22/12/2016 - 2016 Over And Out
Cy Writes....
What. A. Year.
It makes my head spin a bit to think how far we have come in the last months. This time last year we had only just relaunched the Rocket and there was only four of us, with Richard just doing one day a week building bikes. Now there's six of us with number seven on the way, and because we have a race team again there will be eight of us at tonight's Christmas meal.
Along the way the Rocket got three mates in the droplink range, and with a bit of help from Business Sheffield I decided to get them all in one go! We have revised the whole hardtail range, done a new Escapade, kept building 26" wheel bikes, done some awesome ride jerseys, won some races, been to some great events, bought a van, got a demo man to go in said van, and demo'd the hell out our demo fleet. We have done a bunch of videos, some amazing photoshoots courtesy of Richard, and generally got a lot more creative with our media and merchandise, which I love.
Almost everything about the rhythm of the business turned on it's head this year which all the new people and bikes we added. Normally August is quiet for us with people being on holiday. This summer with the arrival of the droplink range, we were full throttle all the way through building bikes for people. Usually in December we quiet down towards Christmas as people are spending their money on their family and friends instead of themselves. Our bikes don't often constitute Christmas presents. This year we were all in on Monday and Wednesday this week. We dispatch 6 bikes to a great bunch of guys in France on Monday, and yesterday, this was the pile of boxes waiting for TNT and UPS at the end of the day:
Seven bikes and something like 30 frames I think? Wow. Quite looking forward to a few days off!
My favourite thing this year was getting all those droplink bikes out there and available. It's been in the plan to have more than the Rocket in the range since before the first Rocket was launched, and it's so great to have some more options for people to ride a Cotic. It was pretty scary committing to the funding to get it done, but I'm so glad we did, and we're not stopping here. As you might have gathered from our increasing busy-ness and head count, we are growing and I'm really enjoying having a bigger group of people around me to discuss ideas and bring new things to the mix, but we're still pretty small. I expect we'll be a little less small this time next year, but I don't think any of the Big Three have too much to worry about!
I think my favourite photoshoot was the Life Bike shoot back in March. Rob riding the skate bowl at Dev Green on an Escapade was just brilliant:
If you have some down time over Christmas, enjoy it. Hug people you love, have fun, and maybe ride your bike a bit too. If you're stuck in at any point, maybe have a look back over what Cotic got up to this year. I've just had a quick flick through and there's some lovely pics and videos, and a few articles I forgot I wrote!
http://www.cotic.co.uk/news/archive2016
And if that wasn't enough, there's always the old favourites over on the Videos section. Get a bit of Rocketman for Christmas!
http://www.cotic.co.uk/videos/
Thanks for all your support this year, thanks so much if you have bought a bike. Have a brilliant Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Cheers,
Cy
Founder and Director, Cotic