The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Selling mountain bikes all over the planet (Friends)

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Jeff Cayley joins Adam to talk about selling mountain bikes all over the planet and making some of the best outdoor and mountain bike gear, parts, and accessories you can buy. They have a killer YouTube channel as well.

Welcome to Change Log and Friends, your weekly talk show about building a mountain bike retailer. A big thank you to our friends and partners at fly.io. Made for humans and robots. Learn more at fly.io. Okay, let's talk. Well friends, it's all about faster builds. Teams with faster builds ship faster and win over the competition. It's just science.

And I'm here with Kyle Galbraith, co-founder and CEO of Depot. Okay, so Kyle, based on the premise that most teams want faster builds, that's probably a truth. If they're using CI provider for their stock configuration or GitHub actions, are they wrong? Are they not getting the fastest builds possible? I would take it a step further and say if you're using any CI provider with just the basic things that they give you, which is if you think about a CI provider, it is in essence a lowest common denominator generic VM. And then you're left to your own devices to essentially configure that VM and

configure your build pipeline, effectively pushing down to you, the developer, the responsibility of optimizing and making those builds fast, making them fast, making them secure, making them cost effective, like all pushed down to you. The problem with modern day CI providers is there's still a set of features and a set of capabilities that a CI provider could give a developer that makes their builds more performant out of the box, makes the builds more cost effective out of the box and more secure out of the box.

I think a lot of folks adopt GitHub Actions for its ease of implementation and being close to where their source code already lives inside of GitHub. And they do care about build performance and they do put in the work to optimize those builds. But fundamentally, CI providers today don't prioritize performance. Performance is not a top-level entity inside of generic CI providers. Yes. Okay, friends. Save your time, get faster builds with depo, docker builds, faster get up action

runners, and distributed remote caching for Bazel, Go, Gradle, Turbo repo, and more. Depot is on a mission to give you back your dev time and help you get faster build times with a one line code change. Learn more at depo.dev. Get started with a seven day free trial, no credit card required. Again, depo.dev. Okay, Jeff Kaley, it has been, for me it's been a journey. I guess it's been a journey for you too, but I've known of you and have been impressed by you for many years now, if you didn't know that already.

Well, thank you. I see you as a mountain biker, an entrepreneur, and to me those are like two really awesome qualities so you're high up on my list of people to care for in this world and even if you didn't know. I've been really impressed with worldwide cyclery. What's crazy though is when I ask people about it and where they buy their mountain bike gear, they don't always say from you. And that makes me sad. I feel like you should be the most well known just as much as anybody else.

And I don't know. You're not always on the top list, but yeah, well, there's a lot man. The retail space is challenging and competitive and it's changed a lot. And yeah, we're definitely well known and the third biggest in the US and I think the fifth in the world when it comes to the enthusiast high end mountain bike space, but still a lot of options for people to buy things these days on the interwebs. You know, I don't usually ask people to introduce themselves. I kind of like just do it with you naturally, but I feel like you're a left of center guest

in so far that this show primarily speaks to software developers We don't usually talk about mountain biking. However, we did have a mutual friend Adam Miller on this podcast years ago I guess back when he was the original founder of Revel still is the original founder, but now he's buying it back, you know his we'll probably get some of that detail But oh, yeah Had Adam on I would say during some of the heyday for mountain biking, you know, this last several years has been a unique space,

but just because you're a unique guest for this show, please introduce yourself to some degree. How would you introduce yourself? Yeah, cool. Well, I'm definitely not a software developer, although I am very much a nerd in a sense. I love technology and business and finance and all of that, but don't specifically work in that. So yeah, I grew up in Southern California and was just always into extreme sports. Mountain biking was the most prominent one for me. And

I started racing a lot when I was a teenager and raced a couple years professionally out of high school and broke plenty of bones. And I was doing Enduro and downhill racing and, you know, had always worked in the industry and the off seasons as well. And from there, I opened up a mountain bike shop that was online and in store with the idea of it being very much tailored towards the high end enthusiast portion of the market. And I wanted it to be very multi channel retail. So e commerce heavy, but still

have a good in store presence as well. And that was in 2011. So I opened that business when I was 21, which was which was quite some years ago now, and just grew it and scaled it. And we did a lot of, you know, unique content marketing content marketing to put ourselves on the map and have always had a lot of fun in the game of business, trying to make sure our marketing came across as enjoyable and fun and authentic and creative and unique. It really wasn't super tactical. It wasn't calculated in a sense.

It was just more real and this is what we are. We educated people on the things we knew about in the space and did right by our customers and worked really hard to build a good business that had repeat customers and all that and curate sort of all of the best stuff the mountain bike world had to offer. So yeah, we've done that for quite a long time. And around 2016, I had kind of started seeing some sort of cracks forming with that business model of bicycle industry retail. And so World Wide Cyclerage, just for context, was a retailer. So, you know, think your traditional bike shop, albeit, you know, mostly online and specifically geared towards the high end segment of the mountain bike portion and catered towards the enthusiasts. And that business was, it was just the model was changing

in a sense that a lot of the brands in the industry were starting to sell consumer direct and and the retail landscape was changing because of that. COVID came along and the bicycle industry went through this massive boom cycle. Everyone who was already a mountain biker just rode more frequently and got more into the sport, more intrigued with it. People who weren't necessarily mountain bikers got into the sport. It was just a great socially distant activity to get into and the whole industry boomed all the categories.

That lasted longer than most people thought it would, happened probably a couple years, then it went through a huge bust cycle. And needless to say, pre-COVID, we had done a couple things as we saw some faults and cracks with the business, and one of which was fire up a mountain bike Hard Goods brand, which actually did the design and manufacturing

of things like pedals, grips, bars, stems. So we saw that business called Trail One Components and it's really tailored towards giving back to the sport as well as manufacturing all the products. And then we also acquired a very small brand that we did retail called Kettle Mountain Apparel. And it was in its infancy, one of the distributors we worked with

had made it as sort of a cross-functional versatile apparel brand that had some mountain bike pieces. We actually ended up buying it from them because we really wanted to get into the apparel space because we just really enjoyed apparel of all kinds in the outdoor segment. We did a lot more. When I say we, it's like me and my business partners, we did a lot more than just mountain biking. That was in late 2019 that we did that.

And that business now, Kettle Mountain Apparel, is actually a bigger business than World Wide Cyclery. It's grown and scaled really fast. And so yeah, now I'm basically running World Wide Cyclery still, which has three retail stores, still a big online business, running Kettle Mountain Apparel, which makes some mountain bike specific gear, but mostly adventure travel apparel of all kinds, all menswear, and then Trail One Components, which is a mountain bike hard goods brand. So yeah, that's a long-winded way of saying, you know, just some random kid from California

who was really into mountain biking and outdoor stuff and also really enjoyed the game and sport of business. Yeah, I look at the things you've done and from the outside, it's easy to see the highlights, right? But I'm sure there's a lot of challenge in there. 2011, was that still World Wide Cyclery in 2011 or was it a different brand? Yeah, so World Wide Cyclery was the first one. The industry was in a unique spot, right? Because if you look at the bike industry, 70s, 80s, 90s, and even into the aughts, it was kind of a heyday for brick and mortar bike shops. Brick and mortar bike shops did really well. They were good businesses. They had decent margins. They're relatively easy to operate. They were good small businesses.

relatively easy to operate. They were good small businesses. That obviously got really turned up when e-commerce came into the fold. And sort of that 2011 to 2022 was sort of the heyday of the e-commerce side of the cycling industry. And yeah, World Wide Cycling was the first one started at age 21. And the reason I named it that is because if you remember, the US had, you know, fairly recently gone through the huge financial recession and the USD was actually pretty low against a basket of currencies and mountain biking is a super global sport and we have access to a lot of the best stuff in the United States. And there was a big opportunity I saw that you could sell a lot of this stuff online internationally. And that was the initial market I was really focused

on, which is why I named the business Worldwide Cyclery. And for the first three years of Worldwide Cyclery, so 2011 to 2014, we were predominantly international in terms of where we were selling and marketing. And then that shifted. The USD just got stronger and stronger. Different countries that were big sort of mountain bike markets, their currency went downward and our business shifted much more domestic.

So yeah, it's been, Worldwide Cycler is kind of an old business now. It's funny, I hear people all the time calling their business as a startup and it's 10 years old. I'm like, just because you're losing money, doesn't mean you're a startup if you're 10 years old, or even five years old, like get out of here. You're not a startup just because you wanna be cool.

So I'll never say that about our business even when it was a startup. I would say too that you're, and I don't know you personally, but I only know you from the persona you put through the internet basically. The name you attach to your businesses and then I think maybe your personal presence

on your YouTube channel, primarily for World Wide Cyclery. I think I obviously see you in product shots for Kettle because you're like a star. I'm the free model, so that's why. You're the free model. Yeah, why not? If it works for Jeff, it works for everybody else kind of thing.

So I only know what you allow people to see, let's just say. Yeah. And so that's my personal perspective. So, you know, you, you know, your own struggles, you know, your own therapist, you know, your own friends and, you know, all the of your whatever's you're not sharing with me. But I see you as somebody who's like really sharp with business, not like oddly, but but unexpectedly. You know, you're a racer, you've got this athleticness to you, you've grown up in this very harsh sport.

You've broken bones, as you've said. I don't know what kind of mental problems you have to keep doing it, considering the broken bones, but I kind of get it because I've OT beaten crash. I haven't broken anything as a mountain biker, so maybe I'm not really a mountain biker if I haven't. The collarbone is kind of the rite of passage, so consider yourself lucky so far if you haven't broken one of those, you know, and I'm just old enough

now to know that I'm like, you know what? I like mountain biking, but I've kind of like I've downed back. It's just I know what I'm capable of, and I'm only going down mountains that I can pedal up. Yeah. Or want to pedal up, which is the challenge of downhill, I would say, or any version of it. The point I'm getting to though is that you've got this, you got this extreme sport, let's just say background. How did you learn about business? Was it just through school hard knocks? Did you learn because you had to? Did you go to school for some of this stuff?

How did you get sharp on the business side? Was it just, I don't mean that pejoratively, was it just dumb luck? Or how did you get sharp? Because you seem pretty sharp. Yeah, well thank you. I appreciate the kind words. And yeah, I've, I fielded this question

a number of times because a lot of people do see me goofing around on the internet and then also realize sort of what I've built in the business side of things and are like, how did this guy do that? How does that person equate to that person? Exactly. It is definitely unexpected. Yeah, I have a very funny humor too. You bring a lot of real genuineness to you, which is why I loved your primary brain in the first place. It's like I was drawn to your authenticness.

And then even like Liam and the rest of the team being equally authentic, equally as customer caring, equally as passionate, like that's just truly unique. But that's your content side. But that's your content side, that's not your business side. Like how did you get sharp in business? Yeah, so the business side, you know, I think part of it was a little bit of just

something I always enjoyed, sort of unknowingly. You know, when I was a kid, when I was about 11 years old, I, you know, that was that was when eBay was just this awesome marketplace where anyone could sell random things. I had discovered eBay as a fifth and sixth grader and started selling random stuff I could get my hands on around the house. My dad, he would get gifts at white elephant parties or whatever. He's a medical malpractice lawyer that defends doctors and super nice dude,

doesn't know anything or care much about business. He's just a really passionate guy in the medical legal field and he would get like random gifts from parties and he would never use and they'd just sit around and be like, dad, do you want this pen or whatever random thing you got? And then, oh, you could sell it. And so then I'd go through the garage and sell things.

And so I started selling all this stuff on eBay as a kid and just figuring it out, just poking around, reading, figuring it out. And then I started knocking on all the neighbors doors and telling them I could sell things for them on consignment and started doing that. And looking back, I didn't even think about it at the time, but looking back on it, I was like,

oh, obviously there was some natural inclination towards business and sales and just commerce, right? Because I was doing that at a really young age and then I loved BMX bikes at that age too. And so I started disassembling BMX bikes and custom painting them just with spray paint and using tape to create graphics on them and stuff. And then I was then I would paint people's bikes for money in the neighborhood and build custom BMX bikes that I would custom paint for friends. And I was like always wheeling and dealing doing stuff that I just thought was kind of fun and never really realizing that that was clear signs of business acumen and entrepreneurship. I never even thought of it that way.

I just did that stuff because I thought it was fun and enjoyable. I've got incredible, supportive, nice, kind parents that have just always let me be myself and chase my passions when I've had them. Business just fell into that. I started working at a local bike shop when I was 14. Great local bike shops called Michael's Bicycles in Newbury Park. Still in business. They've been in business for I think longer than I've been alive, like 40 years or something.

The owner is just classic, charismatic, good salesman, awesome owner. And I just learned a ton hanging out around him. And he actually really cared. He liked people. He was a really good people person. He loved selling bikes. He loved riding bikes. He loved working on bikes.

He loved running a small business. And I just watched and listened and observed and really enjoyed that. And like a lot of the business acumen that I got was from just working alongside a small business owner that was passionate and good and getting to work. I think getting to work alongside a small business owner, like owner operator, is a really good educational thing as in your formative years in business and entrepreneurship because you get to see their decision-making and what they think about, what they care about, how they care or don't care for customers, things like that. And you know you learn some stuff that you shouldn't do, you

know. He was like most small business owners at the time, you know, a little sloppy with organization and inventory and sometimes how he would organize and prioritize people's service work or not prioritize people. You know, just get your classic small business owner stuff. So I just learned a lot from working there as a kid. And once I got better into mountain bike racing, I was getting sponsored and getting free product. And then in the off season, I would sell it on eBay and sell it through Pinkbike forms and stuff.

And yeah, I just always enjoyed all of that. Like I enjoyed selling things. I enjoyed the, I always had sort of an optimism towards sales in a sense and it was just easy because it's like if somebody comes in and they want to upgrade their bike or buy a new bike, to me it was just so easy and natural to sell that because people are buying these things to have fun

and smile and get an adrenaline rush and be healthy and like go outside. So I just always thought like this is the best thing to sell ever. You're selling fun, selling bikes. So I just like that a lot. And yeah. And so, you know, from there, I, you know, had sort of seen this opportunity to sell more and sell online and told the owner about it. And he's like, that's awesome.

You should do that. But I'm not interested in doing anything more complicated in my life. And he was, you know, quasi-retired in a sense, right? Didn't really want to work much harder than he had been. So then I just did it myself, right? I was like, okay, how can I figure this out? Like, okay, how does this work? You know, he just like basic stuff.

All right. Super basic fundamental things that, you know, I just learned by doing very much so. So I was like, OK, how do I, you know, get my first small shop? What do I do? How do I get money to buy inventory? OK, how do I list inventory that a distributor has that then I can sell and then immediately buy from there and then ship it out? And, you know, these are things that people have terms for in the e-commerce world called just in time inventory and, you know, little stuff like that. And I just figured it out by doing. And because I enjoyed it, it was really easy for me to learn everything. And business was just something that I thought was genuinely fun to do.

And when something is fun, you do a lot, you think about it a lot, you get creative with it. And it's so frictionless to learn because you get creative with it. And you just, it's so frictionless to learn because you're enjoying the experience. So I just learned by doing. And in the early years of World Wide Cycler, I in large part had no idea what I was doing. I didn't really understand a P&L or a balance sheet. I kind of figured it out. And then I just read and learned and then you go to the accountant and he explains things and then you go back and you read more stuff about that and sit there on Google and study stuff and man, it would have been nice to have chat GPT back in those days.

Yeah, yeah. To just, you know, instead of sitting on Google for hours sifting through articles covered in ads and reading things, you could just talk to an LLM. But anyways, that's I just learned by doing and that's it. Like that's... I just learned by doing. And that's it. I think that's the best way to learn, especially when your ass is on the line to some extent. You're running a small business yourself. That's how you learn seriously and take things seriously. And yeah, and then it's like different stages of the business. In the early years, I learned the fundamentals of just finance and the basics of buying and

selling inventory, stuff like that, customer service, customer support, all that. And then as the business evolved, and we needed to hit different... We needed different levers to pull in order to keep growing. It was then, okay, let's get more into marketing. How does marketing work? How do we get people to have desire to buy these products? How do I figure out what does customer acquisition cost and how do I understand that? And so I just learned all this stuff by doing and because I liked it, I just dug into the information more. And I was also just a lot of it's humility. You have to just know you don't know a lot and try things and experiment with things and fall on your face and get back up and

not be afraid to ask dumb questions. And you know, I don't know. So yeah, and I barely graduated high school. So I went to high school for two years. And then I went to charter school, which I qualified for because I was racing mountain bikes as a junior professional athlete. I went to charter school for a year. And then I just figured out you could take the California high school proficiency exam. And I just took that and bounced. And five years later had a multi-million dollar business. So I was like, I didn't learn anything from any formal things.

It seems cool to go to business school and learn this stuff but just doing it yourself I think is a great way to learn. And that's how I did it. Yeah. I also think about the other incumbents in the mountain bike retail space. Now, I started the show off by saying that I genuinely am surprised when I mentioned my affinity for what

you know, your brand, World Wide Cycler, where I buy the majority of, I would say, most of my mountain bike stuff. When I ask folks like about you, they don't they don't know, because there's like Jensen, there's other major, major brands. Yeah. How did you navigate not just learning by doing and like that aspect, but competing against some of the biggest dogs on the planet when it comes to distributing product to mountain bikers? Like, that's got to be.

Challenging, I guess, to put it lightly. Yeah, yeah it is. And I think part of that is just industry knowledge. I always tell people that when they're interested in business or starting a business. And I think one of the most important things is you just really need to understand your industry. Who are the players in the industry that matter?

Who are the newcomers? Who are the incumbents? How are they acquiring customers? How are they retaining customers? What's their reputation like? What's their strategy? Is their strategy getting dated? Is it still relevant?

If you just think and ask a lot of those questions, and the more you have clear and concise answers and understanding of all of that stuff within an industry, that's where you can begin to see really strategic places where you can fit in and compete and do well. And so that's what I did. I was in the industry so long that I knew and understood all these players and their strengths and weaknesses. And I also understood a lot of how the industry was evolving from a very granular backend

side of things. Jensen had started in, I think, 1999. I was a kid. I used to buy from them when I was a little kid. They're still a great business chugging along, right? Their model, because it started so long ago, it was before a lot of the brands and distributors within the industry had good B2B e-commerce platforms. And before those e-commerce platforms

that they used for the B2B side had really good APIs. And then it was before a lot of these software products that came about, which was basically a more sophisticated ERP system that would allow you to take an API from a distributor and configure it and conform it and then send it to Shopify, eBay and Amazon. And so there was a lot of technology and software products popping up in the e-commerce space, while simultaneously the sort of back end software side of things within the industry with these brands and distributors was getting more sophisticated. And I just I was so in the industry, I saw all that stuff and understood how that stuff was happening. When you do that, you start to realize and see opportunities and

you start to also notice what competitors and usually incumbents aren't as attuned to that stuff. Maybe they don't want to integrate it because it's a challenge, because they're fine the way they're doing things, they want to continue doing them that way, or because they have these legacy systems that are hard. So you just start to see all that sort of stuff. And that's how you figure out where you can compete. And yeah, that was a lot of it. It's sort of boring behind the scenes stuff, but it is important stuff, because when you want to go up and fight against really good competitors out there in an industry, you have to understand the industry landscape in a very intricate way like that. What do you think made you win?

What was the initial win or two that really made you think, OK, this is this is legit. Not only is it a good business, but I can actually run this business. I love the people I'm growing up with or adding people on because I can't do it alone. You got a great staff that helps show them the sales and just sell them. Mountain bike stuff is not like sales. It's just passion and a lot of keys. I feel like it, like what you said before, does kind of sell itself. If you're selling it to the right person.

Now, if the market has dried up in terms of customers, it's a different thing. You had a huge upswell whenever COVID happened, then a big old, you know, let out, so to speak. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that's much how that changed the world. But like, really, it seems like it's like damaged the mountain bike industry in a way, but that's a different let's table that for the moment. When it comes to like the first initial few wins, like when did you really see the light? Like, okay, I can do this. This is the future, not just as a temporary thing or this is something I'm trying.

This is I'm actually doing now. I'm now I'm this. It's a good question. I, I definitely think there's been, I think every business goes through phases. There's phases of different reasons of why you can grow, and then you kind of tap out that strategy and you have to find a little bit of a new strategy or just different methodologies to continue to succeed.

You know, in the early days, all I was focused on, you know, I started at age 21, I was just trying to make $60,000 a year. That's all I wanted. I was. I was just trying to make $60,000 a year. That's all I wanted. I was like, I just kind of make $60,000 a year. My number because that was like, you know, at the time, it was like, if I could make $60,000 a year, I could comfortably pay rent and travel a little and ride bikes.

I don't know. I wasn't really that thought through. It was just like, oh, like, that's a living wage. OK, I was making like 30 at the bike shop. If I can make 60, I'm going to be having a great life. I don't know. That's all I thought about, which is so funny how much my brain has evolved and how quickly it evolved just in a few years of starting the business. But that was like the initial focus, which I look back on and still laugh at.

But going back to what I said about the way that these software products were coming online in the industry and the industry was figuring out API feeds and just data feeds and yada yada. Like some of the initial ones were just that, literally just that, like just figuring out how to use software tools and build a little tech stack that could then push distributors inventory data feed into your ERP system. And then you could modify it in a certain way. And then you could advertise and sell that product, like just little weird back end technical things like that. That was kind of some of the first thing that put us on the map.

And that financial model was actually pretty amazing because it didn't really cost much at all in terms of upfront expense. It was very minimal cost to just sort of build this little tech stack, get the products advertised, and then you were based on a just-in-time inventory model. So you'd sell something for $100 that you didn't even own. Then you would take $70, give it to the distributor, then you would ship the thing out and now you've made 20 bucks, right? And then just like, just do this over and over again, just really simple, basic, just in time inventory model.

That was kind of the first thing, just figuring out a little strategy like that. And then that only goes so far, then it becomes like, okay, now we need to build a website and now we need to figure out customer acquisition costs, we need to understand a website. And now we need to figure out customer acquisition costs, we need to understand, you know, how sustainable is it to have an eBay brand and Amazon brand versus your own website and have great repeat customers on your own website. So you start to understand, you know, the viability of all these different ways of selling

things and the viability of how you acquire customers and retain customers. And so the second piece was, okay, now we need to figure out how to market really well. And we didn't really put like a crazy amount of tactical effort into that because you kind of can't as a retailer because as a retailer, you're mostly confined to this about 30 points of gross margin, which is quite small. So you don't really have much room

for customer acquisition costs. So you don't really have much room for customer acquisition costs. So you have to pretty much do it in a very, very bootstrapped way. And that came down to content marketing. And that was, you know, so I got really interested in good at SEO and like figuring out how to take knowledge out of my head about random things, whether that was how to set up clipless cleats

on your pedals, how to tune your suspension, random stuff like that, and writing it out into articles. And then we started making YouTube videos and we started just talking to the camera and rambling off random things that we thought, you know, most of the original ideas for the YouTube videos were fueling all of these customer questions. And there's a lot of this complicated compatibility stuff

in the bike industry. It's like, does this fit this? Does that fit that? What would happen if I put this fork on this bike? Random stuff like that. So then we would just make questions or we'd make YouTube videos based off of those questions to just educate people. And there was still a huge gap in the marketplace on YouTube for that. Like there just wasn't those videos. So we just started making educational mountain bike videos about upgrading your bike compatibility things, tips and tricks, random stuff like that. And that was largely free in a sense, right? It was just me talking to a camera, we do some super basic editing and talking on YouTube. And people really liked it. And that had a lot of side effects that I never knew were going to happen. Because not only were we

then educating mountain bikers and getting views and getting sort of brand awareness, but then people were going, hey, I actually like these guys. Like these guys seem cool and genuine and they helped me and people sort of are naturally have some level of reciprocation in them. And they're like, because these guys helped me, I want to buy at this retailer. And we saw that happening when we go, oh, like this is actually building us fans, not just customers. It's people that actually genuinely appreciate that we wrote and or filmed useful educational mountain bike content that was helpful for them.

And then now they like us and want to shop with us instead of our competitors selling the exact same product at the exact same price. So you start just learning these things like, oh wow, that actually worked quite well. Let's just double down on that and make more useful videos and let's make more useful content. And so that was the next sort of big lever that helped really put worldwide cycling on the map

that made people realize who we were and just want to shop with us. That was a big one, right? And then of course there's like the thousand other small things that people love to gloss over. But if any business is successful, there's a thousand other things behind the scenes that you have to do to win, right?

It was like maybe the big overarching, obvious strategy I can tell you was, yeah, we got quite sophisticated at content marketing and built an audience and that made people want to buy with us, but realistically, we still needed to have a good website. We still needed to fulfill those orders on time. We still needed to have really timely responses to our phone calls and emails to help people out,

to solve warranty issues, to just do the basic stuff that customers had a great customer experience with when they shopped with us. And that was a strategic advantage because a lot of these incumbents, they were terrible at answering emails or phone calls or just their customer experience was terrible. They were very transactional in an industry that shouldn't be transactional. This is a passion driven industry. You should be able to call and talk to someone who actually rides bikes and they can tell you their experience with this product and if it's compatible or not.

And if they like it, you shouldn't be getting some boilerplate weird useless answer and like they just people started realizing a lot of these incumbents were almost like fulfillment houses it's like I could just buy something here but it's like that's it ends there like they don't know anything about the product they're not helping to make a decision totally yeah gaining affinity like I wouldn't we've we've had some email exchange since 2022. We've been trying to get you on this podcast for a bit and it's not your fault. It's my fault too.

That's how things work out. But I think I share with you cause I was excited. I want to concur on a lot of things you just said there because I think I watched Liam build several bikes. I think they were your bikes. Now that I think about it, they were rebel bikes. And I think I learned how to do certain things. I'm not a bike mechanic,

but I can build a bike from scratch today. And it's in the reason why is because I think a large part of that is because of the passion that you talk about the passion that you talk about that came through you personally yourself and those you've brought into your team. But like that YouTube channel for me was pivotal in my mountain bike journey just because I, you know, I, I personally got more into the sport when I realized and learned how to take care of my own bike. Yeah

It was just really bad. I'm in here Yeah, like having that agency over my ability to to one control the component and then true to just control my What's the right word to say like my trust in it because I tightened the bolt to the right meter, for example. You know, or I know I've showed the titanium bolt over something else, for example. You know, you did it right. And your bike's not going to fall apart under you and it will be your fault. Or I know there are new brake pads or just like, you know, I can go down this mountain with more confidence because I built and chose the components.

Yeah. And that began with, I think, the fidelity that you allowed through your YouTube channel. Not just the ones which was like, what's cool about SRAM or what's cool about this or why you choose SRAM over Shimano or, you know, these little tastes, like, I wish you'd let out more of that because I like, I would personally just like Just consume all of your content to get whatever you would share like whatever nugget would share and it was never enough

And it wasn't even your fault like but I literally watched Liam build multiple bikes for you particularly learning how to build and how to like put a Star nut into a stem. You know, for example, or even how to like cut a stem and not get it wrong and get pissed off because you've spent 1200 bucks on a new Fox, you know, fork. And you've cut the stem too short.

It's like, that's just, that's just, don't do that. That's the worst ever. And I would wait weeks to like meet that cut, you know, I would procrastinate even like building the bike cause I'm like, it's such an expensive, such an expensive cut to do wrong, you know? And then what's the right tool even? You know, so there's so much mystery in that world

that I feel like you unlocked and enabled. And so I would just literally like every video you dropped, I would be first watcher, always watching. And I loved your usage of the surveys. I think you got I would love to know your data behind the scenes, like how much of this like is truly beneficial to the business because you ask a lot of really good questions that me as an enthusiast, I want to answer and I want to give you the, cause I want to, I want to share my response, but as a collector

of data, I imagine helps you do very valuable things for the industry selfishly, but also naturally. But I'm just curious about that too. But anyways, I loved your, your YouTube channel. Like to me, it was a treasure trove of goodness. It was where I found my community when I didn't have community. It taught me a lot about taste and how you choose tires or how you pair tires together. These are things that I just never knew.

And I got excited about bike techs. I'm a technologist and I love technology generally. I love data and specs and the whys and the hows and stuff like that. And so your channel really enabled me to dig deeper. And then when it became time to order anything, it was obvious, you know, every time you sent me something, you always gave me a code to get 10% off of or 15% off of next time. So you, yeah, one of those little strategies for repeat business.

Yeah. I mean, like, but it wasn't like, I would say, and maybe this will be helpful, helpful to you in your own ego. I would probably say more than anything is that it never felt like you were trying to sell me, you know, it always felt like you're trying to serve me, which is a whole different thing when it comes to, I think Jensen versus World Wide Cycleria, like what you built and what they built is dramatically

different in terms of like how I buy or why I even care to buy from you versus them, because I know why you're in the game. And so a little bit of a gush session there, but really just appreciated the YouTube channel. And I think one, I'll let you respond to that, but then two, I got a follow up on that. So I'll just let you respond to some of my gushing, if you don't mind. Yeah. Well, well, thank you. I mean, I, I appreciate that.

And it makes me happy to know that people like you enjoy the videos, learn from the videos and just got more into the sport because of it. Um, actually really liked the way you said that and does, it doesn't feel like we're selling. It feels like we're trying to serve. Cause that's, that's, that's a great way to say it. I've never thought of it that way. But that's certainly what we've all like, that's basically what we've always tried to do.

One of the core values of the company is we try to impress ourselves and impress our customers. And the theory behind that is, we're trying to operate a really good business. And part of that in our industry is to never be derogatory, which is very common in the industry. The industry is kind of notorious for being very clicky and for it being really hard for new people to come into the sport. Whether that's just casual mountain biking, serious mountain biking, road cycling, whatever, you know, a lot of people have this experience where they walk into a local shop and they feel very belittled by the staff and talked down to like these are so common for people to for you to hear these stories like, yeah, that guy was just a total douche, like acted

like he was a snob nose and I didn't know anything and I didn't know anything and that's why I was there like help me, you know, and's a lot of that um snobbery in the bike industry which is really unfortunate because it's what keeps new people from getting into the sport and liking the sport and sticking with the sport of any type of category of cycling so um yeah we've always talked about that and always tried to be the place where you know cause there's the whole other thing too with bike shops is they carry a few brands that they sell that are bike brands. And if you were to have bought a bike from another shop

or direct or a consumer direct only brand and you walked into that shop to get it worked on, they're gonna be all snob nosy about the fact that you didn't buy the bike there. It's like, that's ridiculous. Like you got a customer coming in that just wants to spend money and like have that, snob-nosey about the fact that you didn't buy the bike there. It's like, that's ridiculous. It's just crazy, right? There's a lot of lack of business sense and too much uppity clickiness in the industry.

We've always tried to fight against that and not behave that way. So yeah, I hope we're always maintain that. But it is tricky because it is a complicated industry. So it's easy to get into the sport and then feel overwhelmed and go, man, it's just like, this is too confusing to figure out what bike to even buy, how and where to use it, how to upgrade it. Yeah, it's just complicated product. But if you like the stuff and you like learning about it, then it's very fun industry because there's a lot to learn and know about The you know the bikes themselves. Yeah, I feel like y'all did a great job of of taste

So you see my curators taste makers? So it made me trust your opinion more because I knew you had a reason why you chose a certain direction It wasn't because this was bad and this was good. It was just more like, you know what? I kind of like the way that SRAM brakes stop, you know, with a progressive state versus like a immediate stop, which I think is one thing I particularly said over the years. And it helped me choose SRAM over Shimano when it comes to my brakes. And to this day, why SRAM is my braking system, you know, not that I would never try out this, but like I trust it more because of,

you know, some of that back and forth. I've also had many pairs of brakes on my bikes over over the years. And so I've bought enough brakes to like really hate doing it. And I procrastinate bleeding brakes every time I have to do it. It's not fun. It's not it's not hard either, but it's just like one of those things where like, you know, yeah, it's tedious. Yes, it's kind of tedious.

It's very tedious. But, you know, I use SRAM breaks for those reasons. And I tried them, though. So I bought them, tried them and agreed with what you agreed with. And so it wasn't like, oh, Jeff said X. So Adam does why. And therefore, you know, happiness ensues it wasn't like, oh, Jeff said X, so Adam does Y, and therefore happiness ensues and no crashes. Yeah.

I've, it's cool to hear, because I've always tried to communicate that there's not always just a black or white right or wrong. Like there's a lot of personal preference. Some people like the feel of Shimano brakes for that exact reason you don't and that's okay let's all admit that you know and that's I don't know that a lot of people are not willing to admit that if they like what they like

they think that's right it's like no that's not how the world works and you can communicate that better and explain that some people like this for this reason and some people like that for that reason so I don't know part of that's just I think being able to communicate that stuff well. And as a retailer, you're kind of uniquely positioned to do that because if one of the brands themselves makes that content, they obviously have to be obscenely biased towards their product. But as a retailer selling multiple ones, you can sort of better educate people on the difference, like the intricate differences between them and

Explain that yes It's just personal preference in a lot of ways and explain why they're different and people can think about their own preferences and try Accordingly like you did with break. So that's cool here So content market was obviously the big push for you Do you think that was the unlocker when you saw the worldwide of your brand truly become, you know, I guess you were worldwide initially, but this YouTube model where you can reach and touch so many people. I think now even I'm going to scroll back up.

Thank you. Not that subscriber counts matter, but you have almost half a million subscribers, almost 540 videos, Jeff. This is on what about Cycleria alone, not even Kettle's channel or Trail One's channel, which I know you have separate channels for each of those. Did you see a dramatic difference whenever you started to create content? Like even from not so much a get customer make money standpoint, but like people enjoy working here more like morale.

Was it more fun? Did you grow your network as a result? Like what were the amplifications and benefits of just like diving further into YouTube? Yeah, that's, that's a fantastic question because it's a good point in that. Yeah, a lot of those. Yes. Big, big changes there. And, and like I kind of alluded to earlier, the YouTube videos were initially just, hey, this could be a great way to build brand awareness. And we have a lot of knowledge about bikes and all these components and our industry. Let's share that on YouTube. And let's share answers to the questions that we're getting all day. So we did that.

And then we started realizing, oh, people really appreciate this and they reciprocate and then they're becoming fans and they're getting more into the sport because of what we're doing. So yeah, that was really fun. And it did internally change the culture too, because the brand was a lot more defined, sort of why we exist and the services we provide, whether that's good content marketing, educational YouTube content

that also makes people laugh at the same time and operating a good business and supporting people having fun on bikes. So all that stuff became much more clear. You know, it's like you can sort of write, this is why we exist. This is our mission, vision, values. You can write all that crap down,

but unless it's very viscerally clear to the staff who works there and the customers who shop there, it doesn't really mean anything, right? And for us, YouTube made it clear. It made it very tangible. Like, oh yeah, this is very clear. This is exactly how we support people having fun on bikes. This is how we educate the mountain bike community

on the knowledge that we have of all the stuff we sell. This is how we curate the products. It became very visible as the YouTube channel grew and as the business grew. And it was very visible to us and our team internally as well as externally. So yeah, I think that's a cool piece because a lot of businesses can,

you can have a big business but it's still very Behind closed doors how they acquire customers how they treat their customers how they treat their employees but a retail business like ours Especially with a lot of content marketing and YouTube it became very Clear, you know in any way you look at it who we are what we're all about what we do how we do it It's it's very just obvious and out there in the open. So yeah, I like that aspect because it definitely changed

a lot of things in our business that made it a lot more real and tangible and just transparent to everyone and everyone, whether they're inside or outside. Did you have anyone inside like, I wanna be on the channel now, or did you have this clawing so to speak of people wanting to be on camera and wanting to be involved in the process or was it sort of, you know, standoffish? How was the reception to the rest of the staff and folks you have involved?

Yeah, it's funny you ask. Most people don't claw to be on camera. staff and folks you have involved. Yeah, it's funny you ask. Most people don't claw to be on camera. It's kind of the opposite. In the early days, some of the very first videos we come with the star nut? Does it come with the shock? Right? Just like in some brands included some of those, some brands didn't, whatever, like super basic, Hey, here's what's in the box.

Just really basic videos. And I thought those would be really helpful to do on some of our top selling products because if you're about to spend $900,000 on a product and there's no video anywhere that just tells you what the heck is in the box. So I was like, let's just make these really basic ones. So I did one and I was like, okay, so here's sort of the template for it, and I'd have a couple of the guys try it. And a lot of people didn't enjoy and don't enjoy having a camera pointed at them

and trying to be clear and concise and articulate, and some people just struggle with that and don't really like it. And YouTube, you know, as much as it's a well, all welcoming place, like you, it doesn't really work unless you're kind of good at speaking in a sense. You have to be clear and concise and articulate and charismatic and know what you're talking about.

And that has to be apparent. And it really, like people can feel if you're uncomfortable or inauthentic or they'll just bounce to some other distraction if you're slow it's just a hard place to hold people's attention even if they're looking to know exactly what you're trying to tell them so it's tricky it's it's harder to be clear and concise on camera then I think some people think and you know if they try and they get that

Heart rush of adrenaline and they're like, yeah. No, this sucks. So No, it's actually kind of the opposite. Most people were like, yeah. Yeah, go ahead Jeff We don't know in here wants to be on camera you do Yeah, I mean sure company man Do the job. Yeah, and I mean I had no intentions of really doing that to begin with to be honest I just thought you know, we just started you had to yeah, really doing that to begin with, to be honest. I just thought we just started doing those. You had to. Yeah, I just had to, right? I was the guy who could just do it quickly and concisely.

Because the other thing too is like an efficiency thing. So if you take 10 takes, you're just wasting so much time. Whereas if you could just say it right the first time, it's over. You're done. The video's good. So yeah, it just kind of depended on in you know, who was good at that stuff. And you probably see on our channel now, Jared and Liam are on there a ton. And, you know, Jared has come both those guys have but Jared, especially because he's mostly on the YouTube channel talking now, he's come so far over the years

just getting way better at just being comfortable and fun and natural and explaining things on camera than he was in the early days. So it just takes time to get good at YouTube and being on camera and stuff like that. It does take time. So Jared remind me, is he the fellow with the mustache? No. He often has a mustache. Yeah.

And then the long, long brown hair. Yeah. Sometimes a flavor saver, sometimes a mustache. Yeah. Always crazy. You never know. Yeah, sometimes a flavor saver sometimes a mustache. Yeah always crazy. You never know Yeah, some some hat that yeah, okay. I know Jared then I know Liam more than I think I know new Jared I knew his face, but I didn't know his name Yeah, and mainly Liam because he seems the one who's the in-house mechanic like he can build anything basically He knows all the specs to the Newton meter before it's even released. He knows it all totally

Yeah, he's a way into it into process. He seems like a pro at being a mechanic So I totally is I always appreciate his videos on that and I was trying to despise like we're Trying trying to find out how to build a mountain bike and what tools to use Is like the weirdest puzzle in the world ever saw it really is You're a park tool would do a better job and they do do a good job, but it's kind of, some of their content is like so general bike that it's not doubted into mountain bike,

you know, which is way different. You know, sure you have a head too, but it's just got different things. You get different specifications, geometry, et cetera, that comes into play. And just trying to find out how to build things. I mean, I don't even know where you would go to school to learn how to build a mountain bike or become a mechanic.

I don't even know if that even exists. I'm sure there's certifications out there, but I was just trying to be an enthusiast. I wasn't trying to be a pro. But I did want to do pro-like things and use the pro-like tools, because I wanted to do it right. I've done things the wrong way.

Let's just say with the wrong tools, you know, and everyone either broke or the process, right? Yeah. I had to buy the thing twice. It was a mess. OK, so no one clawing at the camera. You have to because you're a founder and you got to do it. And I would say, you know, you got a natural knack for it. I would say my favorite. Not bad at it.

Right. Like good enough that I can hold someone's attention and explain things and not have to take five takes and that's all you need to start. I think so. I think more so than anything like it's it's clearly got experience and it's clear you care. And I think those are the two kind of core ingredients

that you have to have to do that job for your company well enough because it's not just showmanship or showpersonship, it's literally being able to explain how things work and why you have particular, why you prefer Max's you know, why you prefer, you know, Maxxis tires over Continental. Maybe you don't, maybe you do, who knows? Or why you prefer this combination,

which I think is the most unique conversation with a mountain biker, like what tire combo? That'll put you in a click right off the bat. I'm sure you are still rocking your DHF for life or something like that, right? I think, was it DHR2 on the front for you? It depends on the bike. These days I'm-

Recon Dissector is your pair? Yeah, well actually now the new Forecaster. So the bike I ride the most often now, the Trail Bike, which is a Yeti ASR at the moment. Yeah, Maxxis Forecaster in the front and Maxxis Recon in the back. Yeti ASR, what is the Yeti ASR? It's their new, it's really like a World Cup level

cross country race bike, but with really aggressive geometry and a little bit more travel. So it's just this incredibly capable, super lightweight, fast all around bike that I've just kind of fallen in love with since they introduced it. It's super fun to ride. Yeah, cause it feels as fast and light and as efficient as a full blown XC race bike. But when you're on it, your body position and the way that the

geometry is in the way it corners and stuff, it feels much more like an enduro bike. So it's just a cool blend of the two. That's really fun to ride. And you also have this history too, which I think is because just like that you juxtapose the ASR to Enduro. But you also said cross country, which for those who don't really mountain bike and you're just listening in because this is the podcast, those are very different. Yeah, like very different. Cross country and Enduro is like dramatically different. Similar in the fact that they're both mountain biking, but dramatically different in, you know, the down this that you go on purpose and

the pedaling up, so to speak. And I know a lot of cross country does pedal up too, but I guess it depends on how hardcore cross country you're going. Really it depends, but the majority of it is pretty pleasant. Uh, now if you're a world cup level, maybe it's not so pleasant. Uh, I don't know. I'm downplaying cross country, but it's, it's, it World Cup level, maybe it's not so pleasant. I don't know. I'm downplaying cross country, but it's it's it's not as hard or it's just different than Enduro.

Really? Yeah, totally. It's a little bit more like distance running on the track versus trail running, you know. Yeah, still running, but different train and different mentality. Different flavors there. Yeah. So we're in the weeds measure, but why Yeti over the latest Revel thing? Well, the Revel doesn't quite have a bike

that would be similar. So they have something close, which I do really like and rode for a long time, which is their Ranger. And the Ranger is similar in a sense, but it's still a bit more on the trail bike side in terms of it being heavier. The Ranger actually has just a better suspension platform, it pedals better, it descends better, but

it's like almost two pounds heavier. So it's a bit of a different bike. It's just more, you know, you look at all these things, you end up splitting hairs in a big way, but you have bikes that go all the way from, you know, cross country, pushing a little into trail, a little trail bike pushing into a enduro, enduro pushing into downhill, more travel, more, you know, sort of slack and long geometry. So they just all change, right? And I just go back and forth between what I'm riding more often

and what I like to ride. And recently I've been more into adventure racing and that has a lot more cross-country-esque style riding in that sport and weight is really important. So that's why I leaned towards that ASR and have really enjoyed it. And I hope Revel comes out with a similar bike, but Revel is definitely more of a trail and Enduro company through and through and has never made a full-fledged XC race bike.

Maybe they will. I hope they do at some point because yeah, I love Revel and love supporting that brand. And I'm actually, I think I'm queuing up. I'm torn between either building up one of their new rascals, which is that trail bike or that new enduro bike they have. So yeah, but I'm always changing bikes. So if you ask me in three months from now, I probably won't have that same bike. Yeah.

Don't necessarily follow your lead because you probably have 20 bikes or more of your lifetime? Yeah, I always, I'm always changing them and I always have, you know, like I have a Banshee Titan as well as an Enduro bike right now. So I have the Banshee, I have the Yeti SR, I have a Revel L-Hefa which is a titanium hardtail. So I kind of always have at least three bikes that I'm riding it for different reasons at different times. And then I'm always like changing those three. But that's what you're supposed to do, man. When you have bike shop and you love bikes,

you just try all the new stuff. And yeah, you just go through phases. You're like, you go through six months where you just love riding XC bikes and then you're like, ah, I'm over that. You just want to ride in Dura bikes all day. And you do that for three months. And then you're like, I'm in bike packing now.

I want to do big bike packing adventures. Like you just get bored and try different stuff. That's part of the fun of it. For sure. All right, one more thing on YouTube and then I wanna take a turn towards Trail One and Kettle, expansion, the empire, you know? The downfall of the industry, the craziness with Revel,

cause we have some similar ties there and just where things are going. But I do want to ask you, given the fixed gross margin in retail, and you're in retail in all sectors, right? So you're apparel, but you're selling. So you got direct to consumer, even with kettle. You got trail one, you're creating, not just selling.

So you're literally manufacturing. You found out how to do that. selling so you're You got him involved, which I think is super cool, because he's like diehard biker forever. And I think there's even like this YouTube, YouTuber biker YouTuber kind of like trend that was there. And then it's sort of like, you know, came and gone with COVID kind of thing. Yeah. But if content marketing is so strong for you,

I think your latest for trail one was like a year ago, video wise. And I don't see you putting out a ton of content for worldwide either. Like what is the bottleneck? Like where is the throttle I suppose for you in this industry with how crazy it is and y'all making more content and growing. Like is there room for growth? Where is that space at considering

how strong this is for young marketing and capturing? Cause that's the whole reason we're talking is cause I found your YouTube channel at one point and got more into your brand and who you are personally. And I just don't see you posting as frequently given how important it seems to be for you. Yeah, so I can definitely explain that. You know, in a perfect world, if you know, I was a trust fund kid, we would just make all sorts of fun videos

all day. You're not a trust fund kid? Unfortunately not. You're not going to get the supplies of cash? Unfortunately not. Come on, Jeff. I wish. But so the way it's evolved is, as I mentioned earlier, the bike industry has gone through some crazy

tumultuous boom and bust cycle with COVID. And even pre-COVID, we'd recognized the industry was just evolving. The sort of heyday of the online retailer was coming to an end because all of these brands were starting to sell consumer direct and they were starting to get good at it. And that's sort of a, it's just an annoyance to a retailer because, you know, worldwide cycle rake fundamentally is meant to take, you know, we have, we have a, so over a couple hundred different brands that we intentionally curated the best brands

in the mountain bike industry and the best products in the industry and got them all in one place and you could shop them all in one area. That is a, you know, still a relevant value proposition and very convenient when you want to buy a new Fox fork and a Maxxis tire and a pair of Shimano brake pads all at the same time in one place. It's, and it was even more necessary and useful when you couldn't really buy those from anywhere else other than other retailers. But now that you can buy directly from Fox or directly from Shimano, directly from Maxis,

it just changes things, because now you're competing directly with the brand selling direct. And if people don't necessarily need to buy two or three things at once from different brands, they just want to upgrade or just want to buy one thing, they just go to the brand directly. You're never going to out-compete that brand

when it comes to SEO. If someone's searching for just that brand, obviously just that brand is going to show up at the top, always. And if people end up there and they can just easily buy from there, they just do. So the industry just really changed, right? All of the brands in the industry,

if you look at it pre-COVID, probably 10% of them sold consumer direct. And the other 90% just didn't. And they just sold through retailers. And that's how the industry worked. That's all changed. And now it's literally flopped. And about 90% just didn't. And we saw that happening and it's just the nature of the beast. It's a bummer. Like, you know, nobody's happy when their, you know, original and good, healthy, fun business model starts deteriorating.

Like that sucks, but welcome to business. Things evolve, things change. The classified ads in the newspaper got demolished by Craigslist, which then got demolished by the Internet. You know, it's like, shit just changes. So worldwide cyclaries business model is just, it's not dead, it's not obsolete. It's just not nearly as viable

and it's not living in the heyday that it once was in that sort of 2010 to 2022 era. And because of that, because of seeing that, we wanted to really get into basically owning our own brands more vertically, so we could kind of control everything and kettle, kettle, knot and apparel was a huge one for us that we really saw a lot of potential in and wanted to grow and scale and put effort into. And that catalog now, you know, we've got

40 different styles of all sorts of stuff for outdoor and travel adventure wear. And we design it ourselves, we manufacture it, we market it, we sell it, we fulfill it, we do the whole thing very vertically, and it's our brand outright. And that brand has grown substantially. And that's really the... If you look at all three of our brands, that brand has the most longevity and sustainability in its business model. And so a lot of our focus has gone there, mine specifically, and kind of the key leaders in the business have really focused there. It's new, it's exciting, it's fun, it has longevity and sustainability to it, and we have so much more control over it because we're not a retailer, we're just actually the manufacturer of everything and the retailer. It's all more vertical.

So a lot of our efforts come towards cattle and the way we've grown cattle thus far hasn't been the same strategies. It's been a bit more paid marketing because that's a more viable customer acquisition strategy than the content marketing side of things. And every industry, every product, there's just different levers and different things you can do to help grow revenue. And for Kettle, that's not necessarily been content marketing just yet. A little bit, we're dabbling in it,

but it's been more so making a really good product and then making really good digital ads and making sure we're there in front of the right people at the right time that are looking for mens you know, menswear of that sort. So we put a lot of effort into that and we have pulled back effort on the worldwide cyclery content marketing side because the business model just kind of sucks now, if I'm being honest. Not only is worldwide cycle are competing directly with all the brands it sells now when it didn't pre-COVID. But the industry's had that boom and bust cycle and the bust cycle has dragged on for what feels like two and a half years now and it's still in it. The industry totally over-inventoried itself and that's caused a huge amount of discounting and margin deterioration. All these things just really added up.

On the tech side, simultaneously, what's really been a huge issue for everyone who was in the things just really added up. And 95% of the page is paid pay-per-click ads everywhere. And the organic stuff is so far smashed down below the AI overview and the paid shopping results with images and the paid click text ads. Your organic traffic, if you just look at the structure of a Google search engine results page pre-COVID versus now, it's dramatic how different it is like, people just used to get a lot more traffic from Google for free organically. And those days

are just gone. Google has just kicked everyone in the nuts. And that's just totally smashed e commerce businesses that were fairly dependent on content marketing and forced them to pay to play. And if you're forced to pay to play in an industry that has terrible margins, and now you're competing in the ad auction against the. And if you're forced to pay to play in an industry that has terrible margins, and now you're competing in the ad auction against the freaking same brand you're selling, selling it direct, it just sucks.

So, like we- Tell it like it is, Jeff, tell it like it is. So we have to be acknowledged that and pivot accordingly. And World Wide Cycling is still a good, healthy business and it's fine, but the heyday is over, right? So we've moved on a little bit from it and said like, you know, we're not going to neglect it. It's still a great awesome business.

There's still a value prop to having the curation of all the stuff there. So we've, you know, now we've just toned down the level of content. We put out about one video a month now. We put out a couple podcasts a month and that's it. Articles here and there. It's definitely way less content than we used to. Yeah, it makes me sad. Yeah, I know.

Well, if you want to call 200 brands in the industry and rejigger the entire structure of the industry, I'd love for it to go back to the way it was, but unfortunately, the times have changed. Well friends, Retool Agents is here. Yes, Retool has launched Retool Agents. We all know LLMs, they're smart. They can chat, they can reason, they can help us code, they can even write the code for us, but here's the thing. LLMs, they can talk, but so far they can't act. To actually execute real work in your business, they need tools.

And that's exactly what Retool Agents delivers. Instead of building just one more chatbot out there, Retool rethought this. They give LLMs powerful, specific, and customized tools to automate the repetitive tasks that we're all doing. Imagine this, you have to go into Stripe, you have to hunt down a chargeback. You gather the evidence from your Postgres database, you package it all up, and you give it to your accountant.

Now imagine an agent doing the same work, the same task in real time, and finding 50 chargebacks in those same 5 minutes. This is not science fiction. This is real. This is now. That's retail agents working with pre-built integrations in your systems and workflows.

Whether you need to build an agent to handle daily project management by listening to standups and updating JIRA, or one that researches sales prospects and generates personalized pitch decks, or even an executive assistant that coordinates calendars across time zones. Retool agents does all this. Here's what blows my mind. Retool customers have already automated over 100 million hours using AI. That's like having a 5,000 person company working for an entire decade.

And they're just getting started. Retool agents are available now. If you're ready to move beyond chat bots and start automating real work, check out Retool Agents today. Learn more at Do you see a direct line of like make video about X for worldwide in particular sales happen? Do you see do effect happens? You know, do you see that cause and effect? Yeah, we not as much anymore. We used to write. And that's I think we will again, once the sort of bust cycle of the

industry is over. So a lot of what happened when I say the bust cycle, right, so there was the boom and bust. What happened during the boom is not people overindulged in the sport. And then they pulled back how often they participated in the sport. And while they were participating a lot and sort of overindulged in the sport, they bought a lot more stuff. They got really into it. You know, they had to cancel their Disney World trip to Paris because of COVID and they instead just did a regional trip and went to Moab and rode mountain bikes with their family, right? So, people really

overindulged in the sport, which was great for the time being, but then it's rained back. Gyms opened up, soccer fields, baseball fields, football fields. Everything just kind of went back to normal post covid. And people stop riding bikes as often. And they had bought a lot. And the industry that overproduced a lot, which then caused caused a huge amount of discounting across the board. And people also just had, you know, they're buying good, hard goods

that last a long time. So they're not like the consumption of anything and everything in the bike industry, whether that's even consumables like tires, grips, chains, pedals, stuff like that. Like even that's tapered off because the participation slowed down. And because a lot of people literally bought extra grips or extra tires, because there was like these weird times where there was no inventory during COVID because the supply chain disruption. So there's still this bus cycle going on. So there's so much less demand and consumption across all categories in the industry happening right now that it's not as easy to just make video about X and sell X. Whereas pre-COVID, it was. You know, like things were normal and steady

and chugging along and you could introduce people to new products they hadn't heard about or an upgrade that they hadn't had. And they're like, wow, that actually looks like it would be sweet. I'm just going to buy that right now. So it was way more clear, you know, pre-COVID. And then during COVID was just nuts, right? Like you could sell anything. It was COVID was, was just nuts, right? Like you, you could, you could sell anything. Um, uh, it was crazy.

The industry was nuts, right? It was, it was so funny. It was a while time on the opposite side of that, Jeff, you know, you guys were hammering out videos and enjoying life and clinking your champagne glasses. Here's me trying to get my tires just to go and just ride. Yeah. What was, I'm curious, what was your experience? Do you feel like you overindulged during COVID?

Like your amount of riding and mountain bike content consumption and mountain bike related purchases in 2020, 2021, were those like higher than you've ever had in your life? Oh, yeah. The the pinnacle of the number I would spend to see what I mean. Was in those years. Yeah. It's natural, I suppose.

It is. It's such a weird phenomenon to be because I discovered mountain biking before that, but discovered my passion for it around 2019. So the year before things blew up, I got back into the sport more so that I, uh, I had early 2019, I bought a, um, a specialized, uh, I should know this off the top of my head, a stump jumper, like the most, you know, what they're most known for about a 2019 stump jumper. It was like two grand, which I thought, Oh my gosh, a Stumpjumper, like the most, you know, what they're most known for. I bought a 2019 Stumpjumper. It was like two grand, which I thought, oh my gosh, I would never spend two grand on a bike.

Now I'm like, oh dude, I got this bike for two grand, okay? Like this was a deal. I know you know what I mean because I've seen some bikes you've built. Yeah. You know, I got this bike and I was like, I enjoyed it. And then for whatever crazy reason, I got this bike and I was like, I enjoyed it. And then for whatever crazy reason, I took it apart.

Everything was off of it. Like it wasn't even, I couldn't even ride it anymore. It was a bike. It was a bike. You were bored, man. Yeah, I replaced it. You're shocked. I replaced the fork.

I mean, I re-ran brake lines, which was super painful in that kind of frame. I had to get a fishing thing from Park Tool, which was super painful in that kind of frame. I had to get a fishing thing from Park Tool, which was amazing. The first time I did it, I don't even know how I did it. I didn't have the right tool. And then Park Tool thankfully has, you know, I don't know what you call it, but-

Internal cable routing kit. There you go. You probably know it off the top of your head cause you speak their lingo. Internal cable routing kit. There you go, Jeff. Good job. Showing off your true colors here. And so I did all that. It was really wild, but I discovered the sport, I would say, before COVID, but was falling in love with it. And at the time when everybody

else was about to. And so my timing fall in love with the sport was just poor timing, comparative. It wasn't because of COVID, but I think I leaned in even more because like obviously I'm into it. So might as well go even further. And I live here in Texas near Austin and we have a city called Burnett here that has Spider Mountain. Yeah, Spider Mountain's the if it weren't for Spider Mountain, I think mountain biking would be very boring here in Texas. Like it's good, we've got lots of cool trails,

but nowhere near California's trails or nowhere near Colorado's trails. Like just compared to, we don't have mountains here. We got the hills, okay? Little country as they call it. And I live in the hill country and it is amazing. And you know, Spider Mountain TLDR for everybody who doesn't know is a lift serve.

I think about 500 feet of descent total. So it's like lift serve, which means you get onto a lift like a ski, you put your bike on this hook and it goes up with you and then you come down with gravity. No pedaling required, total fun. And it's amazing. But you know, that was my experience was I got into the sport when everybody else was starting to.

It wasn't because of COVID, but it was also because of COVID. Like it was just timing, it's all worked out. Yeah. And I, probably like anybody else, I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it now. And it was never, now was never fast enough. And I remember everything being out of stock, everything,

everything was out of stock. It was insane. I even know how you guys kept it going with like how chaotic it must've been during that time. It was chaotic, man. It was, it was for everyone, right? Because you had the, you had, you know, the bike industry had that participation just went

through the roof, interest in the sport, purchases in the sport just went through the roof. At the same exact time, the supply chain just shut down and most of the products in the industry are made in Asia. So all of a sudden you sold all your product with this insatiable demand and then you couldn't get any more of it. So then that led to this massive inventory outage for a long time. And then when the inventory came back, people overbought, they're like, well, I'm not going to, I don't need three sets of brake pads, but I'm going to buy them anyway, because I don't want to, they might be out next time.

I'm pretty sure a pair or two of extras. That has a really, really hardcore long term side effect with this boom and bust cycle in the finances of the whole industry. That's I think I have two chains, Jeff. In case I break my chain, I got two more chains. I think even as we speak, everybody did good on chains or, you know, the foreseeable future. Exactly. Yeah.

So it's still lingering. Isn't that crazy? So yeah, I mean, that caused some serious issues for the industry and it was very hard to navigate. And a lot of the brands, as you've seen, went through just a cashflow crunch. They ended up ordering more inventory than they needed because they thought the demand was there.

And then all of a sudden, when the demand slowly tapered off, they had all this inventory they couldn't sell and then they needed cash and they didn't have cash because they had too much inventory and then bam, bankrupt, just like that. Businesses can be very fragile in a volatile economy like that, which is why a lot of them go bankrupt and a lot of businesses fail. So it's tough times. And yeah, speaking of rebel, rebel went through that craziness too. And in a way, it was like they, I think you just started to promote them around

2019 and maybe it was 2020. It was the year of COVID I believe. Yeah. I like, I really, so I guess more on your content side, I really appreciated your trip to the HQ. I love that behind the scenes stuff. I love your, your perspective on boutique brands in the industry of bike, in particular is unique. But it turned me on to this whole new aspect of like boutique brands

in almost every industry I care about from computers to biking to you name it. You know, your personal passion towards the boutiqueness of Revel. It competes with Yeti. Yeti is a really well-known name brand, comparative, I would say. And I mean, you probably have a different perspective on comparitiveness to it, but carbon frames, amazing suspension. I think you'd call them super bikes.

They're both super bikes. But they're built by very different companies. One is a big box kind of retailer kind of thing that wins World Cups and Revel is fairly new and but has similar roots but it's got that boutique nature to it. I loved your perspective on boutique bike brands and building things around those things. What was I trying to tell you though? I like that though. I like your boutique bike brand kind of aspect when Revel first launched, but the, the,

going to their HQ and seeing Adam and behind the scenes and like, like no one was doing that kind of stuff. And like someone who cares about what they buy and why they buy it likes that kind of video. I don't know what it cost you to produce it, but it was worth its weight in my goal because like it helped me fall in love with the rebel fall over the ad and fall over the team there, fall in love with the reasons why they showed up to do what they do to maybe even care about rebel in the first place.

So it's like it's this really weird, you know, phenomenon that happened. But Revel launched right at the same time as, as, uh, as the downturn of like COVID. And I think I got my bike. Oh, Jeff, I think I bought it. Um, I bought the frame only. I caught the silver bullets, the T 1000, uh, Revel one, uh, sorry, the, the Rascal one. Um I bought the frame only and I think I got it in like December, November 2019. And I built it during COVID. Nice.

So I like, I didn't even build it right. I like I bought it, took my time with it, bought components, took my time with it. And then it just took me a while to like really settle on everything I wanted to build with it. And that's how it worked out for that particular building, that bike there. But I bought it as a frame only. And I think it sat in my studio office for a bit there for like at least two months, just like, just taunting me.

Just taunting me like build me now please. And I'm like, I don't have my time. I don't have the time to do it. So I eventually did but it wasn't until like things had shut down and things had changed that I actually had time to build it so that's how it works out. Yeah that's well I'm glad you still pulled it off though because you know you could have had it sitting there for a whole year with no inventory on just one final remaining part or something so it sounds sounds like you push through it and something stupid, right? Like a like a break pad or something like that.

Yeah. Or see, like something exactly something dumb. It's like critical, but like seemingly non critical in the grand scheme of things. Let's zoom out big and and look at your foresight to not collapse under the weight of all of the COVID stuff. And then, you know, I think you bought Kettle before, so you sort of, a lot of precursors you sort of paid attention to, to make you make some moves that were wise prior to COVID

so that you can sustain everything that happened during COVID. How did Kettle come about? How did Trail One come about? Why did you feel like it made sense to go vertical and build your own and make your own things? And is that dramatically harder than retail? Yeah, it's, I mean, the reason we did both the Kettle project and the Trail One project, you know, this was pre-COVID is because I'd mentioned we'd already started to see how the mountain bike industry was evolving, just the cycling

industry in general with a lot of the brands going, you know, consumer direct or offering that as a channel and squeezing margins. And it's like we saw the faults and cracks, you know, just doing a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats like SWOT analysis, as they call it in the business world. So like, we'd seen this stuff coming and we're like, yeah, this is how we need to combat it. And it also seems fun too, right? Seems awesome to be like, well, we've got this great infrastructure and team

that we built with Worldwide Cyclery. The industry's evolving in a sort of unfortunate way, but it also seems awesome to fire up a couple of our own brands that we'll own and outright and be more vertical with. So that's why we did both those projects. And yeah, I'm eternally grateful for pulling the trigger when we did because as the bike industry went through that boom and bust, those two brands, Kettle in particular, because it's not reliant on the bike industry because it's mostly outdoor apparel,

that really pulled us through in a big way in the last just two, three years once the bike industry sort of blew up and went downward and Kettle just kept growing, which was amazing because it's just operating in a much larger total addressable market and just menswear in general. So Kettle's been doing super well and just growing and growing super fast.

And a lot of our attention has gone there. And Trail One is definitely still sort of, you know, in the bike industry, deep in the weeds because it's a straight up mountain bike component company. So it's still a bit of a victim to the industry situation and I have good optimistic sort of long term view for it. But Troll1 was also meant to be a great bit of a passion project. It wasn't really meant to be some huge, big dominant mountain bike component brand. We wanted to make really good mountain bike components that we always wanted

and work with a good engineer to design them and then have a really cool and unique sort of philanthropic element to it where every product that sold a dollar goes back to a trail network that it's named after so we could actually build a brand that truly supported the sport of mountain biking. And part of that was just, you know, I think that's the right way to do things and I think it helps push the industry forward when somebody comes out and says, Hey, guess what? We have comparable flagship level mountain bike componentry. That's at competitive prices and it is actually really giving back to the sport in a cool way. So yeah, both of those businesses between Kettle and Trail One have been amazing and been so glad we did both of those because obviously, you

know, we couldn't have predicted a giant boom and bust cycle during COVID or predicted COVID. So yeah, it was just, it was just good, good to have those. And yeah, now, now they're a core piece of the puzzle. And yeah, like I'd mentioned earlier, Kettle is actually a bigger business than World Wide Cyclery now a year to date. Yeah. Are you familiar with the state of Texas at all? Oh yeah, definitely. You come here frequently? I wouldn't say frequently, but I've been to Austin many times and Dallas many times. Okay. Do you know the brand HEB? No. Okay. So you should study HEB. Okay. And I wonder if what you're doing... Now I didn't piece this together until the moment you

just said this, and this is why this is like off the cuff for me So H e B is a really well-known Texas beloved Like if you live here in Texas, you don't really shop for groceries anywhere else other than H e B if you're true Texan Okay, it's like that and you know, Texas has got a lot of pride in It's like that. And, you know, Texas has got a lot of pride in terms of its choices, its size. Like the rain is literally bigger here. OK, when you get hit by a raindrop here, you get knocked down.

Yeah, that's how big rain is here. I'm almost not even kidding with you. It's seriously big. So H.E.B. is a grocery store, and you know, like a common thing. Amazon's doing this. A lot of the brands, they attract a lot of the customer base and they take Energizer batteries and replace them with Amazon basic batteries as an example. Right. Yeah.

And I'm not saying that Trail One is is the Amazon basics by no means am I trying to to say it's lesser, but it's not it's been a while. So I built my bike and thought about the components I use that I forget the brand that I use raceface. I should move this I use a really nice Really really cool bars from from race face. Doesn't matter which ones they're like r35s. I believe carbon bars really fun Probably more than I need but I go downhill here and there here and there the point i'm trying to make is that heb they

they The thing they've done uniquely different than I think a Kroger or an Aldi or I'm not even an aficionado of grocery stores. I just know this because this is how H.E.B. is to us Texans is when you go into H.E.B., you will often choose the H.E.B. brand, not one because it's cheaper because it is, brand, not one because it's cheaper because it is, but two because it's, it's got these particular roots. It's a Texas farmer grown or as locals you could possibly get while still being packaged good.

Yeah, that's cool. And so HB has this really good salsa you can get there called Texas Texas. Like what a better name for salsa, right? Texas, Texas. Yeah. Not only only one Texas you got two Texas in there Okay, and if I could buy stock in this company Jeff I would totally buy a stock It is the the best salsa you'll ever get from a can. It's amazing Yeah, nice, but it is an HG be brand and so they aim to come out with competing brands to what would typically be

You know the incumbents Probably a little bit better. And because of the way HUB has positioned their brand, it's seen as even better. Not just a cost-comparative better, but like a literal product better. And I'm wondering if Kettle and Trail1 might be that for you. Yeah, yeah, they are definitely. I mean, you know, Trail1 would be more similar in that sense where Trail1 has gone after the specific components that are basically fully optimized, not really going to change very much when you're thinking about, you know, grips, handlebars, pedals, stems. and spin on it in some different ways and preferences. and it has a better story and a better sort of actual supporting the sport type of brand behind it. It can just be like that's a way better value prop, right?

So, yeah, so Trail 1 has been that way. And Kettle's funny because apparel is such a crazy space. You know, when you look at outdoor apparel there's anything and everything you can you can buy outdoor apparel from amazon or cosco and you can also buy our tax for nine hundred dollars and feel cool it's like there's so many options and price points and branding and fashion and aesthetic and you know what do you care about are you buying it because you want people to see your tax logo and think you're or are you buying it because you actually want a small rare brand that has technical attributes that you really care about, right? Or do you just frankly want the cheapest rain jacket you can find and you got it at Costco?

So it's like there's, it's a way bigger market with way more options. So kettle for us is very different because we've positioned it in a way where we're really just making the stuff that we specifically want. We specifically want it at this price point, so not as outrageously as expensive as Patagonia or Arc'teryx, but expensive enough that it's actually really good, like really good high-quality fabrics and it can come with a lifetime repair policy and it can come with really high-quality

zippers and buttons and trim details and fabric that lasts and actually performs well. So you got to hit some level of higher enterprise point to make that happen, but it doesn't need to be Arc'teryx level, which at that point, you're just paying for a fashion brand. And it doesn't, you know, it can't really be below that towards the Amazon or Costco price point, because then it just frankly falls apart and doesn't function well. So we were kind of figuring out like, this is a sweet spot we think is relevant

and what we want, and these are the designs and aesthetic that we want. So we're just really trying to make stuff that we specifically like and enjoy price point wise, functionality wise, looks wise. And luckily that had so far has just resonated well, right? And we found the people who also care about those same things.

So yeah, that's been fun, but that's like kind of the gamble you take in a lot of business when you're creating a product is like, well, we like this, hopefully other people do. Yeah. Well, I see the grand scale of Kettle, but I'm not seeing the grand scale, at least from my perspective of trail one.

Yeah, there will be. It's a tiny niche market, right? Trail one is going to be a niche market of high-end mountain bike components for enthusiast mountain bikers that care about good quality components that have a give back to the trail network. Yeah. Yeah, it's a way smaller niche market and that's fine and then understood.

So the products, they aren't changing much because like you said, they're already kind of stabilized products anyways. Yeah, I think we'll continue to introduce more stuff with trail one and refine existing things and find sort of new categories to break into. And we'll also do some experimental stuff that, one of the ways we're gonna evolve it

in the next couple of years, there's a lot of these obscenely high-end, crazy, nice boutique European mountain bike component brands. And I've always loved those. And I think we can make some of that stuff in the US. Trick stuff is an example of that or intense suspension. There there's some wild stuff that the engineering and the passion that happens in a lot of it's in Germany, because a lot

of the manufacturing is there is insane. And a lot of those crazy high end boutique rare things only exist in Europe. And I think we know trail one could definitely make some stuff like that in the US. So we're going to and it's talking about a niche rare things only exist in Europe. higher price points and yeah, just just a fun brand to run and something that we can be proud of because it actually is genuinely supporting trail builders and trail building efforts all over the place, which I think matters for the sport. It does matter for the sport. I think you'll laugh at the page I'm on on trail one.

I was on the titanium rotor bolts upgrade kit. You offer if you didn't know this, you offer gold, which I love. I don't have gold as a need I have been a rainbow guy myself enough That dipped like I got my chain. I think is that I think my rear cassette is that Sounds like you need some matching rotor bolts that are made out of titanium. I really do So that's why I was looking at these. I like you know what?

I didn't know you sold bolts, but now that I know that I can get some valve stems too, if you want to look together. I might I might just have to get my bling on, you know, my matching bling the the design of the things here is so good though. How did you I imagine your process to build this was Find the right people hire the people, put them in the right kind of places, let them go and do the right work? Or how much personal hand did you have in the design? Because there's a lot of minimalism and a lot of similarity in the, like from the bolt to the stem to the, you name it, there's a lot of similarity to the, just the

look and the feel. Yeah. So kind of keeping that consistency with the industrial design language across similarity to the just the look in the field. Yeah. So kind of keeping that consistency with the industrial design language across the whole product line is something we've always been cognizant of. And the way we've been able to pull that off is yes, myself and Liam have had a ton of input on all of this stuff. And we've also been fortunate enough to I will add a longtime industry friend who's actually one of the original founders of Raceface, since

left Raceface once they got acquired by Fox. And he was able to connect us to and he's actually one of the founders of TrailOne, one of the co-founders and he was able to connect us with a incredibly talented PhD level engineer that did a short stint at Race face on a work visa. He's an Irishman, but he did a short stint at race face on a work visa in Canada for a while. And now he's actually back at ones a side project for him as a co founder too. So so we've got some really good people on the procurement side figuring out the best factories and manufacture this stuff. And then the engineering side to actually do all the really technical CAD drawings of all the

stuff. And then you know, Liam and I having a lot of input on how things look and should be shaped and specs and all of that. So yeah, it's just piecing together a team like that, that can execute on good products. So. Yeah. You've done a great job. I will tell you, I don't own any Trill One products.

And I think it's because I bought all my stuff and I'm like, well, I don't need two stems. Yeah, exactly. I just generally, I would like to have another one that would mean may have to sell my current race face one to just place it. So there's not a lot of utility in replacing it, but it had not already. Now, the next time I get grips, I get your grips. That's for sure. I think I've done the the ODI, ODIs. Yeah, the ODIs. Yeah.

Whatever you guys suggest that I think I eventually landed there Like I took some of your advice on like which different grips to try out and just landed on the the ODI I think they're pros for a cock correctly, but they're kind of like thin. They're not super thick. They got some good grip to them They're about 20 ish bucks. They're not super expensive. Maybe 30. I don't know what the number is, but fairly affordable Yeah, but I mean how often do your grips? I mean, I think grips probably last. My grips probably last me less than yours because you probably bike every day. I don't get the bike every day, Jeff.

All depends on how much you ride. Yeah, man, it really does. But I'm a big fan of Trail One. Just haven't personally bought any of your stuff yet. I'm looking forward to the day when I need to replace something. And there you go. I got looking forward to the day when I need to replace something and there you go, I got a trail once handlebar instead of a replacement from something else.

Yeah, well thanks man. What about kettle then? How do you take this to the, this must be the juggernaut of what you've got going on. Is this the biggest thing you have going on right now? Kettle, yeah, absolutely. Kettle, yeah. So like 80% of your time is going to kettle and then 20% sprinkled us

elsewhere. How's it work? Pretty close. It's probably 70 30. Um, there are all pretty intertwined though. So, um, you know, the, the three stores that we have for worldwide cyclery, um, which are also, you know, basically small retail store on the front, um, sort of customer service and admin in the middle, and then warehousing and fulfillment in the back. So we have one of those in California,

Nevada and Pennsylvania. And those stores also do all of the warehousing and fulfillment for Kettle and TrailOne. And then it's all a bit intertwined in the back in terms of who's working on what brandined in the back in terms of, you know, who's working on what brand and how the finances are co-mingled, at least on the worldwide cycle and kettle side, trail one's a separate entity.

But anyways, it's all been intertwined, especially the infrastructure and staff with all three brands. So I couldn't tell you like an exact percentage split that I have, because it's pretty intermingled. But yeah, but needless to say, you know, kettle is a huge opportunity for us that's growing really well. And we know it's just an important piece of the puzzle.

And frankly, it's something that we're having a lot of fun with, you know, to be honest, as you probably heard in my agitation talking about the bike industry, a little demoralized, not just with the, you know, the boom and bust cycle is what it is, but more just the way that the industry has evolved in a way that's really, unfortunately neglected, you know, good retailers, good retail infrastructure, good, you know, good marketing for the sport to get more people into it. Like it's just evolved in a way that is detrimental to the growth of the sport. And that's a bit demoralizing on the mountain bike side of things.

And on the apparel side of things with kettle, it's actually been the opposite. It's actually really fun to see, you know, the enthusiasm people have for being adventurous and traveling and going outdoors and how technical fabrics have really come a long way and manufacturing methods have come a long way. And there's a lot more cool, little intricate,

useful details you can mix into apparel that didn't really exist years back. And for people who care about little thoughtful details like that and were those people, we like designing that stuff and testing it and making it and finding the people who also care about those things. And for Kettle, that's just been a huge win, right? We've had so much fun doing that.

And yeah, the kind of the reviews and testimonials we get on the product and the repeat business we get kind of speaks for itself. So that's, yeah, it's grown very fast and been definitely a huge focus of mine. And yeah, that's a lot of where I'm putting my energy these days. This could be a big business, right? Like it could be $50 million plus kind of business. I don't know, I'm just picking a big number. I don't even know if it's a real number or not.

Like, is it? And it could be like the really, really, really big business if you play the long game right. And you spend the right kind of money on marketing and. Totally. Yeah, there's billion dollar plus apparel brands all over the place and even just in the menswear category, you know, Lululemon does over and Patagonia does over,

you know, hundreds of millions and just men outdoor menswear only. So, way bigger total addressable market. So my number was pretty accurate then. Yeah. As actually on a small scale, like a $50 million apparel brand would is not even really a nothing. That's like a little, little brand in the scheme of things.

Yeah. The, the big, the big dogs are pumping out way bigger numbers than that. And when you say outdoor, do you mean just basically anything that's has to do with like hiking, camping, biking, you name it kind of outdoor? Yeah. It's all very blurred in a sense now, especially with how a lot of people wear quote unquote outdoor apparel casually because it's so comfortable.

But yeah, what we specifically like is making apparel that is versatile, that you can wear daily and be really comfortable in traveling, but also has sort of the necessary technical attributes to get out there and perform during hiking, trail running, mountain biking, kayaking, fishing, whatever, you name it, just outdoor activities. Yeah, and then just making specialized products too, like rain shells or more specific pants, like you name it, just outdoor activities. Yeah, and then just making specialized products too, like rain shells or more specific pants, specifically fit short for mountain biking or specific pants for rock climbing,

stuff like that too. And, you know, we do a lot of mountain biking, hiking, show running, adventure racing, rock climbing. We do all those things. So we're just making a product lineup that, you know, covers all those bases. So you just go and do what you do and you find challenges and problems. You're like, okay, let's make this new thing to solve this problem.

The Jeffinator, I don't know. I'm just thinking of something, you know, just cliche and stupid really, but you know, you just do what you do and solve problems for those that are like you. Yeah, yeah. In large part, that's right. Yeah. I mean, and it's funny, I think the, you know, solving problems is kind of a funny thing

in business because it used to be imperative. Like, what problem are you solving? But now I think a lot of modern businesses are, did you build the mousetrap better? imperative, like what problem are you solving? But now I think a lot of modern businesses are, did you build the mousetrap better? You know, a lot of us, we live in 2025, the number of inventions that you're going to come up with now versus what you'd come up with 50 years ago are very different. So a lot of nowadays is about refinement are very different. No, no, we didn't just invent a way to search the internet in the year 1997. Instead we figured out how to make really refine a rain shell for traveling.

There you go. Whatever, you know. Which takes a whole different kind of subject matter expertise to do so. Yeah. You mentioned LLMs, APIs, and I think even AI initially early in the call. Mm-hmm. Does AI play a role at all in your day-to-day life as an individual?

Are you using AI? Is it helping or hurting your business? Yeah, absolutely. I am definitely a nerd and all that stuff, and love it and enjoy it, and have been an early adopter of all of it. And yeah, I use chat GPT daily for a whole range of things. I always experiment with our businesses on Google workspace.

So I always dabble and experiment with the way that Google is integrating Gemini, which is largely terrible and not very useful. Our customer support staff and the content guys, they're using it to write articles, reply to emails. Yeah, so we're leveraging it every which way we can and every which way that's possible to, whether that's automate tedious tasks

or a lot of it's just language related, like writing things and replying to emails, stuff like that, proofreading stuff. There's so many useful cases for it. I don't know, by and large, and replying to emails, stuff like that. It's not revolutionized anything yet. I'm not firing people because I've replaced them with AI robots, just answering customer support queries automatically. There's still the human touch. The humans are just much more efficient so far, you're in the space where there is probably some pretty substantial things being revolutionized with writing code and stuff like that.

Everything's changing. Yeah, big time, right? It's a whole different, like the response from you to the response to somebody else we talked to today. We recorded a podcast this morning, for example, and it's just dramatically night and day changing the future of software development. Yeah, that makes sense. As we speak about it.

That's cool. It's totally changing how a seasoned, senior, professional, well-trained, multi-language aware software developer writes software today is dramatically different today than it will be tomorrow. I mean, it's always been true, but specifically now we have the burgeoning effects of that truly

taking place and not being this pie in the sky potential, like literal truth coming true as we speak. It's so true. It's so wild. So it's wild. Like you are using it on the implementation level where you're a word calculator is how we describe it, right? I'd imagine you personally are probably running different business models.

Maybe you're doing like different forecasting or ingesting it, ingesting data and doing stuff like that. Like that's how I personally am doing things. I'm not so in different. I'm like forecasting and scenario based, you know, breaking the business, so to speak, whatever we're trying to do as an example. So, yeah.

Yeah, it is cool. I mean, it's amazing tools have come out so far and I'm always trying to find different use cases for them that I enjoy. And I also just love to research and learn anything and everything. So being able to converse with all of humanity's knowledge is pretty cool.

And I use that all the time to learn and study and research, which is super fun. I am curious too, just from your perspective, we pay for a lot of SaaS products and everyone in the e-commerce space does and they're usually grumpy about it. Do you think that all of these SaaS tools in the e-commerce space are going to get disrupted in a bit in a way that's tools in the e-commerce space are going to get disrupted in a bit in a way that's going to be able to build those for so much less money. I think even if somebody rebuilt it, they would still find a way to charge you for it. So I don't think the money goes away. I think what may change potentially is if you had a software team already

that was building software internal tools for your companies, which you may already have. I think that their job grows. So if you've got even one or two person, just call them a tech team, somebody who runs the websites. Yeah. Could be a small team of two or three. I'm just hypothesizing.

But now their job should be to start to think about how to build out your own internal tools, build out your own internal systems, because it's getting democratized more. And it's not that non-software developers are making software, it's just that people who are less entrenched in software creation have new liberations, new guides, new, like you're a lifelong learner,

I would just say it's like more on-ramps to the road you may want to go on. You know, it's kind of like that. It's not like a literal just, I'm doing it for you. It's now you've got an uncanny buddy that's willing to help you provided you pay it, you know, to do the work, you know, kind of thing. And that's going to get more and more expensive over time potentially, but you have some, you know, to do the work, you know, kind of thing. And that's gonna get more and more expensive over time potentially, but you'll have some, you know, some diminishing returns when it comes to that. Like some people are paying 200 bucks a month

as an example to OpenAI and their higher end things. And same thing with like Cloud and Anthropic, they're paying the higher end versions to get access to more unfettered or unlimited or multi-user or whatever you call it. And you're gonna to have that. But I think if your team, if your tech team is making software for you over time, they can begin to make more software for you

and maybe start to chip away at those extra services that you don't really need anymore because they're kind of like a database in the cloud, basically. Now they have security and they have maybe they have SOC 2 compliance or some sort of other compliance that you need to now take on internally. The problem just shifts. Your cost basis probably stays somewhat similar. You know, like you pay them three grand a year, you're going to pay somebody else something

per year to deal with the problem, to now have the problem. So it might just shift a little bit. I think over time you'll have more of an opportunity if you don't already have an opportunity to create more of your own business level software that's bespoke, unique, one-off kind of thing. Like you mentioned APIs and ingesting data, stuff like that, you know?

Yeah. Is my guess, you know? Yeah, yeah, cool. If they're not already doing that, they should be doing more of that. And I think more internal tools is probably guess, you know? Yeah, yeah, cool. If they're not already doing that, they should be doing more of that. And I think more internal tools is probably good, but now you gotta maintain them. And when they break, they're broken, you know?

And you gotta fix them. So, you know. It's always a pros and cons of building internal. You gotta judge, you know, your downtime. Was it worth it to take it internal? Well, maybe we gained some agency over it, but now we gained, we also gained the full-on maintenance ability of it. Like we have to maintain it over it, but now we gained, we also gained

the full on maintenance ability of it. Like we have to maintain it when it's down as our fault. You know? And so we had to learn uptime. Now we have to learn a whole new problem set. So what was once just a WordPress website or a Shopify website has now grown into a whole different problem.

So it depends on if you want to bite that off. Yeah. You know, so that's my thoughts on it, but I'm glad you're using it. I'm glad that AI is a part of what you're doing on the day to day, because I mean, if it wasn't. But you're sharp, Jeff, you're sharp. You know what you're doing.

So what's the next big thing for you? So if kettle is where things are at now, how do you, like what makes life good for you? What's the next thing for you? What makes life good for you in these next steps you take? Yeah, so, you know, my take on business in general is I'm not trying to conquer the world.

Quite the opposite. I'm trying to run a lifestyle business and do it really well. And what I mean by that is I wanna have a business that I can be really proud of in the way that it treats its customers, the products that it produces, the way that it treats its internal employees,

the way that it brings things to the world, whether that's humor or creativity or content. I like a business that I can be proud of that hits all of those things in a really good way and just provides a great, awesome life for myself and the team. And that's it. We don't have revenue targets. things in a really good way and just provides a great, awesome life for myself and the team. And that's it.

We don't have revenue targets. We're not trying to be like, oh, let's hit shopping with us like that's it that's all just calm down after that you know like just have a good life so so that's that's my outlook on it well thanks man I mean it's it's definitely it's definitely contrary to the typical you know hustle at all costs build a unicorn sell it like no I'm not at all like I just want to run an awesome, fun business and have a good time doing it and make sure that along the way we're, you know, building products that we can be proud of

and the people love working here and people love shopping with us. Like, that's it. Like, that to me is important. I feel much more sort of fulfilled and vindicated when I see positive testimonials about the service we provide, the products we make, and the happiness and cheerfulness of our internal staff,

and our ability to take care of them. That to me is what matters. I'm not going for an exit, I'm not going for an IPO, I'm not, none of that. I'm just trying to enjoy myself, enjoy my life, make sure I take plenty of vacations and time off and stay fit and take care of my body and make sure the rest of the staff does that.

And yeah, to me, that's like what a lifestyle business is and should be, and that's what I care about. So definitely contrary to, you know, I think most hustle at all costs, build and scale, be the unicorns take is, it's like I'm took kind of the opposite. That's good. It's gonna get a healthy outlook on your next steps and just generally how you operate.

That's why, like I said, I was gravitated towards what you've done, even if it wasn't you could have been doing something different. If you just had the same energy, like the thing I'm now into is golf. I don't know if you're into golf or not. You're in the golf chance. I like golf. I'm not super into it, but I definitely enjoy it. Yeah So when I saw kettle I was thinking guys the next obvious maneuver there would be potentially golf. I don't know how well

It's almost outdoorsy. Yeah, it's definitely athletic and You know charges high dollars potentially for your, your average polo costs, you know, a low cost is like 50 bucks. A decent cost is like a hundred or so dollars for like a decent polo, you know? So I don't know. Yeah. There's room in that space too for, I think a lot more, it's probably crowded, but there's room for fun. So the same reasons why you're in the business you're in currently is I think

there's the same kind of fun nature and there's a whole new playful nature coming to golf that hasn't quite been there in the last, I say for most of its time, like the last five years it's changed. I think it's ready for a younger audience, which means new people coming in, which means a whole new different

psychology of buyer, you know, where the older psychology of the buyer may have been this, I don't know, clicky uppity golfer where I think now the landscape of who golfs. I'm just so surprised by who golfs. Yeah. I'm like, you're you golf. Like for real now, it's like, I wouldn't take you as somebody who cares about your score or like what you're trying to break or what you're trying to like, you don't see like the kind of person, not you, but like this fictitious person I'm suggesting.

Like, I'm so surprised by who's involved in golf. Yeah, it's a cool sport and it's great to see how well it's done post COVID. It's actually one of the poster trials of business that funny enough, it gets compared to cycling for the all the wrong reasons. So, you know, golf had quite a big boom as well during COVID. And it's hung on to the customer base. A lot of people got into golf and have still stuck with golf post COVID.

It didn't really bust. Whereas a lot of these other sports, cycling in particular went boom and bust. And people said, well, you know, a lot of the reason golf did so well was, it was a little bit more, I don't think inclusive is the correct word, but it was a little bit more, it was more appealing long term to different people. And they actually enjoyed it. Like they went and got into golfing during COVID, they never really golfed before. And it became habitual to be

like, you know, once a month, or even every Sunday, they go out and play with their boys. And some people take it really seriously. Some people go out there to a beer hole. But the golf courses and the people who were on the courses and the staff at the courses and the experience of golfing wasn't ever really derogatory or exclusionary. And so more people got into it and just kept doing it. And they liked it. And it's like hung on to a lot of these Newcomers to the sport in a really good way In the exact opposite way that the cycling industry got all these newcomers and then just lost all of them So it's it is cool to look at how well the the industry's done

And yeah, I'm actually just in the apparel space to have gotten familiar with some of those new golf brands that are much more Apparel Space too have gotten familiar with some of those new golf brands that are much more off the cuff and unique and Bad Birdie is one of the ones that I follow and admire. It is cool. Yeah, there's like new golf apparel that's a little more technical but a little more flavorful and edgy. Yeah, and you're right. I think as the baby boomers phase out off the course, there's going to be a lot more millennials taking over the golf course scene course, there's going to be a lot more millennials taking

over the golf course scene and the flavor is going to change. And it is cool to see the industry change and evolve like that. Yeah. I think you're right about that, Bertie. They've got a really cool brand. Yeah. I like a lot of their stuff. I mean, you look at everybody and all their, every photo, it's, you know, somebody that's

30 or younger, you know? So I have no idea what your age is, but people who listen to my show know my age. So I'm not 35, almost a year. I'm 11 years older than you, Jeff. It feels weird to say that. Well, we're all aging slowly, which surely, man. Yeah, you know, one day at a time, right?

Yeah, exactly. One second at a time. Well, I look forward to you. So are you hinting at the fact that kettle might get into golf? Oh, I don't know. I don't, it kind of depends on- Any thoughts at all about that? Or a whole separate brand?

Yeah, I don't think we'd do a separate brand. Most people are asking us when we're gonna make women's apparel. And it's just like, I'm not trying, like I explained my business philosophy earlier, I'm not trying to boil the ocean. I not trying you know if I were to just all of a sudden make golf wear or women's wear it would be for the wrong reasons like I'm not trying to make products to sell them for making money like that's not what I'm trying

to do here so I want to make stuff that I like and I'm into and you know if the handful of us who are kind of calling the shots on what products we make next and what sort of you know categories we get into for whatever reason we all start golfing more we'll probably the handful of us who are calling the shots on what products we make next and what categories we get into, for whatever reason, we all start golfing more. We'll probably just make golf apparel. If for whatever reason, we all start surfing more, maybe we'll make more surf apparel. I literally can't predict what we'll make in the next five years because it just depends on what we happen to get into more.

Recently we've gotten, a lot of us have gotten more into backcountry skiing, mountaineering and adventure racing and trail running. So we're just making more stuff for those categories because we like that. And we're definitely interested in making bags too, because we travel a lot and there's so many different bags out there

and like little things about bags that you can do there. Totally, yeah. And everyone's got different preferences. And so, and footwear, I have no idea. It just all depends on what we end up, just like the few of us here, what we really get into. But I would bet at some point, it might be a few more years,

we'll go through a phase where we're into golf and we'll start making golf apparel just because of that reason. So we're just making shit that we want to use and like and what we're into at the moment. So who knows what it'll be next. That's a really good thing. Well, I was hoping you were getting into golf or into golf because I figured that at some point you start to offer my next passion sport, which is golf. Some content, some insights, you know, I mean, all that good stuff.

I think the space around golf is so really unique. Really, it is. I've been enjoying it personally. I've been enjoying playing with friends. I like it for business. I like it for networking. I like it for just getting outdoors. One thing I think the golf has over mountain biking is the collarbone scenario. Yeah, much safer.

Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's a lot easier to be mobile with my body, not broken because I crashed going over some really chunky stuff, which I find super fun. I mean, like the adventure in me, the like I'm 46 and so I'm not young. I'm not old either. I'm at that age where if I break something, it hurts more than it did 10 years ago. So I'm a bit more cautious of a rider, but at the same time, like I get out there

and I just, I'm shredding hardcore. But I'm definitely more mindful of my shred. Yeah, same. Whereas like two or three years ago, I was a little less concerned about it. Now I'm more concerned about it. And so golf has seemed like a better hobby slash sport because it's got different benefits, let's just say.

Just different benefits, you know? Yeah. I admire any sport that has like a good way for you to get outside with friends and converse, chat, get exercise, have fun in the sun. Like I don't care what it is. I like all those things. And I really appreciate friends and converse chat, get exercise, have fun in the sun. Like I don't care what it is. I like all those things. And I really appreciate how,

how golf has evolved into such a social sport where it just becomes a great way to get away with your boys and go hang out for eight hours playing golf and shooting the shit and laughing. I can't do eight hours. I'm not allowed, okay? I got four or five, Jeff. If I'm gone five hours to golf, that is the full day of golf. Yeah, I'm in trouble at that point.

I got different things that time me and bind me, so to speak. But yeah, I'm glad you're engulfed. That's interesting. What else, what's left unsaid, Jeff? I know we've gone for quite a bit, probably more than you probably thought you would, but what's left unsaid to this audience

that is just curious about your next steps or any further insight you can offer? Yeah, you know, I think we covered a lot. And yeah, I appreciate you having me on the show. I know I'm definitely a different guest than you normally have, So I appreciate that. And yeah, man, fun, fun chat and all that stuff with you. I mean, one of the things that, you know, if I were to be an advocate for anything, I'm definitely an advocate to

live a good life and just be thoughtful about the way your career is shaped, whether that's your own business or, or how well your career kind of feeds your lifestyle. I definitely am an advocate for lifestyle businesses, like I explained, like try and find a business you can run that is fun and enjoyable and you can be proud of and or trying to be in a career or a space, a job that you really enjoy the lifestyle of it and you love your work and you love the industry that it's in. I'm just an advocate for that because I've seen so many people come to our businesses

from these corporate jobs. They're just like, I couldn't do it. I loved bikes my whole life or I loved outdoors my whole life and I've been an engineer at Gore-Tex and I just can't stand it anymore. And then they like take a huge pay-to-motion and come work in a much more fun industry and they're like, this is so I should not forever. And so I'm definitely an advocate to like really be, you know, to tell people just be thoughtful about how you spend your eight hours a day working and ideally it's in an

industry that you're passionate about and can really feed your lifestyle and your hobbies in a good way. So yeah, that's the only thing I'm a true advocate about and I want people to think about and consider because I think the days of us having to grind away to just make a paycheck at a job we hate just to survive, those days are kind of gone. Like we've got so much more opportunity in how big and complex this economy is now that take advantage of that

and actually love what you do and your work. Yeah. And I will say that the show's taken a bit to get coordinated because every time I've reached out to you, you've been busy. You've been traveling the world. So you really do speak what you're saying because that's reason why. It's like

you've been busy. Yeah, I'm all over the place. My calendar is booked out a long ways. I think we're going to Australia or something like that. You're like, I'm leaving Australia for this bike trip or something like that. I'm like, well, dang it, I want to go and that'd be kind of cool. But that's your life. You get to sell bikes and make gear and make components and influence folks. But at the same time, you get to sell bikes and make gear and make components and influence folks. But at the same time, you get to go and just see the world and enjoy the sport

and enjoy the people you're doing it with. Which is- Totally, man. Is just so cool, man. I'm so proud of you. So just proud of what you've done. Stoked for all the stuff you've done for you and the team, for sure.

Well, thank you. And I appreciate all the kind words and I'm just, it's just awesome to chat with you and hear that you had a great experience getting into mountain biking and learning from our channels and getting more into the sport from that. Like that's awesome. Like that's literally why we do it. So people can learn and enjoy and get more into the sport and have fun doing it. Like that's the whole reason.

So always more fun. That's for sure. I mean, really, I think the work y'all did with your YouTube channel and just the way you, all the things you talked about with your company, the way you design it from being thoughtful. You know, one thing I'll leave you with is, I was choosing between a hardtail and a full squish

at the time. I thought at the time I thought it had to be either or. I didn't know you could buy two bikes, Jeff. I didn't know you could have two bikes, okay? Just like you got two computers, you got two bikes. Yeah, you know, I was like, you know, I can have this hard tail and I can have my full squish and I can have two bikes.

Totally. I didn't know that at the time. So I was really like, okay, I could, I gotta get one of these things. And I was looking at a hard tail frame and I was trying to choose the fork. And it was a really helpful process and enjoyable process to email your support folks and then not just tell me like what options were good to consider, but to dream the bike with me. Yeah.

You know, I think that was the coolest thing ever. It wasn't just customer support. It wasn't just, let me get a question to answer it about this product, or here's the link on the web, go find out yourself, dude. It was like, okay, no, I see why you're thinking like 130 in the front for this bike and why that makes sense. Maybe you want to go 140 because you'll be a little bit more aggressive.

This is all insider speak for, you know, how many millimeters your fork travel will be, you know? And, and so just without having that community, without having other buddies to like really, I mean, I have other friends, but like, they were tired of talking about things with me, you know? And, and so to like, just have friends by association through World Bicycler was pretty cool.

You know, I definitely had, if you go into your support systems, you'll see a few emails from me, kind of stupid asking questions about forks and travel and what to choose and choices. That's how it starts, man. Everyone's gotta start somewhere. It's complicated products. It is.

And I always appreciated the fact that just the DNA of your business was, let's serve this person versus sell this person. Yeah. Let's serve them in their quest for more knowledge and their quest for more enjoyment and a friend. And that, to me, was really, really cool. And it spoke dividends compared to your competition

in this case. So I appreciate that. But Jeff, again, thank you so much for being the awesome entrepreneur and, you know, just curious person, the athlete that you've been to explore these sports and not just explore them and keep all the goods for yourself, but find a way to share it with others and build a team and build a business. And like really what you built is just tremendous.

And I'm so thankful and so proud of you. Yeah. I appreciate it. Well, thank you. Can't say thank you enough for the kind words. OK, achievement a lot for me. Talk to one more hero of mine. Yes, Jeff Kaley is one of those people I've been following, as you've heard in this podcast, Jeff and his companies for many, many years. I'm a customer

I'm now a friend, you know all those things but it's so cool I'm a big fan of Jeff if you haven't been to worldwidecyclery.com or any of his adjacent brands kettle or trail one check them out Jeff and his team are amazing been a customer for years and now friend. Okay, we're in Denver soon Change law comm slash live you should be there $15 ticket what? Yeah, that's that's for you. We want you to be there. Okay, that's it. This shows done. We'll see you next week