Anyone who has started their own business will tell you that it is the both the greatest and most difficult thing you will ever undertake. Your heart has to be in it. Crema was a passion project for me with the simple idea of building the bikes I wanted to ride. But how to gain customers and sell them? Taking from my experience in the specialty coffee business, and borrowing from the Italian influence on cycling, Crema was born. From there I created the brand name, voice and tonality. We built out the first coffee - bike studio in Europe to showcase the bikes, offered a premium level of service and built out merchandise to support our loyal fans of the brand. We showed up to key events, even creating our own like the Short Track Series and CrosstoberFest with coffee machine in tow. We won the accolades of the magazines and were very creative in working with our partners to show up in other brands advertising and events. We were the first brand to have a ‘gravel’ bike and followed that up with the first ‘adventure gravel’ bike that was soon replicated. To this day, people love Crema, something that I will always be very proud of.