DISTRIBUTOR
“We also understood from the start that it wasn’t just about getting stock into the right bike shops – we also had to generate consumer demand so the early days of Silverfish were a mix of everything really, out on the road selling in the day, picking, packing and invoicing orders in the evening, stock checking on a Friday so we could get our weekly PO into Race Face, dealing with all the pitfalls around importing, duty, VAT, fluctuating exchange rates, but also hustling for last minute advertising space with the magazines, getting product out for review, sponsoring teams and supporting local riders. “By 2001 it was obvious that we needed to move Silverfish from the end terrace and garage ‘warehouse’ – not least because we’d won some reviews for the Race Face Aquanot jacket and an articulated lorry rocked up with 16 pallets of them to the house, but also because the business had grown quickly and we needed more staff to help us. “So, we moved to our first ‘proper’ office and warehouse, expanded the office and the warehouse team, and then Foot and Mouth hit. This obviously impacted the UK MTB scene pretty hard but somehow we still managed to continue to grow our sales and our dealer base (despite the countryside being locked down).
perfect fit to get Silverfish started, but before taking the plunge for our first purchase order, I reached out to a few of the top retailers in the UK to sanity check our plan. “Although they voiced their support and were genuinely
interested in stocking the brand, there was also a lot of advice along the lines of ‘the MTB scene is dead’ and I’d be better off sticking to the day job. So, in the end it was a leap of faith for Sarah and me. “Race Face was originally Plan B, the big idea was around 24” wheel Silverfish branded jump bikes. But having ploughed through countless prototypes where none of the changes requested actually materialised the way they were supposed to, the Silverfish jump bike idea got shelved pretty quickly – which wasn’t a bad thing. “The demand for Race Face was incredibly strong, by 1999 we were all pretty much fed up with super light XC stuff that always broke and were increasingly looking for performance and reliability over negligible weight savings. We hit the UK market with the Race Face Turbine LP cranks at exactly the right time.
“Those initial orders with brands were all proforma, which certainly kept me up at night for two reasons, funding the business, and the fact that the fax machine was in the bedroom next door and would usually start spewing invoices at about midnight. It certainly kept me pretty focussed in the day though. We needed to turn the stock quickly so we introduced a 5% early settlement discount which kept the cash flow good and allowed us to quickly reinvest in more stock. This practice of generous ESD has become one of Silverfish’s signature offerings.
www.bikebiz.com April 2024 | 25
“It was still early days so we just rolled with the punches, little did we know it would be the first of many. The UK bike
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