scott.projectsomewhere

I had a question over the weekend from a girl admiring the Mach2, and it’s sailingbits.com sticker. She asked, “so what do you guys sell… is it like… sailing… stuff?”

Yes indeed.

I’ve never really been one for clever titles. Hence the one about shiny carbon parts. Keep it simple.

We have been busy putting together a whole bunch of new carbon components.

A new 49er compass bracket is available which fits neatly onto the new carbon 49er rig. Nathan & Iain and Euan & Sam will be using them in the Delta Lloyd Regatta this week.

Then there’s the modification to the popular Moth GPS bracket to fit the foiled bars on the Mach2, and the geometry of the Prowler wing frame.

And then there’s the new lightweight adjustable carbon spreaders for the Moth. They’re well priced and give you something else to adjust, or even just a way to pimp out your boat with more clear-carbon goodness.

But wait, there’s more…

Next up is the new deck compass bracket for the Mach2 and Bladerider, and our new carbon cams which minimise the chance of the cams falling off the newer small diameter masts. They’ll likely go on sale soon but might be in limited supply for the Worlds.

Then there’s the gucci carbon trapeze handles…

The 18 footers are all gearing up for the JJ in Feb, with all boats sporting their new kit for the Nationals over the next few weeks.

We trialled our new big rig for the first time last Friday, and it is enourmous. We were flat wiring and depowering well before we would have with the old #1. Hopefully that is faster. We need a couple of sick easterlies to find out.

Sunday’s race was an all #2 rig affair, with a seabreeze coming in faily early and a hot day forecast. The breeze came in, but not at 25 knots, so all in all it was an easy welcome back after the break.

We started well with Euan on Souther Cross just below us, Seve buried and tacking out early, and the Project guys launching off the line with speed down low.

The Poms have been working pretty hard on their sailing and their gear since they arrived back in October, and it shows. They lead from the first cross and didn’t lose it til right at the end of the last work.

Upwind we made a couple of mistakes and lost a few boatlengths on the leaders, but rounded in 4th behind Project, SX and 7. Down the run we rolled 7 twice, but Pete decided to throw himself over the side at the bottom mark. 7 went through us and we lost touch with the leaders. It was all still faily close with SX finally getting the upper hand on the last upwind, before Project did a huge pitchpole in the big waves off Nielsen Park.

We banked a 3rd for the first race of the Nationals. Not bad, but still points we don’t want to be losing.

Photo: Ace Marine Photography
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The Moth preparation for the Nationals has been coming along well. It feels like everyone has made a bit of a step up since SIRS.

John, Marty, Ben and myself trained in a nice Southerly last Thursday, with my changes proving themselves against John early on in the session before he found his legs.

In Saturday’s 6 or 7 races in a moderate East-Nor-Easter, John won a few, I won a bunch, and there were a whole load of very close finishes – one in which Marty and me crossed at the same time, and another when John almost cleaned up my rudder blasting into the line on port. Les seems to be 10%-ifying every time he hits the water, so in short order he should be well ahead. The last week also sees both Tacka and Nathan training with us to find the way around the boat prior to their first regatta.

Only a few days left to go now.

Things are looking up. We have 4 new Bladeriders being delivered to Woollahra in the next couple of weeks!

Hopefully we will soon get the critical mass to start mopping up more and more sailors who are sitting on the sidelines.

Zhik have come through with the goods on their new Moth hiking straps. Stock is on it’s way, so order now for delivery at/before the Nationals in January.

The straps fit a standard Bladerider or Fastacraft wing frame, and are built from a high-quality webbing that does not have the excessive stretch that other straps have.

So instead of bouncing around with your feet in the air, you have better grip on the boat so you can pull yourself on and off the wing faster.

These straps are definitely a worthwhile upgrade, and it is great to see Zhik working with us to build the little tweaks and upgrades that we’re always looking for.

So order the hiking straps now at sailingbits.com. Or even some matching Zhik sailing gear to go with them.

Just over a year ago we launched sailingbits into a bit of a test phase to see if the idea had legs.

And a year later we’re still here. So that’s a good sign.

We’ve expanded our product range from what started with some custom components for 18s, Moths and 9ers to include a rapidly expanding catalog from some high profile sailing clothing names like Gill, Zhik, SLAM and SEA. We’ve also lined up good products from Tacktick and Velocitek.

We’ve signed up with manufacturers like Bladerider to resell components and even whole boats. Then we have relationships with KA Sails and CST Composites to offer basically all the best bits we use on our own boats.

And we’re now testing the waters with fittings from Ronstan & Harken.

So our product range is expanding week by week, and our sales are trending up nicely, so we’ll be around for a while longer yet.

The selling-on-the-net gambit has been an interesting experience. Far from the passive income dream, it’s been far more work than any of us bargained for, and the workload is piling up faster and faster. Alex is still busy chasing money, John is still busy chasing products and customers and I’m still busy chasing technology. While we’re using technology in a rudimentry way to get products out there, I think it can be used better to make sure we know exactly where, when and how everything is going and how much its making at a point in time. I’m going to have to get my hands dirty at some point to try and get the workload to scale in a better-than-linear way. Sailing 7 days-a-week and spending the rest of the time in the office or rigging 18 footer masts hasn’t left me much time to do it, but the goal is to take sailingbits.com to the beta stage soon.

And while we’re battling away under the extra workload, we haven’t even started advertising yet. Our google adwords campaigns are small, and at this point returning a disappointing 0% ROI. We’ve avoided the traditional media completely, and haven’t started to engage with the popular online brands like anarchy or sail-world. We’ll get to that eventually. In the meantime we’ve done remarkably well by knowing pretty much who all our customers are directly and using some gratuitous plugs now and again. There’s still plenty of people we don’t know.

We’ve gone and sourced a couple of gucci custom made bits, and have plans to make even more.

While we’re notionally based in Sydney, to date a small majority of our sales would be to customers Internationally.

So things are good. 1 year down. We’re in business. We’re making a profit. And there’s still plenty of room to improve.

What do you think?