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I think there's some pandemic effect here. Materials, components, and workplace challenges hurt businesses working on a slim margin. Until last year, I was a chief engineer in a manufacturing plant that made cabinets. We stayed open during the pandemic because we were defined as a vital industry. It was a semi perfect storm. People with disposable income for kitchen remodels or custom bikes were now working from home and still getting a paycheck. For us, people had the time to take a good look around their home and decided to remodel, you know, since they would be at home anyway. We struggled to meet the orders because of material shortages exacerbated by trucking woes.
Cabinets aren't bikes, but they're similar in that they're at the mercy of supply and demand. Builders that had to sell a certain number of bikes a year to stay afloat were subject to the constraints of material and component availability.
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