Afternoon its been a while.
Just wanted to catch up on proceedings.
There's been a bit of movement as we try to move things forward with new content and new products.
First one is the Website, I appreciate the website is not as smooth and as perfect as it should be.
It was supposed to be a work in progress and grow and transform as the company grew. A friend of a friend did a sterling job of setting it up, however, I decided to change track and get the website completely rebuilt with some fresh ideas and on a different format.
I have been in discussions with a Digital Marketer called Jason (nice guy - if you are reading this, I have sent you a text) and we are in the final discussions on what I want to achieve and coming up with new ideas, his involvement and how to get there.
Hopefully we will have some movement on this and we can get the new website up and running.
Secondly, I have placed a few orders for stainless steel road bikes for some friends. I managed to find a UK frame builder at a really good price who was willing to build Columbus XCR stainless frameset and Reynolds 931 frameset, both partnered with a Columbus fork.
We spent quite a few weeks getting the geometry right and then graphics and then I placed the order.
Getting a UK frame builder was important to me, but it does have its pros and cons. Firstly, communication was easy, I just picked up the phones and sent emails and nothing was lost in translation. Secondly, its nice to use British builders who can then put the money I paid to them back into the local community. The price was never an issue and the resale price will be in my opinion very competitive. The downside of using British builders is they are so bloody busy with other work, that I have had to wait. In future we may have to switch to non stainless framesets and this will bring the time down. But the quality is second to none. On speaking to a mate who has extensive experience in the Cycle industry - he was helpful and passed me contacts in Italy, which could be an option. Lastly, steel building in the Far East could also be an option, but at present - I will stick to UK frame builders. Reynolds 931 and 853 framesets with Columbus forks will be going up on the website shortly.
Lastly, I get a lot of messages asking if we will be doing road bikes as well as gravel bikes, so it made sense to look into this. This has taken time, I have found the language barrier the hardest in dealing with companies in the Far East. But slowly we have got there. We are just about ready to order some sample frames to look at and test. This, however, will just be the beginning, we need to get them inspected by 2 independent frame builders (I would like a second opinion) and also, we then need to build them up and get them tested as complete bikes. So it may take some time. Thanks for Wayne on helping with the geometry design. I owe you biscuits and beers.
Thats it for now, just a reminder, we have clothing available including long and sleeve jerseys and gilets, and also t shirts and sweatshirts.
Hopefully the weather will pick up and we can get out more, I am booked into Majorca in October, so I am trying to get fit for that, but the weather really does not help and I hate the turbo.
Speak later
James...