We are crowdfunding the sustainable future of Singletrack and you can own a share of our business today.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong
Back in July we announced our plan to open up ownership of Singletrack to new shareholders via the Crowdcube investment platform. Almost 500 of you signed up to be kept in the loop and yesterday we emailed all of you to let you know that our investment campaign is now live on the Crowdcube platform. We are very happy to report that there was an almost instant flurry of investors pledging amounts from £10 to a great deal more. We are definitely off to a good start but we need more of you involved, even if just to share the opportunity to anyone you think would like to help us thrive for another quarter of a century.
Next year Singletrack turns 25. That’s a quarter of a century of independence in the bike media world. A lot has happened in that time and we’ve left a lot of history in our wake over the years.
Latest Singletrack Merch
Buying and wearing our sustainable merch is another great way to support Singletrack
We’re continually doing what we need to do to remain a key player in both the mountain bike and publishing world, and we’ve proven time and time again that when the going gets tough, doing the right thing by our subscribers pays off, even if that means asking for their help.
Following the amazing support we received from our readers last year we’ve been looking at how we remain sustainable and not just survive but thrive as a media brand. We’ve looked at every part of the business and we’ve made changes where they were needed – We are adaptable, but now we feel it’s time to adapt again and once more we see our future involving you, our readers, subscribers and website users.
Singletrack has always been about the community. Our independence has allowed us to remain a mountain bike media brand for mountain bikers and by mountain bikers since the very beginning back in 2001. That won’t change and indeed we want to build upon the experience, contacts and knowhow that a quarter of a century has given us in the specialty publishing world
And that’s why we are offering a chance for you to not just be a reader of Singletrack but to own part of it.
Our investor campaign has just launched via the CrowdCube platform offering you the chance to become a shareholder of Singletrack. A real shareholder, part owner and with the chance to benefit from our future growth and success. You can invest any amount you like from just £10 to a lot more. The more you invest the greater your shareholding will be.
The investment process is overseen at every stage by Crowdcube. If you don’t have a Crowdcube account then you will need to set that up. To make absolutely sure, you won’t be able to invest for 24 hours after your account is created. They will also walk you through all the risks involved. Only then will you get the option to invest in us and even then, your investment will only be taken at the end of the campaign and again, only if you still want to invest. In the meantime there will be lots of opportunities for you to ask us questions and find out more about what our plans are for the future.
Follow us at Crowdcube.We will be using our Owners Club mailing list to keep our investors updated on how the campaign is going and after the campaign is closed, to keep all our new owners updated on the plans and more that we are already working on for the short to long term future of Singletrack. If you want to be a part of that then check out the campaign over at Crowdcube right now and sign up to our Owners mailing list below.
Donations
For financial reasons our investment campaign is open to UK residents only. We’ve been contacted by many of you from outside the UK about this but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that at this stage. If you are not a UK resident but you still want to support us then you can make a donation below. We will consider any donation as if it were an investment and offer up the same perks as the Crowdcube campaign investors can get.
I was hoping someone else would jump in and ask first – buy hey ho!…
I can’t see any mention of possible future returns or being able to sell your stake on that Crowdcube page. If things go well are financial returns part of the deal and can you sell your stake?
Good question.
Crowdcube do have a mechanism for selling shares but as Crowdcube is all about private companies it doesn’t work the same way that buying shares in a stock market listed company. The types of share sales within private companies are called ‘secondary share sales’ or ‘secondaries’. That is something we will explore more in the future. As to returns on investments – all the shares on offer in this campaign are ordinary shares with pre-emption and dividend rights attached. In short they are the same types of shares that I have and that Chipps has. So, in the case there are profits that we make available to shareholdersvia dividends then yes, all shareholders will be entitled to dividends.
Pre-emption rights mean that if any shareholder looks to sell their shares these must first be offered to existing shareholders first.
There’s more information about Crowdcube shareholders here
Here’s my questions, I’m not putting them on the Crowdcube forum, seems daft as there’s a perfectly good one here!!
1. What are the plans to ‘expand into the growing outdoor adventure market’ mentioned on the Crowdcube introduction? This expansion seems critical to the future of the business but I can’t see any further detail anywhere.
2. Will the current shareholders, (Mark and Chipps) keep a controlling share of the company, or are their current 105 shares going to be worth the same as any shares I might buy, i.e. £2.62/share
3. What is the current plan to deal with the loan debts when they fall due for repayment in about 6 months time.
Good luck with this, I really hope you can keep this place going, I’d really miss it if it went, (but probably not as much as you would).
The plans have a varying amount of detail and you can understand that some parts are a little too sensitive for a public forum happy to disclose more in private chats on any platform – email, DM etc. The plans also depend on how much we raise with this offering. I have a range of options for a range of final funding totals. The one thing that is common is that the future relies on content and high quality content at that. The content is what will drive subscriptions, which will drive commercial deals. We have limited resources being a small team and there’s currently too much for us to do to make that happen quickly. One example is video production is a stalling point for us. It’s what the market wants – it’s what users engage with and it’s what the industry wants including in their packages. We can do it, but not at the scale we need to be able to take advantage of the market.
Travel is a market that is growing. That’s another avenue to commercial success. again, it’s a lucrative option but it is very resource intensive and has to be done very carefully to ensure the content is good enough.
There are other things on the list for investment but like I say the list will be prioritised depending on the success of the campaign. I’ve cashflowed the next 9 month sand the next 2 years based on different investment scenarios. Inshort the more we can raise the more on the list we can tackle.
I’m not precious about my shareholding. It’s likely that Chipps and I will remain the largest shareholders after this campaign but if there’s enough investment then I don’t care what my stake ends up being so long as Singletrack has a strong future. All shares are equal in value to those that I and Chipps hold. ordinary shares with full rights, pre-emption and dividends. If Singletrack succeeds then all shareholders will benefit equally.
The current bounceback loan is in it’s final 12 months of a 6 year period. Regardless of the campaign they will be paid up on time as scheduled via the monthly repayments. Accounts language makes it sound a bit like the entire amount will need to be paid up in 6 months. That’s not really the case. We’ve been paying it down every month, on time for 6 years. I can’t wait for it to be gone. It will significantly boost our cashflow.
Good to see this – I’ve bookmarked the email to sign up and do all that malarkey on CC when things calm down a little workwise, hopefully next week.
I had a question, don’t know if it’s answered on Crowdcube. OBviously the future depends on a steady stream of bilge on this forum from workshy clowns like myself quality content and a top notch website*, so arguably the value of one’s shares is dependent on the core team remaining part of STW – Chipps, Mark etc. erm… has that been taken into account anywhere/ what’s the STW thinking on that?
*insert joke of “well it’s managed this far without, so why bother in the future…" 😉 🤣
I’m not going anywhere but the future can’t have me driving the bus forever – so yes, it’s been considered. My personal goal is to grow the company to point I’m not required – that’s important if for nothing else in the event I get run over by that bus. One of the medium term goals/obligations is to appoint a fellow director so I’m not the only clown running the show 🙂
That detail was plenty for the size of the investment I’m likely to make, (lets just say I won’t be in a position to force myself to be that second director!) thanks Mark.
A point of clarification, please. Pre-emption rights are usually taken to mean that existing shareholders get the right of first refusal should there be further rounds of issuing new shares to avoid dilution of their holding rather than if a shareholder wants to sell their shares to someone else.
Hmm. I just went through the sign up process as I was considering this and wanted to see the options, only to be told “sorry, you are not able to invest. Singletrack Magazine is not available for investment in your country”. (Ireland).
Bummer.
Does this scheme qualify for the EIS tax incentive/ efficient wrapper for investment?
No EIS – says that on the listing
Ignore me
We are a bit too old as a company to qualify for Eis tax exemptions and the R&D side is a bit of a reach for us. I did look into it.
Oooh, interesting. Ireland is fairly backwards when it comes to day-trading, at-home investing etc; but is STW investing only available in the UK?
We are listed on the .com side of CrowdCube. There’s the .eu side but I think we aren’t listed there for Euopean investers due to reasons. I shall contact our account manager and clarify.
Not sure it will work but try this link if you are inside the EU
https://www.crowdcube.eu/companies/singletrack/pitches/qrpwkZ
Surprised there aren’t figures for year end 28/02/25 in the financials?
Valuation is from two sources that have valued us in the past 3 years. They were considerably higher than this valuation. For the purposes of this valuation we ran the numbers closer to our actual turnover rather than strategic market value. The financials for the year ending Feb 25 are in the process of being prepared for filing by our accountants. Turnover is up on the last filed year slightly. That’s what I have currently as they are not finalised.
Great Mark, thanks for clarifying 👍
The link works but if you sign up with a non UK address then you get this:"
Sorry, you’re not able to invest
Singletrack Magazine is not available for investment in your country."
How much are you looking to raise?
Presumably the amount will dictate which parts of your strategy you implement?