We were lucky to catch up with David Harrington recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, David thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
The idea for Triangle Adventures came from my wife Marlo. We have the NC Greenway trail in our backyard and we use it to walk, run, ride bikes all the time. We were riding e-bikes one day on a gorgeous Fall afternoon and we noticed there weren’t many people outside enjoying it. She just leaned over and asked, “Why doesn’t anyone do a tour of this trail?” That’s where it all began.
I started researching, and there used to be a Segway tour of Raleigh, but they went out of business. No one else was doing anything quite like it. We wanted to build something that we would love to do ourselves. We loved history, e-bikes, an occasional beer, and of course the picturesque scenery of the Greenway.
The second half was that we wanted to highlight our town of Clayton. We wanted to shine a light on this very cool town where we lived, and show people the great local hotspots and history. Next thing you know, I got a business license, began building a website, and fast forward… here we are today with Triangle Adventures!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Marlo and I have a history of being very active and loving the outdoors. She was more of an avid biker than me, but I always enjoyed it as well. E-bikes were great because the barrier to entry was very low. Anyone at any fitness level can ride them, and people don’t need to work very hard.
We wanted to make sure this was reflected in our brand. Adventurous, fun, and safe.
Since starting Triangle Adventures, we have become an Aventon dealer, and I have become a UBI certified bike mechanic. We are continuing to build and strengthen our brand. Adventure, fun, and safety.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
At the beginning, when we first launched, we had the misconception of thinking people would just be lined up to do our experience. We did some grass roots marketing, test drive events at the local brewery, and small tent events. We couldn’t hardly give our tour packages away. Our first several tours were just friends and family that we gave away for free to get pictures and videos for social media. But then we ran out of people to bring so we started reaching out Instagram influencers who were willing to trade a video for a tour. So many of our tours were just freebie giveaways. We tried and tried but things just didn’t ramp up as quickly as we wanted.
Lesson learned, it takes time… A lot of time. So much of it is patience, and for us, it took months and months of grinding. We still had full time jobs during the week, so all of our free time was just slammed with marketing, tours, networking events, appearances, etc.
Things began to slowly ramp up, we started getting more and more Google reviews, we started coming up higher on searches, we partnered with more affiliates, and today almost all of our tours are full. In fact, we are turning away business because we don’t have the time. We are looking into hiring people for the 2025 season. Good problem to have!
Key takeaway: Patience, tenacity, dedication, hard work, and more patience.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
We send regular emails to our past customers that are just friendly touch bases. We also do our best to keep people engaged on our social media. Customers, both past and future, are literally everything. We want to make sure they are raving fans and tell everyone about us. We strive to make every customer feel that way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.triangle-adventures.com
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/TriangleAdventures
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/RTPadventures
