"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - Starting your own team?

So I like my current team a lot. But I've got a problem, when I joined my current team, a bike shop team, I thought I'd be following my set career path, but I realized how much I hated it, and went back to my previous gig; a bike shop mechanic at another shop. Now I like my job and my team, but they're at two different bike shops, and I'm in sales now at my shop.
My shop isn't known for carring high-end bikes, as it's more of a family-bike kind of place, but we do occasionally sell some higher end bikes, and we've got a great relationship with our manufacturers; not to mention that I get them at a highly discounted price.

I'm getting to the point of wondering why I'm promoting another shop (not really a rival shop, since they sell high-end) when I should be promoting my own shop.

So what goes into making a team from scratch? I've already got a basic outline of what a team structure should be, having been on two so far, and I might have a merge with my first team, which buys parts from my current shop.

To be a "racing" club that you put on your racing license, you register the club with the USCF. Forms here: http://www.usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=91

There used to be a requirement that a club had to promote at least one race per year, that may still be the case, check with your district rep / officials to be sure. I suspect it's not really enforced.

To be a "racing" club that you put on your racing license, you register the club with the USCF. Forms here: http://www.usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=91

There used to be a requirement that a club had to promote at least one race per year, that may still be the case, check with your district rep / officials to be sure. I suspect it's not really enforced.

I think it is a good rule, should be enforced, and would provide more racing throughout the year. That's just me.

Yeah, I know all about the forms and single race per year. We've also got a really good relationship with our cites police and could probably get some permits in for a crit through the city, and maybe a cross race.

But what I wanted to know is what really goes into it, besides the paper work?

So what goes into making a team from scratch? I've already got a basic outline of what a team structure should be, having been on two so far, and I might have a merge with my first team, which buys parts from my current shop.

$150 to register a club, and whatever the clothes cost.

If you want to be sponsored you have to put on a race every year.

The hard part is getting people to put up the money for sponsorship, and organizing events, and organizing club things. If you're a one member club there's less to organize, but you'll have a harder time rounding up sponsors, too.

The requirement to promote a race is for sponsored clubs. I looked into starting a club and talked to someone at USA Cycling who told me that if the name of your club is Joe's Bike Shop racing you don't need to promote. If you are Fast Guy Velo and are sponsored by Joe's Bike Shop then you have to promote. I am all for promoting races, but setting it up this way may buy you time to get the club organized before taking on race promotion too.

What do you mean you have a basic outline of a team structure?


Prepare for ass loads of paperwork and another full time job.

Name the club, register with USAC

Apply for 501(c)(3) status with the IRS (contact a CPA)

Figure out what you want out of the team. Closed or open membership? How will you sway people to join your club when you don't have sponsorship deals yet? What can you offer riders? Are you going to reimburse them for race fees? Give them free kits?

Put together a sponsorship package, stating your goals and motives and mail it to everyone in the industry.

Get your team set, sponsors set and get the jersey order in by November. Sooner, depending on who you'll be using (chances are you will end up using Champion Systems due to low minimums and low price). You don't want to start the year with your guys wearing last year's jerseys.

Figure out a race to promote and start working on the permits for it.

Oh, and don't tell anyone about your blog. Anyone wanting to be associated with your club won't want to read you typing the F word every paragraph. Be professional and keep the opinions to yourself.

Oh another thing. Prepare the forms for rider responsibility and waiver of liability. You don't want your riders wearing a team jersey and getting mouthy with officials/riders/etc without worry of being kicked off the team. You also don't want them suing you when they wreck. What about a replacement gear policy when they do break something in a race supporting your club?

I think that you have a reason to form a team and that you would do right by your shop to promote it.

What it takes to run a team:
- deal with racers who think everything should be cheaper and get there quicker
- deal with racers who want a kit that looks different than what you've designed, but they still order $800 worth of kit. Your kit order is about $10k now, with 15 guys on the team.
- deal with racers who haven't paid for the kit they don't like but they still got the $800 wholesale of kit in their gear bag because they know you and you let them take it because the race was tomorrow and they forgot their wallet but they'll come in Monday to run the card through.
- deal with a card that gets rejected for an $800 charge
- deal with racers that aren't on your team but are interested in joining because their friend got $800 kit for free
- oh, right, and do paperwork and such.

Seriously, though, to run a team you're going to be dealing with people. Racers, local racing rep, officials, sponsors (probably the bike/parts reps who visit your shop, plus a few misc businesses).

Promoting a race is the hardest part of running a team (or promoting a race). Without the race doing a team is cake, easy cheesy, maybe a couple hours of effort a year. If you run a team with more people and more sponsors (I've only gotten up to about 50-60 racers and maybe 5 paying sponsors), maybe 20 hours a year, say an hour or two a month in the winter and the spring. This is especially true if you are at a shop and everyone can find you there.

You can usually hit up your local bike/parts rep for sponsorship. Usually in the first year, unless you aim high, you get stuff at employee for the team guys. So helmets at 40% below wholesale, certain bikes available at super cheap prices, maybe deals on wheels. Kit will be expensive so decide if you want durability or cheapness. For the team's sake I would not pass on the whole savings to the team - put some of the money in the team kitty. So you explain to everyone, Such-and-such bike company is offering us helmets at $x (name a price $5 over their price), bikes at $y (name a price $50 over, to cover shipping etc), and accessories at z% off (name a % that is 5% higher to cover shipping etc). This way you have some cushion if something unexpected happens, like the 8 people who decide they don't want a size S but want a size M instead. Or for the inevitable guys who simply eBay their stuff.

I think the most important thing to do is to decide what you want your team to be. Do you want a Cat 2-3-4 squad that dominates races? Do you want to have a Cat 4-5 Masters 35+ team? What do you want to do? Why would someone join your team? Group rides, maybe from the shop? If group rides, who pays if someone breaks a collarbone? USAC will pay for that insurance if you fill out the paperwork and send it in. Will your team work as a team? Is there anyone on the team with experience to teach the less experienced racers? Will there be a transfer of knowledge, a sharing of experience? Do the members get along? If they barely do, will you be willing to work with them so they do get along?

Having a reasonably successful team is a great experience. Promoting a race, one of very few in your area, is even better.

good luck,
cdr

great post!

hrmmm, let me pull out my pen and paper and just start taking notes here...

The hard part is getting people to put up the money for sponsorship, and organizing events, and organizing club things. If you're a one member club there's less to organize, but you'll have a harder time rounding up sponsors, too.
Agreed. Some of us and our parents tried to form a junior team once and getting sponsors was a bit of a waste. We got a pledge to sponsor $300 in cash from my then girlfriend's dad's work, but they wanted a non-profit number to write off their donation. Non-profit numbers cost about $300 along with the paperwork required. We already had Encino Velodrome/AAF jerseys we were going to use, and the velodrome hosted our race for us. Finally, getting enough members to make a decent team was difficult. Once I realized the only person in my age group wasn't entering in any of the races I was, I went back to the team that had a handful of more ambitious riders. The team finished out the season, but lacked interest to continue. Funny enough, there is now a team with the same exact name (Encino Velo) with a strong junior program, and none of the members even knew there was an Encino Velo 12 years ago too!

In the end, we had it pretty easy and it still flopped, but that's business.

Oh, and don't tell anyone about your blog. Anyone wanting to be associated with your club won't want to read you typing the F word every paragraph. Be professional and keep the opinions to yourself.


Wow, so true!
To the OP: How much does that chip on your shoulder weigh?

Oh, and don't tell anyone about your blog. Anyone wanting to be associated with your club won't want to read you typing the F word every paragraph. Be professional and keep the opinions to yourself.



The OP's blog definitely demonstrates the people skills necessary to sucessfully organize a team.

Crimson, me and a friend basically started a collegiate team from scratch this past year and got a full team out to race a full season of collegiate racing. I can help you out with getting started and what not, send me a message and i will email the details of starting a club. Just so you now it takes alot of paper work and months of preparations but it can be done.

OP - I didn't see your blog. Yeah, I'd hide that pretty well if you want sponsorship that isn't related to your blog style. I'm sure there are companies out there that don't care and therefore don't mind the blog (tattoo place, wicked rad chopper place, other stereotypical places like that, but I'm just guessing here).

501c3 is not required. It takes tons of paperwork to set up. A not-for-profit (dunno what it's called legally, my partner set it up) is easier but you can't take money out, no money for the partners. LLC is easiest to set up, you can do it solo, and you can take money out. I'll be moving to an LLC at some point but for now a not-for-profit is fine.

Sponsorship I take with a grain of salt. I don't ask for it, it usually gets forced on me. CDR got a few thousand dollars when my boss asked how to get on my jersey. I told them it costs money, he wrote me a check (we spent it all on design fees, whatever was left over we used to pay for club permit etc). I asked if he was serious, etc. Then they gave me more money the next year (designed the shorts with that money), also offered to wrap my van (full sticker - it's about $2-3k plus design) but I declined.

CDP also insists on buying all its merchandise, at least the big things. Wheels, frames, etc., we paid for. I refused free wheels from some local companies because they're small and I didn't want to hurt them. I just asked to pay a much reduced price and they obliged. Little things we'll take for free. One energy bar company sent us a pallet (2000 pounds) of energy drink mix - we asked for a few bars. That was hard to give away in a year.

As a shop guy you have an inside scoop to discounted equipment. I'd start there because there's a direct relationship between giving stuff to a team and selling more of it at the store.

No one really gets anything out of sponsoring a local team except for ego and a tax write off. It's essentially a gift to you and your team. I guess it's an opportunity to get a signed jersey in the store and maybe have someone call and complain that one of "their" riders just dropped the F-bomb and gave them the finger when the sponsor's rider ran a red light and almost t-boned their car.

Think of it this way for sponsorship. If you ask for, say, $10k, what would it get your sponsor?
Bike shop - sells $10k in profit worth of helmets, bikes, etc? You know the margins, how many bikes would the team have to be responsible for selling to make back that money?
Bank - opens accounts at a bank that drive up revenue at the bank by $10k this year? How many service charges would that take?
Deli - you know how many sandwiches and sodas a shop would have to sell to make $10k in profit?
Remember that all this business is in ADDITION to their regular business. Businesses are in business to make money. A bike shop happens to sell bike stuff/services, a deli sells food, but both are in business to make money. A smart business person will not spend money frivolously, and if you can show a return on their investment, you can justify their sponsorship to them.

So for such sponsors you could do things like:
Bike shop - have a discount code for team related purchases, i.e. a friend of the team. Track sales based on this "friend of team" code. Aim for 4-5x the sponsor amount for the year.
Bank - give out pamphlets that have a code for a new account. Banks love that stuff.
Deli - give out team frequent buyer cards so you get a free sandwich for every 5 you buy (or whatever). Deli can track purchases and put a real dollar value on their sponsorship.

The best way to retain a sponsor is to show value for the money. Newspaper shot with your sponsor is worth a nice ad's worth of revenue. Front page shot, more money. If you promote your sponsor at your race (a great reason to have a race) maybe a picture of the "Such and Such Savings and Loan Criterium" banner will show on the front page of the paper Monday morning. Wouldn't that be awesome?

However if the sponsor feels like they tossed money into a hole they won't come back. Unless they are doing it for other reasons (i.e. they race for the team, they think $500 for a shoulder patch is "being nice to the guys who work at the shop down the row and buy lunch at my deli every day", etc.

cdr

A 501 (c)3 is the not for profit setup. It allows tax deductible donations. An LLC does not.

I'm getting to the point of wondering why I'm promoting another shop (not really a rival shop, since they sell high-end) when I should be promoting my own shop.

Does your boss even want to sponsor a team? Do you really think wearing a kit with a shops name that doesn't cater to racers is going to do much for business.

A 501 (c)3 is the not for profit setup. It allows tax deductible donations. An LLC does not.

A 501c3 is a "non-profit", charitable organization. It has a charter and has some higher "mission" that extends past its immediate existence (church, civic organization, etc). Contributions made to it are tax deductible.

A "not for profit" is something else. Contributions are not tax deductible. It requires less paperwork, doesn't require a charter, and there's a bunch of other stuff that I don't know about. It does require more than one person.

There is a significant difference between "non-profit" and "not-for-profit". An accountant would be better at explaining this stuff since I only know how it affects me as an officer of a "not for profit". The guy who set up CDP is an accountant but I never got the fine details. He made the decision to make it so.

cdr

Does your boss even want to sponsor a team? Do you really think wearing a kit with a shops name that doesn't cater to racers is going to do much for business.

+1.

If I owned a shop that didnt do anything for racers, it would be a waste of advertising money to pay for a team that didn't really give me the bang for the buck in terms of getting customers.

There is a significant difference between "non-profit" and "not-for-profit".


That's not what I understand, as I mostly see the terms interchangeable. But I'm an engineer who works for profit, not an accountant.

That's not what I understand, as I mostly see the terms interchangeable. But I'm an engineer who works for profit, not an accountant.

That's what I thought too, meaning to me "non-profit" and "not for profit" were interchangeable. But they are extremely different from a legal point of view. It's like saying average power and normalized power, it's sort of interchangeable but it really isn't.

But as far as setting up a team, a non-profit is probably not a great idea. It's overly complicated, requires tons of "real" paperwork (forget about USAC etc), probably a lawyer, regular annual paperwork, etc. A not-for-profit will require some paperwork initially but very little after it's set up. An LLC will be the best for a small team, it can be done in a day of paperwork (plus getting approved).

Any sponsorship can be considered advertising or marketing. A sponsor will be able to write off their sponsorship as such and that's usually good enough for them.

cdr

I didn't realize the OP owns a shop. That opens up a whole other suggestion. You can write off any team expenses as business expenses if you use your team and racing to advertise your shop. When I was into auto racing, a fellow competitor advertised his tinting shop on the car and wrote off fuel (both for the race and for getting to the race), tires, car parts, entry fees, and hotel as the cost of advertising.

^^ he doesn't own it, he works there.

Oh, thanks for the clarification.

Okay thanks guys, some great opinions here. Unfortunately, a third option has opened up to complicate things.