Spooky Bikes

[sonny]

When is the next batch with a Large due?

when you order a custom yo

[fvracer72]

I had that cartoon on my wall

[Eastcoaster]

Yup... I'd be ALL over one. I came off of an Xprezo Gamjam for trail.... I'm a short rider... an experiment for an aggressive trail bike. That thing was low and slaaaack.... a little too much so...but I loved the suspension and you're right. I think there'd be a market for that type of a frame from a small builder. I am also digging "mismatched" travel.... say, 140 in the front and 100-125 or so in the rear.... 67'ish HA......
And, if it came out of FTW's shop out of alu and had Spooky on it? Total wood......

Mickey do you guys ever consider doing a steel single pivot fs?

I know you had worked on a complex new fs DH (I think it was dh) frame but in the end it's just too expensive to get it done.

What about doing something like the Xprezzo single pivots. I got a Xprezzo Super-D back in the new year and finally getting enough rides in on it to have it dialed and the thing rocks. Prior to this I've been riding FSR's and a linkage driven single pivot (original Transition Covert).

I think some rad handmade steel aggressive bikes could do well. Could also follow a bit of the Chromag model and have some of them handmade and some overseas to hit the lower price point. So much of the handmade market is currently XC/light trail. Not much going on in the AM/heavy trail / DH market.

[Eastcoaster]

Also- Here is a completely unrelated Bob Haro cartoon that I scanned from an old BMXaction! magazine.

I miss my Skyway T/A from back in the day......

[fvracer72]

My older brother started collecting vintage bmx bikes a few years ago.....mainly stuff from his era though....late 70's mostly

[suspectdevice]

So,

A thing to note and something that I need to make more clear:

Stock frames(the ubiquitous Skeletor and infamous Havocstaff) are done for the forseeable future. I haven't done the best job getting the word out on that, not have I done a good job in selling them in large enough volume to make any money on them.

I have less than a handful of stock frames on the rack. For the last year we've been trying as hard as we can to get shit together to build race bikes to order and deliver them on time, and stop fucking up, etc. We'll be there within a quarter(thanks mostly to a product we developed for a client outside of the bike industry) and we have a plan to make things grow.

Racing is what FTW and I know best, and for me, it's been the focus of my life first as an athlete, then as an academic now as an equipment provider for 20 years now. Frank has been trying to win as many bike races as possible for more than 30 years. We have to capitalize on the collective experience and passion, because otherwise we're not using our skill-sets and abilities to the fullest and that's a hell of a waste of unique potential.

Supporting racing(and/or business) from the grassroots isn't sustainable for under-capitalized petty commodity traders who just can't seem to create enough order. Unless they get deadly serious about the whole bike racing thing...

How/Why:

I needed a more rational business model that lines up with my long-term goals in life.

To that end we've been building nothing but custom frames for the last 18 months and cutting the fat in the hope that I could find some people to help us win bike races so we can most effectively cash in our passion for racing and capitalize on our core competencies to build a smaller number of bicycles with better attention to detail and better margins and manage pricing so we have time to invest in r&d and product development(and find someone who knows how to successfully run a business). No more super-cheap Skeletors.
Instead, pricing more in-line with performance is front and center now.

I live and breathe bike racing. Frank lives and breaths anything that goes fast. Both of us have helped many other people reach their goals as athletes. The bikes we've been involved with have always managed to be under people who win bike races.

My motivation not to quit this bike building business altogether is driven by a desire to support the proletarian bike racer with practical race bikes that are first and foremost for racing in a way that pissing away all of our margin on the front end couldn't.

Someone mentioned recently that it might be easier for us to make some headway toward stability if we make an all-in move to more actively support racing and after a bit of pondering it's been decided that it's my best opportunity to finally get this company off the ground.

So, here it goes:

The driving force in my life is to win as many bike races as possible, as an equipment supplier, athlete or advocate, because, goddamit, winning bike races can sell bicycles when you do it right...or at least sell enough other stuff to keep me fed and fund enough of a budget to work on developing new products and technology.

Bike racing changes lives, brings order, passion and dedication to the table for anyone who takes it seriously and it's the coolest thing ever. Making things in the USA is pretty important too. People across all sorts of demographics, even people who don't ride bikes can get behind the our kids and the flag.

The most elaborately crafted marketing magic from mega-corporations will fall flat when our bikes are constantly in front of theirs at the finish line.

I've worked with other like-minded people to create the backbone of a professionalized developmental racing organisation to make sure we create a greater and more visible net benefit to the sport than the other guys, and hopefully, that will sell some expensive bikes to some well-heeled people so that we have the resources to provide technical support to a very successful racing organisation.

The team staff we have assembled already do things like run regional road talent identification programs for USAC, race World Cup XC races, win collegiate and masters championships, ride in team cars yelling at 16 year old kids in Belgium and co-author papers I cited in my college thesis.

We have identified an elite group of Freshman and Sophomore multi-discipline collegiate racers from the strongest collegiate programs in the country who have shown the most potential for development based on extensive results analysis, training history, physiological testing and psychological profiling.

Spooky only has the budget to build 5 frames before MTB season, so I need to make sure we see ROI on that investment so we can build more bikes in the future. If we win races we will sell more bikes because I will teach the children to sell bikes, because that's what professional athletes are supposed to do.

We've assembled a professionalized team of coaches, physiologists, nutritionists and psychologists who are devoting their own time and money in return for good vibes and a little product support from us.

The core of the coaching staff is, handily enough, active Pro XC racers with formal coaching and science backgrounds and ex-professionals from the '90s who were around when MTB racing in American was actually a professional sport. One of the members of USAC's Coaching Education Committee is thrown in there for good measure too. I'm not fucking around here. This is all-in. Winning isn't about the bike, it's about the athlete. The staff is professional, a lot of us already scrape in a large portion of our money from bike-racing related sources.

We currently have elite coaching capacity for 8 athletes so getting our shit together and figuring out how to build more race bikes is the big goal here in VT. Build race bikes, win races, keep the lights on, pay the bills. It'll happen as long as I bring in additional revenue streams to support myself and we figure out the carrying capacity so that the guys can keep the shop running balancing building bikes optimally.


A central component of our racing(The Home Team Foundation) program's foundational mission statement is to efficiently manage the collective professional passion we have assembled to create a durable a bike racing team designed to win bike races and share knowledge and creating educational resources about best-practices in sport science and innovative bicycle technology so that everybody else can hop on the Doing the Right Thing bandwagon.

Our goal is to create a transparent and efficient structure for a self-sustaining development-focused racing organisation that The People can help support and nurture directly via charitable donations and fund raising efforts and that can be kicked into overdrive if the need arises or resources arrive to do things like insure that there are opportunities for U23 racers to race at the highest level and receive the best possible college education. There is grant money out there to support many aspect to support much of what we want to do and relatively simple small-to-medium scale corporate endowments to pursue and we'll be going full-bore to raise every penny we can to put into the program and exploit by exploiting existing non-profit infrastructure with aggressive grant writing and fund raising efforts.

It's The Home Team, get it?

Spooky is so small I think will see sustained quarterly growth just by being stoked and supporting the scene.
No matter what we do as long as we go racing at all Spooky bikes will win more bike races and sell more softgoods than we would without giving this a shot.

The momentum behind the team has already started creating new webs of connections in academia, and has opened relationships with aerospace contractors should allow us to organically fuel growth at the bike company just by Doing the Right Thing and Being PRO and Winning Bike Races.

Winning bike races will allow us to make the best race bikes we can and sell them to people that want to win races, give them to athletes who need them win or just deliver them to nice people who want to have fun on a nice bike made by nice people who are trying to do good things for their sport and country.


I'm pretty surprised that a program like this doesn't already exist, but now it does and the cogs are in place and we pulled the trigger the other day and now the adults are scurrying around doing the shit they do and the kids are going to do the shit they do and powermeters are being pulled off of shelves in warehouses and...

So,
Are you with us?

The Adults are still working on tying up various loose ends in regard to governance and legal status for the team and I'm still out there pursuing every possible kind of funding source to get the kids to races and on the best equipment(and will be until the end of time)

When there is more substantive information about the future of the organisation that I can disseminate, I will, but I had to share because this is critical information when it comes to where I'm going with brand direction and where I hope to go with our product stream and over the last week or so it has radically changed what and how I do things, for the better.

www.hometeamcycling.org
The temp site should be up in a few days.
Now it's time to go sweep the shop floor and make sure that there is coffee in the machine for the morning.

[liv2bike]

Nice take man. Well said. Your passion comes out in what you wrote. Keep it real, keep it legit, keep it focused, keep it grounded and keep the kids on point b/c it is about the kids. Cycling can be such a positive force in not just our lives but in our kids lives and in the lives of kids that look up to us and what we do. I wish you all much success. I look forward to following the program.

Just another reason why VS absolutely rocks. This right here is what it is all about. Makes me want to go out and ride my bike really fast. Cheers.

Guy

[quickag]

I wish I was fast so I could ride for Spooky.

[Matthew Strongin]

I wish I was fast so I could ride for Spooky.

I wish I was fast so I ride a Spooky.

Mickey, this is awesome. I'll definitely be following your exploits and when the time is right I'll do my part by ordering one of them built to order Spooky jobs.

[suspectdevice]

Looks like we just scored our first $20k in donations from a few New Media types so that we cant start looking for professional non-profit managerial staff.

Let's roll!

[TRuss]

Very very nice work Mickey.

[fvracer72]

I'm a little bummed...I've been saving for a havocstaff, unfortunately in M/L which is not part of the the remaining stock. Maybe I can swing a custom.

[andrew flowers]

Mickey nice work

I know it's tough to step back from doing "cheap" MUSA race bikes, but it was the right move

I am still blown away by the quality of frank's construction, and it makes sense to exploit that

selling race bikes for pennies on the dollar doesnt feed juniors

selling guys who know what they are looking for the best constructed and designed aluminum race bikes in the world does.

everytime I ride the purple beast i smile, the bike is an effing bully

we all need to share your stoke, as it is wildly infectious

keep it simple and win some races

i've got a good feeling about this new deal

[suspectdevice]

Thanks Andrew!

I went to college for 5 years(and have the crushing debt to prove it) to eek out every piece of scientific information I could about making people win bike races. I spent the 6 years before I went to college consuming every single piece of training, technical and racing related information I could get my hands on, studying the operations of the top MTB teams in the world and apply training science with the help of a really great, kind, experienced coach who cared as much about educating me and keeping me safe from The Grinder as he did about preparing me to race.

That's 11 years of my life devoted full-time to studying bike racing. I haven't been capitalizing on that stuff enough. As Armstrong won more and more tours I came to care about endurance bike racing less and less. By 2004 when I was ready to graduate I had changed my scientific focus to preparing speed and power athletes, because the Evil Ones hadn't co-opted it yet and it's a lot more fun to work with people that life massive weights.

I'm pretty far off the back these days when it comes to sport science(I spent all weekend in the stacks at Umass trying to get caught up though) but out of fate I got a sponsorship proposal from a MTB team out of the Southeast that just happened to be chock full of people with amazing backgrounds in coaching and science. I also got resumes from many of the best U23 XC racers in the country. It became immediately obvious what had to happen and here we are now. I'm trying to get out of the position of marshaling this operation as quickly as possible but there still are a lot of connections that are on me to be made and the last few technical partners we need to run the operation put into place.

I know a bunch about how to design and market the commodities needed to race bikes but they are just that, commodities. Bikes are just tools that are used to win races. All of the bullshit I stack on top of our bikes to make them cool tools has value and I deserve to be compensated for it.

Helping kids win races is more cool bullshit I can stack on top of the existing marketing narratives and I'm making the assumption that we'll be able to make further inroads into the 13-24 demographic that can't really afford our bikes in the first place but does eat up propaganda with reckless abandon and cool t-shirts.
We need to sell more non-bike merchandise(I haven't even had enough money to order t-shirts for 18 months!) and focusing on a demographic(and create something compelling for them) that actually buys that stuff is a good way to start moving cloth.


p.s.
If we don't start building stuff with carbon we're not going to be as relevant as I'd like in the MTB world, so that has to change, especially if we want to sell full-suspension bikes. I think metal frames have a feel that's hard to beat for a rigid structure, but carbon can be so much stronger and stiffer, especially for small parts like linkages. There are kids with PhD's "looking into it" right now.

The fact that I can't afford to buy some t-shirts but there are people out there doing all sorts of research into stuff doesn't escape me.
They just want to go racing. Yay racing!

[TRuss]

This shit is rad. Please continue to keep us updated and informed.

[Eastcoaster]

"p.s.
If we don't start building stuff with carbon we're not going to be as relevant as I'd like in the MTB world, so that has to change, especially if we want to sell full-suspension bikes. I think metal frames have a feel that's hard to beat for a rigid structure, but carbon can be so much stronger and stiffer, especially for small parts like linkages. There are kids with PhD's "looking into it" right now."

DING DING!

As much as I'm on board with metal as my next Spooky.....
I'd be ALL OVER a carbon, full susser 6Fiddy-b. I'm patient.... LOVE to see it Mickey.....

[Eastcoaster]

"p.s.
If we don't start building stuff with carbon we're not going to be as relevant as I'd like in the MTB world, so that has to change, especially if we want to sell full-suspension bikes. I think metal frames have a feel that's hard to beat for a rigid structure, but carbon can be so much stronger and stiffer, especially for small parts like linkages. There are kids with PhD's "looking into it" right now."

DING DING!

As much as I'm on board with metal as my next Spooky.....
I'd be ALL OVER a carbon, full susser 6Fiddy-b. I'm patient.... LOVE to see it Mickey.....

That all being said....
Just be sure to make one small enough for me.... (hopefully having pro women on the team will help my odds...) ;-)

[suspectdevice]

Right now I'm making the kids write and edit the final sponsorship proposal for the team- we're developing a tweaked google environment with a volunteer from google labs and we're working on live tweaks to the system. It'll take a long time until this works smoothly- luckily they respond instantaneously on facebook.

I really believe in experiential education- making a bunch of college freshmen write and edit all of the documents for the team and be involved with information management is a good way to do that. I'm proud of them so far- although there are always kids in the back of the class that need to be more aggressively engaged to be brought into the dialog.

I'm hoping we'll be able to share the information management system we create with other teams in the future- there is a lot of really complicated logistics and data involved with a bike team. There is also a lot of data to log. Besides the obvious power files we need energy consumption, energy intake, weight etc. etc. If we are going to learn anything it's going to be via statistical analysis of larger-picture items. All of us on the management end are very scientifically minded- producing something that we can publish or information we can share with colleagues or that might be part of a larger analysis in the future is critical.

I'm most excited to start generating lots of .csv files and sticking them into STATA. We have a heterodox economist(because progressive nerds ride bikes) on the team who wants to help us do some statistical analysis to help us do things like track specific youth demographics that are currently under-represented in bike racing among and overall racer/mentor density among other things. By zipcode. Sounds pretty good to me: someone who knows how to process data looking for results that aren't just about maximizing profit, because that's not what we're going for.


I figure if we're going to do this we need to go all the way, even if we need to quote Mao every once in a while.

[Matthew Strongin]

Awesome stuff, Mickey. Keep the info coming.

[fvracer72]

Can someone throw me a link for the havocstaff geometry chart that was on the spooky site?