Plum, Ghent’s best-known bike shop, has a new owner. The shop on Verlorenkost has been taken over by Lucien, D’Ieteren’s bicycle chain. Lucien also takes over the Remory-Van Heddeghem shop in Wetteren from the Remora family. This reports the business newspaper De Tijd.

With the two acquisitions, Lucien now has 16 branches in Belgium, but these are the first two outside Brussels and Antwerp.

Household names

Plum is a real household name in Ghent. The shop, with lots of old jerseys and posters on the wall, is like a museum and has existed since 1910. Founder Pol Desnerck not only marketed his own bicycle brand P.D.S., which later became La Plume, but he also had his own cycling team.

The shop remained in the same family Hans for three generations and even expanded in the 1970s to a dozen or so outhouses across Flanders. Later, the business passed into the hands of a few staff members and, at the end of 2020, one of Belgium’s oldest bicycle shops got with Annick Houtsaeger a new owner.

The Remory-Van Heddeghem bicycle shop in nearby Wetteren is also a household name. Founder Fran Van Heddeghem designed the very first chain tensioner and a device to prevent the front fork from breaking. His son Tjefke, who later took over the business, designed the first children’s tandems in collaboration with North. The shop, an icon in Wetteren and the surrounding area, was still owned by the Remory family until it was sold to Lucien.

16 shops

With the take-over of the two historic but in the meantime obviously, modernized shops, Lucien, part of the listed company D’Ieteren, which is best known for the import and distribution of cars of the Volkswagen Group and Carglass, is further expanding its chain.

Lucien, founded in 2022, has now a total of 16 shops. However, this is the first time that Lucien is looking beyond Brussels and Antwerp for an acquisition, as the other 14 shops are in and around these two cities. The names of both bike shops remain, by the way, with the addition of the name Lucien.

Leuven and Mechelen next

According to CEO Karl Lechat, it will not stop with these two expansions. In De Tijd, he says that two branches will be added in Leuven before the end of the summer and that they are also aiming at Mechelen, while Hasselt, Namur, and Kortrijk are also on the wish list. There are also talks about acquiring a larger bicycle shop chain.

By 2025, there should be at least 25 branches across Belgium. In the long run, Lucien wants to sell 70 000 bikes annually. In cooperation with the Antwerp-based leasing company VDW, it is also launching a personal lease formula for people who do not have access to a company bicycle allowance through their employer.

Small, independent bike shops are under increasing pressure in Belgium. In a short space of time, some bigger players have joined the Belgian market besides Lucien, including Colruyt’s Bike Republic, Raida, and Wildiers. Such chains, in the latter two cases, smaller entrepreneurs who have joined forces, can help customers get their bikes and equipment faster, save costs more easily, and find specialized staff faster.

Currently, Belgium still has around 1 500 bicycle shops.