Sunday Bicycles rebrand

greg roche

SUNDAY BICYCLES: THE SECOND COMING
Sabbath is the new Sunday. That’s the message from the people behind Sunday Bicycles who have announced the business being rebranded to Sabbath Bicycles with immediate effect.

Greg Roche, owner and director of the business explains: “Throughout our short existence we have been pursued by an American corporation claiming trademark infringement and have persistently demanded rights of our domain name. While we have been advised by our UK lawyers of a 60% likelihood of success at High Court, the cost of taking the case there (in excess of £50,000) is totally prohibitive to us as a small UK business. From our perspective, it feels like Corporate America has won simply by being significantly wealthier than us… “

Sabbath Bicycles has grown successfully in the two years since it’s inception in October 2006. Originally set up with nothing more than a £10,000 overdraft, second year UK sales stand at quarter of a million pounds. The business is now contemplating European and global marketplace opportunities, as well as planning to expand its current sixteen strong retailer network to 40 in the next 12 months.

Greg Roche continues: “The key message is that we haven’t changed. I’m still running the business, Iain is still delivering the designs, Gareth remains in the workshop. We are not being taken over by a big suited and booted corporation. No venture capitalists have insisted we do this. We are the same business, same company registration number, same VAT number and most importantly the same great products with the same look and feel.”

Sabbath Bicycles is looking to minimise impact on customers both new and old. With this in mind, http://www.sabbathbicycles.co.uk/whyReb ... abbath.php should answer any concerns or queries that either you or your customers might have. If it doesn’t, please contact Sabbath directly on 01625 617333.

giant_man

Sorry to hear of your troubles with the other company Greg. Being in business myself, I can sympathise with your name complications and concede that indeed, money does talk volumes.

Best of luck with Sabbath mate!

GeorgeShaw

I can't make up my mind if the new name is too Christian or too Heavy Metal ...

Grifcp

Jaysus...gotta love bullying aholes eh! Go for it guys, and best of luck to you! I'd be grateful if you would PM me the offending corporation's name so I can avoid their products.

wilwil

I can see the problem. When I have done a search for you I always get a BMX teenage lifestyle website with the same name. Presumably they are the US company you refer to.
Good Luck.

kafkathedog

Hmmm....you wouldn't have thought the trendy BMX'ers would be into legals and the like.

Perhaps we should all send them an email saying 'shouldn't you be out riding instead?'

You've probably done the right thing, the only people who win out of such encounters are the lawyers.

Shame though 'sabbath' isn't as nice IMO.

greg roche

Funnily enough, i suspect the cool BMX dudes know nothing about this... they appear to have been bought by a massive corporation shortly after we set up and i suspect that as part of that purchase the lawyers reviewed what they had and spotted that neither company had secured a trademark. They sent us a letter which was incredibly aggressive and haven't backed off since.

In the meantime, i've had not one enquiry for a BMX or skateboard, and i'd be surprised if anyone has tried to buy a custom titanium road frame from them, which kind of made me wonder why they needed to put me through all this in the first place...

Thanks everyone for the positive and supportive response. As you can probably imagine we've been really worried about the response but customers and suppliers alike have been great over the last week and that's made things that much easier.

Greg

mackdaddy

Don't take it too personally. The lawyers have a business too and clearly in the times of credit crunch they need to drum up business and justify their fees by creating an issue out of nothing and being paid exorbitant fees for resolving something that only exists in their heads.
I blame the corporations for not just throwing them out on their @rse.
It is similar to WWF wrestling versus wildlife. I never went to a wrestling match (hypothetically of course - wrestling is just nonsense) to see if I could see 2 pandas fight! Although it would have been easy to give a pund to save Hulk Hogan from certain extinction.

Good luck Greg, I'm sure it'll work out. Let the bikes speak for themselves. Just wish I could afford one, regardless of the name.

giant_man

The important thing is the bike Greg, not the name imo.

And the customer service quality from a company such as yourselves.

verloren

Glad to hear you're looking past this stupidity, Greg - it must be disheartening having to give in, but you're right to focus on what you do best. Not totally sure about the new name though - isn't Titanium supposed to be light metal?

Just a thought - you might want to rename the 'Sunday Supplement' link on your website before their lawyers decide that's enough to keep them billing for a few more weeks.

meagain

Should be lots of "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath" links/lines on which you can hang model names!
Mind you, might have to watch out for heavy mental (sic) lawyers...

maddog 2

Sabbath ...?

who thought that name up?

greg roche

Me.

meagain

Obvious. Top band, top bikes!

kafkathedog

I do like your banner ad on the 'road' homepage

Sunday Bicycles
the second coming
Reincarnation 2009

greg roche

I did that, too.

Particularly pleased with the cross made up of our swirly 's' shape logo thingy.

GyatsoLa

Hope your new name goes up the google list. When I googled 'sabbath bikes' I got an article from a Jewish website about why orthodox Jews should refrain from cycling on sundays!

kafkathedog

GyatsoLa wrote:

Hope your new name goes up the google list. When I googled 'sabbath bikes' I got an article from a Jewish website about why orthodox Jews should refrain from cycling on sundays!

Unfortunately if you've only just registered it that may take a couple of months IME. But it will probably take a while for 'them' to get hold of the domain, reroute the DNS and for google to notice the changes.

You can use google tools to submit your site if you haven't already, this MAY speed things up, however Google is pretty proficient by itself

kafkathedog

One thing you can do is do a post on your blog entitled 'Sabbath Bicycles' as blog entries get read really quick, especially .blogspot ones.

cyclingvet

With the heavy metal connotations of "Sabbath" have you considered sponsoring the Rock Racing Team?

meagain

Do you have a WSD model? "Titanium Maiden"?

mike ives

I sypathise with you immensely. American businesses do agression very well, but then nayone can do that; it diesn't require skill. I haven't purchased from you yet but definitely will in the near future.
Happy trading!

Leedsblue

Who thought that name up

Me


Great response. Killed that conversation stone dead.

FWIW I think the new name is much better than the old name. Good luck

Monty Dog

Trademark ownership comes under a few broad classifications - there's probably only one 'Sunday' trademark for the whole of the sports market and hence the potential conflict with the US company - if they own it, then they may have a claim. In a previous job I had to contest a number of trademark claims so speak from experience, and US lawyers can be very litigous and verbose, even when their claims are pretty spurious - they often think a US registration gives them a worldwide mandate. Event though Sabbath might not come up on a web search, somebody still might own the trademark classification, so may be worth getting a search done before you spend any more effort and money.

greg roche

Hi All,

I'm been to Stuart Holdsworths funeral today. Puts bike rebrand shinanigans into perspective. As you may know, Stuart ran the Etape Du Dales and was on the committee of the Rayner Fund. We worked with him as bike sponsor to the Etape, helping raise some money for the fund. He was a fantastic guy, and the 300 + people, made up largely of cyclists, at his funeral was testament to the fact that i'm not alone in thinking that.

Anyway, thanks again for the supportive posts and advice as far as our business goes! Sabbath is trademarked in the vehicles section of goods classification so no worries this time around. But that was our issue with the whole thing. We started as a business in October 2006. They regstered their trademark application in the UK and Europe in February and informed us in March. So when we started we were naive not to register the mark for ourselves, but there wasn't already a registered, similar trademark either....

Anyway, water under the bridge. And we'll be at the etape du dales next year and i hope we can help make the event something Stuart would have been proud of.

Have a good weekend.

Greg

blorg

Good luck with the rebrand Greg. Although not a customer I was well aware of your company (I got a Van Nicholas in the end) and had never heard of the US BMX company. It's a tough one TBH because I'd have to say "Sunday bicycles" was the better name, Sabbath has too much of a religious connotation which can hurt from both ends. Best of luck with it anyway, keep making good bikes.

richardjallen

There's nothing to stop you naming a bike Sunday though is there?

Mad Monkey

Hi Greg

Glad you didn't let the lawyers get you down. I actually prefer the name Sabbath, but I'll gladly keep the Sunday logo on the September I bought from you 6 weeks ago.

Excellent product, even better customer service.

Good Luck for the future.

wjws

Hi Greg,

Best of luck with the rebrand - could not be happier with my Monday's Child - a brilliant bike!

Big Red S

richardjallen wrote:

There's nothing to stop you naming a bike Sunday though is there?

Iron Horse make a bike called the Sunday...

Sundaycyclist

Hmmmm. Does that make my Sunday Silk Road a collectable item? I'm not selling though! Like the new name and best of luck with the relaunch.