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.
Having invested with crowdcube before, it strikes me that for the casual investor there is quite a jump between the 150 and 500 award levels so people who might have gone for 250 or 300 ukp are going to invest 150. I know there is no way of altering that now.
Are the investment options limited to those values then? I’d assumed they were just bands for the different rewards, but the actual money you could invest would be variable within the bands.
Edit – think I may have misunderstood your point. You’re saying well I’m not going 500 quid, so for the same reward I may as well just do 150 instead of 250.
You can invest any amount. Those levels aren’t fixed.
Have a good weekend everyone.
any questions you can post here (I’ll be monitoring) or message me direct.
I was reminded of this interview I gave around a year ago and how it gives an inside view in how I’ve tried to manage the business side of magazine subscriptions. It’s long and technical and for most I imagine it’s pretty dull. But it’s an insight into how and why we do stuff like we do.
Supposing someone was thinking something like “well, I’ve had a lot of value from this place over the years, and I would really quite like it to continue, and indeed improve. So I might be willing to give some support in the form of a hundred quid or two. But frankly I don’t much care about the investment side of things, or having my name in the magazine etc."
Would it be more helpful for you guys for that guy to invest, or to simply chuck the money at you directly via previous routes for extra support?
(I would assume the latter, but sometimes things aren’t as simple as that.)
A donation would always be welcome and the level of support we got in 2024 through donations was incredible but thiso time it’s a bit more than that. I WANT you guys to have a stake in the work we do that goes beyond just a donation. It may sound odd but I find the prospect of sharing ownership quite motivating.
Stake in a website with two thirds of the screen covered in Temu adverts!You’ve got a nerve
£7.99 and the ads disappear for 2 months.
That said, I’ve just made some changes to the ads (It’s a new ad provider we are using and it takes a some time – weeks – for the ad networks to learn our site and start letting the larger/better advertisers run their ads on our pages – hnace lots of TEMU ads currently)
The change I’m testing is an 8 page limit on ads if you are logged in. So, your 9th page onwards should have no ads. The count resets after 2 hours.
I have read the information and the pitch deck. I have got a lot from Singletrack over the years and am minded to invest a little. But what I don’t see anywhere is what’s the exit plan, how will I ever get my money back? If I can’t then it is not an investment just a way to support you guys. Not a bad thing but not the normal sort of investment opportunity you see on crowdcube.
The plan is to get Singletrack sustainable with a long future ahead of it. There’s always the opportunity for some larger investor to want to buy it but that’s not the plan here with this investment campaign. There is a mechanism within Crowdcube for private individuals to buy/sell their stake but it’s not something I’ve looked into in depth at the moment. The shares have full dividend rights so future profits can be distributed to shareholders. Crowdcube is a platform for investing in private companies (ones NOT listed on any stock exchange) and the intent is often to keep the companies private rather than public for as long as possible.
I have found this information though which I hope is useful…
You would have to pay me to buy shares in this website
Isn’t that the idea? You buy shares, STW gives you a dividend?
Massive rule one failure. If you don’t want to, just keep it to yourself instead of being unkind.
Hmm, it seems the market and me have a difference of opinion. I really don’t want video content. That’s put me right off TBH.
I don’t invest in mining companies because I want or like coal. I invest because it makes me money, because, sadly there’s still dozens of countries that still use it. There’s lots of other materials they produce, but to make money for the investors you’ve got to have a product that people want to buy to protect the future of the company whether you like it or not.
I understand your outlook if you were donating like the 502 club, but this is investment. I’d only make an investment if I knew I was to get a return on my original sum. The only thing I’ve heard so far, which would make we want to invest is to up the video content. I’d like to hear more about future plans to increase revenue, even if it means sacking off the mag. Sadly though, there’s not enough info to this regard for me to make an investment.
My inbox and DMs are open for any questions.
Exactly. Like others I am not sure of the potential exit strategy / cash profit on the investment here, but I see it as a small financial support for the fun I get from the magazine and the website.
As one of the original life members, and therefore not paying an ongoing subscription, I see the 502 club and this as an alternative to that subscription but that is a very personal view. I don’t expect a share in Go Far to help fund my retirement. Also, having been on one of the lifetime subscribers rides in Calderdale and blown up halfway up the second climb, I am not sure the invite to the owners ride is that great of an incentive for me unless they decide to hold them somewhere a bit flatter.
I don’t mind video content, but on MY terms… My bugbear with Pinkbike is the auto-play videos which i’m sure generates a LOT of clicks, but they’re complete and utter bollox clicks as they only last 2s until they’re stopped/paused or navigated away from. However i bet it shows the right stats that the video made 4,000,000 clicks… but really.. it never.
It depends on the content though.
Content however is massively lacking these days on here from STW in any form. You used to get decent articles from people like Hannaha, but apart from that little one about DH racing recently i can’t think of any STW written articles…
TBH apart from the magazine i never read, i have no idea what STW does all day.
STW gives lots of publicity for the racing exploits of your son?
Which I do enjoy reading!