Takeaway points – Any new startup wanting to break into the industry

1. You can write any old shit press release the Journos are such useless teapots they will print it.

2. Sick have pretty much removed all public trust in anyone wanting to have a go.

Farage will be a better PM than Gove or Bojo

As I’ve said before precious it’s got nothing to do with you has it, is that what upsets you most , the fact your nothing to people yet crave attention just like Jordan.

What? What is your agenda Phil? So far you’ve insinuated that every side in this is dodgy in some way?

And yet your still chelping, pretending to have some vested interested in helping the poor and needy , it’s been pointed out your only here to stir the pot.

You can guarantee even though Tom has no horse in the race he will be there stirring away like a desperate attention seeking nobody.

In fact no, no it wasn’t that your still pissed that Jordan told you to jog on and do one aren’t you sock puppet.

The sad thing is that Marino sound like they got exactly the same treatment as the customers. No doubt they would have been up for something to get the frames shifted had Sick just spoken to them “privately, like most businesses do”

Wonders if Marino has his own agenda in publicising this? He has 30 frames being built and 30 finished.

Sick have some serious work to do here if they are ever to regain any trust.

More chance of Theresa May starting a bike company and selling them.

I have heard of 2 other suppliers that haven’t been paid.

And yet not one other person has complained of any such thing petal.

I don’t think Sick are going to re-appear TBH.

How stupid do Pinkbike feel now?..

INTERESTING that only Marino is claiming he was never paid, maybe there was an unseen issue that stopped them paying him.

Awaits press release saying ‘haterz’ ruined our company.

We will be suing for compensation.

150 frames they say, would that be the 35 frames unpaid for in Peru. At least we now know their bullshit factor is 4.3

No this was when they were saying they had all given up the day jobs and comitted fully to Sick.

First they said 300 frames from their new Chinese supplier.

Then they said it was 200 ,stated by a customer at some show.

Then it was 150 as the most bandied about number.

May delivery no less.

Looking at Pinkbike the big apology to all their existing customers customers, is being offered a different kind of shitty frame they can’t flog , to the one they we’re actually flogged to start with.

Where is the supposed new stock?

It surprises me that there hasn’t been a mob of angry folks waiting of frames or refunds come knocking at their door

Would that be a duo or trio? I’d go and bet they don’t have that many actual sales.

then any insurer working

Ha you think they have insurance.

have they been CEN tested or even ridden by test riders, or are they just the exaggerated sketches of two blokes who by their own boasting aren’t established bike designers?

I have seen the answer to this somewhere else and it was not pretty from what I recall the guy refused to build them based on the fact they weren’t testing anything.

Has anyone seen any signs they do test? No.

Sick claimed their riders test the product.

I’ve got plenty of thoughts, but I’m not sharing them here (or anywhere else public for that matter). And no, you can’t infer anything into my unwillingness to share…

Yet taking the time to confirm.

The whole debacle has exposed the absolute low level of competence in any of the online press , as much as the credibility of “Sick” is in tatters the people reporting on it should grow a backbone also and deliver facts rather than run scared of opinion that hurts their likes, or sales.

Told you Farage would be heading for PM.

Any amount of money, that putting things right means people get a £150 frame despite paying over the odds for their home-built crap.

Posting pics of said crap from the years gone by now just to seem like they are currently attention whoring as usual active.

Despite that maybe they’re going to be a massive success and the “Haterz” are going to get owned in epic style.

Any of anything been delivered yet?

What happened to FTW working for them on the kickstarter that they took money for?

£20k wasn’t it?

Sounds like Brant! The 101 bike guru of ‘designed in the UK, manufacturerd aboard’.

Amazing he hasn’t tried to turn this into some kind of massive marketing ploy, giving out consolation prizes for the unlucky losers.

They offer a lifetime, NQA warranty? Well I never

A No Questions Answered warranty?

Still at it I see.

where’s the hard-hitting piece from the mag anyways?

No advertorial ready yet?

Is the answer not separate fields for XY people, transgender and similar?

Ah a rational argument, Of course the discrimination would be unbearable.

And the 7 previous pages is all me is it? Do me a favour, check to see the first few responses, started out at light hearted ribbing, from all

Second post in you were trying yet again to belittle someone on the internet.

I will just leave this for you to digest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberbullying

Could have bought a frame from SICK!!

This could have been brilliant.

insular

Hardly,

This is brilliant give Europe money for their knackered church. THINK!! Would they do it if Westminster burned down? NON

almost as good as anything from Cotic, Stanton, Chromag, etc

None of which are bad bikes or is that the insinuation?

If you expect variable quality and absolutely piss poor customer service?, then yes you are correct.

Fortunately some brands need to cover the costs of providing decent service, the product isn’t just the thing that arrives in the box.

You know those 200 chumps

Its Still an amount more than the 156 chumps on here who do nothing but gammon about how terrible its all working out.

Blokes on a forum changing the world again.

I’ll wait.

Didnt take long did it? what was it 5 minutes later,

…anyone on this thread watched the “FYRE” documentary. Just sayin’ .

Even those poor saps got a sandwich.

The thing I find most striking is how some of us can’t say I told you so enough times.
They were and still are Chancers, Mr floppy trousers is even distancing himself.

I will wager when London bike show appears Mr Chaos will be having a manicure or somthing.

Oh gawd still at it!!

Christ, they are like the Brexit of bike brands.

Hardly Theresa May shall have delivered upon her Brexit promise before they deliver on anything.

Oh dear oh dear….

https://m.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=211801&pagenum=3

Seems an email to all those waiting on frames within 48 hours was too big a challenge.

Ok so two people didn’t get frames according to that thread, It is mostly made up of Tom Howard and some others stirring the pot.

4 pages later same old, same old.

Moan_moan_moan

I know three UK nationals who have applied for French nationality

Brilliant they will be able to turn a nation that does know how to protest into a set of Bedwetters, just because they didn’t get their own way.

They were always a couple of chancers trying to get started, just like a lot of other bike startups. I guess the hype made people think they were more than that, and their expectations were greater

Nothing they have done even existed, Nothing was even tested,
Every single kickstarter has failed, They got the few products Marino and Downland made and pretended to be massive.

I’m sure they will deliver a shed load of Chinese frames now they have to get themselves out of the shit with someone who sees their massive marketing potential is better than their own.

Still the same remainer’s whining away, Honestly ,couldn’t make it up.

**COPIED FROM THE MAILING LIST EMAIL**

At some point we had to answer the whispers that are going around.

Once I’d heard that I had secretly quit Sick, I knew it was time for a mailout.

In actuality, the opposite has happened.
From the 1st March, I’ll be working at Sick full time.

The short version is I’ve spent the last few weeks working with other manufacturers and under mentorship from larger bike companies to get better at doing this. To step up and lead the whole Sick team. So some changes are coming and I’ve outlined them in detail below. It’s a long one, and there is heaps to take in.

TL:DR We will be writing to ALL customers with a delayed frame, within the next 48 hours with an accurate time of delivery as updated from our manufacturers, we’ll build in customs clearance time. (This will include any crowdfund frames or items we are waiting for)

Our customers have had to be very, patient; if it included you, thank you. We do appreciate it.

It’s incredibly frustrating to not get this on track yet, we’ve worked hard and dedicated a lot of time an energy and we ARE getting there.

We are NOT businessmen, we are a handful of riders who wanted to make cool bikes, and although we are new to this, we are learning. And we are honoured you are on this journey with us. There are alot of people that want to see us fail, but thankfully, far more people want us to succeed.

Pre-orders allowed us to get the price down so people could afford it, that was our primary goal.

It’s very unpredictable and that’s a hard lesson to learn.

What’s changing?

I will be working full time on Sick from March, I’ll have a more production and logistic based role ensuring frames get to the warehouse and to the customer on time. Whilst this has been one of my focusses, I’ve been responsible for a lot of other jobs too, it’s been hard to balance.

Joe will be taking over the entirety of the clothing side of the business and a large amount of it will be moving in-house, allowing for even more control.

Some of our staff will be moving on from more casual roles in to larger part-time positions, allowing me and Tim to focus on the business as a whole.

We’ll be taking on additional customer service staff and utilising Zendesk ticket system to more effectively manage timely responses, this will help customers stay informed and stop some of the duplication we are getting which is slowing things up. 9/10 problems are delays or missing items, we are confident once we overcome this teething period. These will dramatically reduce.

More Suppliers, larger capacity, no more pre-orders.

We were just as surprised as anyone that the Wulf and Deathwish sold so well, we overwhelmed our manufacturers and needed to take a break for them to catch up, even with extra staff onboard, even with the 60 day break, they were still swamped. Overselling is a good problem to have but very much a problem. The challenge is you can’t rush handmade frames, a rushed frame is going to be a bad frame, quality and safety is incredibly important to us. We are valued for our strong frames.

I have spent the last 6 months working with various established, larger manufacturers, negotiating and working towards a process where we can meet demand for frames without pre orders.

We now have 5x more production capacity than we did 2 months ago. Whilst we have made great steps, it will take a bit of time to kick in.

We made mistakes.

We communicated badly, it was embarrassing to say, “it’s going to be late, again”, even if it wasn’t our fault, because when you boil it down, we are responsible for delivering on time in full. We were so fixated on solving the problems, we didn’t have the time or energy to communicate that’s what we were doing. This worried people and kept them uninformed. That ends now.

We didn’t put any focus on profit, we all had full time jobs already, so getting paid wasn’t a big deal, but as we scaled up it became clear that we had to take it seriously. That this couldn’t just be a hobby when it was taking up 7 days a week, we would need to pay the staff too.

We got tripped up on eCommerce, when it works well, its amazing, but we had to fight paypal and banks for double charges and CC fraud, we had to spend a huge amount of time getting some frames found after they were stolen from a courier. We didn’t have the hours in the day to do it. There was very little contingency if something had gone wrong.

Alot of manufacture lead companies (YT and Canyon spring to mind) get a lot of heat for holding ‘scams’ (take a look at the Trustpilot reviews and they are quite something). All of our payments are bound legally to deliver. The customer is ALWAYS protected. But communication of that protection is important to.

Inevitably pre-order manufactured stock is subject to delay. It’s one of the reasons the price is low because the risk for the manufacturer and client is lower. The crux is no one shouts when their bike is early. We have a saying, “No one remembers a late delivery, but they would remember a bad one.”

International Frame Shipping

We will be discontinuing our automatically fulfilled global shipping on frames. Please note clothing and components will be unaffected, anything that has already been ordered will be unaffected, we will manually cost out international frame orders. This has been a drain in terms of money and time, we have unhappy clients from the delays this causes, but it also tends to end up a net loss for the business. By dealing with shipping outside of the UK/EU on a case-by-case basis, the customer will have a better understanding of the costs and time involved. In short, we will ship globally, but you’ll need to speak to us first.

It’s important for us to communicate to you, we’re not going away anytime soon.

We never take your support for granted.

Jordan, Tim, Zam, Lee & James.

P.S.
I took a break from social media for a variety of reasons, my phone breaking was a bit of a blessing in disguise, I realised, it was nice that I could touch base with customers in real time, but I was dedicating a lot of time to that when I needed to be focussed.

It meant it was easy to make personal promises, I would run out of time to handle and let people down, that doesn’t feel good.

Hand on heart, I want to help everyone, but as the business grows, the demands on the team does too, I’m constantly reminded to stay in my lane and focus on the big tasks I have.

Not having my phone forced me to focus on emails during office hours, to keep a tight rein on my productivity. It has meant people have thought I have dissapeared, but I’ve been offline less than two weeks, it’s important to note, I’ve done a live stream three to four times a week for the last two years.

The second reason, well, it’s not nice. The team, our employees, including our close family, and in some cases, our children, have been targeted by a pretty nasty campaign by an unhappy customer and his friends. I’m sure you guys have seen it on social media or in the comments of articles. Some of the threats were serious enough we needed to file a police report. They requested we took some downtime away from face to face contact whilst an investigation was held. In due course, I’ll return to social media. I miss you guys and will be back when I have a handle on this. I know you guys know me well enough

For someone who proclaimed that he came from a QC background in major industry dropping
some big names you might be forgiven thinking that possibly they would have a handle on QC.

They mention several times their ticket system in the published excuse emails,yet are now just implementing one called ZEN desk.

Mentor-ship = Mr Trouser’s

2000 likes nearly on a single image on instagram, yet six backers for the LAST FAILED crowdfunding and no sign any of the others.

Ah I will cut them some slack here not one person should threaten anyone’s kids BUT isn’t Karma a bitch when it comes back threatening to kick your face in, especially when “you” have previous for exactly that?

Please note clothing and components will be unaffected

Unless you ordered bars six months ago and unbelievably still haven’t received them, or is that what unaffected means?

Many long standing bike companies haven’t cracked that yet.

No of course they haven’t 🤣.

I never said they didn’t sell any? 300 odd isn’t it?

How many frames get sold out of the grand total?

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10621767/filing-history

Next year should show this massive growth.

. I get the impression that once you get to a stage where you can afford a bike/frame of theirs, you are no longer the target market.

So puberty then.

Impressive how they got 25k Instagram

But can only sell half a dozen frames and never deliver , yes sir that’s impressive.

The slepnir (180mm 29er, high pivot, gearbox, unknown frame material) hit 150% of target I think, but then the target was £9k. Wonder how that’s going.

Have you actually ever seen anything in reality from any of their vaporware instaposts?