The homepage for the RacerMate website, launched in 2014 and responsible for hundreds of thousands in added revenue.
In March of 2013, I accepted a marketing/design position at Seattle’s FloScan Instrument Company, the parent entity of RacerMate, Inc. With nearly 40 years in the indoor bike trainer industry, RacerMate’s CompuTrainer was unrivaled.
Countless superstar triathlete endorsements, a truly indestructible, American-assembled product, and a money-back guarantee in cycling improvement should have made selling a breeze, but with dated marketing strategies and an increasingly crowded marketplace, the company was in desperate need of a modern overhaul. I worked closely with the sales team to understand our product, our field, and our customers.
I came onboard as part of a trio of marketing and design specialists and immediately got to work on updated print collateral to illuminate the complex science behind our award-winning trainer.
With a few brochures, flyers, and magazine ads under my belt, our team quickly turned attention to an ailing website, weak branding, and lackluster online presence. With 4 months and a tight budget, I headed a 3-man team that successfully launched a brand new RacerMate website (since retired) in the Summer of 2014. A professionally produced advertising video quickly followed, a hopeful turn in the trajectory of RacerMate and CompuTrainer.
With the new website breaking $200,000 in sales in just weeks, and most of the kinks worked out quickly, our primary goal was to put out as much marketing material as possible to make up for lost time. Our team worked hard on scripting, pitching, and overseeing the production of our first product overview video in the last decade.
Our team’s major projects included overhauling the CompuTrainer/RacerMate Facebook and Twitter profiles to match our new look, and a detailed timeline section to highlight our little-known “first in the business” history. It’s not an exaggeration to say that RacerMate created indoor cycling, and it was my goal to see that this fact became common knowledge. In pursuing brand recognition, the first step was to replace the company’s marketing line, “The Gold Standard Of Cycle Training”, with my branding concept, “The Proof Is On The Podium.”
The bicycle and indoor trainer industries were still heavily marketed through expos and trade shows, so my major contribution was to work with the CEO and product inventor, Wilfried Baatz, in understanding and marketing the engineering genius behind our products.
We soon began covering news of sponsored athlete wins and podium sweeps. It’s not hype: CompuTrainer has more podium finishes than any other trainer in the world by a wide margin. Below are a handful of my expo flyers and magazine ads, which ran between 2014 and 2015.
