The Atbco Project

As a bike shop owner, day to day life can sometimes seem mundane. I'm incredibly lucky to own a successful bicycle shop - pretty much a life-long dream. The shop, however, exposes me to so much within the bike industry and demonstrates that there are holes not being served or a look/brand identity/fit in clothing that I'm not 100% stoked on. I end up with piles of ideas. Ideas that come from understanding bikes and how many people use them - gives me ideas for both parts/accessories and clothing. I have bike shaped dreams too... but that'll be a longer journey.

The name started from All Time Bike Co., and I started doing some stuff with that logo. It was fun but something about the acronym atbco was appealing. Like just all the silly and applicable things it could mean. After farting around with this crown and liking it, it dawned on me that part of the appeal is the somewhat DIY feel to the logo. It is so easy to generate perfect, formulaic graphics these days - somewhat similar to the formulaic products we're typically exposed to... so the "home brew" appearing logo is quite meaningful.

This obsession with wanting to make my own bike parts and clothing began about 35 years ago, when in high school I had my girlfriend sewing me shorts which I painted logos on, altered shorts from the store to suite my style and being able to design the logo for our BMX Freestyle team to put on t-shirts. In the '80s, being able to have any creative freedom like that was awesome. In the '90s I owned a BMX parts and clothing business called Skid Products. I dealt with about 30 shops in Canada and USA and enjoyed it, but had to get back to the reality of work. It was way tougher back then with shitty computers, expensive advertising in magazines, no such thing as social media and trying to deal with Taiwan and China by fax was just about impossible from my mouldy basement apartment.

Our Mission Statement

I kind of do have a mission statement for Atbco. It is to come up with innovative and or fun products for cyclists while avoiding being a "we also make that" kind of a brand... well, except t shirts. I love designing t shirts and in that case, a shirt is a shirt except for the design attached to it. I'm getting old, so becoming more critical and grumpy with every day. I've been heard many times in the shop complaining when a new MTB clothing company shows up to offer basically the same shit that Fox, TLD, etc offer but with their brand. Nothing to add innovation wise, no ounce of compelling personality to add - maybe just a bloated budget from someone thinking they will somehow steel market share from one of the big guys... then 2 years later, they're nowhere to be found.

A Different kind of website

You may notice that our website is different. This is because I'm incredibly unskilled at making websites so I took the html from my shop's website from many years ago, before we got fancy with ecommerce and stuff and have essentially used its layout with no clue how it will look.

More info to come to get you hyped: where parts are practical, and clothing might be practical or just plain fun