Shareholder Update - October 2023

We're Shipping and Getting Faster
As mentioned, our frame has passed all of the ISO 4210 tests, and we're into production and shipping bikes. October has been our most productive month so far and we're getting better on all metrics. We still have a ways towards production efficiency and proper scale, but we improve daily.

We are about a month away from being able to ship sizes 51 and 53. Aside from a lot of orders in those categories, many of the media and editors that are lined up to review the bikes are in that size range. So getting these bikes to them will be a big uptick in attention and traction in having serious reviewers get their opinions out there.

Below are some more testimonials from customers.

"Very impressed. Nice work! So good. Quietest bike I’ve ever ridden. I want one… let’s talk"

"It was awesome. Such a great ride. Climbs like a bird. Descends like a stone. Loved it."

"Excellent, that bike just keeps getting better."

"Not going to lie, still buzzing from the first ride today. Felt really good."

"Bike rides super good, stiff but comfortable, very responsive to any input but not twitchy like some bikes are."

"Surveyor has a certain personality. It gives you confidence and lets you know it's got your back."

"I've been riding metal bikes for the past 10 years for comfort and ride quality. The Surveyor choice was about loyalty and friendship, but has turned into a love and respect for handmade carbon. The ride is peppy and beautifully stiff while not sacrificing compliance for those of us who want to be comfortable on the bike. While I don't know if there is truly an n+1 killer, the Surveyor has the lines and ride to bring you back every time and delivers smiles on the toughest grinds. Not to mention was built by the best team in the business."

Canada's first carbon fork - Approved

Well... the fork has been an immense project and the challenges of such a complex composites part are now very well known to us. The bright side is that we now have our fork 3rd party approved. This is big. Not only for our own production, but now we can offer this part to other bike builders. Some of these builders have already purchased forks, and others have verbal orders in for 2024. We have verbal commitments to over 100 units prior to people even seeing them.

Increased Production

We are improving each day. It is an aggressive project that we have all signed up for. Making a world class carbon bike is a very involved endeavor. Our part failure rate has decreased drastically and now we are confident that each part that is cured is a usable part. With composites, you will always have some variability or scrap rate, right now ours went from 19% to 5% in just over a month. We expect that number to be going down even more. To be clear, this is not scrapped bikes, rather just the parts. We still don't want scrap, of course, and have it at a respectable rate right now with improvements well in sight. 

Aside from adding more hands, due to our increasing capabilities, we have purchased a larger press - as seen above. This press will increase our part production in a major way. As of right now, for the most part, we are curing one part at a time. With this press, we can cure multiple parts, i.e. four forks at a time, rather than one. It will take some love to get it up and running, but it is a big step. Not to mention that we got it for a steal. These are 250K USD new. We got this one, that is in great working order, for 20K USD. 

Our goal is to get to shipping multiple bikes in a week. Right now we are working up to approx. 2 bikes per week as averaged over the month. Our goal is to get to 5 per week. This is a giant effort and part of the reason for our new equity round, to be discussed below. 

Just last week we bonded a bike a day. This was a first. There is a lot of work after this to get the bike ready to ship, but it was a great milestone. Much of this is due to improved production management and some skilled hands in making high quality parts. 

Sales and Marketing

Sales have improved since September. We have attracted some dealers in Asia who tend to order ~8 frames per at a time. We have not been able to ship to them yet, but these kinds of orders are very promising. We do see a slight uptick in direct to consumer, but we don't think the needle will move much here until we get bikes reviewed by the media and decrease our lead time from order to delivery. This is all happening, just not here yet. 

Our focus on dealers remains. We have begun to ship to them in the last couple of months and the reviews have been terrific. We also just shipped to our first EU dealer, The Service Course, in Girona, Spain. This is a big step as they are a trend setter for Europe and all things bikes. They just received it this week, so stay tuned to our instagram to see how they review it. 

Right now, Canadian Cycling Magazine is reviewing the Surveyor and should have it in print in the next month or so. Their review will be of great use to us as we wait to get the smaller sized bikes out to more influential platforms. I think it will be very meaningful to our local market and for our ability to receive independent assessment and credibility.

In addition, James Huang, AKA the AngryAsian from Escape Collective, one of the world's most influential cycling tech editors, will be visiting our facility in November. This will be a great opportunity to work more with him and his platform as they are also very reliable and trusted product reviewers. Stay tuned. 

At the end of the day, the best thing we can do is to continue making bikes, improve our pace and scale in order to feed our sales channels. This is happening every day, but we need more time to get better/faster at what we do.