Introducing... the Podium Club!

The Podium Café is proud to announce the launch of the Podium Club, a buyers club for Podium Café members. This will be an incredibly easy way for interested people to save money on great gear... and for everyone else, very easy to ignore.

The Skinny:

We will invite sellers to sell stuff to us at rates you can't find elsewhere (well, not easily anyway). Right now we are kicking off the Podium Club with a deal from the rather beautifully named Podium Cycles, which is not currently a part of the vast Podium Café empire; it's a shop in North County Coastal San Diego... more about them in the next post.  Podium Cycles has a number of specials in mind for us, and we expect other retailers to take an interest in this service too.

So people will come bearing deals, and we will screen them to make sure they're good ones - namely, better than what you could readily find yourself. All you have to do, if you're interested, is be a member of the Podium Café by creating a login - which is free and doesn't actually require divulging any truthful information at all. The only reason for requiring a login is to limit offers to our readers. That's about the extent of my involvement.

When you see something you like, read the whole post to get specific instructions on how to buy that item. My big disclaimer is that all the terms are between you and the seller; the Podium Café isn't a party to the sale. I'm just helping make connections. There will be no need for minimum quantities. Just... if you see an offer you like, contact the seller per the instructions and work it out.

Like the other ongoing matters, I am creating a special page which will display a running list of the deals we've been offered. Since this is a pretty low-tech arrangement, I'll throw in the disclaimer that sellers can pull the deals when they see fit, and we might not have gotten notice, especially if it's been a while. Of course, if deals are disappearing too quickly without reason, those sellers may not be invited back. But I'll try to make sure that things like "limited time only" and "limited quantity available" are stated up front.

I will publish a single post for each deal, so the site isn't crawling with offers... gear sales are not why this site exists. Hence the special page, where people who are looking for the offers can find them easily, at any time. All of this will make sense once I post the first offer and you can see what we're talking about. And I'm doing exactly that in a few minutes.

Oh and... if you know other sellers who might be interested in making us sweet deals, pass this idea on. If it meets our standards, making the offer is free.