On to London and Milan, but first…

It is just a few moments before we leave for Lon­don, the first stop en route to the Milan Motor­cy­cle Show. You can­not begin to imag­ine how unbe­liev­able this entire jour­ney has been. The actual “inven­tion” of GoGo Gear only started on March 5, 2009 when I received an email from Jes­sica Prokup from the Motor­cy­cle Indus­try Coun­cil. I had been referred to her as some­one I could talk to about safety wear for women rid­ers. In an email to Jes­sica, I explained the 360 degree reversible, reflec­tive high vis­i­bil­ity line we were devel­op­ing and she very bluntly told me, that’s nice but it’s not suf­fi­ciently pro­tec­tive. THAT was the begin­ning of the edu­ca­tion that ulti­mately led to GoGo Gear as you see it today. There are moments like this when every­thing turns on a dime and this moment was the one that will for­ever deter­mine whether this was going to be a viable busi­ness OR I was pos­si­bly going to lose my entire life sav­ings by bring­ing the wrong prod­uct to mar­ket… per­ish the thought!

This defin­ing moment is con­sis­tent with every­thing that has hap­pened with GoGo Gear and the entire path this ven­ture has taken. At many points along the way, one deci­sion here, one deci­sion there, a chance meet­ing, a chance con­ver­sa­tion, a tele­phone call out of nowhere, a refer­ral to some­one piv­otal in all this, everything has been lin­ing up as if it were some­how meant to be. I’d been some­what aware of this but was too focused on try­ing to resolve all of our tech­ni­cal chal­lenges with the gear.  My atten­tion had been on find­ing great fab­rics and then, once we decided on the designs, fig­ure out how to put the whole thing together. Sam­ple after sam­ple, take it apart, reassem­ble, change this, change that, add this, take that out and the list just went on and on. Mean­while, this whole thing was tak­ing on a life of its own as the months passed. Then, dur­ing the sum­mer, we made a deci­sion made to change fac­to­ries and I’m on my way to China to teach a new fac­tory how to make our coats. That, in and of itself, is prob­a­bly the most incred­i­ble part of this whole story because I am deathly afraid of fly­ing. It may be hard to under­stand but for me, when I’m walk­ing down the jet­way, I feel like I’m dying. I won’t even tell you what it’s like when I’m actu­ally ON the plane! Always been that way, always will…  BUT, in spite of this, I will have prob­a­bly flown about 50,000 miles in 2009 and can’t even explain how that has been pos­si­ble other than, the GoGo kind of just just made me GoGo!

You know, as I sit here fin­ish­ing every­thing up before I leave, I reflect on how very strange all of this is because I’m just some­body who used to have a job, went to work every day and just had a life and then I didn’t have a job any­more. The econ­omy tanked and my only option was to get busy and do some­thing about it but I NEVER expected any or all of this, in fact, I don’t even know what THIS is! Five months ago, I had never heard of the Milan Motor­cy­cle Show and in a lit­tle while, I’ll be on my way there, as an exhibitor. Go fig­ure, I mean, most sane peo­ple who cre­ate some­thing start really small and let it build a lit­tle at a time but I was like, well, let’s just do the world! Why not?!!! Most peo­ple I know think this is all crazy but in a way, understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. The train is leav­ing the sta­tion and this thing has taken on a life of its own and I’m just going to trust that every­thing is going to be okay, that I WILL arrive safe and sound in Europe, the show in Milan will be great, I’ll head off to China to inspect all the GoGo Gear that’s in pro­duc­tion and then I will return to the US know­ing that GoGo Gear is just about to arrive.

I guess this is just one of those sto­ries where you believe fiercely in some­thing, you take action, you do every­thing you pos­si­bly can to bring it to life and to see it hap­pen and THEN, you just get out of the way and hope like hell it turns out okay! I have a feel­ing every­thing is going to be okay and this is going to be the start of some­thing really incred­i­ble, incred­i­ble for all of us because it’s just the begin­ning of some amaz­ing pro­tec­tive gear, filled with inno­va­tion, filled with fab­u­lous fab­rics and most impor­tant to me, filled with so much love that every­one will feel that ema­nat­ing from their GoGo Gear when they’re wear­ing it. Yeah, I know, this may all sound kind of hokey, and maybe it is because every time I get ready to fly, I always feel like I’m dying so I have to tell every­one I know that I love them, but it’s how I truly feel and my hope is that any­one who encoun­ters GoGo Gear and reads or hears of its ori­gins will know that this was a really spe­cial story and not spe­cial because of me or any­one else, but spe­cial because of the pos­si­bil­ity that an idea can come from any­where and anyone.

I can­not close with­out say­ing thank you to a cou­ple of very spe­cial peo­ple on twit­ter. One is Eric Almen­dral, known on twit­ter as @scooterism. Eric is the graphic designer who cre­ated the Scooter­Girls “Go” logo and helped define and refine the over­all look of the Scooter­Girls brand and image. He also cre­ated the incred­i­ble web­site where you see GoGo Gear today. He has bril­liantly cap­tured the essence of what we wanted to express with GoGo Gear and we can­not begin to express our grat­i­tude for his acute under­stand­ing of who we are as a com­pany, of GoGo Gear itself and of the vision I have for the future of Scooter­Girls and GoGo Gear. Eric has also been pro­foundly influ­en­tial in our process of refin­ing the tech­ni­cal fea­tures of GoGo Gear and we would not be where we are today with­out him.

I also do not have the words to express my thanks to Clau­dia Harry, owner of Urban Scooter Com­pany in Atlanta (@urbanscootrgirl). Clau­dia called me while I was trav­el­ing early this sum­mer and was the first retailer to call about Scooter­Girls and GoGo Gear. She doesn’t know this but I was SO ner­vous when I returned her call because she was a “real” store and I was just hop­ing and pray­ing she wouldn’t be dis­ap­pointed in what we were try­ing to do with the line. Clau­dia has been 1000% behind us since that first call and has served an incred­i­bly impor­tant role in dri­ving our sales efforts for­ward, for­ever dri­ving home the point that this is some­thing very spe­cial. It’s one thing to think it your­self but it’s entirely dif­fer­ent when some­one comes out of nowhere, so early on in the process, hav­ing never seen a sin­gle photo and gets on board and says “I’M IN”! I don’t think Clau­dia has any idea of the impact she had and con­tin­ues to have on me by mak­ing that com­mit­ment. It doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily take a LOT of peo­ple to do some­thing like what we’re doing, it more just takes really incred­i­ble peo­ple and Clau­dia is at the top of the incred­i­ble list. She may be on the other side of the coun­try doing her GoGo thing, but she is VERY much with us here in Los Ange­les, at the cen­ter of the start of some­thing very, very spe­cial. Clau­dia, thank you for being “IN”!

Well, it’s time to go to the air­port so I’ll close here and just say I’ll be talk­ing to you from Lon­don and Milan. And for all you twit­ter tweet­ies out there, I’ll be tweet­ing to you the whole way. I’m SO excited to be shar­ing this incred­i­ble jour­ney with you! Bon voyage!

Arlene