Koala Blog

WishBoxUSA brings Koala Bottle to the UK – March 21, 2013

Life is very exciting these days at Koala Bottle headquarters, to say the least!  On January 30, 2013, James Huang of Bike Radar raised the curtain for the world wide bicycle audience to learn about our cool and innovative magnetic bottle system.  Within a few days blogs from far and wide began sharing the story of Koala Bottle with their followers and fans. It appears that news travels faster than Mark Cavendish can sprint and that emails stream into our inbox faster than you can pour water into a 24oz bottle. These are truly amazing times!

And, while Koala Bottle was designed to make it safer and easier to get the bottle in and out of the cage while riding, merely reading about this innovative bicycle product will not improve your riding experience. But, attaching it to your bicycle will.  Luckily, we have a terrific new partner to bring our product to European customers – Wish Box USA!

Jerry Smith and John Wilkinson, who started WishBoxUSA, were forward thinking and realized an opportunity existed to bring quality Made in the USA products directly to customers in foreign markets on a low volume basis.  Their service enables small manufactures to satisfy the demands of European customers, who simply want to purchase one or two units of a product.  For companies in the early stages of development, WishBoxUSA enables companies such as Koala Bottle to get the product overseas without having to fill an entire shipping container and without having to go to the post office to ship small orders.

 Koala Bottle’s first WishBoxUSA shipment is available in the UK as of today! We are very excited to be working with Jerry and John.

 Koala Bottle has some huge irons in the fire and is working to build similar distribution channels in Australia, Asia and South America, so keep an eye out for Koala Bottle riding into your neck of the woods.     

A Killer Race and a Beautiful Park – March 3, 2013

Nestled in the Midlands of South Carolina between Columbia and Sumter is Poinsett State Park, an oasis that will stimulate your senses with its old growth forest and pine covered floor.  The well kept and rather undisturbed park is simply beautiful!  The open space and canopy of the forest makes it a tranquil and inviting place for any occasion.  For Koala Bottle’s first visit this past weekend, the rolling landscape of the park made for an ideal venue for a foray into mountain bike racing!

On March 3, 2012, Poinsett State Park hosted the Killer 3 Mountain Bike Race, which is part of a the Southern Classic Mountainbike Series, a calendar of 14 races that runs from March through the month of August.  At 6:00 a.m., I loaded the Koala Bottle tent, table, chairs and some prizes for the racers into my car and headed down highway 378 toward Poinsett Park.  It was a frigid morning, but the air was still and the sun began to peak through the trees at sunrise.  Within an hour of arriving, a mass of cars started pulling into the parking lot, which became a teeming frenzy of racers as soon as the car doors started flying open.  Long lines formed at registration and cyclists were pacing to and from cars and spinning around on their bikes, all the while adjusting their bikes and their layers of clothing.  There was a noticeable air of excitement for the first race of the season.  The overflow of attendance gave the impression that this event has been going on for some time. To my surprise, however, this was only the second year for the Killer MTB race at the park.

Nonetheless, Thomas “Zabo” McCants, the Park Manager, and his crew (Jason, Russ and Kelli) kept the traffic running in an orderly fashion and provided the park visitors with all their needs.  And, in doing so, Zabo and his capable crew were all smiles, simply enjoying the fact that cyclists had descended upon their park from a variety of southern states with one objective in mind – mountain bike racing.  Not to mention, Christopher Moore and Jeff Duncan operated the registration desk like a well oiled machine. Lines formed quickly and in numbers, but it flowed at a steady pace, not leaving much time for chatter.

This was Koala Bottle’s second year on the race scene and its first mountain bike event.  It was truly a pleasure to be invited by Zabo to partake in this event as a vendor.  And, I feel ashamed that I have lived in Columbia, SC as long as I have without visiting Poinsett Park. You can bet that I will be going back very soon to do some exploring. It is also worth noting that Poinsett Park sits only 15 miles north of the waters’ edge of Lake Marion.

As I close out the last words of my first ever Koala Bottle blog, I want to say that the multi-loop 7 mile course made for a fantastic spectator venue. There was a steady stream of racers along all sections of the course throughout the morning. Most of all, however, the event was truly enjoyable because the park staff was so cool and accommodating and the socializing around the Start/Finish area with the members of Midlands SORBA made me appreciate the time and energy that is donated to make mornings such as this possible.