This has to be the biggest change I've ever made.
Bolton Ebikes is being renamed to Area 13.
You're probably wondering why in the world would you do that?!
You have a Youtube channel.
You have a podcast.
You have Facebook pages.
You have Instagram pages.
There are so many places the Bolton Ebikes name is known and well recognized.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to change it.
This was not an easy decision to make, but it had to be done.
Before I get into why Area 13, I want to explain where Bolton Ebikes came from
and why I was so reluctant to let it go.
Towards the end of 2018 I was looking for a name for my ebike company that made sense that had some
history that was easily recognizable and that name turned out to be Bolton or Bolton Ebikes.
Odds are many of you still don't know that
Robert Ogden Bolton actually patented the electric bike in 1895.
Now that wasn't the only reason the fact that he had the earliest patent for an ebike,
but because it was actually a modern ebike.
In my opinion it looked like he was really pushing the envelope of
what's possible because the patents showed a diamond framed bicycle.
Very similar to what you see today the same basic design it had a battery mounted
in the middle of the triangle which is basically how most ebikes are made today
and it had a hub motor in the rear wheel which we also see very commonly today.
So again 1895.
Over 120 years ago now.
No one really knows how well that bike actually worked.
Did it even work at all or was it just a patent on paper?
I don't know if we'll ever really find out the answer to that.
But I thought that piece of the puzzle was perfect for representing an ebike company.
Now the second reason is that Bolton is a surname that actually runs in my family.
My middle name comes from my dad and my dad's middle name comes from somebody
with some prominent family history and his last name was you guessed it
Bolton and just coincidentally both Boltons, the one in my family history
and the one that invented the electric bike were born in Pennsylvania.
Not exactly at the same time but in the same general time period.
And if you trace both families back far enough you get to Bolton, England.
Now I don't know if they were actually related or if they both
pulled their name from the town of Bolton, England.
I would still love to find that out one day but of course I was always holding out a little bit
of hope that maybe I would find out that I was actually related to the original
quote-unquote inventor of the electric bicycle.
And when you think of bolt like a lightning bolt,
it just really lends itself well to logos and branding.
All of those pieces just fit really well and that's how the B in our logo was designed
was partially a lightning bolt so we could just put a little hint of electricity into our name.
All of this was happening at the end of 2018.
My Youtube channel was just getting started I had less than 5000 subscribers.
But the business was starting to gain some traction because of the
aftermarket upgrades and parts we're providing the
really competitive price on high performance electric bikes we were offering.
Everything was looking great for the Bolton Ebikes brand.
So I did what any business person would do with a unique
name. I filed a trademark for Bolton which was eventually published in August of 2019.
Now if you're not familiar with the trademark process, that's totally okay
you don't need to know that and we don't need to get too much into the weeds about it.
But the short version is, you file a trademark and several months later somebody actually
at the us trademark office reviews your application and either approves or denies it.
If they deny it there's usually some reason like there's already
an existing name that's either the same or potentially confusing with yours or
if they approve it it's because they didn't find any conflicts and you're good to go.
So the Bolton trademark was approved initially.
However with any trademark there is a 30-day window in which somebody can oppose
a trademark that's being filed so that gives anybody that's already out there in business
using a specific trademark to oppose something that they think could conflict with their brand.
Now I'm not going to mention the name of the other company
We do not speak his name.
I thought we had a pretty good case the fact that the trademark office
didn't see a problem with it and it was actually a different name. H
However it was an electric bicycle company. So but this was all going on now in September of 2019.
It had almost been a full year of working on the Bolton Ebikes brand.
I wanted to keep the bolton brand for all those reasons I just gave you.
And I decided it was worth fighting for.
Fast forward more than two years to December 15th of 202, less than 30 days ago, we finally got
the final decision from the trademark board about whether our trademark would be approved
or if it was deemed to be conflicting with a trademark that already existed.
I was surprised to hear that we lost.
That was a pretty big blow to me
because I had now been working on this company with the Bolton Ebikes name for over three years.
The Youtube channel went from just a few thousand subscribers with the Bolton Ebikes name
to now just shy of a hundred thousand.
We have again a podcast with well over a hundred thousand downloads with the Bolton Ebikes name.
But moving forward I had to make a decision. What are we gonna do?
So we made the tough decision to change the name.
We wanted to find something new, that represented our desire to always make bikes better.
We're always working on things behind the scenes here things that you may not see
trying to figure out maybe it's new controllers or frames or suspension, batteries whatever
it is we're trying to figure out how do we make the next generation of electric bikes.
I also wanted a name that would represent our brand moving
forward into the future without forgetting all the great Bolton Ebikes history.
Third I wanted to incorporate if possible
something that goes along with our aviation themed bike models.
Many of you know that all of our bikes are now named after aircraft of some sort.
So why Area 13?
How does that incorporate those three things?
Area 13 is of course a play on words for Area 51 a secret military base.
We've got some secret projects going on in the back
that we can't always tell you about until they actually come to
fruition and we can introduce them into a new product so instead of Area 51 it's Area 13.
Because I want it if possible to figure out a way to make it so that if you already have one
of our bikes you already have a piece of our new brand Area 13 on your bike.
So the good news is you actually do you just don't know it yet I hand drew the original Bolton logo.
And believe it or not it actually took a fair amount of effort to make the lightning bolt
be that's used on our head badges it's used on sweaters shirts hats on some of our batteries and
other things it took some effort to make sure that it didn't look like a 13 to begin with and now
if you look at the b you can probably see oh yeah that does kind of actually look like a 13.
So what we've done is taken the B and just modified it slightly.
You can see that we've taken
exactly part of the original logo and incorporated it into the Area 13 name.
So what happens from here obviously it's going to
take some time for everything to change away from Bolton Ebikes.
As of today our website is AREA13EBIKES.COM
Our new logo is Area 13.
This very Youtube channel is going to be changed to Area 13.
Our podcast will be changed to Area 13.
Everything branding wise is going to be changed to Area 13 Electric Bikes or Area 13 Ebikes.
So if you have any friends that are looking for ebikes make sure you send them now to Area 13.
To help you remember the name we are launching a complete new line of merchandise on our website
immediately we have new shirts for every single bike model that incorporate not
only the Area 13 logo but also the model of the bike so whether you have A Blackbird,
A Lancer, A Sabre, an Avenger, Crusader.
Whatever it is you can buy a new t-shirt which will be
heavily discounted right now to get the word out.
So do me a favor support our new brand name Area 13 go to our website Area13ebikes.com
Check out some of that new merchandise.
And if you're still on the fence about buying an awesome electric bike
I highly recommend you check out The Hydra.
We are going to have it on display at The Sportsman's Expo
That's an outdoor hunting fishing
boating RV camping expo that's in Sacramento, California January 20th through 23rd.
We will be there all four days.
We will also have some special show only pricing on certain models.
If you need a little inspiration to get excited about the show go
check out this video about the Wattwagons Hydra.
It's a full suspension carbon fiber e-mountain bike with over 2000 Watts of peak power!
I'm Kyle, The Owner of Area 13. Electric bikes That Are Out Of This World!