AccessFuel at The 2026 Life Time Sea Otter Classic

It Started on Two Wheels

AccessFuel didn't start in a boardroom. It started with a great idea and a bike.

Our founder, Rob Imrie, is an avid cyclist. Not the kind who owns a bike and talks about riding. The the kind who clips in before sunrise, chases climbs on weekends, and has opinions about bottom bracket standards.

But Rob is also a data strategist. And somewhere between interval training and analyzing ecommerce performance, he noticed something the rest of the cycling industry was quietly struggling with: the brands riders loved were stuck.

Not stuck for lack of great products. Stuck because their data lived in six different places. Stuck because every marketing decision felt like a gut check. Stuck watching ad spend evaporate with no clear explanation of what went wrong, or where to focus next.

The cycling industry builds world-class equipment. But when it came to growing the business behind the brand? Most were running blind.

The Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

Here's a reality most cycling brands don't talk about openly: the average return customer rate in cycling sits around 10–15%.

Think about that. For every hundred customers who buy, fewer than fifteen come back.

It's not because the products are bad, it's the opposite. A great frame lasts years. Components are durable. Most riders are upgrading one bicycle at a time, not building a collection. The product itself doesn't naturally pull customers back to the store.

That means for cycling brands, every customer relationship counts more. The margin for error on acquisition is razor-thin. And the brands that can't see their data clearly, that can't tell you which channel is actually driving revenue, which creative is converting, or which customers are about to lapse, are leaving growth on the table every single day.

Disparate data. Murky attribution. Gut-check decisions that kill performance. It's the cycling industry's silent growth ceiling.

What Happens When Clarity Replaces Guesswork

AccessFuel set out to break that standard.

We partnered with a cycling brand that had exactly this problem. Their paid media channel was active, ads running, budget moving, but the cost per acquisition made the channel impossible to defend. Nobody could clearly explain why. Data lived in too many places. Attribution was murky. Creative decisions were based on instinct, not signal. Every dollar spent felt like a guess.

They didn't need more dashboards. They needed actual clarity.

Within the first week on AccessFuel, they had a unified view of their entire customer journey for the first time. Every channel, Meta, email, organic, pulled into one clean view. Our AI analyst, AIRA, identified the highest-converting customer segments based on purchase history and behavioral data. It surfaced which creative concepts were actually driving conversions, and which were quietly burning budget.

The results, in 30 days:

• CAC reduced by 71%

• ROAS increased 320%, reaching 3.8x

• Conversion rate improved 285%

• Monthly purchases grew 7x

• Positive ROAS achieved on Meta, for the first time since launching the channel

That's not a slow build. That's what happens when a brand finally has the clarity to make decisions with confidence instead of anxiety.

Why We're at Sea Otter

We decided to attend the 2026 Life Time Sea Otter Classic this year, but not to try to book calls or sell.

We're going to genuinely connect with the operators at the heart of the cycling industry. To learn about their experiences and challenges. To hear what's working, what's not, and what keeps them up at night. And to continue shaping AccessFuel into the reliable single source of truth for ecommerce brands that are serious about growth.

This industry is personal to us. Rob didn't build AccessFuel for cycling brands by accident, he built it because he understood the unique dynamics of this market from the inside. The long replacement cycles. The loyalty that exists but is hard to capture in a dashboard. The operators who care deeply about their products but don't have the data infrastructure to match that ambition.

Sea Otter is where the cycling community comes together. We want to be part of that, as riders, as builders, and as partners.

Come Say Hello

If you see us at Sea Otter, don't hesitate to say hello.

Coffee's on us, and we'd love to hear more about your brand, your challenges, and what growth looks like from where you're standing. No pitch. No pressure. Just a real conversation between people who care about this industry.

We'll be around all week. Find us, grab a coffee, and let's talk shop.

Learn more about what we're building for cycling brands → accessfuel.com/cycling