A Different Kind of Company
A few months ago, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (BRAIN) ran a feature on Compass Bicycles. It drove home a point that I hadn’t really thought much about: Compass is a different kind of bike company.
BRAIN quoted Elton-Pope Lance about Harris Cyclery’s experience: “The shop doesn’t introduce customers to the brand; they come in asking for Compass tires or parts.”
This bottom-up approach is the opposite of the industry norm. Usually, a company launches a product. The company introduces the product to dealers at the big trade shows. The dealers then order it and present it to their customers, the cyclists. The cyclists usually are the last to find out that a new product exists.
With Compass, it’s the other way around: Riders go to their shops and ask for our products. Shops then contact us to set up a wholesale account. (It’s easy, because we aren’t a big company that makes shops jump through hoops.) Thanks to our customers, we now have more than 450 bike shops all over the world who carry Compass components.
The difference goes deeper than just how our products are introduced – it’s also how we develop them. Compass didn’t start with a market analysis. Compass didn’t really have a business plan, either. Compass started with a bunch of us riding our bikes.
For the long and adventurous rides we liked to do, we needed tires and components that weren’t available. So we developed them ourselves. We made prototypes and then put them into production by working with the best suppliers in the industry. That is how Compass started, and that is how we operate today.
We were surprised by the positive response to our products. We weren’t the only ones interested in tires for spirited rides that combined paved and gravel roads. Many riders also needed handlebars that were comfortable during all-day rides and beyond. They wanted cranks with chainrings that suited their gearing needs, rather than those of racers. And so on…
The BRAIN article quotes Kathleen Emry of Free Range Cycles: “Compass tires are much wider than even commuters are used to, yet almost everyone comments on how supple they are and how much faster they feel.” We are excited that customers enjoy our products as much as we do.
Thanks to customers like you, who spread the word about our products, we don’t have to go to trade shows or create marketing campaigns. Instead, we can focus all our resources on making better products.
We develop every product to meet our own exacting standards. When we ride far beyond the horizon, when we crest mountain passes at night, when we take our bikes to the limit on hairpin after hairpin during twisty mountain descents, we must have complete confidence in our bikes. That is the standard we apply to everything we make.
And we realize that without our customers, these products wouldn’t exist. And we wouldn’t be out there riding and developing new products, because we’d have to market our existing program. Without you, Compass wouldn’t be possible! Thank you!
- Read the entire Bicycle Retailer and Industry News article (reprinted with permission).
