It is with great pleasure that we announce that Black Seal Imports, those fine folks who distribute Yeti Cycles, Urge Helmets, Brake Authority pads and cSixx components here in New Zealand, have joined with Trail Fund NZ to launch our “1% For Trails” program. That means 1% of everything that Black Seal distributes or sells direct will go to Trail Fund NZ to help support mountain bike accessible trails here in New Zealand.
This contribution will be a great help to Trail Fund NZ and will help the project do even more in terms of supporting funding, education and marketing all the great volunteer trail building projects that are going on around New Zealand. It is also an especially generous contribution considering this is an industry that isn’t known for fat profits. Of course for those of us who know Black Seal it’s not a huge surprise that they have been quick to get onboard. The driving force behind Black Seal is of course former professional mountain bike racer and Muddy Olympian Kashi Leuchs who founded the company with a dual mission of not just creating a business but also inspiring people to ride bikes more often. Supporting trails is a natural way of doing that for Black Seal and so it’s no surprise that the idea for this came from Kashi himself.
As for the future, Kashi and the Black Seal team are keen to see the ‘1% For Trails’ adopted right across the mountain bike and outdoor industry in New Zealand because they understand that without great trails we don’t have a sport. Of course it doesn’t hurt that more trails = more sales so we’re all hopeful that this type of financial support for trail building, first pioneered by our good friends at Ground Effect, will spread further and help ensure our sport continues to go from strength to strength.
Very soon you will be able to order one of the very cool Yeti / Trail Fund NZ performance riding tops modeled in the photo above. Kashi is going to do a bulk order first up for those who want to get in early, we will post details soon. Keep an eye out too for your own “1% For Trails” stickers in your next order from Black Seal. Thanks once again to our good friends at Cluster Creative who designed the sticker, once again making sure we stay on the right side of cool.