How We Solved Our Biggest Problems

Looking back over the past year we have learned a whole lot about who we are as a local company, solved our biggest problems of what our place is within our community and are translating that into our master plan for the year that will unfold as the weeks and months go on. Hopefully you will see us a whole lot more out and about the city. Also, as our business matures we have become more focused on our customers wants and needs, what you are interested in and not.

We've been fortunate to have some really great customers that have helped us shape who we are, challenge the way we do things and support us; all of this has helped shape us and help us to grow into who we are as a company today.

Customer photo of her new HappyRainyDays pannier

In terms of our stylish bicycle accessories, we try to source as close to home as possible. What's unfortunate is Canada hasn't been one of the places that creates the unique stylish bicycle accessories that you are use to seeing in our boutique. If you've become aware of special or unique products you would like to see on our site let us know. We are always interested in growing our product line. One of the caveats for us is that the accessories we carry need to hold a duo purpose. For example our line of leather handbags and panniers, all of them attach to the back rack of the bicycle but off the bike the clips are cleverly hidden behind a leather zipped up pouch and the pannier is transformed into a hand bag or briefcase. Beautiful on the bicycle and off.

Next we try to source our stylish accessories from the creators themselves. We think it's important to develop personal relationships with our vendors. We get a real sense of why the product was made in the first place and develop a connectedness to the product we can then translate the story on to you. A perfect example of this is our line of HappyRainyDays rain capes. We've gone so far as to meet Astrid at her HQ in Amsterdam this past fall. Meeting the designer, seeing her creative at work was very inspiring. It also gave us a sense of what we can expect for our spring line of rain capes. We're in for a real eye popping treat of colour for the spring. I will have a post about our time in Amsterdam with Astrid of HappyRainyDays in a future post.

As in the world of fashion colours and patterns change season to season. We purchase in small batches so what's in stock today may not be in stock tomorrow. It's the way we planned it. Our products are as unique as the person who uses them. As in fashion we all take our personal style with us as we travel the city scape and while you're on your travels we didn't want for you to cycle down the street seeing 10 other people with the same colour/pattern item. That is why we are constantly restocking with different and unique colours, to help you stand out in a crowd and develop your own cycle fashion.

As you may know, we have started a new blog Musings of an Urban Rider. This blog is all about cycling culture, cycling infrastructure, the behind the scenes stuff and most importantly the things that make us tick. It's our passion for cycling and our desire for better cycling infrastructure that got us to where we are today with Le Vélo.

What this blog is not about is selling our products, it's really about who we are in terms of cycling and our passions for it and why we do what we do here. We hope you like what you read and we hope you will engage with us and share your thoughts and opinions on our musings. It's really a chance for us to get to know each other a little better. So stop by every now and again and see what we're up to.

A new Musings post out and you can read it here.