Gravelstoke at Velotown
When we first reached out to Velotown, a new bike shop on the 101 in Leucadia, to see if they wouldn’t mind stocking a few of our water bottles we were blown away when they offered us an entire wall! It’s been a pretty cool experience to come up with a unique space to showcase some of our merchandise in this new collaborative space on the Pacific Coast Highway in North County San Diego. The new location opened earlier this year and is home to Velotown, Queenstage Coffee and Hamburger Hut. Having coffee, bikes, food, and beer in one location makes it the perfect spot to start and end rides, as we did with our entire DirtChurch gravel adventure series this past fall.
The space we had to work with for retail was only a small wall with a window into the coffee shop next door. For the design, we worked with industrial designer and local artist Sims Kelly, who came up with a three-dimensional surface that would offer increased visibility to people in the main Velotown shop area, and to those walking through from Queenstage Coffee. Below you can see the wall before construction, and a few shots of the new wall made completely from plywood.
We were thrilled with how the space turned out after a primer coat of white paint! There’s room for storage on a horizontal shelf above, and a single LED light illuminates the window area below. For retail hanging hooks we went with simple bolts, nuts and washers from our local hardware store which seem quite strong as they are mounted directly to 3/4 ply. For hats we used a single joint hanger and a custom cut 2x4 for the platform. In addition to hats, we also have water bottles, t-shirts, and socks for sale. Sheet metal was also added for attaching photos or signage with simple magnets. In the future, we would like to add some color to the wall and maybe even a painted mural.
Thanks for reading and we hope you like our very first retail wall space. If you’re in San Diego please swing by and say hello!
If you are local, be sure to join us at Velotown this Saturday, December 10 for the This Is Not A Gravel Race Pre-Party at 6:00PM where you can see it for yourself. More details here.