A Canadian Cycling Magazine reader recently sent a note to the magazine about an interesting description of a bike bag that he found while browsing a local bike shop’s website.
What struck him immediately was a small detail about halfway into the blurb: “The Little John can also fit a small hand gun [sic].” Further down the description, the same detail is repeated, stating that the bag is a “good size for a gun storage.”
The bike shop responds
The reader then reached out to both the shop, Sweet Pete’s in Toronto, and BiKase, the manufacturer of the Little John frame bag.
In an email to Canadian Cycling Magazine, Pete Lilly, the owner of Sweet Pete’s, said that all of the descriptions used on his shop’s website are provided by manufacturers or distributors of the products. The shop hasn’t had issues with that system prior to the incident. Sweet Pete’s took down the listing immediately after being notified. Lilly will revisit his partnership with BiKase during the off-season.
Lilly said that BiKase apologized that Sweet Pete’s had gotten involved in the situation as the shop had not had a part in the writing of the description.
“At Sweet Pete’s, we do our best to avoid mixing politics with business,” Lilly said in his email. “That said, removing the product in question immediately from our website is indicative of our position on the matter.”
Company suspects hack
In an email to the reader who first noticed the description, BiKase’s owner stated that the blurb must have either been a mistake or that the company had been hacked and promised to look into how it had occurred.
When asked for comment for this article, BiKase reiterated that there had been a suspected hack. The writer of the unsigned email from BiKase thought the text had been corrected.
“We despise gun violence and [are] very disturbed by what has been going on in the world,” said the writer of the email from BiKase to Canadian Cycling Magazine.
BiKase was founded in 2010 by Chad Buchanan and is based in Milwaukee, Wisc. The company sells a variety of cycling accessories.
As of May 4, the description is still up on the BiKase website, and on several of their distributors’ websites, including Amazon.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…