The question we had coming into the Christmas holidays last year was, how can a little brand like TASCO MTB have a larger impact on our mountain bike community than just stoking them out with killer product to wear before and after their biking adventures.  I think we have stumbled on something really cool...

Last December in the inaugural TASCO MTB Bike for a Buck Charity Sweepstakes, we partnered up with Rocky Mountain Bicycles and saw over $5000 go to one of our favorite charities, World Bicycle Relief.  Sure, maybe half of this donation was thanks to an anonymous donor who was a fan of what we did, and maybe Rocky Mountain nearly giving us the bike as their contribution was ridiculously good of them, but either way we were pretty pleased with the amount of support by so many to make this happen!   Through this campaign, we were able to provide 35 Buffalo Bikes through WBR to families in need of these utility vehicles for their livelihood.  Oh yah, and Patrick Sterling of Monument Colorado took delivery on a brand new Sherpa 27.5+ bike, so he won big on the deal as well!  

Fast forward to June 2, and the second Bike for a Buck Sweepstakes.  This time we partnered with Pivot Cycles and Camelbak to bring it back a little bigger, and were able to arrange a great price with the folks at Pivot to buy the highly esteemed Mach 429 trail bike!  With 29 inch tires making a re-resurgence in the trail bike category, we figured that we could get a lot of people drooling over this beauty during the contest.  The chosen charity was NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) who is doing an outstanding job of bringing support to leagues and teams across the country to get more middle school and high school kids out riding their bikes!  Their slogan is #morekidsonbikes, and we see that as less kids on the couches and streets too!  

Still not sure if the real draw for people was to win the bike, or donate to NICA, but either way, we saw our great community come together to help support this event, and are pleased to say that we are able to donate a total of $5847 to NICA.  This includes a $500 pledge from the winner of the bike, Joel Maus!   Thanks to the hundreds of people and industry partners that shared this info on their social media pages to help get the word out.  Companies like Bike Magazine, Mountain Bike Action Magazine, Maxxis Tires, Camelbak, BikeRumor, MTBR, Pinkbike, Epic Rides, Pivot, all spread the word and we saw thousands come to participate!

Now is a good time to introduce Joel Maus of Fullerton California.  On June 22 at 6PM, a few of us were still in the office to participate in the drawing of the winner.  This time is exciting for us -it’s been a lot of effort to get to it, and it is the high point of the contest - seeing who you are going to stoke out of their mind!  We pulled Joel’s ticket, gave ourselves hi fives and went straight to work getting a hold of him.  After emails and texts were sent, phone calls were made, we weren’t able to get him on the line.  Talk about a downer!!  Then we decided to do a little sleuthing on Instagram to see if we could learn more about our winner.  This is what we found so we decided to give him a little time to get back to us.   

Knowing that Sedona has some pretty spotty reception, we were pleasantly surprised to get a call from Joel early the next morning.  He was truly stoked out of his mind, and immediately realized that the trails of Sedona would be much better suited to the Pivot than his hardtail!  He offered to drive down to Pivot (based in Phoenix about 2 hours away) to pick up his winnings, but no such luck.  Turns out there is quite a bit of demand for the Mach 429, and keeping this bike in stock isn’t an easy feat for the folks at Pivot, so we had to put in an order for Joel’s bike.

Congrats Joel, and thank you for your pledge of an extra $500 to NICA – that’s a pretty classy move!  And thank you again to all who participated by buying tickets and product during this event.  We are a pretty rad little community, and TASCO MTB is stoked to be associated with you all!   Stay tuned for details on the next one….

Happy Trails!