Grinvestors

Grin Tech Investor Program

Grin Technologies is a privately owned business that doesn't believe in short cuts and takes pride in doing things the hard way. We built this operation from the ground up based on a conviction that electric bikes and other light electric vehicles were being overlooked, and have bootstrapped operations year after year to our current state without any outside financing or investment. Our plan is to keep it that way and still be around and innovating 50 years after launching, through long term business practice that transcends the fads and trends of the day.

So why have an investor page?

Grin maintains a line of credit with the traditional banks to finance working capital, inventory, and R&D expenses. We regularly draw on and pay off this line, while being charged interest and bank fees for the privilege. Meanwhile, we have customers who are passionate about ebikes, believe 100% in what we do, and have extra money on the side that they want to put to good use.

We are not especially fond of large Banks and their strict corporate policies, and thought it would be fun to keep more benefits of this venture within the ebike community through what we’ll call a grinvestor program. We’ll open the door to our friends and customers to play the bank, and pay interest in store credit that they can use on their passion projects and every day commuters.

How it works

The process is really simple. We are looking for people who are willing to loan a minimum of $10,000 to a maximum of $100,000 to Grin for at least 12 months. For the duration that the funds are on loan, you will receive 8% annual interest payment in the form Grin Tech store credit which will be deposited into your account. So for instance, if you loan $10,000, then every year you'll get $800 of credit added to your customer account to use on any kind of purchase from ebikes.ca.

Whenever the arrangement no longer works, simply let us know and within 30 days we will return the funds. If extenuating circumstances mean we are unable to return the full principle within 30 days, then any additional interest after the 30 day period would be owed in cash rather than store credits, and we will guarantee the full amount including interest would be paid back within 3 months regardless of the situation.

That sounds great, but how can I trust you? Where is the fine print?

Here is our one caveat; if you don't already know and trust us with our word or would need additional legal documentation then this isn't for you. From our end we are really looking for people who have been customers of ours for many years and with whom we have a good rapport and history together. If you haven't actually purchased from Grin in the past but have been following our activities over the years and feel like you know us and want to participate, then we can consider whether or not this would be a good fit for both parties after some correspondence.

Do the store credits expire?

No, and assuming we succeed at staying around innovating well into the future (that is our mission after all!) then you have a long long time to decide when to use them. Every 6 months we will deposit the next installment and send an email an update with your current credit balance so that you remain familiar with where it stands.

Can I get cash instead of store credit?

No, that's not nearly as fun for us. If there are really extenuating circumstances (like an accident) where suddenly there is no value in having credit for ebike parts then we could work something out, but that's not the point of the spirit of this program.

I love what you do and am pretty wealthy, can I loan even more than this?

The reason that we set an upper limit of $100,000 was to be sure that we would always be able to return people's loan amounts based on our operational cash flows. At the moment we would be uncomfortable with larger amounts, although we much appreciate the vote of confidence!