alt Hacker NewsSimilar thing happened with mask manufacturers during COVID.
They didn't spin up additional mask production b/c they knew the pandemic would eventually pass. They learned this lesson from SARS.
Not maxing out production during spikes (or seasonality) in demand is a key tenet of being a "rational economic actor".
too bad the bicycle industry didn't learn this. They acted like COVID was the new-normal, and it has resulted in many companies disappearing when they learned the hard way that demand for bikes in a pandemic is neither sutainable nor normal.