Our Indiegogo campaign finished up last night, helping us raise almost $4,300 to go towards the development of the backrest for our bike seats! Thank you to all of our supporters and backers in helping us exceed our campaign goal by over 100%. 

We continue to work with our factory on the backrest development. Here's a picture of the first prototype that the factory put together:

We're reviewing the functionality, installation, and durability of the prototype to make sure it meets our requirements. The factory will be shipping the backrest to us very soon. Once we've worked out all of the kinks with the design, manufacturing will begin, and we'll have our backrests available a couple of months later.

As soon as Blake Johnson (the new designer I started working with) was done completing the design specs for our backrests, I had him start working on designs and specs for the pannier hooks I had prototyped back in October of last year. Besides a backrest, the number one thing our customers have asked us for to date is the ability to hang their panniers on their bike seat.

The design is relatively simple: "hooks" that hang on the side of the stash-box that pannier hooks can hang onto. My first prototype pannier hooks ultimately left scratches on the side of the bike seat, so we decided to add a small, thin piece of foam material to protect against this scratching. 

Here is the latest iteration of the design that Blake is working on. The challenge we're facing is making the pannier hooks compatible with the backrest, such that both can be installed on a bike seat at the same time. This latest version seems to have overcome this challenge, with the pannier hooks extended enough past the support arm of the backrest to provide enough clearance for the pannier clip to hang onto without bumping into the backrest frame.

Next steps for Blake and I are to come up with a way to make a quick mock-up of this new design, and make sure that the pannier hooks don't extend too far off the side of the stash-box such that it's awkward or cumbersome. More news to come as we make more progress!

I gave Mark a bike seat to play with late last year, as well as a couple extra bike seat cushions I had lying around, so that he could do some initial "prototyping" with some extra leather he had at his shop. This is a picture of the first custom leather bike seat cushion he made for me, including our Companion logo on the seat. It's a beautiful black leather cushion, incredibly soft. You can't really see it, but through the perforations that make up the logo, he included our colors behind the top layer of black leather.

We figure folks aren't going to want to have a Companion Bike Seat logo on the seat of their custom leather bike seats, so this is just an example of the quality craftsmanship that Mark brings to his work.

Each of our custom handmade leather bike seats will be made-to-order after they're purchased. We're offering them in a variety of different colors of leather for the custom seat, including, brown, black, white, red, and blue. You'll also be able to choose the color of the stitching used at the corners of the cushion, for a completely customized bike seat.

Consider these the "Eddie Bauer edition" of Companion Bike Seat ... or better yet, the "MCB edition" Companion Bike Seat! Our custom handmade leather bike seats will be available mid-January for order on our website, and will take two to four weeks to ship (since Mark doesn't start on your bike seat until you order it).