This week we’ve had a Cyclepods International meeting. We have them approx every 6 weeks. We had a very promising discussion on our Displaypod proposition.

From our Cannondale case (a cyclepod installed in a Toronto bike shop made up in Cannondale colors), studying British, Danish and Swedish bike shops, and discussing with an UK based shop fitter, we know there is a huge unexploited market for bike shop fitting and we are optimistic that we have a very attractive proposal to the bike retailers and manufacturers.

Looking at typical shop re-fitting sales impact and bike retail data, such as standard shop fitting cost and sales increase needed to hit break even, we have an extremely appealing offer to take to the market.

We are now 5 months into our engagement with Cyclepods. Currently we have interesting discussion with new business partners in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Malaysia and South Korea. Germany has come the furthest and our German partner will launch our products in February in Germany, Switzerland and Austria as well as in a number of central European countries. In North America we have an interesting discussion with an US premium bike brand, who wants to use the Cyclepod to expose their bikes in show rooms.

During fall ’09 the Streetpod design has been finalized. Check www.cyclepods.com shortly for pictures and details. The Streetpod is a welcome contribution to our product portfolio, focusing the on-street parking market.

In our home market – UK & Ireland - we just finalized the installation of 200 Spacepod units at KPMG’s new office in Canary Wharf (London). We’ve also added more Minipods sales resources, to further meet the great demand for this product.

CyclePods has developed a selection of eco-friendly, designer bicycle racks that are space-saving as well as very protective of the bicycles. CyclePods is experiencing great success, and has attracted customers such as BBC, Sky, IKEA, Sainsbury, The Guardian, and many others. Furthermore, CyclePods has sold a kids-version of the bicycle rack to more than 100 schools across Britain.

The product has won several deign prizes, and been exposed in TV in various countries. Now, it is up to Rainmaking to utilize this great start-up and wide exposure in an international manner. We will examine a number of core markets, find suitable distributors, educate these, and provide them with all the support, which they need in order to succeed in their markets respectively.

The founder James Steward is a very talented and likeable person, who has developed a new kind of cycle racks that really stands out. James and his team have already created a sales success in UK, and with customers as The Guardian, BBC, IKEA, M&S, SKY, Ford, Pepsi, and Rebook, they have proved that the product is sellable. The international expansion hasn’t been prioritized so far, and we are now discussing whether Rainmaking shall enter as co-owners and put full focus on the task with identifying, choosing and training distributors worldwide. More to follow.