Fabio Grigoletti and Pablo Horn are auctioning off a mountain bike that they financed with the help of sponsors and assembled themselves as their final project at secondary school. They want to donate the proceeds from the sale to the biking organization "Trailnet".

The passion for biking has made Fabio Grigoletti and Pablo Horn friends. For several years now, the classmates at Sek Waldenburgertal have been going on mountain bike tours together several times a week. When the final project was due at the beginning of this year, it was immediately clear to the two 15-year-olds that biking would be the main focus. "Everyone should be able to benefit from our project, especially the mountain bike community. That's how the idea of a bike auction came about," says Horn. They would like to donate the money raised to the Trailnet organization, which is also committed to mountain biking in the Basel area. However, in order to be able to hold an auction at all, an object for auction is of course required - in this case, obviously a mountain bike. Horn and Grigoletti have financed this themselves in recent months through a number of sponsors and assembled it together.

Support from Radix, proceeds for Trailnet

Their mountain bike should be perfectly suited to the various trails in the Liestal region and reflect the zeitgeist of many mountain bikers. They were supported in their project by the Liestal bike store Radix. The first thing the two students did was to look for sponsors. Their plan was for the various components of the mountain bike to be financed by different sponsors. "We used an information letter to inform potential sponsors about our project," explains Grigoletti. "We usually visited the companies in person - on our bikes, of course." This part of their project work turned out to be the most laborious because it took more time and effort and it was more difficult to find sponsors than expected. However, the two were able to transfer their enthusiasm for the project to various sponsors and gain their support.

The best moment for the two soon followed: all the necessary components were in front of Grigoletti and Horn, waiting to be assembled. This only took an afternoon, as the secondary school students already had experience in this area. Both have already built their own bikes and worked on them again and again.

A franc is the starting point

What's still to come is the actual auction of the finished bike on "Ricardo". They hope that they will be able to raise the original value of the bike of just under 5,700 francs at the auction. The auction is scheduled to last 10 days and they will set the starting bid at 1 franc in order to draw as much attention to their bike as possible. The sellers are not worried that it will go for significantly less than its value: they have already heard from a number of people that they will be bidding. They don't find it particularly difficult to part with the great bike, they say. They are "already happy enough" with their own bikes.

So if you are still looking for a new mountain bike and would like to support a good cause with your purchase, you can bid for the Santa Cruz Bronson assembled by Pablo Horn and Fabio Grigoletti at the following link:

https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/santa-cruz-bronson-carbon

Even after handing in their project work in a few weeks, the topic of biking will not disappear from the lives of the young Basel residents: For some it will remain their favorite leisure activity, for others it will become their profession. Horn will start grammar school in August, majoring in mathematics and physics, while Grigoletti will take up an apprenticeship at Radix.