We are not a big company, and we don’t do a good job of presenting a glossy facade to the world. Nobody here wears collared shirts, at least not if they don’t want to be made fun of, we don’t have inspirational posters hanging from the walls, there is not a museum in the lobby, there isn’t really even much of a lobby, period.

The front door of SCB corporate. What, you were expecting a glass tower?

Visitors to Santa Cruz Bicycles will be greeted by people moving backward in forklifts, toting cardboard boxes from A to B, and a general air of a factory full of people getting shit done. It can be a bit unsettling for some, especially visiting journalists who are used to being dazzled by polished presentations. Instead of a man in a company branded polo shirt and pressed khakis with a well rehearsed company line on the tip of his silvery tongue, visitors will almost inevitably run right into Danny B:

At least he's wearing socks, albeit really short ones. And while he may not have the company mission statement memorized, he will crush you at music trivia. Doesn't matter who you are, Danny B will crush your musical knowledge. Crush it like a bug. To say nothing of his powerful UPS gong-fu.

Basically, we don’t really have any room or time to spend on getting the place all gussied up. Bikes designed, prototypes made, bikes in, bikes painted and prepped, bikes built, bikes back out. Somewhere in the midst of all this we take pictures of the bikes and make some ads and throw together a catalog, and have endless arguments about graphics and the merits of simplicity versus bold new decals every year. So, from the marketing perspective, it’s really kind of flattering to hear us get mentioned as something bigger and more deeply sophisticated than we really are.

For instance, we just launched three new bikes. This one, and this one, and this other one. The launch included sending out some mass emails, dripping info onto the eyeballs of a few forum groups, and getting some journalists drunk after taking them riding. We also produced our first ever video project to try and explain what was going on with the new APP suspension design, the backstory of which can be viewed here, and here. The final video, which is the most polished thing we could ever hope to do on a non-existent budget, was a showcase for the bikes, and it looks like this:

We are pretty stoked on it, and feel that it not only shows off the bikes, but does a decent job of showcasing our own sometimes janky and less than totally polished way of getting shit done. Right around the time we were wrapping up this project, we were contacted by a video producer who is used to working with pockets much deeper than ours. To showcase his talents, he offered up an example of his most recent work for another client:

Let this be an example of how we don’t roll. It’s a nice video and all, but I can’t think of a better example to show the difference between “us” and “them” than this. They are huge, we are not. They have big budgets, we have holes in our tiny pockets. They have deeper voices than us, and use way more expensive cameras. To say nothing of sound effects. We are rough around the edges, and we like it that way.

But sound effects would be pretty cool…

Anyway, all that said, the rumors of our nefarious viral marketing savvy are beginning to get a bit out of hand. Following some heavy-handed speculation that we might be venturing into alt-material for downhill frames, fueled by a certain gregarious Frenchman, the spin machine went wonky. As a badly photoshopped pic of an existing v-10 wrapped in faux carbon weave made the rounds, the serpent eventually ate its tail, or accused us of eating it.

You just can’t buy publicity like this, I tell ya! We’re happy to be hacks, and it is a helluva lot of fun leaning on this virtual pinball machine until it tilts, but there is no way in hell that we have it together enough to produce ultra-slick videos with rad-tarded animation, nor are we anywhere near smart enough to engage in a full-on anti-marketeering, marketeering campaign featuring carbon weave and all the subtle insinuation that we’re playing puppetmaster. Too busy, got shit to do.

That said, next transmission from this slice of the blogosphere will come from Fruita, Colorado. There will be no downhill bikes involved. And it might be snowing…