Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. Shop Journal

20 slides x 20 seconds = Pecha Kucha. Tonight!

2012-02-08T17:22+00:00

Aaron is presenting at tonight’s first ever Pecha Kucha event! The format is similar to a TED talk, in which there is a limited amount of time to engage the audience and convey an idea. But there are more rules to Pecha Kucha, making it even more fun. The Pecha Kucha formula is that each speaker is limited to 20 slides, and each slide must progress at 20 second intervals.

Aaron will be closing out tonight’s inaugural event with a 20x20 presentation on Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. Since I helped him with his slides, I can assure you there’s at least one marginally embarrassing photo of Aaron that will be presented. So come out tonight if you’re in the Roanoke area to 202 down on the market. Event starts at 7:00, and its free!

Roanoke Times Article

Final push towards NAHBS

2012-02-02T15:54+00:00

Every time I ask Aaron if I can post more sneak peeks, he hems and haws and asks to see the photos. Then declares that the photos are too revealing. You see, we’re pretty excited about this year’s crop of bikes. So excited that Aaron didn’t leave the shop until 1:00 a.m. this morning. Because he was so excited about NAHBS. Well, maybe “excited” isn’t the right word. Stressed out? In the home stretch? Wants to get the last bike to paint on Friday?

So, in place of photos of bikes, today I have photos of a giveaway! Stop by our booth this year at NAHBS and get your very own, made in the USA, Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. pencil. And if you’re lucky, I might even sharpen all 500 of them before we ship out to Sacramento.

TShirts and other goodies are on their way too!

Have a great Thursday!

-Michelle

Some Might Say The Greatest Clients

2012-01-27T21:07+00:00

I have to say, we’re lucky to have amazing clients. Our clients join the Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. family, and each one brings something special and unique to the table when it comes to designing their own custom built bike. On Monday this week we got a call from John Robinson, Roanoke resident, who asked if he could stop by the shop. He swung by and brought with him a deposit and letter. The letter is titled “Why I Want a 611 Bike”. Below I’ve hit some of the highlights, but I’ve also include the whole letter (click to enlarge) - it’s worth a read.

The letter begins,“The thought of having a custom made bicycle fuels my dreams and memories of the joy that cycling has brought me all these years. Commissioning the building of a 611 hand-made bicycle is not only a tip of the hat to my railroadin’ heritage hometown, but it pays homage to the importance that cycling has been to me throughout my life.”

John goes on to talk about the beauty of steel (and he says it better than we ever could). “...And I see the working of the materials, of the steel, the abrasives, the tools, the fire, as timeless elements of being human. The essence of which goes back thousands of years. We are tool users. Our hands, through tools and material and directed by the creative drive of our brains, give us the ability to directly affect change in our world.”

John concludes with a nod to the art of bike building. He says, “I want to support the craft, not only through my modest financial commitment, but through my enthusiasm, so this art and science is kept alive for now and for the future.”

Our clients are each unique and come to us for a variety of reasons and through many different avenues. But above all, we’re grateful for our clients who appreciate the beauty, strength, comfort, and art of steel. They may not all be so eloquent in their expression, but they’ve all communicated their appreciation through their decision to buy handmade steel. We’re so grateful to every one of our clients and admirers for supporting the art of small manufacturers and continuing the tradition of handbuilt, American made products. We work hard to live up to your expectations, and we thank you all!

Thanks John, both for the letter and for the permission to repost it! What a great way to start off and now end the week.

(and as if John wasn’t already cool enough, I borrowed the small photo of him on the side of the blog from the internet. Yes, he’s paragliding in Brazil.)

NAHBS 2012 - Track Bike in progress

2012-01-23T22:14+00:00

Here are two in-progress paint shots of our track bike for NAHBS 2012 from Hill at Airglow. That’s alot of gold paint you see there!

NAHBS Sneak Peek round 2

2012-01-20T21:58+00:00

Here’s another one for you. This is a custom built stem going on Bob’s city bike that includes internal wiring and quick release for a custom mounted light/stem combo. We’ve finally gotten our 4 bikes for NAHBS 2012 finalized, and even with some last minute changes we hope you guys will be as excited as we are about what we’re bringing this year. The final list is: City, Track, CX, and a touring frameset. Now if only we had some plane tickets to Sacramento…

(And in case you were worried that we were just goofing off over here, Aaron’s hands serve as testament to the many hours of hard work that have gone into getting these bikes off to paint!)

New Homepage Images!

2012-01-18T02:11+00:00

We finally got some fantastic new homepage images! The photos that were up there were taken as many as 3 years ago, and they were in need of updating. It was on my list of things to get done, but today David Hungate made it much much easier. David came to the shop in early December to photograph Aaron for a shoot for a local magazine. When I called him up yesterday to ask if he had any spare images we could use, he sent me a CD of all the photos he took.

We’re extremely grateful to David for his generosity and for sharing his work with us gratis. Check out his website here, at dominionimages.com. And check out our new images on our homepage! More images to come in future posts.

Goodbye 2011, hello 2012

2012-01-10T22:29+00:00

With the new year comes many exciting projects here at Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. A couple of them you’ll be hearing about in the next couple of weeks, and others are long term projects inspired by people doing great things across the country.

Aaron is 3 months into having an employee, and if I must say so myself, I think it’s going well! I am now handling all email correspondence and ordering, and I appreciate everyone’s patience and enthusiasm as we’ve made the switch. We’ve got a great lineup of bikes already planned for 2012, including some local bikes, like a road frame with DI2 for LD and a road frame for LW, plus a track bike for RT in northern VA, and that’s all slated for the next month! Lots of road and touring builds in 2012 - am I sensing a trend? We’re also working on new merchandise for this year, including new shirts and a few other items that will be posted to the webstore.

One of the things that we have to do every so often is adjust our pricing slightly to keep up with the cost materials and overhead. Although no one wants to raise prices, we do want to keep the lights on here at the Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. shop, so we hope you’ll bear with us as we make some slight pricing adjustments for orders placed in 2012. Actual 2012 prices will be posted in the next week or two, but of course all deposits that have already been received are locked into the current 2011 pricing structure. So until we get the new prices up on the website…

There’s good news! The price increase is not going to go into effect until January 31. So that means that all deposits received on or before January 31 are eligible for 2011 pricing! As a reminder, current pricing is as follows:
Track frames start at $1950
Road frames start at $2050
Tour / CX / Rando / 29er frames start at $2150
All prices include a single color paint job, and custom steel forks currently start at $300.

Get in on 2011 pricing by submitting your deposit by January 31! For questions or inquiries, email me (Michelle) at [michelle at sixelevenbicycleco.com].

In other exciting news, here’s a sneak peek of a 2012 NAHBS bike that is being sent to paint this week.

I’ll work on getting more NAHBS bike sneak peeks posted as we wrap them up.
Thanks for reading, and we are looking forward to a creative and inspired 2012!

-Michelle

2012 - Already making a name for itself

2012-01-02T21:29+00:00

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year celebration. As for Aaron and I, if you were looking for us on Saturday or Sunday, we could be found either at our local urgent care or holed up in our house with the dogs barking at the new aluminum toys Aaron brought home with him. Yes, at 1:00 on Saturday afternoon, long before either of us had even begun to think about a glass of celebratory champagne, Aaron broke his foot. We are still working on constructing a believable story that possibly involves fending off a pack of bike thieves with only his bare feet, or saving a grandmother from a wild hooligan deer attack. But until then, know that it was in the middle of the day, we were still drinking coffee, and at least 3 people have told us that he needs to come up with a better story than what actually happened.
The dogs think the crutches are a distant cousin to our vacuum cleaner, and they stand in front of him and bark incessantly whenever Aaron tries to maneuver through the house on them. Ever the bike builder, Aaron added some Oury grips for comfort.

The doctor said there that his foot will take 6 weeks to heal, and that all they can really do for it is to put it in a fracture shoe. I guess the shoe is better than a cast - could you imagine if metal shavings got down in a cast? Heres hoping that 2012 came in like a lion but goes out like a lamb!

Sneak Peek: JP’s Road Bike

2011-12-29T20:23+00:00

Another bike getting ready to be shipped to the West Coast! We got this bike back in the shop late Friday night thanks to a long drive by Hill Clarke and his wife, Jenny, of Airglow. I think there’s room for a “Twas the night before the night before Christmas” or “Over the river and through the woods” poem there, but I’ll spare you.

So without further ado, here’s a preview of JP’s Road Bike! The colors are beautiful - a shimmery silver, dark charcoal, and magenta to compliment the brass work. A monostay design allowed for lots of additional lug lining, and the custom stem brings brass to the front of the bike, balancing out the brass on the chain guard. We’ll post full photos on the site and on the blog once JP has had a chance to see it! We almost got it to you under the Christmas Tree!

Happy Holidays from Six-Eleven!

2011-12-22T17:26+00:00

As many of you are winding down for a long holiday weekend, we wanted to take a minute to thank you all for your support of Six-Eleven Bicycle Co. We’re so grateful for our clients, friends, and fans of Six-Eleven, and we wish you all a happy holiday season and a joyous and prosperous 2012.

The shop will be open normal hours Friday, 12/23 and Monday, 12/26. So if you’re in Roanoke for a trip home to visit family, please stop in and see us. We’ll be here 10:00 - late both days.

Also, be on the lookout for several new bikes on the blog next week and the first week of the new year. We’ve had a hold up at paint, and have 3 bikes being delivered tomorrow. So we’ll get photos and descriptions up soon! We’ve got a beautiful set of his and her road bikes and a unique lugged frame, fork and stem with some interesting details to get to you. Sorry for the delay!

NAHBS bikes are in full swing, and you’ll hear it here first: we’ve got a cx, road bike, track frame, and city bike planned for this year’s NAHBS, all with a little something special thrown in. It’s a busy time of year!