Tower Electric Bikes
New Member
Hi everyone. My name is Stephan Aarstol. Tower Electric Bikes is a privately owned company, owned by myself and Mark Cuban. Mark is the strategic advisor and investor. I’m the CEO.
Tower Electric Bikes is a subsidiary of a larger brand, Tower (formally “The Tower Group”), which was founded in 2010 as a direct to consumer beach lifestyle company focusing on stand up paddle boards initially. We’re headquartered in San Diego and have a beachfront showroom in Mission Bay called the Tower Beach Club. We live and breathe the beach lifestyle, of which biking is a big part – San Diego is one of, if not the, biggest bike market in the US with over 1.1 million residents who regularly bike.
Over the past decade, we’ve extended Tower’s direct to consumer product offerings into many beach lifestyle products beyond paddle boards, including: surfboards, skateboards, bikes, sunglasses, surfboards, portable docks, and most recently, eBikes (specializing in electric beach cruisers).
A few years ago, we developed and refined the “World’s finest beach cruiser”, called the Tower Tulum, which is a stylish, non-electric, high-end, aluminum frame, belt drive, beach cruiser with our patented passenger pegs. Our first eBike, the beach bum, is based on the popular design of our non-electric beach cruiser.
While we’re a relatively new entrant in eBikes, we’ve been offering up great products direct to consumer for the past decade. I’ve personally been an executive in the online space since 1999, and developing and selling products direct to consumer since 2003. I was in poker chips prior to paddle boards. Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, founder of Broadcast.com, serial entrepreneur, and investor, doesn’t need much of an introduction. He invested in us on Shark Tank, and we’ve gone on to become his most successful investment in the history of Shark Tank. Tower has done well over $30 million in sales, all direct to consumer, one satisfied customer at a time. We didn’t advertise for the first 4 years of operation, and we still don’t rely heavily on advertising as we prefer to pass savings onto the end consumer. We focus on creating great products and providing incredible value to consumers. Our satisfied customers tend to spread the word themselves. In 2014, Tower was named the #1 fastest growing private company in San Diego. In 2015, we were ranked #239 on the INC 500 list of America's fastest growing companies. Harvard Business School has written case studies about Tower. We've done all of this because we provide great value to consumers.
With the paddle board company we were basically selling high-end, design-focused paddle boards thru the Internet direct to consumers for roughly half the price of comparable quality retail boards. We plan to serve eBike enthusiasts with a similar business model.
We're a direct to consumer eBike brand and that term “direct to consumer” confuses many consumers as the retail and e-commerce landscape has changed so much in the past 25 years. By direct to consumer, we mean we ONLY sell direct to consumer and completely forgo the traditional retail distribution channel. We cut out the middlemen, which means we can save you around $2000 off a comparable high-quality, highly-considered eBike purchased in a retail store.
The confusion sets in when consumers see 2 eBikes both selling for say $2000, but one is sold thru retails stores (and maybe also from the brands website), while the other is sold direct to consumer ONLY. No resellers. No middlemen. While the traditional retail brand has to earn a profit margin to pay off distributors, wholesalers, salesman, retailers, and the brand itself… the direct to consumer brand only has to earn a living itself. All that savings gets passed to the consumer in the form of either a far better price on a comparable product, or a far better product at the same price as a retail product.
When you consider that in today's global economy the production cost to produce something tends to get cheaper over time as we find cheaper places to produce them, people closer to the sale get more expensive. As a result, in today's world it’s frequently the distribution channel that accounts for a lion’s share of the cost of products we buy thru retail. Sometimes the product production cost is only a sliver of the final consumer price. Ever by a $20 hat in a store... that hat costs $1.87 to produce. I know. We produce hats too. That’s kind of broken in my opinion. Now do that with a product that costs $1000 to produce and things get crazy!
Because consumers #1 indicator of quality is price, most consumers would assume these two $2000 eBikes mentioned above are fairly equivalent quality. You get what you pay for... right? That’s been true for centuries and smart consumers know this adage well. The adage was reliable… up until the direct to consumer revolution, fuelled by the Internet and social media, really took off big time in about 2010 with brands like Warby Parker selling glasses, brands like Casper selling mattresses, and brands like Dollar Shave Club selling razors. Today, you might well get twice the eBike for the same price if you buy from a direct to consumer brand. What’s more? You get better customer service as you can actually reach the brand directly instead of not even being able to reach the brand at all (try calling Kit Kat, or Budweiser, or any corporate brand) or being routed thru a retailer, whose business is likely struggling to survive as is, and they really don’t have deep product knowledge on most of the products they carry in the first place.
The result? Hundreds of direct to consumer brands are taking over because the value proposition they offer is off the charts!
At Tower Electric Bikes, we’re not only a direct to consumer brand, but we’re also focused on the premium end of the eBike market. We’re not interested in selling the cheapest eBike we can make. We don't make cheap, heavy eBikes with cheap components. We’re not a transactional, fly by night brand trying to spin dimes. We're building a brand for the long term a we've been doing for a decade. We only make great products. Products so compelling that our customers will tell their friends about. We refuse to produce crap. That’s our game plan.
Nice to meet you all! Myself and my team will keep an eye on this forum and hopefully we can answer any questions you have. We have a small, lean team and work a 5-hour workday (which we invented, check out The Five Hour Workday book) in the summer months, but we work fast so we'll try to be as responsive as possible.
-Stephan Aarstol
Tower Electric Bikes is a subsidiary of a larger brand, Tower (formally “The Tower Group”), which was founded in 2010 as a direct to consumer beach lifestyle company focusing on stand up paddle boards initially. We’re headquartered in San Diego and have a beachfront showroom in Mission Bay called the Tower Beach Club. We live and breathe the beach lifestyle, of which biking is a big part – San Diego is one of, if not the, biggest bike market in the US with over 1.1 million residents who regularly bike.
Over the past decade, we’ve extended Tower’s direct to consumer product offerings into many beach lifestyle products beyond paddle boards, including: surfboards, skateboards, bikes, sunglasses, surfboards, portable docks, and most recently, eBikes (specializing in electric beach cruisers).
A few years ago, we developed and refined the “World’s finest beach cruiser”, called the Tower Tulum, which is a stylish, non-electric, high-end, aluminum frame, belt drive, beach cruiser with our patented passenger pegs. Our first eBike, the beach bum, is based on the popular design of our non-electric beach cruiser.
While we’re a relatively new entrant in eBikes, we’ve been offering up great products direct to consumer for the past decade. I’ve personally been an executive in the online space since 1999, and developing and selling products direct to consumer since 2003. I was in poker chips prior to paddle boards. Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, founder of Broadcast.com, serial entrepreneur, and investor, doesn’t need much of an introduction. He invested in us on Shark Tank, and we’ve gone on to become his most successful investment in the history of Shark Tank. Tower has done well over $30 million in sales, all direct to consumer, one satisfied customer at a time. We didn’t advertise for the first 4 years of operation, and we still don’t rely heavily on advertising as we prefer to pass savings onto the end consumer. We focus on creating great products and providing incredible value to consumers. Our satisfied customers tend to spread the word themselves. In 2014, Tower was named the #1 fastest growing private company in San Diego. In 2015, we were ranked #239 on the INC 500 list of America's fastest growing companies. Harvard Business School has written case studies about Tower. We've done all of this because we provide great value to consumers.
With the paddle board company we were basically selling high-end, design-focused paddle boards thru the Internet direct to consumers for roughly half the price of comparable quality retail boards. We plan to serve eBike enthusiasts with a similar business model.
We're a direct to consumer eBike brand and that term “direct to consumer” confuses many consumers as the retail and e-commerce landscape has changed so much in the past 25 years. By direct to consumer, we mean we ONLY sell direct to consumer and completely forgo the traditional retail distribution channel. We cut out the middlemen, which means we can save you around $2000 off a comparable high-quality, highly-considered eBike purchased in a retail store.
The confusion sets in when consumers see 2 eBikes both selling for say $2000, but one is sold thru retails stores (and maybe also from the brands website), while the other is sold direct to consumer ONLY. No resellers. No middlemen. While the traditional retail brand has to earn a profit margin to pay off distributors, wholesalers, salesman, retailers, and the brand itself… the direct to consumer brand only has to earn a living itself. All that savings gets passed to the consumer in the form of either a far better price on a comparable product, or a far better product at the same price as a retail product.
When you consider that in today's global economy the production cost to produce something tends to get cheaper over time as we find cheaper places to produce them, people closer to the sale get more expensive. As a result, in today's world it’s frequently the distribution channel that accounts for a lion’s share of the cost of products we buy thru retail. Sometimes the product production cost is only a sliver of the final consumer price. Ever by a $20 hat in a store... that hat costs $1.87 to produce. I know. We produce hats too. That’s kind of broken in my opinion. Now do that with a product that costs $1000 to produce and things get crazy!
Because consumers #1 indicator of quality is price, most consumers would assume these two $2000 eBikes mentioned above are fairly equivalent quality. You get what you pay for... right? That’s been true for centuries and smart consumers know this adage well. The adage was reliable… up until the direct to consumer revolution, fuelled by the Internet and social media, really took off big time in about 2010 with brands like Warby Parker selling glasses, brands like Casper selling mattresses, and brands like Dollar Shave Club selling razors. Today, you might well get twice the eBike for the same price if you buy from a direct to consumer brand. What’s more? You get better customer service as you can actually reach the brand directly instead of not even being able to reach the brand at all (try calling Kit Kat, or Budweiser, or any corporate brand) or being routed thru a retailer, whose business is likely struggling to survive as is, and they really don’t have deep product knowledge on most of the products they carry in the first place.
The result? Hundreds of direct to consumer brands are taking over because the value proposition they offer is off the charts!
At Tower Electric Bikes, we’re not only a direct to consumer brand, but we’re also focused on the premium end of the eBike market. We’re not interested in selling the cheapest eBike we can make. We don't make cheap, heavy eBikes with cheap components. We’re not a transactional, fly by night brand trying to spin dimes. We're building a brand for the long term a we've been doing for a decade. We only make great products. Products so compelling that our customers will tell their friends about. We refuse to produce crap. That’s our game plan.
Nice to meet you all! Myself and my team will keep an eye on this forum and hopefully we can answer any questions you have. We have a small, lean team and work a 5-hour workday (which we invented, check out The Five Hour Workday book) in the summer months, but we work fast so we'll try to be as responsive as possible.
-Stephan Aarstol
) is the Pedego, and they sell for 3-4k. Not sure which one has better components, but they are rolling with a dealer owned franchise nationwide.
