MetroPed is in transition. transition. transition.
Back in October, I purchased the company I had been working for (New Amsterdam Project) to save it from being shut down. Once at the helm, I realised there were several things that needed to change.

First was the name.
New Amsterdam Project was a good name, very subtle and almost abstract in it’s implications. Subtlety is a quality I appreciate in fine art, not necessarily in business. (Especially a business that is already going to be hard for some people to grasp) So, I tried thinking of something a little more obvious and more accessible to the average American (myself included). Metro Pedal Power is what I came up with. Eh, it’s not spectacular or grandiose, but it’s straightforward, it’s what we do.
Short haul freight in urban areas with human power.

Second, location.
New Amsterdam Project started off in an office in the Agassiz neighborhood in Cambridge (whoa, Cambridge neighborhoods have fancy names?). Andrew had new doors put in when we moved in so that we could roll one of the trikes in. The space was really nice: exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, high ceilings. We even had a couple of very comfortable, cushy couches in there. But it had a price tag of almost $2000 a month. Plus, it was not really a space we could operate out of at all. It was a showroom. So, additionally, we started renting a first floor warehouse space in Charleston near Sullivan Sq. It wasn’t pretty or refined and you had to ride through the “rotary of death” in order to get there, but that’s where the real work happened. It was very cumbersome and awkward to have two locations, with rent and utilities totalling over $2500 a month ( that was almost 50% of our monthly revenue!). So when I bought the company, I immediately ditched that expensive office space with the couches : ( and I moved the office computer and file cabinet into a little corner of the Charlestown warehouse.

Then, my friend Marty (from Geekhouse Bikes) called me about a vacant space he looked at in Union Sq. in Somerville. It’s spacious, has a modest office space and it’s affordable.
Also, it was the original home of Merlin bicycle factory which is basically where Boston’s modern bicycle building culture was born. Mike Flannigan, Rob Vandermark, and a good many of the team at Independent Fabrication started out at Merlin.
So, I signed the lease and we are moving again! I think Union Square is the perfect location for us and we will be subletting part of the space to OPEN Bicycle shop. (a bike shop in Union sq, hooray!)

Third, the networks and the business plan. Geez, I should be working on that right now instead of writing this blog post.

More updates to come!