What a year 2010 was. 2010 was the first complete year of existence for Wheelylift.com since its establishment in 2009. For who doesn’t know who we are; We are Corinne Jaspers and Gabriëlle Ockhuizen, owners of Wheelylift.com. With our product the “Wheelylift”, a unique bicycle storage system. We try to enhance the bicycle industry, nationally and globally. The Wheelylift saves space (up to 40%), is user friendly and durable.
So far the advertisement. This blog contains our stories and adventures of 2010. A summary of an amazing year. We were at a lot of fairs within and out of the Netherlands, accomplished a cooperation with the web shop of the ANWB (a Dutch organization for automobilists and cyclists), embarked with a group of students from the university of Utrecht and won the Pleisureworld Novelty Award! In short, a year full of wonderful highlights.
Of course, the visits to the fairs were our priority. We drove across the country to show people how handy, user friendly and durable the Wheelylift is. Not only were we at fairs in the Netherlands but also in Belgium and Germany.
One of the best experiences was the Giro d’Italia. Many, many cycling enthusiasts came to Amsterdam. The whole capital was colored pink for the big cycling event and we were there. Not at the start in Amsterdam but at the finish of the stage in Middelburg. As always we were busy with giving out flyers to people and explaining how the Wheelylift works. These events are always nice but do people get the message? We have always felt that they understand but the best way to verify this is to walk back the same route and see if there are many flyers on the ground. We discovered that barely any flyers were on the ground, a very good sign!
Another highlight was one of the biggest fairs in the Netherlands: The Utrecht Bike Motion Benelux in October. A very intense 4 day fair, but it gave us a huge motivational boost. The visitors gave us a lot of energy and inspiration. This makes all the hard work worth it.
Looking at the online aspects, the cooperation with the ANWB was very important to us. The web shop of the ANWB is one of the most important Dutch websites where the Wheelylift can be bought. Besides that it’s also available at the web shop of Rose (Germany), fietsdiensten.nl and fietsvakantiewinkel.nl . All of these cooperation’s are very important to us, especially because not too long ago the Wheelylift was only for sale primarily at bicycle dealers. Because of the online propagating, Wheelylift.com is getting more and more publicity.
To make the next step of propagating our identity, we decided to work together with the University of Utrecht. This University has a reputation letting college students work on projects for real companies under school supervision. In the last part of 2010 three very enthusiastic students looked into several possibilities for a higher brand awareness. Very inspiring for both parties. Amongst several other things this blog (and the ones to come) and our new Twitter account are the tangible results of the students efforts.
The biggest reward came in November. We won the Pleisureworld Novelty Award. We were chosen the best novelty of 2010 from 22 submissions. Of course, this is amazing! Especially because the prize stands for innovation, something that we’re continuously working on. A wonderful end of the year and who knows what 2011 brings us. We will keep you updated!
Corinne Jaspers, Wheelylift.com
