Case study: Cycling Brands reaches 129% via Seedrs
Apr 17, 2024
"Finding the right consultancy support for our crowdfunding campaign was crucial, and ISQ met our needs with their expert advice and strategic guidance. Their support played a key role in the effectiveness of our campaign, contributing to our ability to meet and exceed our funding targets. The partnership with ISQ has been a testament to the value of professional consultancy in crowdfunding." - Justin Belcher, MD, Cycling Brands.
Client: Cycling Brands
Platform: Seedrs
Campaign target: £75K
Final amount raised: £97,326
Overfunding %: 129%
Number of investors: 179
Pre-money valuation: £1,8M
Final equity transferred: 5.13%
Business summary:
A specialist road cycling eCommerce business, owner of brands Shutt Velo Rapide & Prendas Ciclismo.
Bullet highlights:
- Revived Shutt Velo Rapide as eco-luxe cycle brand in 2016
- Purchased and revived Prendas Ciclismo in 2021
- Turnover increased by 745% 2016-2022
- Gross Profit increased by 1,300% 2016-2022
We sat down with Justin from Cycling Brands to get the low down on how the campaign went.
What was the best bit/what went well?
Crowdfunding via Seedrs was a very useful exercise. Part of the process is creating a lot of assets, pitch materials, video and copy. Justin got a lot of really useful collateral thanks to running the campaign. He said it “makes you ask a lot of questions of yourself, for example, what are your growth plans etc, as you’re constantly answering constant barrage of questions from potential investors. Even £10 investor customers would have a barrage of questions, in fact, some times it was the smaller investors that had the most questions!”
Benefits of a public equity crowdfunding campaign
- Brand exposure has increased significantly
- Generated more conversations
- Companies coming to us to enquire about acquisition
- Raises the conversation level
- Marketing of brand
- 100 + very dedicated brand ambassadors
The BIGGEST benefit was making contacts with investors who found out that Cycling Brands was looking for investment thanks to the Seedrs campaign, were interested to get involved but weren’t ready to invest at the time. Justin is staying in touch with these potential investors for the next round.
What were the key challenges you encountered whilst crowdfunding?
Justin said it was “Disappointing that we didn’t reach the target we’d hope to achieve. That was in part due to the hugely negative news about the cycling industry right in the middle of our campaign, Le Col posted big losses and the biggest retailer of cycling kit went into administration, so we had to answer a lots of questions about that.”
Do you think you could/should have done anything differently?
Hindsight being the wonderful thing that it is, Justin said “Not really. What we should have done was gone ahead in April and done it over the summer when the market was stronger”.
Top Tips to share with new crowdfunders?
“Employ ISQ - Was it advantageous? Yes!
If you’re a novice, I would recommend using a consultant, it was very very helpful for us, just having someone to bounce things off, getting content sanity checked gives you the extra = extra confidence in what you’re doing. I wouldn’t recommend launching into a process without any type of support, if you don’t know what you’re doing is the right thing to do.”
When asked whether he’d recommend using a crowdfunding on their own without an external consultant, Justin said “Seedrs has templates etc, but they didn’t go to the depths of the ISQ ones.”
Would you use crowdfunding as a way of raising funds again?
Justin said hesitantly: “Yeah, we may do. We’ve got an acquisition opportunity from a Belgium company who wants to sell, so we’ll see where that conversation goes first”
What is next for your team/growth?
Next for the Cycling Brands team is increasing their stocks and streamlining the business. They’re going to focus now on new tech, new garments, and bringing all their ideas to life.
Written by Steph Yeates, Operations Director, ISQ
