A look back on our first year…
Happy New Year, everyone! If you’re reading this, you are likely one of the people who have made our first year an enjoyable experience and made our efforts during this first year worthwhile.
This year we have had wonderful conversations and rides with clients, made a lot of friends, and we even received some farm fresh eggs for making a long drive to pick up a bike. It’s hard not to like the people we meet. Everyone has been absolutely great to deal with.
I guess we technically started the business last November, but we really had no clients until just before the end of the year so we’re calling this close enough. Our first order of business was choosing our first set of bikes. After a few calls and emails, we got a very positive response from Michael Moore at Calfee Design. We wanted to have bikes that were high-end and would be immediately recognized as such, and Calfee was perfect for our first addition to the fleet.
One nice thing about Calfee is that it is a US company th
at builds their bikes by hand right here in California. Their bikes are amazing and our clients have loved having the opportunity to ride them. Unfortunately, most regret it afterward since they can’t afford a new bike, and now they want one. We are happy to inform them that we are a Calfee dealer and we can help them in a purchase if they choose to do so in the future. We are nothing, if not enablers. To all the spouses of our clients, we apologize.
We were able to start paying all our bills without loans from the stockholders (me) by March. Not too shabby. We had a paper profit for most of the year! Not enough to pay the employess (once again, me), but showing a bit of profit was a good thing.
We built up our fleet of bikes to 5 Calfees and 2 Cervelos to make a nice size run of bikes from 51cm up to 62cm. We even had a few duplicates in the middle just in case.
As April rolled around, we were contacted about putting together a bunch of bikes to be made available for conference attendees at the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point. We had luxurious accomodations on top of the parking garage, where we sent out bikes for 2 days while working on our sunburns, despite sitting under a canopy. Still, it was good fun and we learned a lot about pulling together such an event.
Continuing our work doing some corporate style events, we were hired to lead some short tours for executives and sales people from Adecco. We led short 10 mile tours of the back bay of Newport Beach. These rides included a short rest stop and on one ride, we helped set up the end point near the Balboa Pier where our riders went to a restaurant and enjoyed their cocktails and dinner while overlooking the water. Unfortunately, we weren’t invited to that part of the trip!
The rest of the year sped up dramatically as summer rolled on, keeping us driving all over delivering and picking up bikes. We were even setting up rentals on our way to and from a family camping trip to Sequoia. Thankfully, one of our friends was able to do some delivery duty for us while we were away!
As the year began to draw to a close, we had a feature done in the blog called The Washing Machine Post. The feature was called “Where did you get that bike?” and gave us some much needed attention. Brian at TWMP has been great and did a great job with the write up, if we do say so ourselves (we may be a tad biased). Hopefully, we can use that to build on for the upcoming year.
We continued our search for wonderful bikes to put our customers on. We don’t want to put people on a bike that they can easily find. We want
to give them an opportunity to ride something different and intriguing. Calfee was a good start, but we wanted to have some other options. Our search brought us to Volagi. Volagi has the distinction of being the only production bike maker that exclusively uses disc brakes on all their bikes. The also have a patented LongBow FlexStay that provides some compliance in the rear end of the bike.
The stays on the Volagi are completely separated from the seat tube, connecting instead to the top tube. This gives the bike a nice compliant ride and really takes the edge off the road, while still retaining stiffness at the bottom bracket. The design works and makes the bike a great ride for the long haul! The disc brakes work well and are a great new trend in road bikes! We have a 55cm in stock now and are awaiting a 53cm bike in a few weeks.
One of the great things about being in this business is having the ability to get involved in events for the benefit of others. Throughout the year, we were involved in a fundraiser for purchasing bikes for kids at the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Ana. We were involved in purchasing 100 bikes, building them up, and distributing them to kids for Christmas at the Club.
Along the way, the people involved in this drive were able to get 100 helmets donated by the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, socks donated by The SockGuy, and a donation of locks to go with all those brand new bikes. The funds raised were enough to cover all costs of the bikes with ~$5000 left over to support the club’s other services. This was a great success and we were proud to be associated with the effort.
2011 ended on a sad note as our graphics guru, Jon Grant, lost his son to leukemia. As his son was diagnosed and then passed away, we
were overwhelmed by the support for Jon and his family. We started selling his prints in our online store in an effort to raise money to help his family during their time of need. The cycling community and the cycling industry are just incredible and responded by helping us get out the word. Through online sales of Jon’s prints and orders placed directly with Jon, we managed to raise close to $3000 for Jon’s family, while simultaneously giving Jon a bit of press for his incredible work. The way the greater cycling community comes to the aid of people is one of the many reasons that we love being in this business.
Look for some t-shirts featuring Jon’s designs very soon, as well as new jerseys that will come about with his help. We hope to continue to support Jon’s work as we move forward this year!
Well, that pretty much covers the year. I’m sure we missed some things. We have so many people to thank for making this past year so great! It’s been busy and highly rewarding! We look forward to the year ahead and growing our business, and of course, meeting more wonderful people along the way. Have a great 2012!
