September 2026
Autumn is here and bike business is slowing down. Autumn is also a time of change. It can be felt in the air that after a solid first year, Tunk would now need a new push both in products and business, but also aesthetically, visually, and philosophically. Physically we are pretty good, the HQ is cozy and spacious.
The year has been busy with just working on everyday stuff, getting systems running and products shipped and problems solved, and it has been good and allright. But now it feels like we need to go forward as well. A quieter winter time might actually be good to sit back and think.
We would have lots of opinions, tastes and plenty of experience about bikes, especially touring bikes, but we maybe haven’t come up with the perfect way of communicating that yet. Instagram is such a shitty platform nowadays, but still the easiest way to reach people so for now it’s our main outlet despite it all. We will try to make some informative and fun blog articles and maybe even videos in the near future and see how that goes and what is the reaction. It would be nice to be more in control of our own content and have more interesting stuff on the website. In general we need to get more attention and more customers if we are to keep going. Like the saying goes: Early to bed, early to rise makes you wealthy, healthy and wise. But it don’t help if you don’t advertise!
We would now have the financial situation to make a couple of new products, or to add new stock but both options have their problems. Selling other people's products is not the greatest business, as margins are low and competition between webshops is fierce. But making our own products takes lots of time and risks are involved, as we have noticed with safety testing failures and schedules that stretch out until the horizon…
Speaking of which, the stem project is again stuck and Fort is not answering our messages and emails. They were supposed to make a reinforced version of the stem and answer some questions on possible issues on the old version, but we have no answer for a week or two. But don’t take it the wrong way, we don’t want to complain, just stating what it’s like to be a tiny business trying to make weird complicated products.
For the heck of it we also asked some Taiwanese factories about making stems and other products. Their answers were quick and eager but not very helpful and attentive, a bit corner cutting so to speak. Making stuff at another factory might be easier in some ways, and harder in others. A classic case of whether the grass is greener on the other side of the fence...
One option we have thought about is to try making complete bikes. Even though they would be expensive, it would still make the product more “democratic”, as you wouldn’t need to be a medium-to-advanced level bicycle wizard who can build a complicated touring bike out of a frame and boxes of parts. Our custom order program hasn’t exactly been a success, we have had one order so far. A readymade touring bike might be easier to approach and buy than a custom option? It would also be really cool for people to just have the possibility of buying a perfect off-the-shelf touring bike. Think of the olden days when kids were drooling at dreamy bikes in shop windows. For the Hike-Use bike to be like that, a dream… That you can buy with money! That would be nice.
Last week we also had a rare international business meeting, as Yuba from MKS Pedal and Nori from Interjet (Japanese bicycle goods import/export company) were visiting Helsinki. They visited both Töölön Pyörä and Tunk HQ, and later we had dinner together as well. The vibe was very casual, as we don’t really have any big business with them yet, so it was just friendly chats. But the channel to import Japanese stuff would now be open, and even the possibility of getting products made by Nitto was mentioned. It just takes a loong time to get a special product designed, tested, produced and shipped here, and Nitto are especially famous for their rigorous quality and long production timelines. We are not sure what we would want to have in a few years from now!
For the culture pages this time there’s just this picture from the early summer Alps trip. The full report is almost done and will be supplied soon!
Until next Times
Tunk Crew
