Today we’d like to put the spotlight on Funked Up, a Dublin based bespoke bike company that sells globally. Read all about their go-to-market challenges and solutions and how they use monday.com to manage their workflow. The interview includes real screenshots.
Question: What exactly does Funked Up do?
Answer: We’re a bicycle manufacturer that specializes in custom bicycles. We’re based out of Dublin, Ireland and ship all over the world. Our website allows customers to design their very own, fixed-gear and single speed bikes. We’ve over 24 billion different style and color combinations to choose from, so the design possibilities are endless.
Q: What’s the product’s unique advantage?
A: Being able to deliver extremely high quality bespoke products gives us our edge. We allow you to design your own bike — which means you get a product that is really personal to you. Also, the quality of our bikes is second to none.
Q: How is Funked Up different from its competitors?
A: We put an emphasis on customer care, which is something often overlooked in the bicycle industry. The idea of planned obsolescence leaves a bad taste in our mouths. Our bikes are built to last and this is what we’re building our reputation around.
“The idea of planned obsolescence leaves a bad taste in our mouths. Our bikes are built to last.”
Q: Please tell us a bit about the company
A: FunkedUp was founded in 2011 as the second business venture by our Co-Founders, Olaf and Andrew. The first was a successful cycle taxi company, which is still going strong in Dublin to this day. So between the two businesses, you can see there is clearly a huge passion for cycling in our heritage.
We currently have seven full time employees and have plans to grow further in 2016.
To date we’ve sold over 3,000 bikes all over the world. Our market focus is mainly Europe, with Ireland, France and Germany being the big players. But we’ve shipped bikes to the U.S. Canada, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Q: How do you contribute to the happiness of your customers?
A: Keeping our customers happy from the day they get their bike, well into the future, is one of our major priorities. And luckily for us, this can be accomplished pretty easily, as we’re not only building our customers custom bikes, but helping them stay fit and healthy too.
Q: What has been your biggest go-to-market challenge?
A: One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced to date, is getting our translations on our website right. From our point of view, this is one of the most important parts of operating in different markets that don’t speak the same language. We found that getting translations spot-on, is trickier when you’re trying to use the same language as your target market.
Luckily, one of the guys on the team is an ex-bike messenger, who has worked all over the world. We were able to use his network to talk to riders in our key markets who helped us with the local lingo.
Q: What has been your biggest growth engine?
A: One of the main factors contributing to the growth of FunkedUp has been the ability to try and test new strategies. Doing these experiments on a small scale, then developing them further if they work out, has allowed us to create a large bank on information, which also assists in the development of new ideas.
One example which has proved successful is where we’ve tested partnerships with local cafes and bars in Dublin, where we build them custom branded bikes for their businesses which work great for either run around bikes or display bikes in store, and offer their customers discounts. This has proved to work well for us locally, so we’re going to start rolling it out in other markets this year.
Q: What has been your biggest success in the past year?
A: We’ve recently moved away from focusing solely on custom bikes and in 2015 we launched two new ranges. The URBAN Series — our entry level bikes and the RIDE Series — our high-end commuter range.
Q: How do you use monday.com?
A: We use monday.com to manage all of our projects and our entire workflow. We started off using it for managing our marketing, as there was always a lot to this when you’re operating in many different languages and regions. But we saw how effective it was for completing tasks and time management, so we have started using it for other areas, such as product and website development.
Q: What pain does monday.com solve for your business?
A: Even though we’re a small team, there is an awful lot going on during any given day. Using monday.com, allows us to keep track of everything ensuring that the most important tasks get done first.
Q: What was “before monday.com”?
A: It wasn’t pretty. Because we work in an environment that is very focused on trying out new strategies, monday.com allows us to measure the success of these very efficiently. We can optimize and improve if we see results, or bin and move on if something doesn’t work out as planned. The fact that we have an overview of everything that is going on in the business allows us to make these decisions much faster.
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