Are you there Women's Cycling? It's me, November

We've never properly sponsored a team before, but we're now committed to the idea to the point where we've reached out to a few target teams. The place where we'd like to be is NRC/NCC-level women's teams. There's another discussion about how sponsorship squares with our fundamental philosophy, but that's not for now.

Supporting women's cycling offers a lot of advantages: the top levels of the domestic game are more accessible than they are with men's cycling, the teams are a bit smaller so it's not quite such a big bite of the apple, and there's the general tailwind that supporting women's cycling makes a good story. And it does. It's a developing sport that's got a lot going for it, with some significant obstacles. It's at a level where alleviating some of those obstacles is within our reach. Plus, while there are some really big and strong teams out there (Tibco, Optum, Pepper Palace, etc), there are also a bunch of teams that are going to be racing in top-tier events where support on the order of what we can offer would make an enormous difference. 

The problem to date? We can't get a call back. We've contacted a fairly limited number of teams, and immediately excluded ones that we knew were too big for us, or had already announced a wheel sponsor for 2015, or had other conflicting sponsorship in place. But of the ones we've contacted, we haven't gotten a single response. I know we're late to the game, and maybe a week isn't enough time to give someone a chance to respond to an offer like this, but as a willing sponsor to the game I'll admit it's a bit of a turnoff.  

So, here's the deal: if you've got a women's team that competes at the NRC/NCC level, that has its act together, doesn't have conflicting sponsors in place, and wants to ride awesome wheels in 2015, get in touch. 

Thanks

 

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10 comments

This is great.

Rich

Dave said when talking about Deng-Fu that sponsoring a pro tour team brings legitimacy to the brand. This would be the first step.

Darrell

You guys have always stated that sponsoring a team costs money and the individual buyers of your equipment end up paying a little, sometimes a lot more so you can get your name out there. So how you run your business is, well, your business but I'm just wondering the change in thinking?

Corky

As long as prices don't go up, I'm good with this.

Chase

A couple of questions on your new "Just the Tip" dabble into the team sponsorship.Since you guys build up every wheel by hand, who will get preference at the beginning of the season? Will it be the sponsored athlete or the paying customer? I have experienced a bottleneck when it comes to availability of products at certain times of the season due to the companies having to fulfill their sponsorship obligations in time for the season.Will you make public feedback a requirement to all cyclists whom you sponsor? It is always nice to hear from those who actually race on the products.

Joe Ajello

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