I really want one but the uk guy selling them seems a bit del boyish. IMHO .
The guy selling them is currently serving a week’s ban, as he’s persisted in trying to slip sales links into posts despite repeated warnings. Far as we can tell he’s responded to this by getting one of his mates to post instead, going “hey, I’ve just found distributor completely coincidentally, here’s the link!”
Now, we’ve nothing against businesses responding to queries, in fact it’s actively encouraged. However, direct trade advertising is against the forum rules as it’s a quick way for a magazine to go out of business, and astroturfing is very much frowned upon as it’s dishonest and misleading. If you want to respond to customers (or customers of your mates) then feel free; however if you come on here lying and thinking we’re all dim then you’re going to get short shrift. Sorry.
If it were me starting a new one-man-band business then I’d be approaching trade media like, oh I don’t know, ads@singletrackworld.com to pick one completely at random, to discuss maybe running an article or doing a review, maybe running some advertising to promote the venture. There’s obviously interest, it seems like an interesting and pretty unique offering to me. Kind of symbiosis, if you will.
Sorry if this is a little blunt, but I’m getting bored now. But if you keep astroturfing, we’ll keep deleting them. And we’re demonstrably quite good at spotting them.