New Bike Company

[jmocallaghan]

Ok, for those of you who helped us earlier on, we finally finished standing up our new company at www.irishcycles.com . It took some time but we're there. The prices came in a bit higher then we anticipated initially but well within the market norms. For those of you who've been around 15+ years you may remember when Lake Sport imported Basso in Evanston, IL. So... the business model may look familiar. Not a lot of $$ to be made here by us, but a good product at a reasonable price. Thanks for all who provided feedback and who were test subjects on our initial bikes.

 

[kdelong]

Pretty cool, but it looks kind of bad when you mis-spell the name of your company right at the beginning of the first paragraph. Unless, of course, the name of the company actually is IIrish Cycles. If so, then it is mis-spelled everywhere else on your website!

 

[Scotty_Dog]

I respect the fact that you are starting your own bicycle brand, but have to concur with kdelong. After a very quick read of the home page, I spotted one other spelling mistake and many grammatical errors. It might be worth hiring a technical writer to clean it up. Just my 2 cents....

 

[jmocallaghan]

Pretty cool, but it looks kind of bad when you mis-spell the name of your company right at the beginning of the first paragraph. Unless, of course, the name of the company actually is IIrish Cycles. If so, then it is mis-spelled everywhere else on your website!

Ah yes, well, we hit the lowest bidder on getting the site going and it shows! Thanks for the input, we'll have her fix it ASAP. We've actually got another site designer we're working with right now and hope to have hte full site up w/in 90 days

 

[Phill P]

Congratulations on getting the brand going! I hope it works out for you. I too would LOVE to start my own brand, I think ultimately I'll being coming into it from the component side of things first because of the investment levels.

Are you using Axeman frames? I see they now have BB30 frames, and a integrated seat post. I wouldn't bother with the integrated seat post, but suggest you jump on board the BB30 design. It would help give something different and new for dealers to point out to customers as a benefit (stiff light cranks).
On the Red page there is no pic of a fully built bike!! Finally found a built bike on the rival page.
Look forward ot the upgraded website. Your website is going to be your customers first point of contact with the company. You will need some thing more "professional" to install faith in customers. The jamis website is really simple and hasn't changed a great deal over the last two or 3 years. It looks really good though. Links to geometry and spec if you want to, limited blurbs, pictures that have been edited to be just the bike and can be enlarged.

Marketing 101: you are selling percieved benefits. Perception is everything.

I like the logo, but green is hard to colour match.....

 

[jmocallaghan]

Congratulations on getting the brand going! I hope it works out for you. I too would LOVE to start my own brand, I think ultimately I'll being coming into it from the component side of things first because of the investment levels.

Are you using Axeman frames? I see they now have BB30 frames, and a integrated seat post. I wouldn't bother with the integrated seat post, but suggest you jump on board the BB30 design. It would help give something different and new for dealers to point out to customers as a benefit (stiff light cranks).
On the Red page there is no pic of a fully built bike!! Finally found a built bike on the rival page.
Look forward ot the upgraded website. Your website is going to be your customers first point of contact with the company. You will need some thing more "professional" to install faith in customers. The jamis website is really simple and hasn't changed a great deal over the last two or 3 years. It looks really good though. Links to geometry and spec if you want to, limited blurbs, pictures that have been edited to be just the bike and can be enlarged.

Marketing 101: you are selling percieved benefits. Perception is everything.

I like the logo, but green is hard to colour match.....

Thanks for the comments, we are right now waiting for the photos from the photographer for 'full' bikes complete with Red, etc. We ran into a problem initially (albeit good) that we sold out of all our bikes that we received in the initial first two shipments. Tied to the fact we're also waiting for the new Rival it's made for a bit of a frustraiting time (although we received partial nee new Rival for 09 already - still waiting on a few parts).

On Axeman, no they are not from them or their producers. Axeman if I remember correctly is kind of like a Kinesis type name for a factory in Taiwan. Our frames are independant and made by the same folks who produce a few other big names. We were lucky enough to land a former Martec engineer to work with as well.

Thanks for the input!

 

[bpatterson]

is there a shop that goes with these bikes? what is the total wieght on the complete bike posted?

 

[bpatterson]

they look like Orbea's

 

[jmocallaghan]

is there a shop that goes with these bikes? what is the total wieght on the complete bike posted?

Yes, there are a few carrying them right now. You can contact Hawley's Bicycle World in Fayetteville NC, 910-425-3145 for more information. The weight on the frames is 1130 for a medium HM, a UHM is 1020 medium. The fork for both is 350grams. As we say on the web page, the frames are made for racing and durability. No real gimmicks, just straight forward proven technology and a conservative yet fast design. To say it looks like the Orbeas... well... you're right!

 

[davidhowland14]

the bikes look good. In addition to what everyone else said about the typos on the site, i'll add that your thumbnails should be images that are actually thumbnail size, not full size images sized down. Having actual thumbnails will make your loading way, way faster.

 

[jmocallaghan]

Weve fixed the load issues, thank you for your input. We are now also selling direct and through our dealer network

 

[SueB]

I live in CT and just purchased a bike from Irish. I chose the Kileen (with Dura Ace) and It is one of the best purchases I ever made - the bike is fantastic. Light, responsive and beautiful down to the last detail. The communication from the shop during the process was great. Joe addressed every question and took the nervousness out of buying online. I had been riding an older steel Serotta for many years and was a little concerned I might not like the feel of the new carbon bike (old habits are hard to break). After the first few miles it felt like I had been riding it all along. I would recommend this bike to anyone looking for a great bike at a very reasonable price.