Help find Statistics on Unicycling?

General
1

Hello ya’ll,
I did a search but could not find anything. I’m looking to find statistics on unicycling. More specific, how many people can ride a unicycle in the USA? Worldwide? How big is the unicycling market in the USA? Worldwide? And also what percentage is unicycling growing?

I need this for a business plan I am writing for a new unicycle store that will hopefully be up and running soon. But first I need to finish the business plan and it would be very helpful to have some statistics on it. If anyone can provide any info, even educated guesses, I would appreciate it. How much do you think unicycle.com sold last year? Thanks!

2

I haven’t tried searching myself, but this subject has come up before. Notably John Foss made an elaborate educated guess that the search button might be able to direct you to. What I remember from his reply was that it very much depends on your definitions, like who “can ride”. Sure enough, John quoted some numbers though.

3

Try emailing Kris or John Drummond (UDC). They would know the answers to questions about US and world market for unicycles.

4

http://unicycling.org/roster/

That would be a good place to start. Given that not every cyclist has registered there won’t make it perfect but you can get a rough idea. I personally know of about 25 unicyclists from Indiana alone and many aren’t listed on the roster.

5

I think he means people that can ride a unicycle. I know at least 50 people in my 7th -8th grade classes at my last school that can ride but arent registered (because they have a bunch of unicycles in the gym people can use)

They are all really bad though :smiley:

6

Thanks for the info so far. I did another search and found one thread and in it John Foss estimated around 1,000,000 people that can ride. I’m thinking it’s a bit higher than that, at least for people that can ride. As for those that are activelly riding, like at least once or twice a month, I’d say 1,000,000 might be a little high. What does everyone else think?

7

the 100000sounds good for people who know how to ride. i think people who “ride” is WAY less though, like 400,000 (thinking about the US only)

8

I wouldn’t even have any idea how you could go about getting even a semi accurate number.

9

Count all the pedals and divide by two?

10

You could do some random surveys in your area (eg. stad in front of a grocery store during the early eavening, or a busy sidewalk) and/or an online one that you can get on a popular website, give the info to someone who has taken a Statistics class. (Sorry I had to drop the class and can’t remember much.) They could give you a % of total, % of regular riders (eg. at least once a month) w/ % error for each, and some other info.

11

alot of people own more that one wheel but nice try

12

Maybe you can find statistics on other activities like skateboarding or something similar. Then find out how many people go to a national event versus how many people just participate in the activity more casually. Then take that ratio and apply it to the number of unicyclist that attended a NAUCC or Unicon. No guarantee that the ratios are the same, but it may give you some interesting numbers.

13

im in a stats class and i was thinking of how to do my finial project on unicycling. I need to ask several questions and try to find patterns that link different things. I would very much like to do it on unicycling and am trying to think of a way to do this but it is complicated because there are so many random people that can ride so far spread apart.

14

For future reference this is what I found thus far. This was taken from the forbes website stated by John Drummond from UDC:

15

Assuming that 1 percent of the US population MIGHT learn to ride a unicycle sounds WAY over estimated to me. How many people currently live in your town/city? How many of those people currently ride a unicycle?

16

So to sum it up, a rough estimate of how many people ride unicycles in the USA is about 1 million people. Since the above is only UDC, I would estimate that with Torker, KH, Koxx, and other brands of unicycles out there that the total unicycle sales for 2007 were in between 15,000 and 25,000 if f I had to take an educated guess. Hopefully this is all the info I need to complete my business plan. Thanks for everyone that helped and this will be a nice thread for future references.

17

That would equate to an average of 20,000 riders per state. Memphis has a population of about 700,000 people and if I really stretch the numbers hard, I can come up with about 40 known unicycle riders. I still think your estimate of 1 million unicycle riders in the USA is really high.

18

I meant 1 million people in the USA that can or know how to ride a unicycle. Plus, you can’t just divide 1 million by the number of states cause each state is populated different…

19

And you cant expect to know everyone who unicycles.

In spokane, I know about 3 riders, then I know about 20 other people who know how to ride, and im sure there are a couple hundred or more people who know how to ride.

20

This is an old but interesting post. While none of us can know the answer [U]I’d like to make a personal guess:

[/U]1 in 850 people in the US can ride a unicycle.

Assuming US has 313million people, that would mean the US has 368,235 people able to ride a uni.

In my city (Chattanooga, TN) our population is about 175,000 people and although i’ve only heard of ~10 people who can ride I’m guessing ~200 people can ride a uni in my city. Even with 200 riders, to my knowledge there’s virtually no uni riding community or club.

Another thought is density. I assume the density of uni riders is far from evenly distributed in the US- there are probably lots of small towns without a single rider, and then a few places that have a club or school program that totally blow up the statistics cause everyone has an opportunity to learn to ride. It’s a fun statistic to guess on and those are my thoughts on it.

Matthew