I never expected to run into a genius when I was covering the recent 24 Hour Merida MTB Challenge at Kooralbyn, but there he was.. resplendent in his orange Ay-Up! Lighting Systems jersey and black knicks, and ginger hair pointing in all directions.

Andrew Patten who hails from Lancashire and married with four children (all using Ay-Up lights!) is credited with inventing and supplying “ the lightest and coolest looking lights on the planet” and last Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time.

One doesn’t get the chance to interview an entrepreneurial “super-star” very often, so this humble journalist (a super-star in the making himself!!) decided to make the most of it.

CSN: I suppose without Ay-Up there wouldn’t have been a 24 Hour MTB Marathon?

Ay-Up: Well, there could have been, but they wouldn’t have a lighting sponsor as good as ours. Just this weekend we’ve ‘demoed’ over 50. That means we’ve helped out 50 people with lighting as well as 4 or 5 people with broken down lights, so they’ve been able to continue with their race.

CSN: Tell us a little bit about how the company got started

Ay-Up: The company started about three and a half years ago when I went to buy a set of lights. I was told, “How much money do I have in my pocket? - $400 would buy you a rubbish set and $1000 would buy you a good set”.

All my life I have been in Research and Development and Machine Design, so I decided to research the market and found there was a big hole.

It then took me 18 months to get it off the ground and we’ve been operating now for about 12 months. 

Now we’re selling all over the world and we’re a big hit, because our product is low cost, light weight and bullet proof. It’s just what mountain bikers want.

CSN: I see you’ve gone the whole hog with the lycra, and the knicks and things, so you must be pretty proud of the way things have turned out?

Ay-up: Yes absolutely. It couldn’t have gone any better. Of course, we’ve had our problems, but we’ve sailed through these, and now we’ve got the support of elite riders all over the world.

We started off by way of “word of mouth”, forums, people seeing the lights and talking to people, and we found one of the best ways of advertising was to put it all over your jersey and people started saying, “Hey..what’s that?”

We also manufactured these silicon wristbands with out website printed on them, and they are vitually our “business cards”. We can hand them out in the rain or the mud and they’re not able to get lost.

But we’ve also been helped along the way by lots of people on forums who had bought the first lights and thought “These are really good. We’re going to help these guys!”

So they’ve been plugging the lights and they actually got the ball rolling. Without these people, mountain bikers or cyclists, we couldn’t have gone anywhere. 

CSN: It’s important to work with good promoters, so you get on really well with Two Wheel Promotions?

Ay-Up: I’ve been coming to their events now for 6 years and I know Bill and Libby just through entering their events. When I started doing the lights I was approached by Libby and asked whether I’d like to be Lighting sponsor and I agreed straight away.  And so far, they’ve really helped me, both in pre-event coverage as well as post event support on their website.

In the 12 Hour Dusk to Dawn, we lent out over 100 lights which meant that 75% of the field were using our lights, and after the event, 80% of those riders returned to our tent and bought them!!

So the proof is in the pudding, so they say.

Riders simply trial and test the lights and then come back and buy them. We couldn’t do this without the help of Libby and Bill.

CSN: So how far has Ay-Up spread? 

Ay-Up: Well, last year we went to the Worlds in Fort William, we’ve done a few other events in Australia, we’ve sponsored a few teams in Adventure racing (they love light weight lights with long burn), we’ve sponsored the Keno Adventure last weekend and reports back from the organizer indicated 50% of the entrants had our lights.

But we also do events in New Zealand, and we’re going to Canada to support our riders in the 24 Hour Solo World Cup in July. And on the way back from there, we’re going to go to South Africa where we are sponsoring the “Bull of Africa” Adventure race which is nearly the No 1 Adventure race in the world.

We’re also going to be the Lighting sponsor for the “Old Bull Roarer” event in Alice Springs which is next month.  

Despite all this, we are still a relatively unknown company, but we’re starting to get some really good reviews in the Mountain Bike and Cycling magazines. 

There’s now lots of chatter about the lights, everybody knows what they are.

A lot of people haven’t seen them, but when they see them, they buy. 

CSN:  Where does the term “Ay-up” come from?

Ay-up:  Ay up! is an all purpose Lancashire / Yorkshire word that means Hello, How are you?, Whassup?, G'day, Crikey, What are you up to?, Look at this, Oy!, See that?, Bloody hell!, and  Are you listening?

If you shine a light  at a Yorkshire man or a Lancashire man in the middle of the night, chances are he’s gunna turn around and say “Ay-up!”

CSN: Fantastic…What a great concept. Well done.

Comments

Add New Search

Write comment
Name:
Email:
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."