As always, we would like to thank you for your faith, support and hard earned dollars entrusted to BRIDGE.
Below you will find a general overview of how BRIDGE is doing. In short, we are really progressing on all fronts towards reaching our goal of being cash flow positive by the end of this year. Our production is improving every day leading to faster shipping times. Our sales are increasing, our dealer network is growing internationally, and our brand continues to be held in high regard for technical excellence and execution of a world-class bike.
One of our favourite testimonials:
"Inaugural Bridge ride... you have made a glorious machine, what a beauty. Like nothing I've ever experienced before! I never thought a different frameset could make such a difference." M. Cross
In order to execute on this year's plan towards cashflow positive, we are looking for investors and hope that you can help us. You can access our latest investor presentation HERE. In short, we are looking for an additional $1.5M in equity raised on a SAFE note with a valuation cap of $8M. Please reach out if you would like to review anything and feel free to share the presentation with any possible interested parties.
We are building a good funnel of potential interest, and also have an event today (March 7th) with dedicated, influential and affluent riders that we hope generates some additional leads. However, introductions are critical right now and so we would appreciate whatever help you can lend.
PRODUCTION & SHIPPING
We have developed our processes to the point where we are close to shipping 6 Surveyors every two weeks. We need a bit more time to consolidate data to figure out the next steps towards 10, 15, 20 every two weeks. However, the knowledge base we are acquiring is solid, and the progress is in sight.
We had to dig back into our laminate schedule on the small sizes in order to pass 3rd party testing. Testing on the smallest size is the hardest to pass, due to the relative stiffness gain in the much smaller structure. We will be getting the test results this week and are reasonably confident in the results. We are preparing to jump into production on the smaller sizes with as much pace as we can throw at it with our current team.
Our new heat press will be up and running in a few weeks, which will improve throughput drastically by being able to cure more parts at one time. This leads to more pressure on our paint preparations, and so we are also redesigning our paint booth and prep area to handle more volume and more people once we attain financing.
Production is the theme of 2024, as it is critical for us to increase throughput to meet demand, all the while maintaining or improving quality. All of our senior minds are in on this exciting challenge.
OUR ALL-ROAD INTEGRATED FORK
"better than...ENVE forks too in my opinion" - Creative Cycles, OEM Customer
Our in-house produced forks are now on every Surveyor that we ship. In addition, we are selling to select frame builders, one with a best-in-class reputation in the USA. We will be much more proactive in selling to other frame builders once we improve our production pacing.
The efforts put into our fork are starting to show some return, as the ride quality and aesthetics make for a complete package of made-here, made-right. Our customers are feeling the difference.
SALES & MARKETING
Below are some more testimonials from very happy customers.
"For the rider of a Surveyor, they gain a refined balance of comfort and performance... I could get in a position that was racy and powerful, but I was comfortable kilometer after kilometer. The bike has incredibly balanced handling—energetic, yet controlled... It all spans one stunning machine." M Piorio, Canadian Cycling Magazine
"Inaugural Bridge ride... you have made a glorious machine, what a beauty. Like nothing I've ever experienced before! I never thought a different frameset could make such a difference." M. Cross
"Finally putting her to the test today and it was amazing!! Handles SO WELL in the gravel!!.. SO HAPPY!!" G. Connor
"Dude...on a punchy climb, when you go to put the watts down the bike just LURCHES forward. It's a rocket ship. They made a damn good bike" T. Pratt
Sales have improved since September and we are excited about getting into the season with many more Surveyors on the road combined with incredible testimonials. It's not clear to us if the general headwind in the industry is affecting our sales, though based on our relatively short history, we keep increasing sales month-over-month and are excited about what will happen once the market constraints lift.
We have attracted some dealers in Asia who tend to order larger volumes. We have a total of 23 frames shipping to Asia from three different dealers. These kinds of orders are very promising, as they are easy customers to deal with, and order quickly. 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 later this season, just not quite yet.
We have partnered with a sales agency named Fretori. They are the Ontario sales reps for Shimano and were given the permission to represent us. This is unprecedented and will be used as a test basis this year to build on into 2025. They are allocated 20 framesets to sell for us, though they believe they can sell in the hundreds once our production constraints are lifted. They are very active agents on socials, in person at shops, as well as hosting events.
On the media side of things, James Huang, AKA the AngryAsian from Escape Collective, one of the world's most influential cycling tech editors, visited this year for an in depth factory tour and podcast. You will be seeing this shortly here. We will also be getting media bikes delivered this summer for long term reviews that should help us with increased sales going into 2025,
We will be attending fewer trade shows this year as we have hit the circuit and now need our main focus to be on getting bikes in the hands of the editors that have already written extensively on BRIDGE. This priority could switch based on an influx of funding, though the focus is clear for us that media reviews and production are critical over show presence this year. We will be attending select shows at lower cost and higher impact - for example we will have bikes in other vendors’ booths at Philly Bike Expo and Sea Otter USA. We will likely be pressing pause on some of the more spendy shows that are largely for brand presence and not quite directly related to selling and supporting our local market this year.
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.
Shareholder Transaction Update
As mentioned previously, we will be circulating all of the paperwork that represents the re-organization since working with Osler and consolidating our history more professionally. More on this in the next couple of weeks. It is a lot of paperwork, though benefits our investors by issuing preferred shares rather than commons and converts the outstanding SAFE notes to that same preferred class. It will up the level of our organization and improve our ability to smoothly bring in additional outside funds.
Until next time!
Frank, Mike and the BRIDGE Team
