The last month has been a pretty wet and cold month in San Francisco and that puts a damper on the bike riding. Most of my friends purchased some removable fenders and the pleasure riding to Tiburon and Sausalito has been limited. With our extra time, we were able to do an update to the Mission Bicycle ordering process and are pleased to offer several new customization options with a few new colors and an improved order form.

We now allow our customers to customize their chain color (silver, red, black, pink, purple, white, or blue), their hub color (silver. black, blue, red, white, yellow), or their headset color (silver, black, blue, yellow, green, or red). These color combinations - when done in conjunction with the existing frame, wheelset, handlebar tape, and tires color options - will make even more colorful and rad bicycles. I am now rocking a wonderful purple chain on my bicycle.

We also improved our ordering process to include the new options and allow customers a little bit better idea what kind of color combinations they are picking. Using the wonderful Jquery Plugin for customized color picking we were able to manage our colors using our inventory management system and allow users a colorful and obvious way to select what color they want. Behold:

Next on the agenda - a new site design for www.missionbicycle.com and another round of the improved order form!

Last week we completed and delivered our first run of Mission Bicycles. Here they are:

The first cusomters to recieve their bicycles were good friends Joi Ito, Andy Smith, and Neil Drumm. It's been quite a journey so far getting to our first run but getting this first run on the road has been really rewarding, save a rectified mix-up at our powdercoaters (for a little while the red frame was pink, and the pink frame red), everything turned out wonderful.

When we put the pictures up on Flickr something unexpected happened, the picture of Joi's Bike became really popular on Flickr, peaking out as the third most favorite'd picture featured in the explore section Last Thursday!

To celebrate the first run of bikes we had a small launch party with our friends. Mollie C was kind enough to photograph the scene.

The party was really fun. It's really something to have friends getting excited about Mission Bicycles like we are. We're talking about having a second larger / open party some time in January or Febuary. We'll be sure to keep all of you posted if and when that happens.

Our artists friends and random awesome folks who found us through our website have been hard at work designing decals for our first run of bikes over the past few weeks. We've partnered with the incredibly knowledgeable people (Lars and John) over at Logos Graphics to do the vinyl cutting. Recently we have been meeting with them and our designers to take a look at the cutting process, see the patterns and colors available, and try out some cuts to get a good idea of what will work and won't work.

In case you are curious, here's how the vinyl cutting works: First, a vector image of a decal design is uploaded to the decal printer. Then, the vinyl decal material (basically a giant sticker) is fed through a mechanical plotter and cut with pretty amazing accuracy to the desired design. After that, the un-usable area is removed or "weeded" from the sticker backing. Finally, "transfer tape" is used to lift the cut decals off the backing tape so that they can be easily applied to the bikes.

The first designs from our artists have started rolling in. We are going to do some more test prints shortly after Thanksgiving, and will have a selection of decals ready by the time our first bikes ship to customers. Here is a sneak peak of of a design submitted by Abby Kelly from Brooklyn. Check it out!

...so cool.

Bike Snob NYC, one of the most popular bike blogs in the world interviewed us last week. We're all huge fans of Bike Snob, so this was an honor for us. His writing is biting and witty and his observations and stories are routinely hilarious.

Feedback

From the interview we received an influx of interest and feedback, some of it positive, some critical. The biggest criticism was over our base price of $950. Considering there are a number of fixed gear bikes available in stores for $500-$700 it is understandable for people to question why ours were priced for so much more.

Our bikes cost more because we offer a lot of customization options and we use substantially higher quality components than you find on store bought fixies. If you price out our components (using google) you will see that our bikes sell for more than $100 less than the retail cost of the bare components (and thats not including our labor in hand building the wheels and assembling the bicycles).

But even if our bikes are fairly priced considering our level of service and quality and cost of the components we use, we still have a pricing problem in that our base price is not in sync with the current market.

Pricing Change

We're fixing this. As of now the Mission Bicycle will be available for a base price of $790!

We were able to lower the price by cutting into our margin and dropping the component quality on our base bicycle. At the same time we are widening our parts inventory selection and will offer a number of parts upgrades as 'add-ons' when you pre-order a bicycle. This will let us be able to offer the best of both worlds, a more affordable bike that you can customize further depending on your taste and budget. For more information you can read our updated component spec and see the new parts available on our pre-order form.

Many thanks to Colin for letting us use his fancy camera and Katherine for helping us schlep. If you're curious about our photo set-up take a look. We bought a giant backing sheet for $60 and rented the lights, amp, radios, and bike stand for $100 from Pro Camera Rental.

First off, sorry for the long delay between posts. We have been super busy getting the business end of Mission Bicycles in order -- we got a bunch of boring behind-the-scenes business stuff together that we'll spare you the details on.

But great news! The first run of bikes are on the way! We just picked up our first prototypes frame from the powder coater.

Check it out:

The other bike parts slowly rolling in. Barring a shipping disaster we will have the first pictures of the complete prototype posted on Monday. These bikes are going to look hot!

We have done some more work getting the shop in order. We are beginning construction of a shelf that will hold forty frames and a whole mess of wheels 8' above the floor. We've also got all the necessary shop tools order. Next week we will have our headset presses, truing stands, bottom bracket and headset facer's, torque wrenches, and a ton of t-handle allen wrenches ready to rock.

We will be posting a menu of sorts, it will list the customization options for the bike as well as a sizing guide for proper bike fit. We will also be getting a mini art-contest going for the initial decal sets. There will be a lot more news in the next few days so stay tuned!

It's been a really exciting and productive week. We sent a heads up email out to a lot of friends and have gotten a ton of great feedback. It's really something to have friends as excited as we are about the project. Thanks so much to everyone for the support and replies that we received.

And.... we've had three firm orders for bikes (!!!) which we find really amazing considering nobody has seen them yet (including us ;p). For our first run in October we are building five, selling four, and keeping one around to show while we make the next batch. This means that we are one order away from selling out all our first run of bikes. We can't thank our first customers enough. It's really amazing to have friends willing to take a significant bet on us and the idea of Mission Bicycles before it's a full reality.

But -- now the pressure is really on.

The Shop

Here's the thing - Mission Bicycles for now is housed in the Dog Patch. If we had it our way we'd be in a store-front right on Valencia Street, but there are a whole ton of bikes to build and sell before that happens. So for now we are sharing space with our cousin company, Chapter Three, in their awesome Loft space on the other side of Potrero Hill. It's not that bad really, the office space is really nice (14' ceilings, huge windows, etc.) and the bike ride commute from the Mission is nice.

Here is our address if you want to stop by and check it out:
2325 3rd St, Ste #319,
San Francisco CA,
94107

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It was another busy week of construction for the shop. The build/assembly area is almost complete. The workbenches are in place, the pegboard is mounted and the tools are flowing onto the wall. Earlier this week, I made a run to a few different stores to gather storage containers. I put a bit of thought into storage and I think the shop will be very intuitive to work in and with any luck the it will stay clean. The last big thing that will go in the shop is a large shelving structure that will be above the benches, about eight feet off the ground, and extend all the way to the ceiling.

There will be more information on the way, and we'll updating the flickr as well, so check back often.

Thanks a bunch everyone!

Shortly after arriving in San Francisco in July, I met Zack Rosen and Matt Cheney (founding partners at the web-development company Chapter Three LLC) through my girlfriend Aimee and her brother / Zack's roommate Tony. Matt, Zack, and I had a mutual fascinations with aesthetically beautiful custom fixed gear bikes, and in conversation we started wondering why bike companies didn't seemed to pay them much attention. For my first couple months in San Francisco, when we got together we would usually end up talking a big game about how awesome it would be to start a company to build and sell these beautiful bikes.

The time is now

In the last week of August, right before Matt and Zack left for a two week company retreat in Mexico, we took the conversation to Zeitgeist and started getting down to business. Pitchers were ordered, great big bike company ideas started flowing, bad company names were proposed, and business plans were scribbled on soggy napkins. Matt and Zack agreed to put up the money for our first run of bikes, and I started working out what it would take to really get this company off the ground.

The basic idea was simple. We were going to build high quality fixed gear city bikes with no visible branding and custom matched paint jobs. We would build a small run of bikes, see if we could sell them to friends, and take it from there.

Interbike

While on the phone with my old boss Jason Reser, the owner of Reser Bicycle Outfitters, he suggested that I attend Interbike Conference to get the pulse on the bike undustry and to meet with parts distributors and manufacturers. Interbike is the biggest bicycle convention in the world and a perfect venue to start the relationships we needed to get our company off the ground. Going was a great idea, but the show was only a couple weeks away and all we had for our company was a previously soggy napkin with lots of big unspecified ideas. Everyone hustled to get me prepared to go and my plane ticket was booked a day before Interbike would get under way (I would have been taking a greyhound if Expedia didn't pull through with the $200 plane ticket).

After a short flight and a quick shuttle ride to the Sands Convention Center I met up with Jason Reser to start the tour of the show. The show floor was packed with booths and the size of the convention center made it nearly impossible to navigate unless you have a map. Over the next few days I found my way around, met with many companies, and made several key contacts required to get Mission Bicycles up and running. The show was a wonderful experience. Special thanks to Jason Reser for letting me crash in his hotel room and thanks to Jon Shell of Orbea Bicycles for the excellent dinner at the Venetian!

Building a Bicycle Shop

The day after arriving back from Interbike (last Friday) we went to Bank of America (2701 Mission St.) to up a business checking account for Mission Bicycles so we could start making parts orders. Christina Mena, their small business banker, was really helpful and got us get set up in no time.

The afternoon still had plenty in store. Mission Bicycles is being set up in the Chapter Three offices, and we needed to construct some workbenches and shelves. Zack, Matt and myself made a shopping list and headed to the hardware store. After getting together all the lumber, an employee cut everything to length for us. After a long day, we dropped everything off at the shop and headed home.

The next day, after purchasing the workbench materials, Zack, Matt, and myself began construction of the benches. The benches were a basic frame and assembled really quickly. When working with bikes, there are a variety of small parts that can be mis-placed quickly if the shop is not in order, so I started a shopping list for parts storage.

Starting the business

This past few days has been a blur. We're getting all the paperwork filed and accounts set up at manufacturers, getting the shop in working order, and getting ready for a full court press getting the word out about the bikes. We've been working until midnight most nights and I am getting pretty beat, but am more excited each day we get closer to getting these bicycles built.

More later!