Sideburn is born out of a love of printed products and magazines in particular. That love has kept the magazine alive for 13 years. I also liked the way Paul Smith shops mixed unrelated bits and pieces from other manufacturers in with the company's own designer clothing and accessories, unexpected, and sometimes only related because Paul himself liked them. His thinking, I like these clothes and I like these ornaments, books, gadgets, therefore so might my customers.
When I can I've bought things in from other companies (petrol cans, Co-Built burger flippers, Sudo Cycles' fork guards), often they're hard to find parts, because we can't compete with the huge firms. These two principles overlap with Shredder magazine.
Shredder is a mountain bike magazine, made in Scotland, the side project, labour of love of Stuart Leel. It's A5 in size (the original Sideburn size, of issues 1-10, but T-H-I-C-K, 180 pages or so). It's mainly interviews with riders, and features on riding and the MTB community and culture, but there is also a big interview with Sideburn fave, Toria Jaymes of Stay Outside Studio. The page design is purposely obtuse at times, forcing you to work to read the headline or the pull-quote, the opposite of easily consumed digital media, but the stories are very closely linked to how I think about amateur racing, sometimes questioning the point of it all, and deciding there is one, and it's important to do things more than simply exist and spectate.
There is no doubt Stuart loves magazines at least as much as I do. Take a few minutes to watch the film about him and Shredder.
Then, maybe, buy Shredder.