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In life, it’s great to work with good humans and it’s ok to trust your gut! That sums up the theme of today’s Quench’d story, written by Cari Carmean, co-owner of The Radavist.

The Radavist is the first and longest-running “alt-cycling” website, known for Beautiful Bicycle catalogues, event reporting, Framebuilder Shop Visits, and inspiring bicycle touring galleries. Cari tells us the story of selling and eventually, proudly buying back The Radavist, an amazing and impressive feat that all of us at Bivo really admire! 

Take a spin through The Radavist’s site (I really enjoyed their recent piece on trail recovery post-Eaton fire in LA), and check out their brand new custom Bivo bottles while you’re there :) 

I’ve been helping John run The Radavist since 2017, which he had been running on his own since 2006. Bringing my background in graphic design, photo production and sign painting to the table, I jumped in to help manage the advertising revenue and merchandise program. 

Cut to the spring of 2021, we’ve relocated from LA to Santa Fe, sorta kinda emerging from the pandemic, and we are propositioned by a company based in Colorado - they want to buy us. John has been through this song and dance a few times before, nothing feeling like the right fit or timing, but this time was different. This brand was unique in that it bought used bikes and ran them through a certification process to resell them - for us this meant we wouldn’t be beholden to singing the praises of only ONE bike brand.

We would stay in place and run The Radavist and the parent company would gain some new customers through us. Win, win, right?

Fast forward to late 2022, the other side of the pandemic, the side where the bike industry imploded all over itself, having overbought from the pandemic boom and now sitting on mountains of inventory. Long story short, sales at the parent company start to slide, then plummet, and the VC corp that owns the parent company starts slashing budgets and positions. Including our budget - so much so, we were expected to operate with less money than we did before we sold our company. Our short lived run with funding and a team of people to help run the website was seemingly doomed to crash and burn.

Instead of going down with the ship, we were able to negotiate our company back, a pretty rare feat in the history of VC acquisitions. It certainly wasn’t easy and probably took a few years off our lives from the stress of it all. But luckily I feel we have risen from the ashes and are much stronger for it. 

We learned a lot about ourselves and our goals after tumbling through the venture capital house of horrors show.

Growth for growth’s sake to line the pockets of the people at the top is not our priority and it never was, but we sold to a company with that goal, which is a large reason why that company tanked. They were spending way too much money without the revenue to support it, building growth models based on a complete economic anomaly. During the acquisition we inquired about protections during economic fluctuations and were assured that the VC company had a “1 Billion dollar slush fund” for just that kind of scenario. We attempted to do our due diligence, but I think we should have dug a lot deeper to make sure our goals were in alignment. I think reaching out to other companies that had been acquired by that VC corp might have proven enlightening and was a step we missed.

The biggest lesson of all - I wish we would have listened to John’s gut during the negotiation phase of being acquired - there were a few red flags that caused us to really question if we should sell. If some of the people running a company don’t seem like good people, don’t sell yourself to them. In hindsight, it always seems so simple. But, John’s gut was speaking pretty loudly and, unfortunately, we pressed forward. I think we felt we were too far along in the process and just wanted the light at the end of the tunnel we had glimpsed.

Until you sign on the dotted line, it’s never too late to turn back. 

Luckily, that roller coaster ride is now completely in the rear view, and we’ve been able to re-center with the most incredible and talented team of people we could ever hope to be surrounded with. And I’m now a co-owner of The Radavist! 

One benefit of going through the wringer is John and I have more motivation than ever - sometimes you just don’t know how good you have it until it’s gone. Yes, it’s really hard and stressful to run a small media company, especially within the current landscape of the enshitification of independent media, where the name of the game is click bait and the end goal is affiliate sales. It’s a huge risk, especially in terms of having a secure financial future, but, the personal satisfaction of working for ourselves and our goals will remain paramount to any promises that seem too good to be true.

Thanks for listening, 

Cari Carmean, Co-owner of The Radavist