To Our Esker Community,

(Updated 4/15/25) There has been a lot of uncertainty swirling around the bike industry lately—global shipping bottlenecks, shifting trade policies, and sudden tariff changes. So we wanted to take a moment to give you a quick update on what’s happening and how we’re responding.

First and most importantly:

We hope you're doing well.

We hope you’re getting outside, riding and enjoying nature when you can, taking care of yourself, and staying connected to the people who keep you grounded. That’s what keeps us grounded too—and why we do what we do.

So, what’s going on?

A proposed 10x increase in import duties from Taiwan has been temporarily paused for 90 days (a bit of good news), but some new tariffs have already gone into effect—tripling costs on certain components and materials. While these changes are tough for small businesses like ours, we’ve built our strategy around absorbing as much of that impact as possible.

*We want to assure those of you with existing orders or looking place a new order before any changes go into effect—rest easy: Your pricing is locked in. No sudden increases. No hidden charges. We’ve got you.

What about product availability?

Most of our 2025 inventory is already finished, packed, and making its way toward us. But with shipping congestion at an all-time high (wait…AGAIN!?), things are moving slower than expected. We now expect our shipments to land in May—and when they do, we’ll be all hands on deck at our Minnesota warehouse to get bikes out the door and to you as quickly as possible.

Making smart short-term moves:

To stay strong through the uncertainty, we’ve hit pause on a few big projects like our demo container fleet. This one particularly hurts because we love our bike shop partners and our customers having access to our latest bikes.

We have been working hard in the background for a couple years to bring new ideas and dreams to life which resulted in the recent introduction of the Howdy and Woodsy. But that’s not all we have been dreaming up! We had planned on launching a couple more projects this year that we are REALLY proud of, unfortunately they are shelved for now. We promise that these moves are temporary, and they’re helping us stay focused on what matters most: building great bicycles, supporting our co-workers, and community.

Looking ahead with optimism:

We don’t have all the answers about what the next 90 days will bring—but we’re in this for the long haul. Being a small and independent brand means we’re nimble, and we’ve built backup plans on top of backup plans to keep moving forward. It’s not going to be easy, and we’re going to keep fighting as hard as we can to stay around.

We're seeing renewed love for metal bikes, and it fires us up to know we're contributing something special to that momentum.

Thank you for sticking with us, for riding with us, and for being part of Esker. Your support means everything, and we promise to keep showing up with the same passion and care that’s gotten us this far.

With gratitude,

The Esker Cycles Team - Tim, Kyle, Chris, Parker, Tuck and Alexandera