Forum menu
Does it beg the question then about identity.
The tag line for the share offer is “own a peice of MTB history”. Not Gravel. Not bikepacking.
Are we not splitting hairs now? It might just be in my head but "MTB" is an all-encompassing term meaning "as opposed to road cycling." Some big hitters on here might have a "quiver" with a hardtail, a full-sus, a fixie, an e-bike, a gravel bike, a grass bike, a towpath bike, a fat bike, a touring bike, a bikepacking bike, a downhill bike, an uphill bike, a "looks like it might rain later" bike, and gods forbid maybe even a road bike or two, but 95% of that is the industry cynically trying to sell the Next Big Thing to people who already have more bikes than sense. By comparison, most normal people who ride have "a bike." (*)
If STW's publishing output was solely "pure" MTB it'd be a bi-annual publication running to three pages of Binners riding over Rivvy Pike again.
It's not possible to have a magazine which is all things to all people. As I said earlier, I buy SFX magazine. There's a section in there covering comi- excuse me, "graphic novels." I have little to no interest in such things. So what do I do? I turn the page. Someone must have an interest in it (and tickets to events like Comic Con sell out fast) or that content wouldn't be there.
Why not offer suggestions as to what you would like to see (more of?) in the magazine, as some people already have. That could be a thread in itself.
We had a few people complaining about having cyclocross/gravel bikes in their off-road cycling magazine. I'm a broad church kind of off road rider and I enjoy riding my gravel bike like a mountain bike. Equally, I've ridden my mountain bike on massive days out when perhaps I'd have been better off on a skinnier-wheeled machine. But it's all off road and it's all (usually) fun. And if it's not fun, then it still makes a good story...
(*) - One of my passions is escape rooms. The industry is maturing and there is a thriving community of enthusiasts. We have global awards; international competitions (Red Bull were behind that for a time, I don't know whether they still are); conferences (this year's is online, it alternates with a physical location every year); localised meetups with owners and enthusiasts (not wildly different to STW's MNPR I guess)...
But one thing has become abundantly clear over the last few years. We may be the most vocal, the most opinionated, the most passionate about improving things, maybe even the most entitled (any of this sounding familiar?) but the elephant in the room is that we are not the primary target audience.
If a venue designed a game for enthusiasts it would be amazing, but the vast majority of players are on their first, second, third game. If you look at TripAdvisor it's full of reviews which start "I've never done anything like this before but..." but then your review is worthless, you're reviewing a restaurant when you've never eaten food before. The vast majority of revenue is coming from new players. So how do you design a game which a family outing will be able to complete or at least come close to beating, yet also keep an experienced team busy for an hour? (We're increasingly finding ways around this but that's a longer post, ask if you're interested.)
So what's STW's core audience, their primary market? Should they be targeting people with five bikes, a kitchen sink full of degreaser and 10,000+ posts on the forum, or a young family who's heard good things about this "mountain biking" thing and little Hermione has been mithering for a bike for her birthday? I guess the ideal answer is "both" but that's a difficult order to fulfil when there's people complaining because the mag ran a feature on e-bikes last month.
Should they be targeting people with five bikes, a kitchen sink full of degreaser and 10,000+ posts on the forum, or a young family who's heard good things about this "mountain biking" thing and little Hermione has been mithering for a bike for her birthday?
Media and locations aren't the same though are they? Trailcentres usually have trails that accommodate families so little Hermione can ride 'off road', get into the sport and move up the scale of difficulty.
Does the Escape Room media focus on the first time families or target the seasoned players (if players is the right word)? I imagine it's the latter as that where the continuity lies.
Returning to the "plan" I still think it is challenging for STW to pivot to an investible business model given current state and what is going on in the market.
The current model is not showing growth and potentially set for decline. The business is in a halfway-house with technology and it could be argued should have invested in it much earlier. It owns a lot of content and eyes which is good.
The one avenue I can see is along the lines of Gay Times. Look at their crowdfunder and they are very honest in the challenge they face and their motivation for fundraising. Anti-DEI is a massive game changer for them. They are directly asking for help.
STW could echo this, position as "retro/renegade" yet valued and look for a community to sustain them. Maybe also look at untapped international opportunity. Personally I'd be cynical about some amazing growth plan as it hasn't been executed outside of funding, but keeping something worth cherishing may be a good call.
- and we've had cancelled subs (and threats too) off the back of articles on ebikes, gravel bikes, too many foreign features, too many dull UK features
I cancelled my mag sub after complaining for a while about it being too Northern centric, and having way too many articles about riding over drab brown Scottish hills. The articles that made my decision easy, though, were a rare one about Wales, where a newbie described riding a trail centre, and a little later, a Sunday supplement type thing about going for a picnic with a home-made sponge. These sort of things can be entertaining, of course, but I thought these were paint by numbers, and I've been riding for so long that I don't need anyone extolling the virtues of riding a bike. I already know how good it is, and when your mag isn't sold in shops then few people are picking it up off the shelves and thinking, 'ooh, nice picnic, I think I'll buy this mag!'
Locally, we are having a massive boom in riding of all sorts - MTBing, gravel, road, cargo, commuting. That doesn't seem to convert into those people coming on here, though. Is that because they aren't drawn in on the home page - MTB hand protectors anyone? - or because the forum isn't much like the pub that you describe, but more like an old peoples' home where residents get increasingly deaf and rude to each other? 😀
Media and locations aren't the same though are they? Trailcentres usually have trails that accommodate families so little Hermione can ride 'off road', get into the sport and move up the scale of difficulty.
Which is my point. Does STW have a "getting started" section? Trail centres 101? How to choose your first bike?
Does the Escape Room media focus on the first time families or target the seasoned players (if players is the right word)? I imagine it's the latter as that where the continuity lies.
The commonly adopted term is "enthusiasts" and you would imagine incorrectly. There are dedicated review sites populated by enthusiasts but when you leave a venue they generally ask you to leave a review on TripAdvisor or similar because that's where the masses look for info.
The enthusiasts are self-sustaining; they already know where all the good games are, where all the crap games are, and where the new ones are due to be appearing. Owners typically make no money from other owners as they often operate quid pro quo, "you come play our game for free and we'll come play yours for free"; it's pointless to pay (say) £60 for a game just to give it straight back next week.
And all that aside, as I said, we're a minority just by dint of numbers. Games are (usually) one-and-done - you wouldn't do a crossword then erase all the answers and do it again a week later; you might rewatch a whodunnit mystery if sufficient time had passed that you'd forgotten who dunnit. A decent venue has say five games, they'll get five visits from me until they build a new one or rework an existing game; in that time they may get a hundred teams playing a game for their the first or second time.
If anything, the biggest enthusiast value to a venue is word of mouth. Friends know now to come to me going "I'm in (say) Bath next week, can you recommend a room?" and I go "why yes, yes I can." Meanwhile half of the crap stays in business due to raw footfall.
I'm actually quite surprised that there hasn't been a thread on this already. This is STW, I can't be the only ER player surely?
For balance, I read the gravel and bikepacking articles. I enjoy both and I also enjoy MTB. As I get (even) older and my appetite for risk gradually diminishes, I can see me slowly doing more GB & BP and less MTB. With STWs demographic, I doubt I'm the only one. Yeah, I know there are probably loads of 80 year olds chucking themselves down the steepest DH, but that won't be me!
What I really enjoy I suppose and want to read about is riding off road. In the woods or hills and on surfaces varied, including "singletrack". I think that meets the brief set by the mag title? I think if it was Uber proscriptive and articles were gatekeepered in the way some seem to to be suggesting, there would be even less new to write about. How dull would that be? A little variation is good imo 👍
It just goes to show, as if we didn't already know, how hard it is to please everyone for the writers and editors.