Many of you have already noticed that the baskets are back on pre-order.
This new article explains the forthcoming return to stock, and follows on from our August 2 article about the definitive closure of our partner Caddie.
We wanted to share with you what’s next for this adventure and for the Manivelle basket.
Before we go any further, we’d like to thank you for your many messages of support following our last article.
We wrote last August.
For Manivelle, this is not the end, but the beginning of new perspectives.
We’re going to continue producing the basket while respecting our convictions.
It’s an exciting challenge.
Today, we still have a small amount of stock left from the last series of baskets made by Caddie, and demand continues to grow.
The success of our basket is due not only to its quality and local production, but also to its fair and coherent price in relation to the object it is, and its intended use.
A bicycle basket can’t and shouldn’t cost 200 euros.
And it’s this point that makes this adventure particularly complex.
Working with Caddie, thanks to “hand-in-hand” management of production volumes and storage, we had the right price.
Now it’s being put to the test as we look for new partners.
After a quick tour of the neighboring companies, we quickly realized that steel wire work such as Caddie had mastered was being lost with its closure, or that in any case, the handful of French and German manufacturers “in a position to” had no desire to adapt to our little brand.
Why not do it ourselves after all?
To keep the production of our accessories in Alsace and at an affordable price, why not take up this industrial heritage on our own scale?
It’s a new turning point for us, a challenge but also a gamble, that of evolving into a micro-industry.
Being transparent with you is also one of our convictions.
To manufacture our baskets at any cost in France, with a cost price three times higher than before, would be to jeopardize the fragile economic model we were able to make possible and in which we still believe, after more than 3 years.
We decided to start by working with a partner in Poland, so that our baskets and carriers could continue to exist in the short term.
These series of transitions are our economic leverage to make the next step possible.
Since we want to get there, we have to make the baskets and carriers ourselves.
As you can imagine, this takes time and a lot of investment.
Finding new premises capable of housing the various production machines, setting up all this machinery, from the first production tests to the launch of the first series.
We’ve been working on the subject all summer since the sad news broke, with several visits to Caddie in recent weeks.
Visits to get a better idea of what our microfactory might look like, and the machines that could make it up.
Visits that also leave us with a strange feeling every time.
All these machines at a standstill, tools and work clothes left here and there, somewhat carelessly, as if all the employees had left their workstations in the middle of the action.
Finally, the terrible silence, making our every step echo through the factory, whereas we were used to shouting to get along when we visited production.
Thank you all for your support in this adventure, and we’ll be sure to keep you informed of further developments.
Thomas & Silvin
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With that in mind, we’ve got a little time trial ahead of us, made up of beautiful climbs and tricky bends, and the question persists: how do we get off to the best start?
