We would like to thank you for your faith, support and hard earned dollars entrusted to BRIDGE. Below is a general update. If you see anything below that you are able to help us with, and/or would just like some more clarity on, please let us know.
It's been a little bit, so this one is a longer update.
Delivery
From our empty space a year ago, we now have a fully functional production facility making parts on the daily. Every carbon part that we have made has been tested, analysed and iterated on to improve its characteristics. We have ISO third party tested, and ridden pre-production Surveyors with over 1,500kms of aggressive multi-surface outdoor routes and races. We have fit a lot into a short period of time, and we are charging forward each day to get the Surveyors in our customers' hands.
However, in order to achieve our no-compromise manufacturing, it has become clear to us that we need a bit more time. Our goal is to ensure this is the best all-road bike in the world, from durability and reliability to performance and safety, and we are building it to last a lifetime.
There is nothing more important to our team than getting the Surveyor dialled and ready for the unrelenting punishment and/or glorious adventures that we know our customers will put it through. Given this priority, we are revising our first bike deliveries to Q1 2023.
This message has already been delivered to our customers and dealers, and, so far, we have received nothing but support in response.
Product Development and Production
We are at the tail-end of all the prep work that needs to be done. By that, we mean, clearing out all of the hard lessons in order to replicate what worked. We started on a 57cm as our nominal size to get all the core engineering completed. The only remaining variables are the frame drop-outs and our fork. The next few weeks should be the final intensive engineering (i.e. R&D to get to the bottom of any unknowns) on the Surveyor. It is possible, but don't hold us to it, that we made the first ever carbon fork in Canada. Either way, it’s pretty darned cool!
Once these last bits are ironed out, it is really a rinse and repeat for the other sizes. We will be increasing our horsepower by utilizing CAD specialists to implement the design changes in our tooling to all other sizes. This will drastically improve our timelines and enable us to hit our Q1-2023 shipping goals.
We are in the process of applying for SR&ED and a few IRAP government grants. For the most part, these will be a combination of salary expense returns, supporting technical youth hires and, mainly, a project up to 75K. The outline of this project has already been cleared and we are filling out the main application now. It will be to develop our own in-house testing to ISO standards and beyond. We do not like the lack of control in sending the Surveyor out to 3rd parties for relatively basic results. To not witness the tests, does not sit well with us. After-all, that's why we started BRIDGE, to control as many parameters as possible.
On that note, our initial ISO third party test did not fully pass all life-cycle testing. This is not of significant concern: our bike did not fail any tangible performance or safety measures, it just had hairline cracks in it after 100,000 cycles of testing. This means that potentially at year 10 to 20 there might be aesthetic cracks that show up. We have made subtle changes to our laminate schedule to solve for this already. We will be sending our revised version for testing once we complete our carbon dropouts and fork. At that point, our engineers expect it to pass.
We have already dipped our toes into production by hiring an additional laminator, with more in the interview process, while implementing tracking, part-serialisation and process analysis of what is needed per # of frames to be shipped a week. By early Q1-2023 we should have 1 or two more laminators on the floor, an additional heated platen press and a detailed plan on producing frames at a respectable pace to clear out our pre-orders by Summer. Well before this, we will be aligning our sales, marketing and media to ensure continued sales success.
We have also hired a very seasoned industry person to organise our back-end for inventory management, tracking and all-around organisation in preparation for 2023. He also happens to be a very qualified mechanic! We're always looking for multi-skilled people at this time, as many hats are needed.
Sales, Marketing and Media
We continue our local events with cycling clubs and they've been going very well. The personal feel really hits home. Most of the avid cyclists have never seen a production facility before, let alone one that makes bikes. The feedback we have gotten has been terrific. We will continue to focus on these events as they are affordable, educational, and effective for gaining long-term fans.
As we get closer to shipping, we will be inviting or visiting with key media editors in order to provide them with a unique experience with testing the Surveyor. We don't want our bike to just be in a line-up of reviews. We will be sure to organise exclusive experiences for them so that their review is unique and personal.
Our dealer network continues to grow and we are getting frequent unsolicited requests for partnering. We are approaching some of these with caution, in order to properly time our ability to produce with the development of sales channels, as well as ensuring we have the best partners possible. Our approach has been to get enough dealers to show confidence in market acceptance, though not too many that we can't manage expectations.
Our direct to consumer sales have slowed for a similar reason, partially by design. We of course are never saying no to money, but we are making sure that we know a bit more about how quickly we can deliver on our current obligations prior to racing to get more. The interest in BRIDGE is fantastic to experience, as people are truly engaging with us and happy to see a company so focused on no-compromise manufacturing. With our events, instagram posts, customer communications, daily conversations and local rides with customers and potential ones, we are ensuring that this buzz does nothing but grow.
Finance
We have just recently reached our initial goal of ~1mm CAD raised. Thank you, all. We will be oversubscribing the round by about 3-500K CAD in order to "bridge" us to production. This increased amount dilutes the founders, and no one else - just to be clear.
As always, if you have any introductions to individuals that might be interested in chatting with us about this, please send them along.
That's it for now!
We will be sure to keep you posted on major developments. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any further questions or concerns. We are here to support you as much as possible.
In the meantime
We have completed Surveyor 004. It looks great and rides even better. That's it in our header and if you follow us on instagram, there'll be more to see.
In or around Toronto? We invite you to come have a look and give it a spin. As always, doors are open to all of you and it's at our facility (whenever not out on the road)
Next Steps with dealers
We will be in touch in the coming months to ship dealers a very nice paint sample kit. This will be customized to their shop, with name, logo etc. These paint chits will be on carbon and include the colour name, and of course, the colour.
As we get closer to the New Year, we will set-up a visit, and/or event (or both) at shops to showcase the Surveyor as well as have some product knowledge sessions as the 2023 riding season gets closer.
Add these to your reading list.
A few great new articles have come out from industry publications. Road Bike Action did a follow-up to their Bridge introduction article titled "Has anyone seen the Bridge?" that gives an update on our production. Bike Rumor came by for a factory tour and put a very nice photo journal together. Click below to check them out.
