Sunday, February 14, 2010

Trailer Biz

I’ve taken the plunge into becoming a full-fledged capitalist.

After months of planning and procrastinating, yesterday, I officially (that is, monetarily) kicked off my venture into the “Green Economy,” commissioning twenty, count ‘em twenty, Haulin’ Colin trailers, which I hope to sell in the coming year for more than it’s costing to make and market them, thereby earning a profit on the sweat of my (well, mostly Colin’s) brow, and the risk of my capital.

My long-term vision is a trailer for every bike.

The dream is that when you get into cycling, you buy a bike, a lock, a helmet, and a trailer. With something like 15 million bicycles sold every year in the US, that’s a lot of haulin’, Colin.

Realistically, if I can move the twenty in under a year, I’ll be happy.

But we’ll see; at the very least, I’ll end up, when all is said and done, with by far and away the coolest fleet of bicycle trailers in the world. That ought to be good for starting a human-powered delivery service if all else fails.

I have lots of half-formed ideas about how to market the rigs. I plan to hit up all the bike shops in town, that's for sure. And I’d like to approach places like the UW and Boeing to explore the possibility of fleet sales.

At least a couple of trailers will be available for rent, and I hope to have some kind of special deal with and/or for places like Bike Works and the Bikery.

And I definitely want to figure out how to tow a car using two trailers; that’s just too good an image to pass up.

Retail is something of a mystery to me; pretty much the only experience I have selling things was an abortive attempt to be a small-time pot dealer in tenth grade—which ended when I smoked up all my inventory.

No danger of that this time, at least.

1 Comments:

Blogger Deb's Lunch said...

So, can you ship them? Should I send you rinfor to my bicycling enthusiast pals here in WI?

7:47 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home