Pedalr, a new online shopping site launched in mid-September, features several Portland vendors. There are currently 9 sellers from Oregon and four from Portland.
Pedalr co-founder James Hayden, says he and his team started the site because, “We felt that Craigslist and eBay weren’t cutting it for the biking community so wanted to create something bikers could call their own.” Portland has a large crop of small, bike product manufacturers and artisans. I asked a few of them why they decided to become “pedalrs” and if the site is helping their business.
Curtis Williams of North Street Bags said he hopes Pedalr expands the geographic reach of his products.
“I’m pretty focused on selling bags locally but this site will help my business get noticed from anywhere, not just in Portland. It’s well designed, easy to use (like Etsy) and it’s just for bicycles and related products. I’m happy to have my bags on their site, and to support them.”
Rachel Dominguez-Benner makes a variety of hand-sewn bike accessories under the Bike Cozy banner. She said it just “made complete sense” for her to try a site where “the common denominator is ‘bikes’.” She reports just a few sales so far but thinks Pedalr has a lot of potential if they are able to combine the best features of eBay, Etsy, and Craigslist.
Tad Bamford of TCB Racks knows one of the Pedalr founders, but he also saw opening up a store on the site as a way to market his business to a new audience. He hasn’t gotten any direct sales yet, but he has noticed a bump in traffic due to Pedalr’s mentions in the media.
Hayden sees Portland as an important market for Pedalr. He says Portland represents, “The essence of biking for pedalr – artisans, boutique manufacturers and a bike passionate community.”
Pedalr features a wide variety of vendors — from people selling complete bikes to zines to fashions, and more. Check it out at Pedalr.com.
Thanks for reading.
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Minor point of clarification: James is friend of a friend actually and I’ve never met him. Seems like good people from our correspondence though, and he’s a friend of Martin’s, so…
And no wonder I always wear a hat…look at the forehead on that guy. Jeez.
Thanks a ton for the post.
Another way we think about pedalr is a place where where passionate cyclists can prototype ideas for a business or a product and test with a highly engaged community of buyers and sellers at almost no cost.
Thanks again for the great coverage.
– Andrew @pedalr
I am curious to see what the response will be. Anyone sell anything yet through ETSI? Because my wife has been trying to sell original knitting designs for a while and has had almost zero response on ETSI. The problem seems to be the sheer number of items for sale and relatively poor site navigation tools.
BURR, Etsy is kind of a crap shoot, there is a ton of people selling stuff…for knitting patterns she is probably better off with a pattern listing on Ravelry.com if she hasn’t already done so. That’s where I go for pattern hunting. fwiw, one knitter to another, one who uses Esty as a buyer anyways. And right on on the search tools, the Local search annoys me since it only lists the last 100 updated sellers, not helpful if I want to shop local on Etsy….
anyways, Pedler looks like it has a lot of potential, bookmarking!
Pedalr is working well for Fun Reflector. It was easy to set-up too.
Thanks Andrew.
I am surprised this site allows people to sell used bike parts and the like. Right now if feel like I am looking through a classifieds page rather than site for handmade bike goods. Too bad, I was pretty excited when I first saw the title of this article. This could have been the place to find cool one off bike products.
Yeah, I’m kind of confused as to what pedalr is really trying to be. It seems like they are trying to be EVERYTHING, but none of that seems “better” than the other sites mentioned. And I always think it’s better to do one or two things really well than to try to be everything.
Re: Etsy
There are a lot of people doing really well on Etsy, esp our bikecrafters! Walnut and Bike Cozy have over 200 sales each. Some markets on Etsy are less saturated than others.
I am just about a year on Etsy and feel it is pretty good. Affordable, however, competitive. I’ve spent hours and hours working to move my site up in the searchs, and if you search under “relevancy” you will find it more successful. The Etsy searches are all based on the “tags” that are used in the listing so it’s important to have proper tagging. Try searching “bike jewelry” on Etsy using the relevancy option and you’ll see what I mean. I own those pages because I’ve tagged, titled and labeled properly.
Looks like Pedalr is on thier way tho! I jumped on that like white on rice once I saw this. They have some improvements to make but I’m confident those will follow as the site grows.
Thumbs…UP.