Weeksy i realise I’m speculating here so i can’t argue that I’m correct. However no harm in debate.
I get that next week some one could recreate this place for a small amount of money. I’m just pointing out that having been through a similar process it didn’t work well long term. In the short term it was great. But in the longer term we slowly died as we had no real way of being found, so no way of gaining new members
Agreed and that's the tough part. I run a forum with 400,000 posts in 4 years and 1000 members, but only 50 or so regularly posting day to day, 200 intermittently.
Getting new users is really hard
SBC, Trek, etc want the disposable income of 15-35 year olds before Mortgage debt and parenthood robs them,
Blimey. That seems to be turning the accepted wisdom completely on its head. I thought it was all the fifty somethings rolling in cash and the young are seriously hard up through high house prices and low wages. I don't know many 15-36 yos who have £5k to blow on a bike unless it comes from mum and dad.
Sounds a bit disengenous to say, 'all in good time' but that's the crux of it.
Which takes me back to my original question, albeit put in a bit of a holding pattern by Mark.
STW works exactly because of the community and sense of belonging that the site, forum and/or mag instills in people. It’s a mag of the people, for the people and not driven my external “must achieve” financial pressures.
The problem has been with the message “join us and be part of the future” without a single clue of what ‘joining us’ means or ‘the future’ looks like. There’s surely no surprise that it’s created so much debate on the forum, which probably inspires and frustrates Mark and team in equal measure.
Could the announcement have better managed better? IMO probably but what we love about STW is that it’s a bunch of media focussed MTBers rather than slick journo types.
However, can we all wait for Mark’s “all in good time”? Of course we can. The STW is still what we know and love (clearly something slightly different to each of us).
Online safety act now means if you have over 70k unique users/month you must register and jump through a lot of legal and time consuming risk assessment hoops. Demonstrate moderation policies and procedures. It’s a legal obligation that has resulted in some forums closing compketely. As a company with staff it’s something we can manage. As an individual running a forum I’d think very carefully about taking all that on.
I don't know many 15-36 yos who have £5k to blow on a bike unless it comes from mum and dad.
I could point you to dozens of 21-30 year olds earning well into 6 figures. A couple of them ride too. I’m a little over 36 now but I certainly wasn’t scared to put 5k, and the rest, down on a bike at that age. Anything aproaching a mid range ebike wont give you much change from 5k either, and given how they are flying out the doors compared to regular bikes, I say there’s some merit to the above.
However, can we all wait for Mark’s “all in good time”? Of course we can
This
The last line of my post seems to have been lost.
STW have to make sure they don’t lose the opportunity now the excitement has been created. They may need to move quicker and be more forthcoming with information than maybe they had anticipated.
Or perhaps we’ve enlisted the services of experts who know how these things work?
what we have done is let everyone know what we plan to do in September. That’s it at this stage. All the legal and form filling and hmrc stuff happens before then. Between now and then there’s a lot of work to do. Even the date has been considered as well as the weeks running up to it. Could you, just maybe, give us a little credit that we have some idea as to what we are doing?
Will this work for folks outside the UK as well? I think there are quite a few of us.
I’m not entirely sure. I think so. You are fundamentally buying shares in a ltd company. Crowdcube will be able to advise in August.
Could you, just maybe, give us a little credit that we have some idea as to what we are doing?
With the greatest respect, the message so far has been “Give us five grand and you’ll get a photo shoot and a thirty minute bike set up guide” then you shutdown on the real detail of the scheme.
As your target audience I personally feel it should have been promoted better if you have experts involved. Happy to talk offline if you’d like more of a view from this side of the fence as I’d love it to be a success.
You’ve had all the detail there is. At this stage. More information will come at the right time.
Then that message tells me I’m out if there’s no more detail.
Frustration can come over as arrogance and the community is your customer base that can easily move.
However, it’s your business so do with as you wish, it just won’t be for me. You’ve had some success in 25 years so I wish you more for the next.
This just seems really unnecessary, it's surely up to Mark and the team to decide the details and when they will be released.
If that puts you off then don't plan to invest. For better or worse it's not going to be an investment "10 bagger" where you will need to carefully optimise your tax position. It's going to be something to support a good organisation who have put a lot back into the sport and the community.
Then that message tells me I’m out if there’s no more detail.
Frustration can come over as arrogance and the community is your customer base that can easily move.
However, it’s your business so do with as you wish, it just won’t be for me. You’ve had some success in 25 years so I wish you more for the next.
What could you possibly need to know right now that you can’t wait a few weeks to find out?
What could you possibly need to know right now that you can’t wait a few weeks to find out?
I've no more to say on the matter as my own opinions are my opinions and I don't want to put a negative spin on anyone elses view - and I've tried to be positive throughout.
I've come to the realisation that it's not somewhere to spend my hard earned based on what I do know and that's all that matters to me. My offer to Mark to share my thoughts offline stands if it's of any interest.
Hello! Sorry, I'm late to the debate (as usual...) as I've been off to the Eurobike Show* for the last week. Here's a massive post with loads of different thoughts. (And, for some reason, I seem to have a 'cooler' effect on forum posts, where I'll write something and everyone seems to take it as a slam-dunk 'The Editor has spoken' move and no one ever replies. But that's not what I ever want... Please continue the debate!) 🙂
For those who don't know, as of about 2021, I officially 'stepped back' from day to day STW stuff, and generally work only on the print magazine: editing, commissioning, proofing and writing stuff, though I'm still co-owner of the business with Mark, am still around in the (online) office and, more recently have re-taken control of newsletter writing and more web stuff. I won't comment on numbers and things because I don't really know any of them - Mark and I have a good partnership where I don't know if we've broken even this month and he doesn't know what's in the next issue. Yet we both need each other to do a good job at what we both do...
I initially chatted to Mark and Benji about what coverage we might want from Eurobike, the biggest show in Europe, as it can be massively difficult to cover a show solo, especially when you have film crews from embn and the like producing same-day video - and Benji pointed out that a recent pedal review had gained more reads than last year's Eurobike Round-up story had. This makes online news reporting a very hard sell - though it wasn't always. I can remember racking up 100,000 reads from a trade show in the pre-YT/Tiktok days. But that was then.
(*To put things into context, my Eurobike trip was entirely at my own expense, because Singletrack currently doesn't have any travel budget, but I thought that we needed to be there... I reckon it cost me two weeks' wages to go there and be there. Mark previously mentioned mediocre wages - and I'm on a part-time portion of those...)
So, my task there was mostly to see all of Singletrack's trade friends, catch up with personal contacts too (this was my 30th Eurobike after all...) and just see what was going on. I have 400 or so photos of cool stuff if you would like a story to see what looked good, though...
With my cynical head on, there were perhaps a dozen (quality) pedal-powered mountain bikes on display over the six halls and outdoor area. Every other bike was either gravel, e-mtb, massively expensive road or utilitarian town and e-cargo machines... Is that all the bikes there are? Of course not, but MTB is no longer the bike trade darling it once was... Perhaps it's Singletrack's role to chart the engines-on-fire Lancaster Bomber of meat-powered mountain bikes all the way to the final explosion on a distant hillside, as the last remaining 'sport' rider explodes in a fiery acceptance of the inevitability of electric motors and uplifted bike parks. Or perhaps not...
What I did see, that really buoyed me up, was that all of the people I spoke to were upbeat about cycling in general. Much moreseo than the last couple of years. And most of them were, personally, looking fantastic, due to having spent more time on the bike this spring than previously - whether from weather reasons, personal inspiration, or a reaction to 'why are so many of my friends dying? I'm going to do something about my own wellbeing...'. Whatever it was, there was a great buzz about riding bikes, which was great to see. There seems to be an acceptance that the 'golden age' of pedal powered mountain bikes is now fading into the rear view mirror - why pedal when you can ebike? Why ride fun singletrack when you can ride fire roads fast?
And this might be hard to accept for many of you/us, as that is still what we do... But 'velos musculaires' are not what's selling these days.
We've always been a pretty broad church, for better or worse, at the mag and website and have always looked at new things - whether 29ers, ebikes, fat bikes or gravel bikes. They're all bikes and if you can ride them in the hills, we love them. I acknowledge that many of our readers are ageing with us, and we'll only run 'yoof' features on things like dirt jumping if we can write it authentically and in a way that most of our readers will enjoy.
Some of you will know that I like guitars (in true STW style, I have more than I can justify, and would rather buy a new gadget than put the work in to improving my skills...) - but I subscribe to the print version of Guitarist magazine (ironically, a Future publishing mag). It costs me a chunk of change (70 quid a year? I'm not sure) and it's about a topic that hasn't changed significantly in 50 years - most (like 85% of) guitarists you'll see on TV are playing designs penned between 1951 and 1963... And arguably, guitar bands are dead and everyone loves sampled dance music... And yet, there's still stuff going on to fill a print magazine about guitars. There are product reviews, of course, probably to keep advertisers interested, but there are long features, interviews, outstanding studio photography and some great opinions. And the magazine sits next to my bed (or the loo) and fills in those pauses between looking at my laptop or phone that apparently fill most of my days. I still like print magazines...
In terms of how we fill the pages of the print mag here. I have been literally making things up for 25 years. We have no bosses, we have no corporate strategists. We just write what we think you'll like. Singletrack World magazine is made up of a combination of regular features (editorial, reviews, last words...), some commissioned features from regular writers, some 'hey I've been to Switzerland' features from pro photo-journos we know well, some 'hey I've been to Switzerland' features from readers or friends of friends who've been places and who've got back with good photos, and then there are always chance features made up of a passionate blog post (see David Herbold's feature this issue) or from a bonkers idea someone has had in the office that we go and do ourselves...
If you don't like what you read in the mag, please let me know. My email address is literally chipps@ the website. Or editorial@ will go to everyone in the editorial office. Feel free to write me a review, rating how you enjoyed each article out of ten, every issue. Or suggestions for what we could cover. Because no one ever does, and it can be hard to edit and write in a vacuum. In the meantime, I canvas friends and colleagues about what to put in each issue. Sometimes it works wonderfully. Sometimes it can fall flat. But it's always different and hopefully never predictable... and always about off-road bike riding in great places.
As for the paper magazine vs website balance. The paper magazine is massively expensive to make (have you SEEN a commercial print machine? They're seriously impressive...) but being a paper magazine does give us something tangible to sell - to both readers and to advertisers, and it keeps us in the premier league of mountain bike titles in terms of press previews to new bike launches or trade shows. Some people are still keen to buy paper magazines - and would rather pay for something physical, rather than etheral. However, the STW website and forum are giant things in their own right. Where else could you get timely information for getting the last plane out of a war-stricken country? Or learn about two-stroke strimmers, or how to kill a tree and, sometimes, mountain bike information about riding in Tenerife or making 11 speed work with 12 speed?
I've often likened websites like a street of pubs in a town centre. And to spare you the rest of the analogies, STW is a massive pub, with a lounge bar and a public bar and that's it - there are no multiple booths (though I guess there is a VIP room for paying members) but generally it's a big pub full of mountain bikers with free entry (with bouncers who'll let nearly everyone in, but who'll chuck out troublemakers...) and there, everyone can talk about 3D printing, what tyres, where to ride, what waterproof plasterboard and 'Who knows about SU carburettors?' - all known life is there. Everyone comes for the craic and the reasonably priced beer (which you don't even have to buy...) - but would those folks still come to the pub if it was a tenner to enter, or you had to buy a pint in order to speak? Would they leave to go to the scruffy pub down the road as it was free? Would enough people still keep coming to the STW lounge bar to talk about football and lawnkeeping? And would they pay enough to keep the lights on? Would there have. to be a super-VIP lounge for 100 members that cost a grand a year as they couldn't be without their forum? Or could we find 100,000 people who could find a quid?
To be honest, I'm not sure. We're looking at the next step of Singletrack with care. Nothing is yet set in stone. Even the perks on our 'invest with us' page are just examples. (I don't have a travel business, by the way, I have three self-catering gites in an old barn... and I'm not allowed to guide in France. Though the riding is ace) - but again, we're looking to see what we could do with some investment and some headroom, which anyone who runs a business, knows never actually happens, as you're always putting fires out. Or at least we are.
Sorry to go on, and perhaps this could have been next week's member newsletter, instead of a ten page scroll on the forum, but I have other stuff to write about inverted Presta valves instead for that instead...
Forgot to tick the 'Subscribe' button... You'd think I didn't work here. 🤣
Nice post Chipps. For me, STW is a weird kind of niche a lot of the time. But it's weird because it's VERY niche. Look at the other competition online like Pinkbike, that's got it's core of Enduro/DH fans, it's very American centric and Canadian and you can see the views/posts in the articles associated.
But even over there you can see that some articles that should do well (and maybe will do better HERE than there) really don't do as well as they used to. Their Eurobike coverage has been excellent, but posts for it have been lacking. Their biggest recent one is some guy throwing a bike off a bridge after being a bit bonkers. That's the competition lol. THat's society nowdays.
I don't honestly know what 'articles' are going to be hits here, but looking at the replies, it's not the WCDH or Enduro stuff, it's more likely to be a bendy bar bike made from steel that some random guy built in a shed. Like everywhere you go, this place has it' favourite topics/subjects. Throw something on about a new set of Hope brakes/pedals and you'll get posts... throw something on about a new Eeeb and you'll now get 10X the posts you would have a few years ago.
For me, what you/someone has done to the articles is an abomination. They've become some of my favourite things so something that's incredibly hard to find or navigate. The articles now don't even often pop up in the 'latest' list, they're just hidden down the side... weird... Then when you click on them you get a weird list that's not quite 'posts' but is posts, but can't be seen or posted in the usual way.... It's bizarre, absolutely bizarre.
One main interesting thing is that you/STW don't have a defined 'plan' for what to post in terms of topics... but i can easily see why that's the case. Look around you, look around the industry and see what people are doing.
Things that are coming up in discussion for example. Things that are 'hot' in the industry.
Me, i'd start with Ebikes obviousy, then gravel bikes, then spannering, then family/kids. At FoD this weekend it was RAMMED, i mean just bikes everywhere... 60% (i dunno, maybe) of adults were on Ebikes.... The rest were on hire/clunky cheap bikes apart from a minority on MTBs (like me). The kids were on anything and everything from DH bikes to again cheap rubbish.
How about articles of where to ride, like the old ones that had GPX tracks with maps and pictures... Fod has got 3-4 new trails in the last 6 months, from a green, 2 new skills areas, new blue, 2 new reds.. But would anyone ever know.. i don't see how..
Some good points there, @weeksy . In terms of topics (as I know nothing about the website formatting) - one issue can be that one rider's great article, is another rider's 'flip straight past' - 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. Again, in terms of mag content, there are so many online sources of info and entertainment, we try to concentrate on keeping the magazine full of things the internet doesn't do as well, like long-form features, big interviews, scenic photos and the like. Online, it's a case of what we have resources for - a FOD riding guide would be great, but how would we do it? Send someone down to the place for a couple of days? Or ask a busy FOD employee to take time out to map and shoot it for us. I'm not sure, though I can see it being an expensive time for either organisation for, perhaps, little return to them.
Keep up the comments! 🙂
I normally stay out of these sorts of posts but I will put my 2p in for what it is worth.
I used to be a free member until around covid time when there was a drive to give some money as STW was struggling. I signed up as a print member as that gave STW the most money and I think what was requested at the time as the most useful for the business at the time. Since then, I have enjoyed some of the articles but I currently have 3 magazines still in their wrapper untouched. I have never read it digitally either. I subscribed to support a business that run a forum that I enjoy.
According to the stats, that makes me a print subscriber when in reality, I am not. I am a forum user who wanted to help STW out.
As a side note, I don't think I will renew next time round. I wouldn't have renewed last time but STW doesn't send notification of auto renewal so I didn't know it was renewal time until the money was taken from my bank. There are a few reasons why, first one is as above, I dont read the mag, 2nd is more general and it feels to me like forum users are an inconvenience to the magazine. The forum technology is questionable, the updates don't seem to fix issues and a thread asking for issue reports is useless if it doesn't get looked at by the staff, replied to, and people kept up to date on which issues are know and when they will be fixed.
I have posted countless times on that thread, and the one before about issues and even asking for advice on which brower I should use on my phone as the forum is pretty much unusable on my phone...never had a reply. I have also never seen an issue log so we don't all report the same issue again and again, I have never seen a note acknowledging an issue and saying we will fix in in a release on X date.
The icing on the cake was when STW made a change a few months ago and I couldn't log in at all, I emailed tech, no answer, emailed them again, no answer, email Mark who said he'd look into it and didn't. I know, I am only one customer, nobody died etc but it doesn't endear users to stump up an annual subscription.
Like I say it is just my feeling as one customer. Others might feel the same or disagree but I would be careful ignoring feedback from customers "as you have black and white data in front of you".
a thread asking for issue reports is useless if it doesn't get looked at by the staff, replied to, and people kept up to date
I do agree with some of what you are saying, but I don't think the above is fair. Mark does post on the new forum thread, he does acknowledge issues and says from time to time what they plan to do about it. Perhaps not as often, or as quickly as you might like. However he's often on here replying to questions in his own time at weekends and late into the night and has mentioned the stress this causes and the toll this takes on his personal life. We need to be realistic, with (ISTR) just one full time and one part time developer, 118,000 users and nearly 10 million posts they have their hands full, to put it mildly. It's a handful of people some part time working on a shoestring, not mtbmegacorps.
I have posted countless times on that thread...never had a reply
2000+ posts on that thread, are you really expecting a personal reply to all of them?
I have never seen a note acknowledging an issue and saying we will fix in in a release on X date.
Look again. I have, quite frequently.
As magazine content goes, to add a bit more detail to my dismissing the latest issue, here is my logic.
I immediately skip any article that involves bikepacking. And there are two in that issue. I’m just not at all interested in it nor reading about it. A piece about soil from Benji, nah. Riding with small kids, been there, done that and now I don’t have any. Review of water bottles, that’s a bit meh. Some riding group in America, irrelevant to me. Falklands Islands review, again, not really interested.
Perhaps this reflects badly on me, but I did use to subscribe to other MTB mags and thinking back, liked the bike reviews and shootouts, component testing and UK trails news.
The forum is good, I’ve had great advice and deals flagged on it. I still maintain a great feature would be to snooze/mute/hide topics you aren’t interested in. I’m not born again yooth, but the mag and the YT channel seems to have gone a bit “men in sheds”. I know a mate who was a regular contributor has given up on the website due to the content being irrelevant. Too much swooning about obscure brands and possibly just trying to be far too cool. We are supposed to be just having fun riding bikes.
I am really curious what the investment and growth strategy is going to be however.
I'm not a subscriber and haven't been for a while as I just don't see the value in it.
When it comes to the magazine I can't remember the last time I read anything in it that was either relevant or interesting to me, possibly the Excess Baggage article by Nils Amelinckx. Other than that the articles I've seen have been skipped over or immediately forgettable.
On the website I felt that the only person who wrote a decent article was Hannah but now she's left so there's no more of her musings to read, which I feel is a massive blow to the magazine and site.
When I look at the previous competition for the magazines I would that Privateer and latterly Cranked were great reads with interesting articles. Somehow they even managed to make the articles that weren't relevant to the type of riding I do, interesting. Singletrack has never managed that.
The forum is the only place I actually bother visiting but it feels so buggy and slow that I hardly bother commenting as it's often just easier to Google things if I have a question.
I'd love to see Singletrack step up and write the same quality of articles as the previously mentioned magazines but I don't see it happening. If they were to up their game I'd happily pay far more than the current £25 a year subscription but at the moment, to me, it's not even worth that.
2000+ posts on that thread, are you really expecting a personal reply to all of them?
This proves my point - there has to be a better way of capturing, resolving and communicating issues to avoid frustration than having a thread like that. Surely that is like putting a postbox on the wall when you have nobody to empty it.
I use a small piece of software at work, there is 1 developer who supports multiple applications and is allocated to spend 1.25 days per week on our product. We all have access to a sheet where we log issues and request features that we would like to see in future. Other users can see what has been logged and can "like" the ones they agree need fixing first and the new features that we would like to see. It also avoids 50 complaints about the same thing.
The devoper then updates the list once a month with what will be done and when we can expect to see it. It works really well, manages expectations and lets people feel that they have some input into the decisions being made.
We need to be realistic, with (ISTR) just one full time and one part time developer, 118,000 users and nearly 10 million posts they have their hands full, to put it mildly. It's a handful of people some part time working on a shoestring, not mtbmegacorps.
That is understood and as I said, the reason I signed up to the print mag in the first please. Unfortunately, small or otherwise, it is still a business that needs to supply people what they want or they will vote with their feet. Part of giving customers what they want is to find out what they want rather than tell them because you have some data.
I didn't want my post to be a bash STW post, it was merely to point out that sometimes data doesn't give you the full picture.
As magazine content goes, to add a bit more detail to my dismissing the latest issue, here is my logic.
I immediately skip any article that involves bikepacking. And there are two in that issue. I’m just not at all interested in it nor reading about it. A piece about soil from Benji, nah. Riding with small kids, been there, done that and now I don’t have any. Review of water bottles, that’s a bit meh. Some riding group in America, irrelevant to me. Falklands Islands review, again, not really interested.
Perhaps this reflects badly on me, but I did use to subscribe to other MTB mags and thinking back, liked the bike reviews and shootouts, component testing and UK trails news.
To flip this then... What articles DO you want ?
To flip this then... What articles DO you want ?
Maybe it’s just a case that many of us have been doing this for so long that everything that can be written/read has been and that there’s nothing new to be said to us?
I imagine STW team use forum ad a useful guide to where our heads are at so I look forward to reading an article on “How to escape a politically unstable country in 48 hours”. 😀
To flip this then... What articles DO you want ?
Maybe it’s just a case that many of us have been doing this for so long that everything that can be written/read has been and that there’s nothing new to be said to us?
Well that can't be the case as there's new things like Fox Podium forks, Hope Tech5 brakes, E-13 Sidekick hubs, Rimpact Chain dampers and TMDs. Etc etc...
I assume there's new trails being built all the time, new locations to ride, there's racing, there's riding... Heck there's even craft breweries 😀
I'm biased but it often confuses me that DH racing, both WCDH and even National series DH isn't a heck of a lot more popular. There was an Enduro race this weekend at FoD that no-one saw 😀 or a race that only DirkPitts lass raced in...
As above though, unless you can tell STW what to write about, then it's hard... we're all forever telling them what articles we don't want... but not what we do want.
I keep sitting here wondering why i bother updating my boys racing thread, it seems to be largely ignored my most but it does seem to keep some happy so i do post on it...
See i'd post articles about for example Camper van conversions, coffee machines, beer, an article on 'trousers for blokes with a 38" waistline' and things like that... The destination articles for places that 99% of us are unlikely to visit... seems a bit pointless.
I thought the Morzine one had a LOT of potential, but i've not seen anything of much use on it.
To change tack slightly I may upgrade from a digital back to a print subscription to try and get my nose out of my phone.
I like the travel articles, some I get into, others I don't, no rhyme or reason why.
I suppose the problem with kit reviews is that once it's printed I've already watched a few videos / read a few articles (new hope Evo as an example), the print run would take too long. Id probably read and article again to see if any super feature had been missed.
On the forum I find myself reading a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally want to read about (probably the forums version of doom scrolling) . I frequently don't comment as the point has been made or I make some flippant throw away comment.
Well that can't be the case as there's new things like….
I just typed a response but the website went weird on my phone and lost my words. 🤬
Summary was….
New tech isn’t as exciting as it used to be, just more of the same. Been there, read that. Modern kit is generally better than me as a rider.
Reviews are cheap (relatively) to produce so most other content is largely at the mercy of what people are doing rather than a strategic direction (happy to be corrected, but I refer to Chipps comments of Eurobike)
STW has the details of all of their customers so taking ownership of polling them with a targeted “What’s good, good what’s bad” will be far more productive that what can be perceived as just batting the problem away to make it a consumer issue.
I thought the Morzine one had a LOT of potential, but i've not seen anything of much use on it.
We've not published anything yet. We got back 10 days ago issue 162 isn;t out until August. I know that digital publishing is fast and furious but come on.. give us a chance 😉
What would I like to read about? I’m not sure it’s my role to decide that. But I just like mountain biking. I’m not interested at all in Gravel or Bike Packing, so maybe I’m supporting the wrong website? I read heavy going documents all day at work, so I don’t want to read about soil, I want something light.
I pay to subscribe, for the local support and to remove the adds. I don’t pay for any other forum access. I don’t take the paper magazine option as I wouldn’t read it. It’s all fair isn’t it?
The Morzine article sounds like it could be good. An achievable destination, and normal biking, in a beautiful area. What’s not to like about that.
I love reading about the technology around DH and XC racing but PinkBike is my go to for that. Likewise with previews and post race updates, PB has that in bucketfulls.
"What would I like to read about? I’m not sure it’s my role to decide that."
Well, you're a reader and you help pay our wages, so I reckon that you have as good a say as anyone 🙂
You may not like gravel or bikepacking, but some readers do. We certainly try to balance things out so it's not all moustaches and curly bars, nor downhill pyjamas and 20ft hucks. The same goes for trying to balance far-flung places with achievable local stuff. Some readers don't like anything they won't get to do. Others like to read about it for the complete opposite reason that they'll never get to do it, so they'd like to read about what they're missing. Some people love watching and doing racing, some just don't get it. We'll never be able to make one issue that all our readers completely love, but we try not to annoy everyone either!
We'll continue to do some of the 'behind the tech' and 'the people behind the new tech' stuff in the mag, given that actual new stuff tech news is always very well covered by a zillion websites (ours included) so has no place in a bimonthly mag.
I thought the Morzine one had a LOT of potential, but i've not seen anything of much use on it.
We've not published anything yet. We got back 10 days ago issue 162 isn;t out until August. I know that digital publishing is fast and furious but come on.. give us a chance 😉
We'll all be back by then ? 😀
What would I like to read about? I’m not sure it’s my role to decide that."
Well, you're a reader and you help pay our wages, so I reckon that you have as good a say as anyone 🙂
I can see both sides of that. We’re the customer and you want to keep it that way by giving us what we want, but STW is your baby, your vision. There was nothing logical about starting the venture all those years ago, and probably there are times now when it still feels illogical.
It’s a journey based on passion so your output needs to feed that passion and not just pay the bills. STW is at its absolute finest when it shines with the combined passion of the team. Tell us content to you want to produce and we’ll tell you if we’ll buy it.
I personally don’t know what to suggest from my perspective - see comments above. I still enjoy reading about bikes and biking but I don’t pour over it like I did when I was younger. I tend to glaze over on articles that are mass of hyperbolic adjectives that my English teacher would have loved (dear, sweet Mrs Shelton) - I find a bit tiresome every time a mountain, field or river consumes a multi line sentence. Just get on with telling the story
I am interested in new kit but really the improvements are usually unnoticeable to me so purchases are more driven by my ‘Ooo shiny’ gland.
When done well, bike and component reviews are so much better delivered via video, and again kit is so good that it’s back to infinitesimal improvement often described with hyperboles.
To bounce the question back to Chipps and Mark. What mags (biking or otherwise) do you still read after a quarter of a century and how would go about breaking the question and response down if asked by the editor?
Mark does post on the new forum thread, he does acknowledge issues and says from time to time what they plan to do about it. Perhaps not as often, or as quickly as you might like.
There's two points be had here.
Firstly, Mark has repeatedly said that he'd be more engaged with the forum if it wasn't such a bear pit with people falling over each other to tell him how shit he, his business, his product and his staff were every time he dared to post anything. Most of the staff stopped reading the forum because who wants to read that about their job every day? This predates my tenure as Moderator because it was one of the gaps I wanted to try to bridge when I agreed to the gig so that's what, 15 years ago at least?
Secondly, with my Tech Support hat on, I'd rather that the people in a position to fix issues were busy fixing issues rather than spending half of their working day telling people that they were fixing issues but then had to stop fixing issues in order to tell you about all the issues they're fixing.
there has to be a better way of capturing, resolving and communicating issues to avoid frustration than having a thread like that.
There is. There's "not having a thread like that" just like pretty much every other website on the Internet. How would you go about telling Amazon that you don't like the shade of orange they've chosen for their logo?
Is there anywhere else on the web, certainly in the forum world, where threads like this wouldn't just be allowed to exist but be publicly viewable and freely member-writeable? I can't think of many offhand. In fact I can't think of any offhand.
I still think think long term reviews are the best bit, but make it ten pages in depth of initial setup, what you changed, what you liked, mixed in with decent photos in all conditions and tracks/venues. I’d like that. The readers rides you do are my favourite but. I bought a squatch based on what Benji wrote about his.
or go to a trail centre and spend a few hours asking the same and seeing what readers are riding. Pinkbike did that a while back and it was fun
I don’t mind the travel and bike packing things but I’m never going to take a bike abroad in reality so it’s a bit heavy focussed in my opinion
Some interesting comments on this thread.
I've been a print subscriber for years, but have to admit that I very rarely read articles in the mag, mainly due to having the time to sit down and read it (perhaps I should put them in the bathroom........).
I enjoyed the Falklands article in the latest issue - never been and probably never will. But being of a certain age I can remember the conflict, so interesting to see another side to the Island.
The adaptive bike article a few issues back was another one that I read - quite inspiring, and good to see adaptive riding getting some coverage.
The forum is the only one I now spend any time viewing or posting on. The PB forum is woeful, and I just don't get VitalMTB.....
PB has great coverage of the DH and Enduro WC and the occasional report from UK races.
I do think there's possibly a gap in coverage for grassroots and national level racing.
For example the race that my Daughter did at Revolution Bike Park yesterday had over 220 riders - only 12 of those were female spread across U13, U18 & over 18. Same for the MIJ at FoD and Racers Guild at Cannock.
Perhaps articles on why aren't there more girls in UK DH & Enduro?
Or how about our club, where we have 100 kids from 5-18 on the books and another 30+ on a waiting list, our sessions regularly see upto 60 kids attending. My Daughter is the only one that competes at DH - everyone else is XC. And we've got some fast kids - regular top 10 at Nationals and we comprehensively trounced the locals in the Welsh XC series last year and looking similar this year.
We struggle to attract coaches and all of our coaches now are parents of kids who attended (myself included).
Or how about finding out why British Cycling took sooo long to deliver the new Coaching framework - especially the 'Gravity' elements - still the ginger step kid of MTB for BC....
As for YT I used to watch GMBN regularly, but that's gotten very samey just lately.
With regards to current content on the website I've given up on FGF as I can't afford or want £200 bib shorts or a £100 jersey. Appreciate that it's stuff you guys get sent to review, but you know cost of living & all that.
What about the resurrection of Nukeproof? There's got to be something there other than the press release from Belgium Cycle Factory?
Also missing Making Up the Numbers podcasts too......
As for the future of STW I hope it's bright! You guys do an awesome job.
Is there anywhere else on the web, certainly in the forum world, where threads like this wouldn't just be allowed to exist but be publicly viewable and freely member-writeable? I can't think of many offhand. In fact I can't think of any offhand.
But this isn’t a really a forum is it? It’s part of the STW journalistic emporium, a business that we’re being offered to invest in. Mark has said the forum part isn’t commercially viable in its own right and I don’t imagine Mark/Chipps ever set out to provide such a thing as a primary objective. A necessary evil to encourage footfall to their primary journalistic objectives … hence why it has to be tolerated where a pure community approach wouldn’t?
I don’t mean that to be controversial … it’s exactly the question I posed at the start. What exactly is STW?
“Or how about our club, where we have 100 kids from 5-18 on the books and another 30+ on a waiting list, our sessions regularly see upto 60 kids attending. We struggle to attract coaches and all of our coaches now are parents of kids who attended (myself included).”
Did you see the feature I wrote a couple of years ago on the Minehead Merlins? That was very much in that vein, touching on how the parents were being encouraged to become qualified guides, and the success of the older riders. That came from a reader suggesting a feature - and I thought it came out well, though I never heard any feedback on it, good or bad, from anyone not in the feature itself.
@Dave_h You (genuinely) do a good line in Paxman-style questions. We'll have to get you to do some interviews for us 🙂
The forum isn't a 'necessary evil' - as it's not evil, and nor do we begrudge it. It gives the whole website character and a sense of community and we love it. As Cougar says, where else would you get to debate the content and direction of a publishing 'empire' directly with the founders and fellow users? As Mark has said, the forum alone would be hard to staff, as it'd take a similar amount of server power and behind the scenes admin to keep it running smoothly. I know that other websites, forums (and even print magazines) work well with a skeleton staff of one or two, but they're nearly always part of some bigger organisation that can share costs and borrow accounts departments, capital, IT staff and even buildings. We've never had that luxury, which makes any corporate-level move we make a little slower and more considered.
@dirkpitt74 - This kind of sums up the difficulties I face as a magazine editor. You've suggested a feature, yet we've already written one that should be of massive interest to you. So, yay! However, you've not seen it, despite being a subscriber. Boo.
So, what can we do to make sure you see things that interest for you? We run 'in the next issue...' preview articles and we also put the features online after the magazine is published... We do try! 🙂
And yet, as a subscriber, you've also been able to search our archive of back issues and find and read the feature. So yay!
As you point out, there are no comments on the feature, good or bad, so as an editor, how do I know if it was of interest to many readers, or if most people skipped over it?
Anyway, I should get back to writing the next issue! Thanks for the comments as ever.
I can't afford or want £200 bib shorts or a £100 jersey.
Agree. Apols if it's already bindun, but an article on affordable riding gear that's actually good would be of interest to me. More Decathlon and Go Outdoors, less Rapha.
I know you do occasionally review specific items which fall into that category. I recall Benji's enthusiastic review of a low cost waterproof jacket recently which was sadly out of stock when I looked.
I'm thinking less one-off reviews of a single item, but a group test of more affordable gear every now and then. I don't know, shoes one issue, shorts in another or whatever. Maybe not every issue but a couple of times a year?
have to admit that I very rarely read articles in the mag, mainly due to having the time to sit down and read it (perhaps I should put them in the bathroom........).
One of the best things I ever did was install a magazine rack in the bathroom. Before that I kept leaving magazines in there and my partner would move them "somewhere safe" never to be seen again. Guests appreciate it too.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00FJ3SRDA
But this isn’t a really a forum is it? It’s part of the STW journalistic emporium,
Whatever you care to call it, my question stands. Where else on the Web would you see (often brutal) feedback about the site from its userbase posted largely unfiltered?
To flip this then... What articles DO you want ?
Articles on mountain biking. I’m not interested in gravel or bikebacking. In this months mag I have read most of the articles but skipped the bike packing ones. Riding with kids or a creative writing piece on soil. I didn’t get the digital detox features over the last couple of issues. I’m interested in mountain bikes and mountain bike riding and having fun. I am that simple
As above.
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.
Has the publishing widened to include these other disciplines, sort of crept up on us, they’ve sneaked it in because the staff are getting older and MTB less, so write about what they do rather than MTB as it was originally, and now it’s regular content?
Taking that to the extreme, posting a review of a solar powered security camera simply because a member of staff bought one? Is that at all relevant to MTB?
I concede this looks like a pile on but you did sort of ask. And I pay subs.
Whatever you care to call it, my question stands. Where else on the Web would you see (often brutal) feedback about the site from its userbase posted largely unfiltered?
So the question is why it is left unfiltered if it gives the STW team so much frustration? It's totally in their power to operate as a 'normal' forum, so why don't they?
"but you did sort of ask. And I pay subs. " Well, then in that case you get a say. 😀 Simple, right?
The staff ride MTB loads. I was out on my Yeti hardtail at 10pm last night. However, the growth (and therefore much of the marketing emphasis and money) is in the off road cycling market is in gravel and eMTB. My recent trip to Eurobike hammered that home hard. There were very few new 'acoustic' mountain bikes on display, despite it being what all of us here do, most of the time. If there are fewer new MTBs being launched, we have a smaller pool of test bikes we can get hold of. At the extreme, going back to our '26 Ain't Dead' bike review a mere ten or so years ago, we had great trouble sourcing three 26in bikes and that turned out to be the last we saw of any 26in bikes. Something for debate (and perhaps a magazine feature?) might be to discuss if mountain biking as we know it is going to be consumed by electric power, or if the fun (and lack of faff) of pedal power riding will always have its fans. That's certainly the side I fall on... But, just like any test samples tend to be the top-end models and not the affordable ones, so the bigger companies are probably keen to get us to see their best sellers - which these days might well be a gravel bike or ebike. Or e-gravel bike, but let's not go there just yet...)
For context, and articles, I’d include electrically powered mountain bikes in “MTB”. There is no denying they are popular, and big lumps of money to buy.
Also maybe an article how Todmorden managed to shoehorn itself into Calderdale. They continue to speak funny down there, despite alleged Yorkshire allegiance.
PB has ... the occasional report from UK races.
I do think there's possibly a gap in coverage for grassroots and national level racing.
Any UK report on Pinkbike will be user generated. I've done a couple myself.
I'd love to see more UK based race content, potentially giving exposure to the wider grassroots scene, along with coverage of national level racing and UK riders at an international level.
And yes... free user. Previously print subscriber but got to the point where I was reading less articles. Subscribed online for a while to support, but came to the realisation the weekly emails were entirely unrelatable to me and I'd not accessed an article for months, so what exactly was I supporting?
"...so what exactly was I supporting?" Well, there's always the very forum that you're currently using 🙂
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.
