2022 has been a real comeback of a year for us it feels like. With things settling down and feeling a little more 'normal', we've had a little more breathing room in the shop, and with restrictions lifting, we finally were able to get back to holding some of our usual events and bringing back the community feel of the shop. From trail days to ride club and a bunch of stuff in between, here's our recap and celebration of 2022 being an absolute killer year!
Photo: Sam James
Ride Club 2022
In 2021 we ran a scaled-down version of our Ride Club to test the waters and ensure we could make things work properly with some new procedures and a Steed Cycles Ride Club smartphone app. Once we had that fully dialled, we made plans to start the 2022 season with a bang! Â
With a pretty consistently cold and wet start to the year it was a slow start, but that didn't stop the fun. We got out for some awesome rides with a great turnout every week without fail. Our monthly BBQs were a huge hit as ever, and we even levelled up our game this year with a BBQ sponsored by Cadex with some free wheelset demos, and another sponsored by 7Mesh with some much needed ice cream on one of the hottest rides of the year.Â
A ever, we want to send out massive thanks to everyone in Ride Club for making it the huge success that it is. Thank you to the businesses that supported us this year including Wildeye Brewing, Cadex and 7mesh. Big thanks to Chris Mallinson for putting his own time into developing and refining the Ride Club app, and all of the other ride club organisers and leaders for all of their help and enthusiasm. We couldn't do it without you all!
Photo: Geoff Livingston
Trail Days
For the last few years we've been sponsoring Pennzoil on lower Fromme - a short descent trail with some tech and some fun features, but it needed a little love. With fewer restrictions on party size etc. for trail days this year, it meant we could truly put a ton of energy into promoting these to get the most people out that we possibly could. With that in mind, we pulled out all the stops and had one of our best years of trail digging ever.
A crazy dry late summer meant we decided to cancel our September trail day and have an additional one in November to make up for it since moving dirt rather than dust is more beneficial. Thankfully we had the weather on our side for every single trail day this year, with a small amount of rain and perfect ground conditions, meaning turn-outs were great and we got a ton of work done. With 15-20 volunteers coming out for pretty much every single event, we managed to almost entirely rebuild the whole trail - adding fresh dirt to sections that had developed holes, rebuilding corners to flow better and adding optional jumps and rebuilding lips to maximise fun.Â
It's fair to say that Pennzoil is riding about a gazillion times better than it was at the start of the year, and we're hugely grateful to all of the volunteers for their hours of hard work! A big shout out to Santa Cruz Bicycles for co-sponsoring and providing food and drinks for every trail day, and to United Strangers Coffee for providing spot prizes. Also thank you to the NSMBA for their dedication to the North Shore mountain bike community! For more information read our 2022 Trail Day blog post here and keep an eye on our media for information about upcoming trail days in 2023.
Photo: Jake Paddon
NSMBA Fiver Number 5
The NSMBA's Fiver World Series is one of our highlights of the year. With 8 races spread throughout the summer, it's a casual enduro race format held every other Thursday evening on either Fromme or Seymour and costs $5 to enter (NSMBA membership mandatory). With no prizes and no stakes, the Fiver is all about fun and camaraderie rather than going fast, though fast is fun.
Each race is sponsored by a different local bike shop/business and hosts an aprés event for around 200 people - race number 5 was our turn. Co-sponsoring the event and lending a massive helping hand was local company Race Face/Fox. The stages for our event made for a pretty long race with C-buster into Asian Adonis making up stage one, John Deer stage two and Applicator stage three, meaning it was a bit of a late arrival to the party.
Luckily we were well prepared and racers were greeted at our beach-themed party with veggie and meat skewers galore, a well-stocked bar with a selection of beverages from Wildeye Brewing, Windfall Cider and Healthy Hooch kombucha, and Greg Day of Daytime Cycling playing beachy tunes for us all night long. Check out our blog post here to read more!
Again huge thanks to Race Face for a massive amount of help and for supplying a crazy amount of spot prizes to keep the stoke high. Thank you to everybody that volunteered and helped us pull off this awesome event, and again thank you to the NSMBA for everything they do and putting on one of the most fun events of the year. We can't wait for next year!
The Steed Podcast
Over the past year or so, Jarrad has worked pretty hard to breathe some new life into the Steed Cycles Podcast. From investing in some fresh podcast equipment to getting some top notch guests and big names on the show, Jarrad has done an awesome job in revamping the podcast to include some really engaging and fun content.
Guest-wise we've got athletes, industry insiders, brand-founders, coaches, physiotherapists and epic riders, all with their own story to tell. Some names you might recognise include Claire Buchar, Geoff Gulevich and Hailey Elise. You can find us on iTunes or Spotify, or check out our Podcast blog posts to listen in!
New Bikes
Despite the odds, 2022 was actually a great year for new bikes. With huge supply chain issues over the last couple of years, the bike industry really struggled to get hold of a ton of things, bikes and components being two of the main things, and thankfully those problems are somewhat solved. With factories opening up and demand slowing down a bit, we're finally able to have a good stock of new bikes, and oh boy did we see a bunch of awesome new bikes launch this year.
We got the Oso ebike from Ibis, the Tallboy, 5010, Hightower, Nomad, Heckler and Megatower from Santa Cruz, Soloist and R5CX from Cervelo, Melee from Enve and probably some more I forgot to mention. It goes without saying that we're currently pretty well stocked on bikes, so get down to the store and take a look or browse our in-stock bikes list.
Amazing People
You can't run a business without people, and every year we're always amazed at how lucky we are to have such an awesome community of people around us. This year we had an incredible team of staff on hand, from mechanics to salespeople to the warehouse and web teams keeping things running behind the scenes. We couldn't do it without our staff and we want to extend a massive thank you to every one of them for helping us have an absolutely killer year!
Our customers of course are the people that keep us in business, and without them we wouldn't be here. We're thankful to have such amazing customers from all walks of life, and it's genuinely an honour to be many people's go-to bike shop, and a pleasure to be able to be able to rub shoulders and enjoy genuine friendships with them at our many social events. There's a not insignificant number of customers and friends that give up their free time to help us plan and pull-off a bunch of these events simply out of their love for the sport and the community that surrounds it. To those people, and they know who they are - thank you.
Finally, a massive thank you to all of our partners - including reps, brands, suppliers, breweries, coffee shops and all the rest. Thanks for being there with us!
And that's a wrap on 2022! Thanks to everybody that made it such an awesome year, we can't wait to see what 2023 brings. Happy holidays all!
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