The real world availability of full custom carbon Atherton Bikes has remained limited since their debut last year, so the Athertons are turning to crowdfunding – not to Kickstart a new bike but to give mountain bikers a chance to share in ownership of the company as micro investors. Investing in the company through a Crowdcube funding campaign brings the obvious risk & potential rewards of any other investment would. But the Athertons are betting on success, have already been delivering on their custom bike business model, and have already garnered almost twice their investment target… with a clear path forward.
Should you invest in the Atherton Bikes crowdfunding campaign?
OK, so we clearly know that the ex-world champions Dan, Gee & Rachel Atherton can race mountain bikes faster than most people on the planet – even our own Jessie-May. And they can build some killer bikeparks too! But over the last couple of years, we’ve also seen Atherton Bikes churn out some beautiful custom carbon bikes – based on 3D-printed titanium lugs and Dave Weagle-designed suspension.
Why are they crowdsourcing investment?
Their sales pitch talks of the booming cycling industry valued at over £37 billion a year with 20% of that for mountain biking. Yet they remain small and nimble, with design & development entirely in the UK, and ready to go beyond gravity bikes into even producing kids bikes & e-bikes, too.
While they were cautious to start slowly with taking their bikes into production – telling us they wanted to be sure they could deliver bikes capable of riding to match their gravity legacy – now it seems the Athertons are ready to go full speed.
To make that shift from 50 bikes in one year, to bigger UK production capability has meant it was time for Atherton Bikes’ crowdfunding to seek additional capital investment. And instead of looking for a single big investor, they’ve turned to crowdfunding micro investment platform Crowdcube to leverage their millions of mountain bike followers, and let us get in on the action.
Of course buyer-beware, this in an investment where you share in their risk and opportunity for reward. Atherton Bikes was seeking at least £600,000 from investors and said they’ve locked in £944,000 in financing if they got to 500k. Yet as it stands now, they’ve already blown past their target with more than a million pounds from the crowd-investment campaign. With targets of 2500 bikes in 3 years, and 7500 at 5 years, Atherton Bikes has mapped out a set of goals to challenge big established brands within these next five years.
Does that sound like something you want to get in on? If so, and you are eligible (sorry, not open to US residents), find out more over at Athertonbikes.com, then head over to CrowdCube.com to put your hard-earned money on the line – and get in on #AthertonEquity as a micro investor. Equity investment is open until the start of December.
