News

PROBLEM SOLVER

Company: Sacred Rides Mountain Bike Holidays

Location: Toronto

I am the president/owner of Sacred Rides, one of Canada's most successful mountain bike holiday companies since 1996. We currently are in a growth phase, offering trips in British Columbia, Peru, and Chile, expanding to Guatemala, Croatia, New Zealand and India in 2009/2010. Among the awards we have won are "Top 40 Adventure Companies in the world" by National Geographic Adventure and "Top 8 Eco-Tourism Companies" by Organic Earth magazine.

We have a very strong social and environmental responsibility mandate, and have recently launched our own non-profit organization Bikes Without Borders. BWB will soon be launching a line of clothing at Mountain Equipment Co-op, and we have a slew of events planned for the summer.

In spite of all our growth and activity we have a number of challenges looming on the horizon:

Our challenges

1) there is another company in B.C. called The Sacred Ride, who are threatening legal action if we don't change our name (even though they were notified in advance of our name change from Fernie Fat-Tire Adventures to Sacred Rides, and even though the name registry people approved it)

2) the looming global economic crisis threatens to affect us significantly - travel is often the first things to go when times are tough.

3) Currently, our customer demographic is overwhelmingly Canadian and U.S.-based. We're trying to expand our European market share but finding it difficult.

4) I have local operations managers in B.C., Peru and Chile, who run the day-to-day tour operations, but as far as the office goes, it's just me. Which is a little overwhelming at times, especially with a kid on the way in a month. I'm trying to get my business to grow enough to be able to hire some office help.

I would welcome any suggests or ideas on how to get us on the right path.

Thank you

Mike Brcic, customer happiness manager

Sacred Rides Mountain Bike Holidays