Bicycle Theory, Inc. is proud to announce the creation and launch of 3 new websites.

One benefit to a down economy is that it affords us the chance to get back to basics, to shake things up, and to explore some new ideas with our own brand that we didn’t previously have time for. And risk is low – or at least lower.  So, we’ve taken this opportunity to do some exploring and experimenting.

• Bicycle Theory – We started with our own Bicycle Theory brand. Since our inception, BT has changed quite a bit and it was time to update the visual brand accordingly. Now, we didn’t abandon our old brand. But we did take it to the next level by incorporating throughout our own brand materials – from a new website to our brand collateral and office space.

• Guided By ABE – As part of our own Community Support efforts, we created a charitable giving concept to help “guide” our decision-making process. Because as much as we’d like to help everyone, we simply can’t. So to focus our efforts, we created ABE. And we offer ABE to anybody else that would like to embrace him and his quest to support the Arts, Bikes, and Environment.

• Clovis-town – Our mascot Clovis has always been a popular character in BT circles, but we’ve never given him a chance to really shine. So what better way to do that than give him his own website where he and our other employees can share opinions and ideas, as well as show off some of the new things we’ve been working on and/or cool things we find out on the Web?

Unfortunately, nothing comes at a sacrifice and we’re sorry to say that one of our new brand ideas didn’t quite make the cut. 

This fourth brand was being developed under the working name of LUV – loosely meaning ‘Light Utility Vehicle’ – as opposed to SUV. It was intended to be a socially and environmentally considerate t-shirt/apparel brand for bike people – hence, the “love” connection. But rather than just another shirt company, our idea was to take a more ‘skater clothing’ approach that might appeal to a more urban sect of the greater cycling community. So on a short deadline to create a brand and the products associated with it; combined with the fact that we found a perfectly tongue-in-cheek URL, we settled on LUV and set off to work.

Initial response to our product was good. And frankly, the product turned out very well thanks to some great vendors. Unfortunately, due in part to some potential brand conflicts with some other local groups that we admire, we decided to squash it. That’s not to say that they actually would have had any concerns, but it also became quite obvious that this brand would also require greater resources and energy than we are prepared to invest at this moment.

That said, it did teach us some cool new things – like how to better use and incorporate Flash and it’s wonderful new ActionScript 3, as well as where and how to source quality shirts and screen printing.

In fact, the LUV site we created is actually up in its ‘almost final’ state and it’s pretty darn neat – even if we do say so ourselves. So check it out. And if you like the shirts, we have a surplus of them left over from the demo run we did. We’re selling them for $15 a piece. And for $10 more, we’ll throw in a spiffy BT t-shirt as well.