Want to get sponsored by a Ponzi scheme?

If you follow us on Instagram or Twitter, you saw a cryptic post referencing Ponzi schemes and multi level marketing and who even knows what kind of Bernie Madoff stuff we're up to. None, really.

We've never done ads, and the few times we've done team sponsorships it's worked out poorly and we've hated it, so we're not doing that. And since most of the wheels we ship are branded with the name of the rim maker instead of our name, whatever branding we might have on there makes almost no impact. But we've got this army of super happy customers who kind of love to evangelize about what we do, so how to make use of that...? 

We've got it!! Bottles! Everyone loves a nice water bottle. So why don't we brand a water bottle with who we are (November Bicycles) and what we do (Custom handbuilt wheels) and send a pair out with every wheel build we ship? And better yet, let's include a coupon code with one of them, so you can hand the bottle to a friend and say "November builds great wheels, you should get some, and here's a bottle with a code for $25 off when you do order them." And better better yet, let's track the codes so that when one of your bottle codes gets redeemed, we send you a new bottle to replace that bottle, with a new code so you can start the whole thing all over again. 

So actually it is kind of a Ponzi scheme. 

You can also just buy them

We don't 100% know precisely how well this is all going to work, in theory our platform supports this but in practice we haven't done it yet so we'll see. And we got a lot of bottles but we didn't get THAT many so we might run out in 3 weeks (which, if it happens, hooray). But the upshot is that if you've got wheels coming, you've got bottles coming too. And if you love your wheels, and you will, then spread that love would ya?

Unfortunately, we can't offer to retroactively ship bottles to previous purchasers. We've priced the bottles for sale at a ridiculously low $10/bottle, delivered. That doesn't even cover costs of the bottle, mailer, and shipping (shipping alone is about $7). If you've bought wheels in the past, thank you, and our bottles are as good a value as our wheels. Thanks for your understanding. 

We might run out of bottles at any moment, or decide the program isn't giving the necessary returns, or discontinue this at any time. It's also limited to retail sales of new wheels. 

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13 comments

Chris K – We haven’t pursued a lot of reviews. I contacted the intheknow guy a while ago more to discuss things and sniff each other out, but he wasn’t receptive since he wants to avoid developing any personal relationships with people whose products he might review. Fair enough. Several people have suggested he review our wheels, but there’s a reason (I can’t recall it) that he gave for not wanting to review anything that wasn’t a “product on a shelf” wheel set. We have some significant misgivings about wheel reviews in general, as reviewers can have pretty fantastic gaps in knowledge. We had some reviews done in the past and, for example, one reviewer docked us points because the cassette was hard to install on the WI hubs we used. He’d neglected to remove the rubber band that holds the 10 speed spacer on during shipment. If you don’t have the knowledge to do that, you are not qualified to review wheels. The intheknow guy is obviously better informed than that guy, but I do have a particular point of misgiving about intheknow which I’m very reticent to share. One of those “I’m sure this is going on, and I’m sure my perspective will make us look like jerks so I’m keeping it to myself” things.

Dave

This is the blog post I was referring to earlier.

https://intheknowcycling.com/2018/04/30/road-disc-wheelset/

Chris K

Speaking of marketing, do you guys send test wheels to reviewers/magazines/blogs? I love a blog called intheknowcycling.com, they have a similar philosophy to yours as far as being straight up, honest, and forward thinking and they do a bunch of wheel tests. I posted a comment on their disc wheel post about your carbon disc wheels…I would love to see them review them!

Chris K

Okay for a bit of clarification here. My comment was intended as humor (obviously a poor attempt). In response to Jay, I am more than happy with the product and service I received in return for my hard earned $$$. Furthermore I’m sorry if my entry came across as mean spirited, it was not at all intended in that manner. I also intend to purchase another set of wheels for my cross/gravel purposed bike in the future. Let me reiterate that I am completely happy with my purchase and price I paid for my product.

Pugsley

Joe – Yes, one, once, as noted in my comment. You can post a lot of things that we won’t like. You’ve done it a bunch of times. You can say you were unsatisfied with your purchase from us and we’ll leave it up and address it (can’t remember this happening but it could). You can question our info or pricing or perspective, all of which have happened, and we’ll address it and leave it up. Or a thousand other things. The comment we deleted was about Hotfoot rims, and it said “these will never sell everyone wants 30mm or greater.” Either the commenter has a commercial interest in selling wider rims, or is making broad uninformed yet authoritative statements about what “everyone” wants (as we now find it, it was the latter), neither is something we need to address or leave up. We’re not going to curate the comments to only put ourselves in a positive light, no way, but we don’t owe the world a forum for whatever kind of crap they want to say, nor a forum for advertising some other product. Nor are we going to be baited into debating ridiculous stuff. Completely over that. We deserve to have the respect we’ve shown commenters for eight years returned, and when that’s ignored, we don’t feel bound to accommodate it. Simple.

Plus if “do these come with tubeless valves?” “no but we can include a set of black ones, color matched ones are too expensive to include” is pulling teeth, I want to be a dentist. Easiest money ever. Beyond the several other small accommodations we’d made previously. Really no one else asks, they must recognize that our pricing is better than fair and we work our nuts off to make sure stuff is done right.

Dave

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