You may have noticed that we are often out of stock on certain products such as the black Belt Vélo large or medium. We know how frustrating it is when you come across our product sheets and can't order. And for us too, there is nothing more frustrating than these out-of-stock situations, except to be out riding our bikes in the rain and to realise that we are out of patches.

At La Vie est Belt, we don't want to hide anything from you, so today we're going to explain it clearly.

Why we are often out of stock on certain products:

We are growing. More and more of you want to wear us in your size. It's a real thrill to see your enthusiasm for our project and our eco-responsible products. La Vie est Belt We are a team of 5 musketeers. We continue to learn with you on a daily basis. When you learn, sometimes you mess up, like when you forecast certain stocks. And when we screw up, we learn. A true circularity of learning, isn't it? (Did we ever tell you we like circularity?) So we gradually improve to become better at it!

But the main reason for these stock-outs is our raw or secondary material in our case. At La Vie est Belt we design upcycled products such as our belts from bicycle tyres. But there is no supplier of used tyres to whom we can place an order for several pallets of flat tyres.

So it's simple: even if we do our best to make as many belts as possible, we need more waste, more bicycle tyres to limit stock-outs. Yet the material exists, it is just not yet systematically collected. All too often, this waste ends up being incinerated or in unsuitable waste treatment circuits.

No need to panic! We don't intend to stop there. In the team, we are determined to offer you more products and therefore to collect and reuse this waste!

Limiting stock-outs = increasing value = our number one priority. This is our plan of attack.

Today, we are building our collection network. We are developing partnerships with companies that issue bicycle tyres in France (but not only 😉 ): sports equipment manufacturers or companies with bicycle fleets. These discussions take time. Sometimes, the first exchanges date back more than a year. 2022 will hopefully be the year of completion for most of these partnerships. We look forward to telling you more. We look forward to your active participation with new collection points (and not only in the North of France).

In parallel, we are extending our collection circuit through independent bike shops and cycling clubs. If this is your case, you can contact us via this questionnaire.

2022 is also the year of the implementation of the Circular Economy law. In a few words: with this law, a new system of collection and revalorisation of sports equipment will be put in place on the whole French territory as well as theobligation to treat this waste. It is a huge opportunity for us to take part in this project by recycling some of this waste, especially as we are identified as the first bicycle tyre recycler in the sector!

Finally, the optimisation of the washing process is the other major area of work for the production team. Today, we still have a lot of waste in our production because we do not manage to wash 100% of the tyres collected. At the end of 2021, we recruited Robelto, our first professional washing machine. Robelto is in training to send our tyres to the 7th heaven, or rather the 2nd life, and that's not bad!

You can help us!

At La Vie est Belt, we believe that everyone can make a difference. We can each make a positive impact in our own way. You too can help us to recycle more waste (and especially more bicycle tyres) into eco-responsible belts and accessories.

If there is already a collection point near you (link to map), you can drop off your used tyres there. If this is not yet the case, contact the players in your area: the waste disposal centre, sports shops, your bicycle workshop, etc. The more you ask for solutions to recycle your sports equipment, the more these actors will take the time to find solutions to this issue. You too have the power to raise awareness and get involved.

While waiting for all our efforts to materialise with more bicycle tyres and therefore more eco-responsible belts, you can subscribe to thestock alert on the product sheet to be informed of the next restocking.

Thank you all for your patience and support! It is thanks to you that we have saved tens of thousands of bicycle tyres in particular from incineration!

Anything is possible when La vie est Belt !

Mathilde from Team Belt

Ps: yes, we're putting our foot down right from the launch of the blog by talking about stock-outs. 😬