What gets featured on YellowCrank and what does not make the cut

After just coming across an interesting product but then deciding not to feature it here, I thought it would be a good idea to list the criteria companies, and products must fulfill to be eligible to be included here.

This place was created with one primary vision: To be a central spot and hub where readers can find all interesting products from small and medium-sized companies and where excellent products from smaller companies can get more exposure. A win-win for both consumers and brands and a counterweight to all the websites and magazines that mainly promote or sell big-brand products (big brands are traffic magnets and have plenty of advertising dollars. Thus, any commercial site will naturally gravitate towards them).

Thus the first criteria for product listing is clear:

1) No big brand allowed in.

Is that as straightforward as it sounds? Not quite. For example, where is the cut-off in terms of size? Is the company behind a smaller brand small itself, or do they belong to a larger company? If yes, what’s the story behind the brand? Did the larger company found it to occupy even more of the market, or is it a previously small outfit that has seen some investment to grow but still primarily operates independently with the founder still involved in day-to-day operations? I try to find out as much as possible about ownership and then make a sensible decision. Is company size the only criterion? Surely not! I love engineering and design and greatly respect the ingenuity and creativity of people who develop a new product and the amount of work that goes into a product from inception to go-to-market readiness. This then sets the expectations and criteria that a product must fulfill:

2) The product has to be innovative or distinct in engineering or design.

Plenty of small companies exist that make decent products that neither innovate nor are outstanding in design. That is fine, but not the ambition any company should have. While these companies might still design products to some extent, some take an existing product that is available as ODM (a finished product from a manufacturer), brand it, and sell it as their own. Sometimes they might opt to boost their sales by laying down a claim of ingenuity and innovation on their end (anyone who uses Facebook has undoubtedly come across those ads). If I know the product is not being designed in-house, I will not feature it.
It must be said that it’s not necessarily wrong to buy and rebrand an existing design; many wheel and bike frame brands do that. Why is this not just a cheap way to make a quick buck, and why might you still be better off buying the branded product than factory direct via Aliexpress? It’s a topic that warrants its own post, but in short, with the branded product, you usually get import, quality control, and after-sales service taken care of. Brands just shouldn’t be dishonest and claim they designed or invented something themselves.

One final remark:

Why seem some products here so far out or even a little crazy?

There is good reasons for that: 1) I understand that any innovation before it get mass commercialised might look a bit far-out, so what? Does that mean that the underlying idea is bad? Of course not! The history of bicycle development is full of examples of products that were ridiculed at their times. Sometimes they disappeared, only to appear decades later again when developments in material or scientific understanding made that type of product interesting and feasible; sometimes they caught on right away, which by the way can still mean a decade until it’s more widely available. Sometimes of course, also bad ideas disappear. 2) Not a engineer myself and not able to test all the products myself, I feel I should not be the one to judge. I leave this up to you, and up to history.

Got any feedback or questions? Please comment in the section below!