Log in to read the rest
For reviews, the summary verdict and key findings appear near the top of every post and remain free for everyone. The takeaways below the paywall are personal thoughts, opinions, and forward-looking views. They are protected against AI scraping and content theft.
Genuine readers can create a WordPress account and log in for free as a FOLLOWER to read the full text on some subscriber posts, plus get a reduced-ads experience.
If you use this site for your job, please use the correct tier and subscribe as a COMMERCIAL supporter. Industry professionals expect to be paid for their work. So do I.
This content will become fully available to everyone at some point in the future.
My favourite kit and nutrition
- Maurten — the race nutrition trusted by elite athletes. Gels and drink mix engineered to be easy on the stomach.
- Garmin 90-degree charging adapter — the small adapter that keeps your charging cable tidy at the stem. Essential for race day.
- Garmin charging puck — the fastest and most reliable way to top up your Garmin before a session.
- Ravemen FR300 — front light that mounts directly under your Garmin or Wahoo head unit. Keeps your bars clean and your beam pointed where it matters.
- Garmin Varia RTL515 — radar rear light that alerts you to vehicles approaching from behind. Pairs with your Edge or Garmin watch.
- Stryd — the footpod that brings running power to your Garmin. The single most useful running upgrade I have made.
- Favero Assioma Pro RS2 — the power meter pedals most serious cyclists end up choosing. Accurate, easy to move between bikes.
Reader-Powered Content
This content is not sponsored. It’s mostly me behind the labour of love, which is this site, and I appreciate everyone who supports it.
Support the site: Follow (free, fewer ads) · Subscribe (paid, ad-free) · Buy Me A Coffee ❤️
All articles are written by real people, fact-checked, and verified for originality. See the Editorial Policy. FTC: Affiliate Disclosure — some links pay commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Very sad news I always received excellent service from Wiggle. Great products and price but they were let down often by their choice of courier.
dpd?
they were ok in my area.
i have/had no quibbles at all with wiggle hence my link up with them. sad news tho
German perspective on this: wiggle is one in dozens of online stores that were part of the holding in question. They were all fitness related, many of them stepping onto each other’s toes in the German bike stuff web shop market that will still be crowded without them. B24, bc, r2, rose and h&s (radon bikes), that’s the competition they were facing. All the German Signa brands combined would not stand against even a single one of those.
Wiggle on the other hand, it looks super healthy compared to the rotting pile of crap that all the other Signa online brands were.
It must be tempting for bik24 to not bid for wiggle, but I suspect (hope! as a happy customer) that they will focus on more pressing problems. But I don’t expect Wiggle to disappear, very much unlike an the other brand zombies Signa was running.
yes, someone will buy the brand. Wiggle in the UK also own Chain Reaction, although it’s jsut another web front on the same stock.
My uneducated guess from continental europe would be that Wiggle have became a UK household name for cycling related ecomerce and thus won’t fold and go away.
I feel kinda a bit sad for Wiggle. They did offer some great bang-for-buck stuff of which I own a quite a few pieces but somewhere pre pandemic they lost their way. I can’t really put my finger on it but I haven’t bought off them for years now for that reason.
Why would I buy a DHB Aeron Lab or so rain jacket for the same price I can get a tried and tested Gabba or Perfetto Jacket or whatever Castelli’s name of the season for those are currently?
But apart from that, did they grow too much too fast? How big was their european sales and how badly did the Brexit hurt those? How well did their outdoor stuff sell? Did they expand to much out of road biking and MTB? Did Decathlon hit them badly?
___
The german ecomerce shops under SSU weren’t the go-to shops for neither my cycling buddies nor I for a long time now.
Well at least Benko turned his profit. Good riddance to everything else it seems.
Be carefull with investement capital kids. It’s the most fickle mistress.
wiggle was more road bikes and chain reaction more mtb (same company behind the scenes)
they were definitely the pre-pandemic king of retailers for Garmin sports watches. they always got the early stock.
yes they expanded, yes they revamped the website and yes they’ve been hit by regular economic woes.
i don’t know how much the likes of decathlon would hit them, in the uk i wouldn’t have thought that would be an existential hit.
the dhb vs castelli type argument gets me as well. i know it makes sense for retailers to create their own brands but i never felt a great affinity to them (dhb). hence that kinda defeats the whole point of branding if i’d still rther buy a known brand and dhb werent exactly cheap.
From a Danish point of view – wiggle seems to have lost it when Brexit-happened. They simply failed to tell clearly their EU-customers that they shipped the Items from outside UK and as a result to that no taxes/import taxes was added.
EU customers was afraid of the possible lack of IOSS number (= buyers country tax paid – in my case Danish VAT and taxes) so most people decided to do the purchase on other sites.
A second issue the shipping costs exploded – the price more than doubled due to change of shipping agent – often the shipping costs would be 22 euro.
A third issue – A lot/ if not most NIKE produces are no longer sold on the website. Shoes like Pegasus/Vomero/Free that always have been super sellers, cannot be bought from the site.
when you buy things in the EU you pay VAT (unless you are a business). That hasn’t really changed although the colecltion mechanism has. Consumers (almost) ALWAYS pay VAT/country tax regardless of the source
companies you buy stuff from should show a price excluding VAT.
I agree any import DUTY may make the end price more expensive and that the shipper might require you to separately pay VAT