore,’” Willson says.
Dozens of bike shops in more than 35 states are not placing new orders for the coming season as owners brace for trade-war tariffs that will spike bicycle prices by several hundred dollars.
In 2023, Oveja Negra got a $99,350 grant from the Colorado outdoor recreation office’s federally funded Outdoor Recreation Industry Impact Fund, which helps outdoor businesses hire and retain workers. That helped Willson keep her workers on board through the post-pandemic slowdown. For 13 years, business has climbed more than 10% a year, often surpassing the owners’ projections.
Now Oveja Negra, which sources 98% of its materials from the U.S. and manufactures everything but metal buckles in Salida, is in a freefall.
“I’m the U.S. manufacturer using U.S.-made materials and Trump is putting me out of business,” she says. “We figured out U.S. manufacturing and we figured out how to take care of our people and it came crashing down. I’m doing everything Trump wants but we are being punished by this tariff (expletive).”
Fabric costs for Oveja Negra have soared 30% in the past three years. Wages have climbed 25%. To return to profitability, Willson says she will need to sell $50 bags for $200.
“But no one will buy that,” she says. “So that’s not happening.”
Harvey wonders about the seemingly arbitrary nature of Trump’s tariffs.
“If the Trump administration wants to see more goods made in the U.S., where’s the road map? Why not phase tariffs in over time with a clear schedule, giving small businesses a chance to adapt? We can’t just uproot our supply chain overnight,” Harvey says. “I understand the logic of targeting sensitive sectors like semiconductors for strategic reasons. But what exactly is the strategic value of making inflatable stand-up paddleboards domestically?
“China has the infrastructure, components and expertise in place. Rebuilding that here would take years, maybe decades. And without a real plan to stimulate that kind of capital investment, we’re just being punished.”
Last week bicycle-maker Specialized said it was adding a 10% additional tariff surcharge to mountain bikes it was selling to retailers, telling shop owners it should pass the cost on to buyers. U.S. bike manufacturers who rely on products and materials made in Asia – especially China and Vietnam – have long paid high tariffs and the trade war has added 10% more and higher tariffs, while temporarily suspended, seem likely.
“So really the compounding of tariffs is problematic and the on-again, off-again nature of this thing is incredibly frustrating,” said Chris Conroy, the co-owner of Yeti Cycles in Golden. “It’s soul-crushing.”
Conroy had been managing Yeti Cycles when he and another employee, Steve Hoogendoorn, bought the bike company in 2001.
The business has tinkered with domestic manufacturing – it assembles its high-end, carbon-fiber mountain bikes in Golden – but relies largely on bikes made in Vietnam.
“We were one of the last bike companies to manufacture in the U.S., but we eventually had to move overseas because all our suppliers moved over there,” Conroy says.
The bike industry boomed for a minute during the pandemic but quickly cooled. Shops in 2022 and 2023 watched bikes remain unsold, forcing discounting to make room for the new rides. Last year there were signs of a rebound and people were buying again. But the new tariffs and stormy trade war has darkened horizons.
Conroy, who employs 75 workers at his Golden facility, is struggling to minimize impacts to Yeti Cycle’s retailers and buyers.
On April 17, Carbondale-based Revel Bikes emailed its dealers that it was closing, citing $8 million debt and “significant payments coming due and a very soft market.”
Revel Bikes was founded in 2019 with a unique suspension design and carbon-fiber frames. Last summer, another Colorado-based mountain bike maker with an innovative design – Guerrilla Gravity – shut down after 12 years of making bikes in Denver.
Ben Coates, the chief executive of Revel Bikes, declined to discuss what he called “an orderly wind down process” or say if the shuttering was connected to tariffs or trade war. Two days before the announcement the company trumpeted the release of two new models of bikes, including its first electric mountain bike.
“If a deal cannot be made to save Revel, the process will end in Revel being out of business,” Coates said in an email.
Like Harvey, Conroy wishes there was clarity. Returning bike manufacturing to the U.S. will take decades and huge investment.
“And the question is, do we really want that?” Conroy says. “All the manufacturing left because of Americans’ desire for quality, less-expensive products. That is very difficult to have with U.S. manufacturing. The cost implications are pretty substantial for small businesses and consumers right now, and we as a country need to decide what’s most important and balance that with a long-term approach that will allow businesses to see what’s coming and react and move forward rationally. This uncertainty and insecurity is the hardest thing right now.”
