welcome everybody to Seattle by club TV I'm your editor topic Laura and I am with Martina Brimmer of swift industries hello thanks for coming on the show yeah thanks for having me on Tom it's good to see you yeah good good to see you good to see you that you're healthy [Laughter] so yeah the reason I want to talk today is about the social distancing bike club some what it's called bicycle club we're calling it this with social distance cycling cycling clubhouse close yeah and you know this really jumped out to me because I was trying to come up with a post about you know what does biking responsibly look like right now you know public health officials say it's it is good to get exercise and it's good to get fresh air but you have to have social distance from others when you do it and you know biking is kind of perfect for that but only if you're doing it alone or with people that you already live with otherwise obviously you're not socially distancing so when I saw this club it's like yes yes this is brilliant this is exactly what we need so maybe you can tell us a little bit about it yeah so the swift social distance cycling club is intended to be a digital community to basically temporarily take the stead of all of the social writing that we do at Swift industries and personally individually Swift industries is like an insanely social company by its nature we are really social folks we love our community we do so many outward-facing events I don't know any bad companies that do this much event coordination me neither yeah because we love it because it's like where we get our best ideas about product it's how we stake like connected to our community is like so many layers of goodness so we have been cancelling workshops that we do on-site seasonally so Swift oast a presentation series called Stokes poke at local at a bar and people show up in here presentations from people about their different bicycle adventures obviously that's on pause what are your plans with that yeah so we have yet to figure out how we're gonna pivot um with stoked spoke Adventure Club or Stone spoke adventure series but you know maybe it'll take some sort of digital platform and once we've kind of come maybe out of this crazy unknown phase of the last week and Swift has also been hosting a series of social rides which have been popular but those are obviously cancelled for the meantime also so what do you what are you doing to you know keep that lively yeah we're just taking exactly the same energy and putting it online so we moved our community online through Strava Strava at its most basic account level is free um you just have to create an account and then unlike other mapping platforms it really is set up to be a social network so that's why we chose Java and it has like really awesome messaging features you can set up events and clubs such challenges track them so um it was kind of just a little bit like at Swift on Thursday or on Friday we were just like I was like what about the Swift social distance cycling club and everybody just started like cracking up and I was like oh just you wait I'm gonna do it home on Friday and I was like this is actually a super fun idea like what could we do with this so jumped on Strava just kind of got myself familiar with how to set up a club so easy and then went for it and for me every club needs an insignia that's looking at the starting place and I loved this idea I've been watching a lot of Marvel right now and I love the idea of kind of like a little bit of an insignia on the collar a little nod like this the secret society challenge that I put out was for folks who wanted to to take 24 hours to design us logo and and I see oh I count I think about 14 logos were submitted and they're awesome they're so good I couldn't have even dreamed that people would take this time to make these logos they came in from all over in that same time frame basically like we just saw membership increasing like really fast mm-hmm and so within 24 hours we had a logo which is not yet disclosed which one we've chosen so we're waiting for the right time to let us know if people still see the other ones yes they're all visible you see you can give them thumbs ups you can give props to the artist everybody did such a rad job yeah so then um you know I think a lot about like unified experiences how we close social distances and how to create shared experiences so here we are we've started with a platform to connect then we've got a unifying image or logo that like comes and brings us together and then um just thinking about like art installations and gallery exhibits and where it becomes like really sensory so then this idea of a shared playlist came to mind so we knew that we wanted to challenge votes or invite folks to do a social ride on the 4th of April which is when we would have typically had our face-to-face in real life social ride our social rides usually bring about you know between 25 and 40 people out to ride with us depending on the season um and we're really gonna miss we're really gonna miss that event so I knew that we wanted to just set a challenge encourage folks to go out on Strava you can be like really tracking and sharing routes and singing that people are out and about but then I thought that it would be really fun to kind of gamma phi it mm-hmm so we created a challenge there is like a photo challenge that you have to submit so in Strava you can upload afterwards you can upload images that you've taken on route and you get like a gallery and there's some like kind of fun goofy things that you gotta figure out how to take photos of and then we create a Spotify playlist to go with that ride so that was crowd-sourced and we jumped on Spotify started a playlist and set it into collaboration mode and then shared the link out and asked folks to put in like a beat high tempo songs that they loved that they would throw into a dance mix like we just want like there's just so much power in staying positive and music and culture does that for us as a community and um you know and dependent artists are like really really gonna take a hit if they haven't already I mean events are being closed left and right thinking about performing our who really have been working so hard to get to events like South by Southwest - like really bring their craft and their magic to the public and that opportunity now being set aside for the time being so also wanting to like set out challenges and or assignments that also broaden our scope of awareness maybe Tao all of this is impacting all different walks of life mm-hmm so the next challenge the one that we issued today is actually a local one for Seattle specifically we now have 460 people in the straw book club and we want to see it like balloon we want to see it get huge but today's challenge is really for the Seattle community because governor Inslee like many other places in the US has restricted restaurants yeah pays to take out only and we are like dear friends with the folks from peloton Cafe here in Seattle that's where we start our social ride typically one of the most awesome ways that they've adapted to these new and strange and unknown circumstances is that they're making their famous delicious burritos mm-hmm five packs and ready to be frozen and selling them for like $20 I don't know you get a $5 amazing burrito in Seattle and so the challenge right now is for the next 24 hours however long to go out and do a ride out get motivated get out of the house head over to peloton cafe and snag yourself and maybe some friends some burritos drop them off for folks who are also home down working from home maybe have kids and can't get out as flexibly so we're just like we weren't supposed to be riding we want folks to be riding alone or in like very intimate small groups I'm gonna be writing with Jason you know you live together already we got shared you're right it's probably okay to bike with your roommates yeah loving the idea that maybe there's like 10 or 15 of us out and about like really supporting peloton Cafe today in the Seattle and this could go for like I mean like the sky is the limit kind of this could be um whatever our imaginations go for like I would love for somebody to initiate ride for drop-off at food banks I would love to see folks doing an initiative that is some sort of challenge around gift cards for restaurants so join Swift social distance cycling club and whether you're in Seattle or not there's like really amazing ways to activate around our community and support and make it about more than writings but my dog's going crazy I gotta say it's a place for community and and I want to acknowledge like we're trying to keep a beat and positive and honestly like yesterday was so hard I felt like I was in free for all these as a small business owner and so like also taking time to acknowledge that this is real heart this is a really hard time and so even just coming onto an online forum that is cycling based that like we have opportunities to give each other kudos and be checking in whether it's right believe it or not it feels like it's pretty it's a weird crazy time and we're all trying to navigate it yeah together but not yes I know that's the hardest part you just want to give people hugs it's like specifically what you're not supposed to do yeah yeah just gesture yeah yeah well it says so swifter kind of already has experience with this kind of organizing because it's wit campout you know that's a that's a virtual well maybe you should tell people a little bit like what is swim campout is an annual overnight bike ride so please can you all hear me over my crazy dog it's great ambience okay it's real listen this is real oh yeah he's doing like really messing up his toy and he's really proud of it you got a rash in that toy he's like a little Napoleon he had like really proud yeah so Swift camp at is an annual call global call for folks to go by camping on the June solstice we have a global community at this point so we can't say summer or winter it is summer and winter solstice for the participants and it's been amazing it's I think we're doing our sixth year we have thousands and thousands of participants who go out we're working on our planning for this year so if campout is this year on June 20th and 21st and it happens all over the world we want everybody to sign in and register their rides on Swift campout calm because it's so cool to see like thousands of rides happening through the weekend mm-hmm and it's cool too because there's like timezone lapses so you see like Japan goes first and then you're like already kind of getting on their Stoke and then the West Coast hits and then East Coast hits and then we're off to Europe and it's like it is so fun it's so fun to see so what you know we're all kind of waiting with bated breath but um typically we do a big Seattle Swift campout there's usually between sixty and a hundred folks who come out and camp all together who knows what that's gonna look like but such an awesome opportunity to go adventuring with your family which are very immediate friends or closest friends keeping it small and also like cool opportunities to do some solo writing if that's something that you feel stoked about so we're really excited um and have really really cool partnerships lined up with bike packing calm until the designs this year and so it's it's so motivating and it's kind of like Christmas is where softly I definitely our biggest holiday like it feels like the company holiday for sure yeah hey here's cross that we can do the group rides again but you know if not it's kind of still works totally does and we'll keep our fingers crossed because that means that hopefully we'll have come to the other side of this mm-hmm and it's not like we're resilient and we'll just keep connecting and organizing and checking in with each other this way so yeah and at this point most of Swift's orders are online I assume is that correct totally yeah yeah so we're really lucky in that way but we do have a showroom we're working right now to figure out showroom closures stay tuned for some announcements there our showroom is only open Thursdays Fridays Saturdays and Sundays and you know we want to stay accessible we're talking about kind of like convincing those hours what the different options are if we're only open for pickup for example but for folks who are like riding and wanting to support a small business please our online stores open and we like need you right now we totally need you it's it's so amazing as a small business to understand the trickle-down of our economic impact we have incredible relationships with our suppliers we need to make sure that they can do this and get through our employees ourselves it's big and and start to understand the impact that you that like a company like swift industries really has on many many different companies - because we work so closely with so many different kinds of suppliers yeah and all bags are made in Washington State so um you know we work with two wonderful small factories one in Seattle one in Washington like these dollars recirculate right here within 300 miles so it's a big deal yeah it is well thanks for talking to me and thanks for organizing the social distancing Cycling Club yeah I hope that everybody jumps on it would be so so motivating and so heartwarming to see that membership grow yeah yeah it's a really good idea and uh yeah it's one of those things you see everyone else's route to like you know what I'm just gonna go for bike right now I need to stop reading the news yeah here it is it really reframed reframes things and I think it's like really critical of course for our physical health but I can only speak to for myself like being on that bike is so huge for my emotional well-being and it's a tool that's here and a community that's like so engaged so let's lift each other up with it yep and you're not alone yeah totally great well thank you so much for talking to me and uh yeah good luck yeah thanks Tom all right be safe