People occasionally ask why the catalogue is so small. The short answer is that a small catalogue is harder to maintain than a large one. Adding products is easy. The difficulty is removing them — and we remove things.
Since 2019 we've dropped two scooter models and one bag line. Each time because a better option arrived in the same price range and we didn't want to keep both.
The three-month rule
Nothing goes in the catalogue unless Lars or I have used it for at least three months. This is a deliberately simple threshold. Three months covers enough different conditions — weather, route variety, daily fatigue — to reveal the problems that don't show up in a weekend test.
This means we're slow to add things. Suppliers have offered us products at very good margins that we've declined because we hadn't used them long enough. There are bags from brands we like that have been on the to-test list for six months. They'll be considered when one of us has actually commuted with them.
Each item has to do one job better than everything else at the price
We don't carry products that are "good across the board." We carry products that are specifically better at something. The Foldex Compactote folds smaller than anything else we've found for the money. The Seglo E2 Lite is lighter than any comparable model. The Beltwin lock offers a specific combination of frame lock plus cable that we haven't found elsewhere at under €70.
If a new product arrives that does the same job but not clearly better, it doesn't go in. This is also why we don't have twelve scooter models. Four is enough to cover the meaningful variations in weight, suspension preference and range.
What we've chosen not to stock, and why
We've looked at helmets twice and decided against them both times. Not because they're unimportant — they obviously are — but because fit is personal in a way that gear you can size by volume or wheel diameter isn't. We'd need to carry multiple brands, multiple sizes, and be able to advise on fit properly. We can't do that well without a physical space. We might revisit this.
We've also deliberately avoided stocking any product where the main selling point is a sustainability claim we can't verify. A bag made from recycled ocean plastic sounds good. It's also a claim that's very difficult to substantiate from our position as a small reseller. We'd rather carry something we know works than something we're asked to take on faith from the marketing materials.