We had several orders from people planning to take their bike seat out onto the playa this year. Unfortunately the bike seats were scheduled to arrive at the fulfillment center without enough time for shipping before people left. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I already had plans to meet the new shipment when it arrived at the fulfillment center in Phoenix, since this is a new partner and it's always great to meet business partners face-to-face. In order to get bike seat orders out to folks heading to the playa, I filled up a minivan in Phoenix and road tripped north to meet them in Reno to give them their bike seats.

The new inventory arrived safely at the new distribution center on Friday of last week and I was able to review it all on Monday after arriving in Phoenix late Sunday night. The shipment looked great and all back-orders have been shipped out this week. I met with the team managing fulfillment now and they're good people and will take care of Companion Bike Seat well. It was pretty exciting to see the rows and rows of new bike seats (and backrests and ebike pegs) ready to ship out!

All in all it's been a pretty exhausting road trip after covering over 1500 miles of a 1700+ mile road trip, but well worth it at the end of the day. Most of our bike seat sales occur online today, so I get very few opportunities to meet with customers face to face, and this road trip has been awesome for that. Plus, bike seat orders are flowing again!

For most of us, videos are easier to understand than printed manuals with illustrations, and I was finally able to put together a quick video tutorial on how to install and remove the new backrest for Companion Bike Seat. You can watch it here on thebikeseat.com or on YouTube. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay updated on all our new products and videos!

We're excited to introduce a new accessory for your Companion Bike Seat: a sound cloth for the storage compartment! If you've put anything small and metal inside your storage compartment while you're out riding, you'll have definitely noticed how much noise it can make bouncing around. We've designed a custom neoprene mat for the walls and the bottom of the storage compartment to help block out all the noise. It's easy to put in or remove, and since it's neoprene, you can wash it if anything ever spills inside the storage compartment.

We're still working out the details on manufacturing (this is one of two prototypes sent for us to test out), but they'll be made in Southern California, so turn-around time should be very quick. We hope to have them available for sale within the next couple months. Stay tuned for more info soon!

I took Companion Bike Seat out for an early morning ride down Valencia Street in the Mission, and passed a cafe playing some music as they were prepping for the day. Of course I just had to dance!

The latest backrest prototype from the factory arrived today and it looks like we're ready to start manufacturing the backrests for Companion Bike Seat!

The new backrest worked like magic! We took the backrest out for a ride to Dolores Park for the day (just like everyone else in the Mission) and the backrest exceeded expectations. We brought the dog with us for the inaugural bike ride, and she enjoyed every minute of it. The backrest made it much easier to ride as a passenger, such that holding the dog in arms while riding to the park was a piece of cake.

I've let the factory know that we're a GO for manufacturing the bike seat backrests. As soon as we have a delivery date from the factory for the backrests we'll let you know!

We've been using Weebly to build and publish the website ever since we first got started back in 2011. They reached out to me a couple of months ago to help them with some user-testing for a new product their working on, and I mentioned to them in passing how I'd recently redesigned the website and was seeing a huge improvement with how people were engaging with the new design. 

I ended up writing a short article for their Inspiration Center about the benefits of keeping a website fresh and up-to-date. A couple weeks later they sent a team out to shoot a video up on the top of Bernal Hill overlooking the SF skyline. The video is predominantly promoting Weebly of course, but I got a couple of plugs in for the bike seat as well. Check it out when you have the chance!

weebly.com/inspiration/simple-design-update-doubles-sales-the-bikeseatcom-story

This was the first CicLAvia event to be held in the San Fernando Valley and was a huge hit. CicLAvia hosts several events throughout the year, spreading them out all over LA county. CicLAvia aims to change people’s attitudes, behaviors and the public conversation regarding alternative transportation, health and wellness, public spaces and community engagement, and they were certainly successful at it today! What a great experience ... we'll definitely be back again for future CicLAvias.

It's that time of year again, when we all get to put on costumes and get as debaucherous as possible, after taking the little ones out to trick-or-treat and collect candy of course. I realized something this year - if I go trick-or-treating on my bicycle, I can still bring a friend along, I can put all of my candy in the stash-box, and I can collect two to three times as much candy since I can move faster and hit up more houses! Happy Halloween!

The first shipment of bike seats arrived at our "warehouse" earlier this week. We spent the day prepping orders, which will be shipping out first thing next week!