‘What am I doing??’ is a question which runs through my head on a daily basis. It’s not ‘I don’t know how to design/build bikes’- I like to think that Burf and I have got that down to a pretty fine art! It’s more ‘Where am I going with this?’
When we started BTR back in 2012, it wasn’t a fully calculated decision; we knew we could make bikes, and naively assumed that was all we’d need to do. We build them, people buy them, right??? Wrong. Ignorance was certainly bliss back then- we knew nothing about running a business so we happily ploughed into it, thinking it was going to go exactly to plan.
While it definitely hasn’t happened like I assumed it would, I now wouldn’t have it any other way. We started with nothing, so everything BTR is now is a result of our hard work and the patience and support from the friends and family around us.
Since the beginning in 2012 it’s been a huge task to learn everything that we now know, to build BTR up from zero. We’ve done it all without a real goal in mind too; we just set out to build better bikes for people who share our vision of performance, durability, simplicity and honesty.
So where am I going with BTR? Well, our initial values haven’t changed one bit, but after sleeping on a shelf in a shed for 18 months, camping on a narrow boat for another 18 months, and generally borrowing my way through life in that time, I definitely have an end goal that BTR will be my sole source of income. I don’t want it all, I don’t want a lot, I just want enough.
I want to build high performance, durable, simple and honest bikes, sustainably.
Anyhow, that’s enough emo ramblings for now! How about this 650B Ranger!?
Pretty hot, right?