Gravel Grinder News: Andy’s Bike Shop – Riding Gravel Partner Up – by Guitar Ted
Cedar Falls, Iowa: Today Riding Gravel announces its new “technical support” partner in Andy’s Bike Shop, located in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Riding Gravel’s Guitar Ted and Andy’s Bike Shop’s Andy Tetmeyer will be working together to help with logistics and technical aspects regarding the review work, merchandising, and some social media aspects of the RidingGravel.com website.
One of those social media aspects is to get a more consistent podcast schedule effected so that big gaps between episodes of the “Riding Gravel Radio Ranch” don’t happen anymore. “The plan“, says Guitar Ted, “is to get a system and process in place with the help of Andy’s which will make doing the podcast a lot easier.” This partnership may also lead to a Riding Gravel YouTube channel, but that is in the future. “Right now the goal is to work at getting a consistency in the podcast production and then we’ll look at the other stuff on our plate “, Guitar Ted explained. Andy’s Bike shop already has a YouTube channel and Guitar Ted will also be helping out with some of the production of that for the bike shop as well.
Readers may remember Guitar Ted was a mechanic at a bike shop. That situation has also changed so that he is now working with Andy’s Bike Shop as a mechanic. “It just made sense since the old shop was going out of business and I needed to have a technical partner for Riding Gravel. Andy needed a mechanic, so…..” , mused Guitar Ted.
Another aspect of the partnership will be merchandising. Guitar Ted said that plans are to integrate Riding Gravel merchandise in with Andy’s Bike Shop’s e-commerce site. “I’m hoping we can get that up and working so that we can help offset some of the costs of doing Riding Gravel”, said Guitar Ted. “We don’t have a ton of ads on our site, like other sites might have, and we’d like to keep it that way as much as possible. Funding our work through the selling of merchandise will help with that, I think.” The hope is to have a selection of t-shirts and sticker packs along with other branded merchandise on down the road for sale through the site.