BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
With news websites selling products or linking with marketplaces, why shouldn’t shops get in on the publishing game?
Shops have long since discovered that, if they have the resource to do so, blogging or including content on their site can drive traffic, boost brand awreness and hopefully sales too. However, few have actually gone the whole hog and actually produced a magazine themselves.
Velorution is an exception, regularly producing magazines and even books with its recent ‘Little Black Book of Bikes’.
BikeBiz speaks with Velorution’s marketing director Gretta Cole for the story behind the shop’s publishing foray: “As London’s leading premium urban cycling retailer we bring the most innovative and unique urban cycling products from around the world to our customers, as you can imagine we receive so may product requests by other publishers and journalists who want to review the brands we decided to produce and publish our own glossy magazine. This way we are able to devote more space to these beautifully engineered bikes and accessories that are worthy of a lot more space.
"It contains interviews with a spotlight on ‘Meet the Makers’ and the people behind the brands as well as our ‘Velorutionaries’ our customers, who love to show off their bikes and talk about cycling in the City. Our interviews have included high profile Olympic sports personalities, movie stars and global entrepreneurs. Velorution makes for a interesting read and unlike many other cycling mags it’s packed with great content and very cool fashion edits. Velorution is produced in-house and available in print or online through Velorution.com, Apple Newsstand and Amazon Kindle.
“We always make sure our customers walk away with information about our business whether it’s a magazine or a brochure. The Little Black Book of Bikes is the perfect introduction to Velorution, a pocket size guide to our superb bike brands. We wanted to produce a compact, informative high quality book that’s useful and easy to carry. I love printed matter and felt quite nostalgic producing a pocket book. The magazine has been favourably compared to the likes of Rouleur and Monocle, and the high quality content and product pages serve as a powerful re-marketing and customer acquisition tools for Velorution’s stores, concessions and e-commerce site. Our growth plan sees the mag moving to a quarterly publication.”
