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In 2005, Orbea posted a turnover of 48.5 million euros, of which 62% came from sales abroad, and obtained a profitability of 9%. For this year, the forecasts are for 55 million euros (+13%) with international sales accounting for 70% and a significant presence in the United States.

Orbea has a total workforce of 270 people and annually manufactures about 200,000 bicycles, with racing bikes (54%) and mountain bikes (25%) predominating, and remaining sales divided between different types of leisure bicycles. The company has a production subsidiary in the US, and another about to start production in China. It sells its products in 35 countries. In 2005 its main market was Spain (30%), followed increasingly closer by the United States (22%), France (17%), Benelux (8%) and the United Kingdom (2%).

The difficult and, in turn, open US market is a determining factor in Orbea’s success. A market in which this year the company will achieve sales worth $18 million (32 % of total sales) and in which it has its own assembly plant in Little Rock (Arkansas), where 30 people work in a 3,000 m2 factory.

The Managing Director of ORBEA USA, Tony Karklins, forecasts that within three years, the US will be the most important market for Orbea, ahead of Spain and any other European country. These forecasts are confirmed by the Chief Executive of the Group, Miguel Ocaña, who calculates that over this period the company could reach annual sales in the United States worth $40 or $50 million.

Orbea’s unquestionable success over the last few years, especially in the US, is based mainly on technological innovation, which is reflected by the sales mix and the number of patents: 1/3 of sales in 2005 involved products developed in the last three years, during which time a dozen invention patents have also been registered. These figures give an idea of the efforts made and the importance of investment in R&D for ORBEA, in a technologically mature sector like the bicycle sector.

Orbea has exclusively developed a range of products with a high technological content, with the application of new materials, especially carbon fibre composites, for the manufacture of bicycle frames, thereby obtaining very high performance in terms of solidity and comfort. The mastery of the structural calculations involved with these new materials has enabled carbon frames weighing less than one kilo to be designed, like the ORCA and OPAL frames.

In the United States, as Karklins recalls, “the ORCA carbon fibre frame meant having the right bike at the right time, coinciding with the boom in racing bikes, which made ORBEA a household name among US fans, associating it with an image of quality, innovation and technology. This, together with a rapid response to customer demand, has led to an accelerated increase in Orbea’s sales in our country”.
 

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