"I found a crack in the market and filled it": Bum Butter cycling chamois cream enjoys "dream" spike in sales... after Amanda Holden gave brand a shout-out ahead of charity cycle; Shimano 'crankgate' rumbles on + more on the live blog

"It all started when I woke up to a text telling me 'Hey mate, you are all over Amanda Holden's bum'… complete with some screen shots from The Sun online. Blimey!"

Bum Butter owner Charlie Hobbs has had quite the week, his chamois cream business being catapulted to fame by some comments Amanda Holden made ahead of her charity cycle this week.

Charlie explained: "Then my wife passed me her phone with a Good Morning Britain TV interview with Amanda and Bum Butter. Then the story was picked up by countless news outlets 'Amanda Holden smothers herself in Bum Butter'… and just like that Bum Butter is now a household brand name."

In an entertaining blog piece on Bum Butter's website, Charlie asks how does the "mega turbo publicity benefit a small niche business"?

"This is dream marketing, this is off the scale, this is what every small business wishes for… or is it? It is. Website traffic is up, and sales are up. But it was very short lived. 'Today's news is tomorrows fish n chip paper' is an old saying from when old newspapers where used to wrap your fish n chips… and it is very true. I rode the Holden wave and it is now fading away. The chart below clearly illustrates 'Holden's Spike', and you can see what seems to be a sales tail, in grey."

"This got me thinking…. How much would it costs for TV news, celebrity endorsement, and a double page story in The Sun? How much would this publicity cost if you were to buy it? I don't know, but it could be £100-£300k. That is a guess. What was it worth to Bum Butter? A very welcome surge in sales…  and hopefully a nice step up in brand awareness that will help in the longer term. Just so you know. This publicity was not requested, paid for, or even known about until it happened."

And in an amusing twist, Charlie's on Heart this morning talking to Holden about the product... "Whoop whoop…. The Bum Butter media rollercoaster ride is back on. This time next year Rodney…"

Presumably Cycliq or other camera brands won't be getting the same treatment...

> Britain's Got Terrible Cycling Takes: Amanda Holden says cyclists with cameras are "asking for trouble"

Jelmer Bijvang, Berend Bervoets and Kevin Smit have been crowned European Bike Mechanics Championship winners, representing the Netherlands. The Shimano-organised competition saw the participants "demonstrating their technical prowess, clear communication and teamwork, their ability to quickly identify and fix complex mechanic issues". Italy were second and Germany third. According, to Shimano the tests included:

• 'Drivetrain Setup': (Installing a SHIMANO CUES front crank, choosing and installing a cassette that is compatible for the CUES drivetrain; fine-tuning the front and rear derailleurs using E-TUBE PROJECT Cyclist to customize SHIMANO ULTEGRA Di2 shift buttons)
• 'Wheel maintenance': (Servicing a freehub, replacing the freehub body and performing a brake bleed)
• 'Hub Gear Maintenance': (Disassembling, cleaning and reassembling SHIMANO NEXUS internal hub gear)

 No word yet on if the tiebreaker round in case of a draw would have been full crank inspection...

This gem from St. Louis remains the king of scary bike lanes. pic.twitter.com/YGTJVksG5y

— Peter Flax (@Pflax1) October 9, 2024

Great to see the Two Tunnels route will reopen in the near future https://t.co/RJW9axEh3R

— Laura Laker (@laura_laker) October 10, 2024

The BBC has reported that Bath & North East Somerset Council is to install a pump at the entrance to the Devonshire Tunnel in Bath with the aim of diverting flood waters.

Flooded by "increasingly severe rainfall", the eight weeks of work is being carried out on behalf of Sustrans, with the hope that the popular active travel route will be flood-proof afterwards.

"The original Victorian drainage in the Devonshire Tunnel has not been able to withstand the increasingly severe rainfall we have experienced in recent years," Councillor Paul Roper said. "These essential works to install a pump will future-proof the route and ensure that it can remain open throughout future weather events. This is an important route for both commuting and pleasure and we apologise for the inconvenience while the works are carried out, however this is a long-term fix that needs to be done."

> RideLondon "hiatus" for 2025 due to opening of "car use-encouraging" tunnel, suggests FOI request, after London's walking and cycling commissioner objected to closure of new tunnel for cycling event as "absolute no"

You might have seen, crank inspections and Shimano are back in the news. That's because yesterday we shared this piece on a Lake District-based bike shop that claimed in an online video that it had been "banned" by the components giant due to failing 100% of them.

> "Banned" bike shop claims Shimano won't let it inspect Hollowtech cranksets as part of "inspection and replacement" programme due to failing 100% of them

Very YouTube-friendly language of course, the "ban" relating to Mapdec Cycle Works no longer being paid the £35 Shimano is giving bike shops for each time they look at customers' cranks as part of the "inspection and replacement" programme. Why? Well, Mapdec believes it is due to its 'fail rate', or at least its 'not pass rate' being 100 per cent (the bike shop refusing to pass any and sending them all back to Shimano for a second opinion).

Some added context to all this is that a few days before Shimano's UK distributor Madison got in touch to reveal the news, Mapdec had uploaded another video, in which owner and founder Paul Vousden said: "We don't bother inspecting them, we just ship them back, it seems to be the industry norm on all the bike and mechanic forums that we follow, they all just say just ship them back, get a new set."

It's this additional detail that left some reacting to our story with little sympathy for the bike shop, even if many accept the moral argument to Mapdec's stance — and almost all believe Shimano should have simply ordered a full recall last September and replaced everyone's cranks, not just asked customers to keep riding and get a mechanic to inspect them when they suspect something has gone wrong.

john_smith: "Doesn't Shimano issue instructions on how the inspections are supposed to be done and what constitutes a pass or fail? If Shimano pays shops to do given checks in a given way and fail/pass the parts in accordance with given criteria, then a shopkeeper can hardly complain if he gets 'banned' for doing something different (which I presume is what is happening here)."

That sentiment was echoed by other comments too. Yes, Shimano does issue instructions, a summarised version of the scintillating 36-page dealer's manual in the original story. 

From Mapdec's perspective, Vousden admitted they do inspect them properly, filling in the form, doing all the checks, cleaning the cranks, and taking the photos required. But, they won't 'pass' any...

> Investigating Shimano's snapping cranksets: What happened, unanswered questions and an engineer's report

"It asks us, inspection passed or failed?" he continued. "There's no in between. It's a pass or a fail, so our policy has always been if it's clearly failed, it's obvious, it's a fail. But we would never write the word 'pass', we would always write something like 'customer reports creaking, customer not happy with the pass, unsure, please check'. So we thought that we'd send them off to Shimano and Shimano would then offer a second opinion.

"Our policy was always we don't want to be the one that says this is a pass, we always thought that, even though Shimano gave a liability release, that liability release in our mind wasn't strong enough. Also we had customers coming up to us and saying: 'Well how do I know it's safe?' They'd come back the week later and say: 'Can you inspect it again it's still creaking? I'm not convinced this is not going to fail... I want a new one, I'm just going to keep coming back every week until you fail it'.

"I've always always put our customers first and I've never thought I'm going to be on the side of Shimano here."

And while some comments under our piece have little sympathy for the "ban" considering the context of what was claimed previously, it's fair to say the underlying feeling is that all this would have been avoided if Shimano had simply ordered a full recall last year...

NickSprink: "I watched the vid when Mapdec released it, and I completely agree with their approach. They are not materials engineers, they don't have the ultrasound and X-ray equipment to establish this sort of issue (like the airline industry uses). A visual inspection and listening for 'creaks' cannot be sufficient. If I had one of the cranks listed, I would expect a full replacement.  Anything else I would consider a fob off, and be very disillusioned."

EK Spinner:  "[Quoting the story] mechanics are required to undertake a process of inspecting and cleaning. The recall of last September is for 11-speed Hollowtech II road cranksets that were produced between 1 June 2012 and 30 June 2019, and covers the model numbers: Ultegra FC-6800 and FC-R8000, and Dura-Ace FC-9000, FC-R9100, and FC-R9100-P."

 "That should be the end of the process for the bike shop, the next line should be 'Once a relevant crankset has been identified, bike shops are asked to return the chainset to Shimano'."

> "It's a bit of a mess": A solicitor's take on Shimano crankgate on our latest Podcast

Legin: "You may agree or disagree with the approach of Shimano to this issue. However this Bike Shop publicised that they were not following the process that they were taking the money for."

Mr Anderson: "The clear and important issue is that, a crank may pass one inspection, but that does not guarantee that crank is defect free, it can still fail sometime in the future. As the video pointed out, the shareholder had this very experience. Mapdec is putting the customer first. All cranks should be shipped back to Shimano for them to inspect, and issue a warranty they are safe to use."

If only there was a way this whole inspection programme could have been avoided...