Wow, where did all the time go?

Wow, where did all the time go?

Hi to anyone who actually might be reading this blog after all has been quiet for so long...

For months my colleagues told me "we need to update the blog" (translation - John you started the darn blog so update it!), "lets get someone to update the blog for us" (translation - John you're obviously not going to update the blog how about we get someone else to do it?), "lets make it easy for us to all update the blog" (translation - for cryin' out loud John will you never get the darn blog updated???).

Hey, after months of this I finally got the message (pretty quick, eh?) and we "hired" a web developer (actually a shout out to Cameron who is doing this for us, and, err, we haven't paid him yet!) Cameron transitioned the blog to Google's blog system and embedded it on our site. Cameron was quick. Cameron rocks. The rest of us? We don't rock nearly as much...

My illustrious colleagues and I have still failed to take advantage of the wondrous opportunities of blogging our progress. (translation - oi! you all told me you wanted access so we could have more posts - so where are these posts? huh?).

OK - good-natured ribbing aside what have we been up to? A lot...

What's in a name?

As well as producing a world-class 2 wheeled EV we're also trying to get our startup business off the ground. Part of that has been naming and even branding ourselves. Hence we started as rEVolution Electric Vehicles (which was the name of my original business selling X-Treme scooters). Folks didn't like that and there were too many close but different names (I had a lawyer send me a letter demanding that I give his client her money back for the lemon I sold her. Oops, that was the other similar sounding company!!!)

Next we filed as Electric Vehicle Manufacturing, LLC - somewhat prosaic. Descriptive of who we are and what we do - but as dry as dirt from a marketing perspective.

Time for the big guns. We worked with John LeDuc at http://www.leduccreative.com who worked his marketing magic and came up with Current Motor Company and our C-Spark logo. This is us. We're Current Motor Company.

Job done?

Well, not really. We still have a ways to go with marketing and branding. Part of the process has been getting the word out there...

Hi, we're a local EV manufacturing company...

We attended about a gazillion local shows. We started with the Plymouth Green Fair - a three day event. In the summer we did two or three downtown Ann Arbor events. We did our first "ride the bike" event for the Michigan chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association show. Yesterday we just finished attending "The Business of Plugging In" event in Detroit - about 75 or more of the conference attendees took a couple of our bikes for a spin.

We also did a couple of radio interviews, some alleged TV spots (local news was at the Detroit event - but I haven't seen anything). Quite a few newspaper pieces (including getting on the front page of the first edition of the new AnnArbor.com Sunday paper (yes, AnnArbor.com is a website, yes, AnnArbor.com publishes a Thursday and Sunday print edition - we do things different around here!). We also took part in one video production available on You Tube:




We enjoy attending these shows - but boy they take up a lot of time and effort. We get a great response. "what you make these things here?", "wow that's actually a pretty reasonable price", "it looks great". Yes, we get a few duds as well - but that's cool too!

It's fun showing off our "babies". We've also found that Terry is a natural spokesperson...

Oh my, how you've grown...
Well, the team that is. We now have:
John (me) - co-founder - president (the "funny" guy)*
Erik - co-founder - chief engineer (the clever one)
Terry - director of product development (the EV experienced one)
Kishore - UofM engineering grad student (the smart, multi-talented one)
Mary - office manager (the organized one)
Alex - electrical engineer (the one who can not only solder little bitty components but knows what they all do)
Ken - electrical technician / production tech (the one who can solder 'til the cows come home and then turn right around and whip up a nifty shipping pallet or three)
Bill - clay modeler / production tech (he made us a cool model of a three wheeler - I'll leave that to its own post - he then turned around and we taught him how to weld)
Dave - welder & fabricator / production tech (OK, he's also a licensed electrician but with us he's the guy who wields the welder the most often)
Peter - COO (the businessman)
Nate - early stage investor / advisor (the one we don't say "thank-you" to enough)

* by "funny guy" I mean funny as in strange not as in humorous. Actually, as you can hopefully tell we all enjoy working together and we all have a great time.

What do I really do? Try and organize most of all the above stuff into some semblance of forward motion. I also do software (which involves me and Alex telling each other "it's a hardware problem", "no, it's a software problem"). Oh yeah, I also fund about 42.34% of this boondoggle...

What about the bikes?
I hear you cry "John, this is all fascinating stuff, but what about the bikes?" Good question. I wanted to post some of the "non-bike" related stuff that goes in to growing our company. I see this blog as a way to show you the inside of what we're doing - and it's more than just building a bike or two.

It's been a really enjoyable ride this far and I'm honored to be working with such wonderful friends and colleagues (no joke!).

My next post (or perhaps I'll persuade Erik or Terry to post) will be all about the bikes. I promise. I also promise that it won't be six months before we post it...