I recently bought a pair of jeans from the bike-lifestyle company Rapha. I find Rapha's stores, emails, and mission to be inspiring to Bridge, and I'll explain why.
First, you may ask, "What is Rapha?" Rapha is a product company that sells goods for biking, including shirts, shorts, helmets, and accessories. What is unique is the lengths it goes to foster a community (and sales!) by having a coffee shop in it, organizing riding events, offering members-only clothing, and a blog. In their shop, there is a corkboard with riders’ pictures, local routes, and riding patches that customers and staff shared on it. I saw this and wanted to make one for showrooms that is Bridge related. Imagine a corkboard in the Kitchen2Table showroom with pinned pics of members and registry decals to take.
I recently received an email from Rapha. (Please view the accompanying image.) Rapha, which is owned by Sam Walton's grandkids, pitches their seven stores as ‘clubhouses.' Imagine Bridge ‘clubhouses’ around the country?! (Shopify has a little shop in Soho, but it’s not taken off as far as I know. To be fair, the pandemic is a hard time to grow a clubhouse.)
We need a community to help propel us—on bike or not, pandemic or not. Maybe Rapha (with the Walton’s largesse) could invest in a way to digitally connect its community. I don’t know of a bike community or e-commerce platform with digital conferencing built-in. If I could, I’d buy Zoom or some streaming service and encourage stores owners, brands, and reps to join video meetings via Bridge. A store could use this to have instant calls and consultations with brides and customers. Imagine a bride has questions, and the store and the bride just both go to Bridge and click a button to meet.
One may ask: what about their product? How about the quality of those jeans I bought? In the back pockets, there is extra material near the bottom to prevent holes, and on the leg, there is a reflective patch to be seen while biking. Rapha took a common garment and did something maybe not ’new’ but at least rare: they made it better. On the inside, printed on the pocket, there is even a brief history about an Indian city designed by Le Corbusier. Who knew?
I believe Bridge is creating something rare: a quality software platform that connects members. We’re not creating the first e-commerce platform, but we are creating something with many new parts in it that have not been done before. We are making something that not even Shopify, with its $170b market cap, has created. (Even Rapha has the Waltons backing it.) We’re the underdogs taking on big fish, and we’re winning. That’s a testament to our work, smarts, and grit. ...Rapha is lucky we’re not in the bike business!
Thank you for being part of Bridge as we ride through the 'Tour de France of e-commerce.' We hope to win that yellow jersey! :)