Cowboy: The Belgian e-bike start-up seems to be on fire

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Things are not looking good for Belgian e-bike start-up Cowboy currently: Customers are complaining about long delivery times, poor service and miserable communication. The company is also said to be sitting on a mountain of debt worth millions and parts of the management team have left the start-up.

Founded in 2017 by Adrien Roose, Tanguy Goretti and Karim Slaoui, who died in 2023, the Brussels-based company Cowboy's e-bikes are fun and, like VanMoof, are among the most seamlessly connected models on the market.

Frame problem likely to be expensive

2025 is considered a "crucial year" for the company. Although Cowboy has raised over 130 million euros in funding since it was founded – almost as much as VanMoof with 150 million euros –, it has not yet made a profit. Cowboy had already set itself this target in 2023 and then again in 2024 and 2025 – without achieving it so far.

Due to a frame replacement program for the Cowboy 4 ST (MR) model announced at the beginning of May, the dream of breaking even is unlikely to be achieved anyway. As the company explained at the time, fatigue cracks could occur in the weld seam between the head tube and down tube after a mileage of around 2500 km. The manufacturer warns that "in rare cases" [...] "it could lead to structural failure of the frame and pose a risk of injury".

Cowboy itself does not give any figures on the cases. The manufacturer merely says that the recall is "very limited". However, the flämische newspaper De Tijd conducted a small survey among rental companies, according to which at least 1000 bikes are likely to be affected. Industry experts told the newspaper that replacing a frame, including the production of the frame, labor and logistics, "costs more than 1000 euros per bike.

For safety reasons, customers are advised to stop using the bike; the manufacturer does not offer a replacement. In addition, the manufacturer is allowing the service insurance contracts for affected bikes to continue and is responding to customer emails and chats with AI, as one affected person told us. Cowboy could also pause such contracts as a gesture of goodwill.

Cowboy with a mountain of debt

But Cowboy is probably dependent on every euro. At least that's what the latest available figures for 2022 and 2023 show: Cowboy made net losses of 32.1 million euros and 21.7 million euros respectively in those years. Cowboy has not yet presented current figures for the 2024 financial year, although the company should have published them by the end of July 2025.

According to data from the Belgian Staatsbladmonitor portal (a database with all publications from the government gazette), Cowboy had negative capital of over 22 million euros and debts of over 43 million euros at the end of 2023. According to De Tijd, a "large part" of this debt is subject to interest of 10 to 12 percent. None of these figures look rosy.

Cowboy is apparently also struggling on other fronts. For example, buyers are complaining that they have to wait up to eight months for their e-bike that they have already paid for, as reported by das Dutch magazine Bright, among others. The procurement of spare parts also appears to be a major challenge, with Cowboy no longer relying solely on its team of bike technicians, but now cooperating with 200 dealers. Previously, similar to VanMoof, Cowboy was a pure direct seller but changed its strategy around mid-2023.

Internal changes

According to De Tijd, Cowboy's dealer network numbered around 300 partners at the beginning of 2024, but some are said to have already left. "At this company, they have no idea how to deal with dealers," Philippe Van Eekhout, head of the Belgian Velodome retail chain, told De Tijd. "It was completely impossible. I didn't know when I would get bikes delivered, and when they were delivered, they were the wrong ones." Furthermore, the margins for Cowboy bikes are said to be far lower than those of other manufacturers, which makes them less attractive for dealers.

There also seems to be massive internal changes. According to De Tijd, the marketing director (Richard Ascott), the head of customer service (Aurore Balsan), the communications director (Amy Grimshaw) and the head of the cost-cutting program (Ross McCullum) have all left the company in recent months. According to our information, at least the communications position has not been filled. According to the newspaper La Libre Belgique, Cowboy is also looking for a new CEO to replace co-founder Adrien Roose.

Cowboy did not want to answer our questions about the company's situation and the framework replacement program. Co-founder Tanguy Goretti put us off in writing until next week, when "we will be able to address some of the questions and provide more information on what is going on". It is unclear which issues the company will address.

Goretti recently gave a brief statement to the Belgian newspaper L'Echo: "It is no secret that Cowboy is facing various challenges. 2025 is a crucial year."

(afl)