Today is SLUK’s 4th Birthday! How time flies. Yes folks, in March 2016 ScooterLab went live for the very first time. Launched by myself and Sticky to bring up to date news and reviews, written by Scooterists for Scooterists around the world. ScooterLab, (or SLUK as it affectionately became known) quickly took off… big style.
Over half a million scooter enthusiasts from all corners of the world tuned in last year alone!
Over those four years, there have been many changes. Sticky jumped ship in 2017 to concentrate on his book writing projects. Something he continues to do very well, he also contributes to SLUK as often as he can. Unlike our Scooterboy humour, the website has matured and evolved, whilst sticking closely to its small-wheeled roots.
Read on for a bit more info and details about the brand new SLUK App.
ScooterLab is 100% Scooterist
We’re not run by a multi-national corporation. ScooterLab is run, written and produced by independent Scooterists – 100%. We try to employ the help and services of fellow riders as much as we can. People like Booga, who will be sticking his big lens in your face at Modrapheniacs this weekend. From the design of our adverts and stickers to the ladies working in the background, we’re all scooter riders. Admittedly, in true Scooterboy style, we don’t do everything by the book. We’re not always politically correct, we’re not always right and we may have to cover scooters/subjects some of you may not agree with but we try our best (aside from the mamby pampy political correctness).
Are you a Scooterist who wants to write for us? Get in touch at editorial@ScooterLab.UK
SLUK mission
As you all know, ScooterLab is a FREE ONLINE MAGAZINE. We toyed initially with running it by subscription but know how difficult the internet is to monetise.
SLUK is a full-time occupation and business (we gave up everything to start it from scratch), it’s not a part-time blog done as a hobby. We thought long and hard and opted to fund things by running specially selected adverts. Our ethos is to only advertise brands, products and shops we either use ourselves or respect and trust. It’s quite easy to get affiliate paid advertising for any old tat, but our readers are a bit savvier than that. As a result, all the adverts you see on SLUK are relevant to our readers and their interests.
It helps us if you click on the adverts and buy something from the people who put faith in us…
Advertising is a great revenue stream but the internet is very hungry, it needs feeding 24 hours a day, seven days a week and it costs a lot in geek food. We thought selling a few SLUK T-shirts might help to make ends meet, so we added a shop in the summer of 2016.
Since those humble beginnings, we’ve seen a minuscule offshoot of a simple merch shop grow into a thriving and integral part of ScooterLab. What started as a few bits of printed clobber accidentally spawned around 70 freshly designed/invented/manufactured SLUK Plastics™.
Products – designed by us (sometimes thought up by our readers) and made by the very talented Nigel. Our products can be seen at every scooter rally around the world. Aside from SLUK, our Plastics range are now sold through SIP and a couple of other selected partners. The online shop has also seen us supplying trusted products and brands made by others and will no doubt grow as time moves on.
If you have a brand, product or idea we might be interested in get in touch at Shop@ScooterLab.UK
SLUK App
It’s a fact of modern life that our mobiles are glued to our hands whenever we’re not riding a scooter. We’ve slowly seen the shift from desktops to mobile/tablet use over the last four years. In 2019 almost 300,000 of you read SLUK on your phone, whilst ‘just’ 172,000 used a desktop and 40,000 a tablet.
SLUK was designed from day one to work on any device and it still does, you can already have our website stored as a favourite on your screen, on either Android (click the link for instructions) or on iPhone – see video above. You can also already opt-in (or out) for notifications when we publish a new feature but things are changing.
For our fourth Birthday, we’re treating our readers and shoppers to a brand new dedicated SLUK App. It’ll be available FOR FREE on the App Store and Google Play in April. For our overseas readers, it will also include some translation features, which should help you to keep up to date with what’s going on.
We’ll bring you the release date as soon as the SLUK App is ready and has been tested.
Thanks and see you on the road
For now we just want to thank each and every one of you for reading our features, clicking our links, sharing our posts and tagging us (and your friends in photos) on social media. It all helps to keep things moving forwards.
We’d also like to thank all the fellow Scooterists behind the scenes who help out in any way at SLUK, you know who you are. Also thanks to our advertisers, your faith in what we do is highly appreciated.
Scooter Media, run by and for Scooterists – see you on the road somewhere soon.
Iggy
it is so refreshing getting daily updates on what is happening in the scootering world, new innovations, nostalgic memories, tours and rallies. Long may it reign
Happy Birthday! Really enjoy the content you guys create and share. Thank you.
Happy Birthday to sluck & friends 🙂
Great achievement! Happy birthday SLUK!
Keep up the great work team Slukers