Dynamic Life Cycles
Dynamic Life Cycles
The Griz: A Lifetime on Two Wheels with Jason Haycock
Meet Jason “The Griz” Haycock, a legend in the cycling world with over 35 years of experience, including an incredible 25 years and counting at Norco. Growing up in the blue-collar neighborhoods of BC, Jason’s love for bikes started out of curiosity and necessity, growing into a passion that continues to drive his career and influence the cycling scene around him.
We’ll dig into Jason’s journey, from wrenching at boutique bike shops to earning the title of Norco’s North American Sales Champion. Along the way, he’ll share unforgettable stories, like his time at a Korean-owned bike shop, where he sharpened his skills, gained cultural insight, and found mentorship that left a lasting impact.
Jason’s innovative approach to the cycling world has transformed how people experience bikes. From building demo programs to growing sales across North America, his influence is still rolling strong today, shaping the industry for the future.
This episode is all about connecting with Jason’s ongoing story, from a small-town enthusiast to one of the most respected leaders in cycling. If you love bikes, leadership, or just hearing a great journey, this one’s for you.
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- Hosted and Produced by Jarrad Connolly
Welcome back to the Dynamic Lifecycles podcast. Happy New Year to everyone and I'm excited to kick off the year, as we have some great guests lined up To start it off. We have one of the most generous and hard-working guys in the industry, jason the Grizz Haycock. You may know him from his 25 years at Norco or his 35 plus years in the cycling industry or his 35 plus years in the cycling industry, but most know him from his time out in the field, hustling his passion for cycling and seen on Instagram as GrizzTour. I won't share too much more about Grizz, as we touched on so many of his chapters of his life during the podcast. But, as always, if you enjoy the episode, please get on and give it a five-star review. It helps push it out to so many new like-minded people. If you have any questions also, don't hesitate to reach out, as I'm always happy to chat, so enjoy your listen.
Speaker 1:All right how are you? What's going on? Awesome, Nice sunny day out today. It's insane. It's January, middle of January and we're walking around in t-shirts.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, versus the other day like uh, smelled like snow, felt like snow yeah and the ski industry is doing awesome. So that makes me excited, because it means that we're gonna have a good spring in the bike industry yeah, there's a lot happening in spring, like grass is opening, we've got a lot of new bikes coming. There's tons of cool stuff happening, that's it yeah, and we're already talking about spring and getting prepped for it, so yeah, um.
Speaker 1:So I guess real quickly, where do we start? I'm trying to think of how we start this podcast, because I think a lot of people know who you are, but they also don't know who you are Even your daughter just said to me. Then every second day he comes out with a new story that we've never heard. So where do you start in the life of Grizz?
Speaker 2:I guess BC, born and bred. Yeah, small town, blue collar. Yeah, uh, small town, blue collar and uh, just like any other kid, fell in love with bikes and uh became my passion and uh also a form of means. You know, it was my adventure, my escape. But, more importantly, how I think I got into the bike industry was again being blue-collar. You know, a less fortunate kind of growing up. I had to learn how to fix my own bike, yeah, and then I became that kid that fixed my brother's bikes and then I fixed our friend's bikes and then I fixed our friend's bikes and then, you know, if I needed bike parts or a tube or a tire, you know I'd go hang out at the local bike store, you know, volunteer to like, sweep the floor, crush boxes, you know, to get a tube or a tire.
Speaker 1:And I was just a grom hung out in my local bike store and one of the one of the kids that you still see floating around today asking for a job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's how, that's how I got into it, you know um, and then I think really you know the a big part of it was kind of moving, moving from small town BC to Vancouver. And within a week of living here I started uh bikes on Broadway and uh, which was the home in the original space at Rocky mountain bicycles, even started Um. I think that's probably where my adventure begins if we're keeping this kind of related to my history, yeah, and what I've kind of done in the bike industry here in canada on the west coast, and and then how it kind of maybe even merged into the us and then back to First Black, first Riding Adventures.
Speaker 1:Where and what was that like?
Speaker 2:13, I think I think it was 13. I got a Norco Spitfire BMX. Yeah, wow, all chrome. It was kind of almost state of the art. But again, you know this would be them back to 1983 and you know there was no such thing as a lot of local bike stores in rural, you know, small town, everything that would be hockey, skiing, bicycles, it all came from the hardware store.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so our little hardware store was called Oscars and they were the Norco dealer and their premium bike brand was Norco and it was a pretty advanced, it was pretty flashy. I mean, I can remember having a banana seat bike before that and you know, I remember taking the banana seat off, the sissy bars off, stealing the seat from my mom's Apollo 10 speed to kind of make my um, my bike look like a bmx, but then to get a real bmx and you know, when I was 13 man it was, it was game changer yeah, yeah, I can only imagine how how that looked way back in there.
Speaker 1:I can picture like this like almost like an old school chrome bmx. We actually I don't know if I showed you the photos for one of the one of the boys that I used to uh, well, he works for ktm now but, uh, he built up an old chrome bmx from like 79, I think it was something like that. It was like yeah, it's like. I'm definitely picture what you're talking about there you go.
Speaker 2:Well, I have one of those frames hanging actually in my garage right now. Uh, wasn't my original bike, but it was something. Then when I was, I found it and I kept it. And I mean, realistically for a guy that doesn't ride a whole lot anymore based on injuries and a few other things, I still have too many bikes in my garage. I think I'm gonna count of over 22 or 23 bikes in my garage yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:It's all memorabilia now some of it is and a lot of its collectibles, some of its even bikes that came with certificates of authenticity or you know again some true collectibles. I think the oldest bike in my garage is a 1930s kids bike hanging up in the rafters. Yeah, I got a 1970 rally with a sturmey archer three speed. But what's really cool about this 1970 rally is it's a true england bike and there's zero rust on it. Even though it's steel rims and everything, there's zero rust on this bike and it's uh, it's one of my favorites you're gonna have to, uh, build out the man cave a little bit more and get that happening well, originally when I got it because, again, it wasn't one of my original bikes, it was a bike that I I collected.
Speaker 2:Um, I've got this beautiful shelf up in our vaulted ceiling in our living room and I told my wife that I actually got this because I thought it would look good up on this shelf in this vaulted ceiling in our living room. But when I brought it home she said no way.
Speaker 1:I think most men out there can relate to that exact conversation I know. Before I moved to Canada, I used to have on my bedroom wall all of my helmets hanging up on hooks, almost like you see that they do in the pro houses and all of that type of thing. And then, uh, now, living with my now fiance, it's like she's like yeah, those things are going in the cupboard, they don't need to be on display that's right yeah so I I can fully understand what you went through with that.
Speaker 1:So, uh, fast forwarding back to where you were just saying, then moving to Vancouver, starting in the, the bicycle store, um, and then where did that go? Like, how old were you when you started there?
Speaker 2:well, so, in my early career. I was a bicycle mechanic and so I guess back you know this was a, for this was a really cool bike store because, as I learned the history of it, it was called Bikes on Broadway Before that, in the early days, the bike store's true name was Bicycle Peddler and it actually even had a sign on the brick wall on the back of the store. The legacy of this store, and for what it means to Vancouver and the bike industry here in Canada, is it was part of the franchise. It's West Point Cycles and Rocky Mountain started in this location. Grayson Bain started Rocky Mountain. He started the company in there. It was the warehouse above where we would then store our bikes that we would build in the wintertime all our booking order bikes.
Speaker 2:but rocky started in there and it was such a small operation but they even hand painted the bikes back in the day and if everybody remembers, in the early 90s or, sorry, the late 80s a lot of the bikes came with this kind of splattered paint and, uh, you know those are done with just literally paint brushes and people splatter and paint on them, I believe, uh, but I can tell you that's what the wall looked like there was a wall in this warehouse that they would lean the bikes up against they just like flick the paint on they just flick the paint on and but anyways, the bunch of people that worked in this store throughout the 80s were the guys that started Kona, the guys that started the original Synchros, a bunch of the crew that started Rocky Mountain and then also Race Face, and not a lot of people know that Race Face was kind of on the heels of Rocky Mountain and a bunch of that stuff.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, I think of the history of the people that influenced you know, I think you think of these people, that again, the people that did Conan now and Rocky and Synchros and Race Face, and they all kind of came through the same retail store and I think it's kind of neat that you know that, I pride myself that. You know again, I wasn't somebody that started a, that you know that I pride myself that you know again, I wasn't somebody that started a bike company, but I've been at Norco now for 25 years and, uh, you know, I think, just the legacy that this one retail store had on cycling in Vancouver so I guess at what point?
Speaker 1:because we're. We're now sitting in the, the former john henry's. What point was john henry's heydays compared to that store? Was that before or after or around the same time?
Speaker 2:it would have been right around the time that john henry, I believe, was starting, because I believe john henry was in business about 30 years ago. I think that's what we estimate here in this building that we're in today. Um, I think the strong retailers at the time though it really wasn't the that wasn't the heyday of john henry uh, john henry was in its early infancy. The heyday in the bike stores of that day our biggest competitors again was west pointcle. West Point was the biggest Rocky dealer, along with Bikes on Broadway. Then you had Mountain and Beach and I can tell you that place really inspired me and the way that I look at bicycles even today.
Speaker 2:I mean to think in the early 90s that there was this one bike store. If anything fit into the mold of what we would call a boutique bike shop, it would be mountain and beach and they had the best of the best of everything. Yeah, you know, and the most expensive bike even the rocky would have had back in the day was a custom built bike that would take six weeks to build. It was called a thunderbolt. Um, you take measurements from the customer. We would normally have to do that over the phone because all those were sold to Swedes or people coming in from Europe. They'd fly to Vancouver and pick up the bicycle and fly home because it was way cheaper to do that. But this mountain and beach owned by Rod, it was amazing. I mean, it was the first time I ever saw, um, you know, um, a Manitou bicycle or uh, you know if they're the Yetis, and um, he also did a bike line called the uh goats or the toads sorry, off-road toads.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, when I said goat, there was these off-road goats, or forget what it was. Or I mean again like, if you think of any Paul components, or like this, the trick, the jewelry, the best of the best stuff was always in this store. Yeah and uh, and it inspired me a lot. Um, and then so back in the bike store that I would work at. I would always go there to find where the trends were going. I tried to always bring that back to this korean bike store because I, uh, I was working for a korean gentleman, uh, named bill, me young, and I almost felt like it was like a karate kid thing back in the day, because you know, I was taught a lot. You know, I mean I was self-taught until I was taught and I really owe a lot of you know my skill set, mindset and the way that I look at the bike industry, even today, from that gentleman.
Speaker 1:Would you say that that's one of your first mentors in that way?
Speaker 2:I guess, I guess I never really thought of it that way, but he probably for sure. Like he taught me a lot of like, even little things, like right from wrong. But at the end of the day I think probably the best thing that I got was cultured. Yeah, again, I was a blue collar kid coming from rural town. Right, I never really had even chinese food before and then to be exposed to korean food and chinese food and japanese and you know everything that vancouver had for it. But I mean, I credit. That's why I can use chopsticks today is because you know we get busy on a Saturday, so his wife would make us ramen soup and there's no forks in the bike store, so I had to learn how to eat ramen soup with chopsticks and that's how I had that today. But, yes, I would say, yeah, that was probably my first, maybe, mentor, but again as a bike mechanic.
Speaker 2:But I'd get laid off in the winter time and I'd go do dry wall and it was so dirty and dusty and we were always doing the finishing work and so if you've ever sanded drywall, oh yeah, I realized early on. I was like you know what? Sales people don't get laid off in the winter time. Yeah, if you're a good salesperson, you're going to stay on. So first I aspired to be a salesperson. After my second year second winter, being laid off in a bike store, and so when I came back for my third year I said that I wanted to be a sales guy. I didn't want to be a mechanic anymore, and then I was highly motivated to be number one in sales and I wanted to be a manager. I knew I wanted to take it to the next level and I've always kind of had that energy of trying to take my career to the next level, or a little bit of drive.
Speaker 2:And something I guess I didn't say in here is so I was a cadet as a kid, like an army cadet, and that was my escape from my weird rural family, um, growing up, and so I got to go away in the summertime. I learned how to you know, um, I went scuba diving, learned how to scuba dive. I was, uh, went into some shooting competitions as a kid indoor and outdoor shooting competitions and stuff and even though I was a bit of a headbanger, all my friends were metalheads. I was probably the only short-haired metalhead, but I had this whole other life that was in this, this kind of army cadets. And then I did army reserves.
Speaker 2:Even when I was younger, when I was 17, I went into the army um, very short-lived, because I uh found my passion. You know, I wanted to work on bikes. I said that wasn't where I wanted to go, was into the army. And I think that first war 1989 and then 90 was the first korea war and stuff, and I was actually in this. I was supposed to actually report to victoria and I was going to be shipped off.
Speaker 2:But I changed my mind and moved on for that and decided and I'm glad I did, because I might not be in the bike industry for and and had the career that I've had so far, which is is a blessing for sure so.
Speaker 1:So then, out coming out of the bike store, was that when you moved into synchros? No, so I had.
Speaker 2:I had um, a bike on broadway ended up getting sold. But it got sold to another korean gentleman that was moved from korea right to vancouver and the family didn't speak very good English at all. So I was kind of went with the sale of the bike store. It felt like um, but it got kind of complicated um. But then there was another amazing gentleman that was also Korean, that came to Canada but came to Canada via Texas and he bought Fraser Cycles and Fraser Cycles and Dunbar Cycles back in the day they were both up on their respected streets, so obviously Fraser Cycle on Fraser Street and Dunbar Cycles on Dunbar Street and they were just little mom and pop shops back in the day. Well, howard, the Howard Kim, the gentleman that bought Fraser cycle, he moved it down onto Northwest Marine drive just by the night street bridge and he put it into I'm, it's gotta be a 6,000 square foot.
Speaker 2:It was a huge, huge, huge case, massive. You know nothing that Vancouver ever saw before. We were the biggest specialized dealer in Canada. Then, um, absolutely amazing store and I worked there until I, even until my wife and I got married. Um, when I was 25 and I was the sales manager at the store and it was a great store. So again another store. So I've always sold Norco at every location, every bike store I've ever worked at. But I had a really good rapport with the owner, howard, and he even paid for my wife and I's honeymoon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:After we got married and we went to Southern California and did a bunch of things. But yeah, he paid for all that. So it kind of tells you where we were at in my relationship with that owner. But at the time, right there, that would have been right around 94. That's right in Chaz, at the cove bike shop, and that was again another dynasty bike store back in the day. If it wasn't out in a beach, it was the cove. That's where you really, you know, you had wade working there, you had cory leclerc working there. Gabe came on, I think just shortly after that. That bike store was certainly a destination bike store and it was the cool vibe that's where all the cool kids hung out.
Speaker 2:Um, but they started manufacturing their own bikes, the go bikes yeah the stiffies and stuff yeah, they had some wild names on those bikes yeah, but then so all the manufacturers would let them order parts and you know I don't know if it was Chaz or if it was his, you know the people working for him, but you know, if they were building 50 bikes, you know they bought a hundred of something right, and then they were gray marketing parts into the Vancouver market all the time.
Speaker 2:And then the Georgia straight newspaper would come out at the time and you know you would hear, or even sometimes the radio spots, but you know you would hear, or even sometimes the radio spots, but you know you would see, like suspension forks and drive trains and things just being blown out at ridiculous prices that a regular bike store couldn't compete with this OEM pricing. So we finally got to the point where Howard Kim you know he became, he got his citizenship and he just said you know, frankly, fuck it, I'm out, I'm out, I'm going to sell this business. And I don't think he even wanted people to go through the books, um, and see the red tape. So he went on a liquidation plan for about six months and just in the cooling is, I guess, suppliers come on selling them stuff.
Speaker 2:So he would have enough stuff to kind of liquidate until it got to the point and selling him stuff, so he would have enough stuff to kind of liquidate until it got to the point and I was kind of headhunted, um, and recommended.
Speaker 2:At the time it was an ogc rep that told mike tile at bsp that I would have been a good employee. So mike tile was expanding his store from vancouver up into the north shore and he just bought the bike store that used to be the great bicycle company and he was turning it into bicycle sports specific up in lynn valley and that's where lynn valley bikes is today. Yeah, and so I went over there as a manager and I worked there for a couple of years as well, and then my wife and I, uh, we moved out into pit meadows, um, you know, we bought a house, uh, she's a school teacher out there and, uh, ended up getting a full-time teaching job out there. So it was challenging to come all the way to North Vancouver all the time. Um and I also wanted to have the same days off with her after work in retail and you, you know you're always expected to work Saturdays and Sundays.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to find a job and get onto the other side of it. So I literally was going to Norco, I think for a few year period. I think hiring manager at the time was Chris Hennessey and he told me that he was keeping my resume paper resume on file and they only kept them on file for every three months. So that triggered something in me.
Speaker 2:So I went home after dropping off the first resume, pulled a calendar down yeah marked it for every three months because it's literally five minutes away from my house, and so every three months I would go and drop off another resume but in that period I was able to get a job at the original Syncros, and so that was my first taste of getting to the other side and working for a supplier and a distributor and a Monday to Friday job opposed to working weekends. And, yeah, and then a couple years later started at Norco.
Speaker 1:So that would have been exactly 25 years ago to almost today's date yeah, I was gonna say I know it was january 25 years ago, I just don't know the date.
Speaker 2:Obviously, yeah, it was january 20th 2000, I was hired prior to the holiday season and I was told, uh uh, that we'd go through the holiday season, that my first day would be on the 20th of january yeah, wow yeah there you go.
Speaker 1:Almost, yeah, almost, happy 25 years. It was yeah, totally, totally. So where did you start with norco in that? Is that in one of the sales rep roles, or is that in something else?
Speaker 2:so I applied for a particular job again because, you know, I guess sometimes I think my head was bigger than you know, I think even my pride I was still pretty, you know, younger. I felt like I knew everything, just like I think every young buck back in the day, right, I think it's a survival skill, but I did. I applied for Chris Hennessey's actual position because he was moving on to a sales position and I wanted to be their customer service supervisor. And I think also common is I was a manager of a couple of bike stores already. So I felt like you know, but you know, I was a young bike store manager and again, I probably faked it to make it a little bit and learned, but I had, you know, good people around me.
Speaker 2:But but yeah, I ended up not getting that position, but what I did get was an opportunity to become a customer service inside sales role. And probably the best part of that story is, 30 days after my first day of starting, chris Hennessey came up to me on a Friday and gave me a gift card for $50 to Earl's, I think, or one of those places, and said he goes. I wish I would have hired you two years ago when you first started coming in here he goes.
Speaker 2:You know you learned so quick. You have been such a great employee. I don't think anybody's picked it up as quick as you have. And he goes. I should have hired you two years ago. And he goes. This gift card is an appreciation for what you've done in the first 30 days and my apology that I didn't hire you two years ago.
Speaker 2:That's a massive compliment it was kind of neat and I remember that to this day. I was. I was pretty stoked when I went home, yeah, but yeah, and then so um, I think it was first year was kind of that, and it was the grind and I was learning it. And then the following year had an an opportunity to support and go out Like it's still even today when you're working at Norco and we're going to do field events, and if you're going to Crankworx now or you know we're going out to demos or BC Cups or Canada Cups, they always kind of lean on the customer service team hey, do you want to go out and support? Yeah, do this. And uh, and look for extra energy, right. So I went and volunteered and went out to a couple of my first events and absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2:And right after I probably volunteered at two or three events, our events guy at the time ended up quitting and uh, and he was also our factory team mechanic and so I jumped right into that role. So I guess my next year at the company I was still inside sales during the week, but then I was our factory team mechanic, um, on weekends and really when we say factory team mechanic, there's no such thing as the UCI or World Cup really. I mean, there was the racing that was going on in the US and then we had BC Cups and Canada Cups. Our team at Narco was really a BC Cup, canada Cup program, so so, yeah, so I got the opportunity to travel western Canada and support, you know, people like Darren Butler, byron Gray, you know, I think, mike oh, why can't I think your name, mike, mike from that's a real estate guy up in Squamish now and he was also national champion at the time.
Speaker 2:Um, come on, mike, uh, we also. We were also the distributor for, uh, gt, so okay at the time. So then we also had Dave Watson that was rolling on GT. So Dave was kind of on his own program, but there was a couple of uh, uh when we were at nationals, uh, that had to support Dave Watson as well on his bike, for for the time he was on GT. But, uh, mike was kind of unique that we were still developing the original VPS bike at the time. So, um, I was busy in the pits changing out seat stays and chain stays into shorter ones and longer ones, and then, uh, I was the only guy that I ever trimmed tires for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Like, depending on the conditions, tires back in the day were pretty. You know, not the selection that we have today. Yeah, and uh, I could remember, uh, mike always wanted me to like trim. Well, he taught me to like trim. Well, he taught me how to trim tires. But then he would get busy doing stuff. So by the end of the summer I kind of knew what Mike wanted in his tires and so I'd be grabbing side cutters and trimming up tires to go with the drier conditions or the wetter conditions that we were dealing with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you in that time frame. That would have been around the time that norbas were pretty massive, wouldn't it be?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, you had the grundig cups and the norbas and stuff as well in the us that was kind of that before it really turned into world cup stuff yeah, because I think well I mean the world cups I got. I gotta lie. I mean yes, there was world cup, world cup stuff just felt like it was just coming online because even in 2002 or 2004,. We hosted one right here at Grouse Mountain a.
Speaker 1:World Cup, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I guess really when I meant that phrase was more that that's what Norco's focus was on, For sure yeah. And we've always been focused on local supporting community here, and I mean we weren't really a big international brand or anything at the time.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, because, like I'm just trying to picture that time frame with like Palmer and those guys were sort of bouncing around with that World Cup. That was like Vuleos that type of era 100%. And then, yeah, obviously I remember seeing there was kind of the the australian invasion coming into the norba series and that's right and that's when I said that I was supporting dave watson.
Speaker 2:That was only really at a canadian national he was he was in those series that we were just talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. And then from that point, like 2003, 2002, 2003, sort of was the World Cup sorry, the mechanic type of thing, and then back into the sales from there.
Speaker 2:Then I became an outside sales rep. My first territory was the Whistler Corridor. Okay, and so early on, yeah, I had the Whistler Corridor and then I inherited Northern BC and then I had that for quite a while. I think I probably put in four or five years into that territory until I inherited the Okanagan and Kootenays, even for a little stint there. I even filled in on the Prairie Provinces for six months, kind of touched most territories. I even supported Tom Baspell in Alberta for a while. We were also then after GT Narco was a Haro distributor. So I even crossed over into Alberta and I did Harrow in Alberta and got to meet a lot of those guys. So yeah, I think I've kind of covered most of our Western Canadian territories other than um, oh and then.
Speaker 2:And then we started as a brand. We really had this big focus on the US and there was a bunch of individuals at the time that we ended up having to start to cut our teeth in the US. Pamela Rooney was one of them, went out first and he was helping down in Oregon. Steve Bugish went to Washington. Those guys were about a year ahead of me in the US Setting a foundation, you know, because we didn't have agents or anything at the time and we really, you know, had to go down and tell our story, build territories to the point where then we could try to hand them over.
Speaker 2:But we were trying to go, uh, direct down there and then I had an opportunity, um, and my wife and I, I mean I guess we bounced around here a little bit, but I mean we get to this point here it looks like around 2012, yeah, um, and my wife and I had our third child then and I kind of wanted to tone it back a little bit. As a traveling sales rep I didn't the BC side of things here, like as being a domestic Canadian rep not only did you have to sell Norco bikes, but we had to sell Haro bikes and then, you know, we had like 50 other brands in the portfolio catalog. Yeah, a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff to sell. Uh, what, what I liked about and it attracted me to want to be one of our us sales reps, was we just went down and sold bikes yeah purely bikes, purely bikes.
Speaker 2:we could go down and tell that story, um, you know, I think at the time it was around a hundred, a hundred models, um, and it was a simpler story to tell to get some really good results.
Speaker 2:And then I inherited, um, a lot of rural stuff, I guess, maybe because I'm the redneck and somebody thought it'd be a great idea to throw me into Montana and Wyoming. But he thought it would be a great idea to throw me into Montana and Wyoming, north and South Dakota, nebraska, alaska, texas. I also did Hawaii for a while, but that was more just a phone one. And then I always supported California for some reason because we'd always get new guys down there. I always supported California for some reason because we'd always get new guys down there. So I was always supporting and we would get on like some good guys. Like, we worked with a lot of scram sales reps in the US but I always felt like I was used as a trainer or a guy to kind of go down, get these guys up to speed, tell them our brand story, and then they would do that.
Speaker 2:But then I did like I said. Then I did like I said. I had nine states and I was my own.
Speaker 1:So from 2012 to 2017 I was a US sales rep yeah, and then tell me a bit about the award that you won in 2017, because I feel like that is a bit of an exception, because you were what? 20? When did you win?
Speaker 2:well, there was a few. So at Norco, um, you know, at Norco and at probably any big sales company, you know, or maybe, that if the company is a sales driven company, norco is less of a sales driven company. Now I feel like we're, you know, sometimes more marketing than sales and then sometimes sales versus marketing. But in the early days we were a sales driven company and you would have your, always your annual sales awards. We would go for, you know, almost like a banquet thing at the end of the year. You know, we'd celebrate the territories and so on.
Speaker 2:And so early on, I guess in 2003, 2004, years consecutively, I was our horror sales rep of the year, but it was still like a junior award because I wasn't a full Norco sales rep. Well, I was, but I was still crossing over, but I didn't win our big award, our Stanley Cup at Norco. And LTP Sports was sales rep of the year and you always. There was always two sales reps of the year, but there was an overall and then you're, you know, either the other sales reps, so versus east and west, and we would share those titles, but there was always. And so for four years I was Haro Sales Rep of the Year 2006,. I was the overall sales rep champion for Narco, so Canadian Sales Rep of the Year 2008,. I was our Canadian Sales Rep of the Year overall again, and then, like I say, then I was kind of flirting around doing a few other things. I was down in the US, you know again, so from 2012. And the year I exited as a US sales rep in 2017, I won our North American sales champion.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Sold more Norco bikes than any other sales rep in canada or the us yeah, which is huge because it's like there's quite a few different reps, obviously, quite a few different territories, that go along with that um, and there was a couple of boys at the office that were mentioning how unique that award is, because they don't normally is it true that they don't normally give that award out it was.
Speaker 2:So there was a few people that were like so, a gentleman, kurt withers, he, um, he was the first one to get a like that same award again, because we always had the canadian one. But when we started going down into the us and had house guys go down there but then we'd even have, you know, agents down there, so we would bring them all up in the summertime and we'd have our annual sales conference, so we needed to include the US sales guys as well. Right, so there's been different champions the way that we kind of if it wasn't an overall, you know, um, it would be they even then implemented and had a us champion. Yeah, but uh, at the time it was, there's, I think there's only a couple of us that won, uh, north american sales champion, but that was on top of still having canadian sales reps yeah, a sales rep of the year, and then, once you come back up here, 2017, was that where sort of the like?
Speaker 1:where did you go from there? Is that where the demo tours? And yeah, so like what?
Speaker 2:happened after the us. The cool thing is is I mean, I didn't ask takes at the us. There was a trump administration. There's a few other things going on.
Speaker 2:Again, I also built out my territories. To be the point and that was always the objective is that I would build the territory, turn it over to an agent. There was enough meat on the bone now that we can pay a commission and so build, pass on, build, pass it on, build, pass it on. So, yeah, it just got to the point where I was pretty much done, we fulfilled, we had reps from all over the US. We were feeling pretty good, so I had an opportunity to come back into BC, but then there was no Canadian sales reps at the time or positions for me to kind of take over.
Speaker 2:But what we were starting to just build out was and what was becoming popular was the demo experience and special events again, and I think, with a little bit of the history that I had when I first started with the company, was that I had a huge passion for going out in the field and supporting athletes, supporting events, supporting the brand, and so it was such an easy, easy fit for me. So, yeah, in 2018, I built out a Canadian demo program and then, shortly thereafter, I built out a North American demo program, and then I became our field marketing manager for all of North America and managed five demo experience teams from across north america yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:So tell me a bit more about that, like what was the reason that demos were coming on? I guess people wanted to try the bikes, things like that. Stores couldn't afford to have the bikes in store. Is that what drove that to be that way?
Speaker 2:Obviously, yeah, I think I mean you kind of nailed it there. I mean, as these bikes got more technical, they also got more expensive. I mean a demo, you know, a fleet of 15 demo bikes is $100,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah, minimum yeah.
Speaker 2:So it was costly for retailers and we, as every other brand, encouraged retailers to have their own demo bikes. And you know, you got your big retailers like your Bow Cycles, calgary Cycle or, in the US, the same thing. The bigger retailers had no issues having their own demo bikes, but it was your mom and pop shops and your rural and Norco's always been the supporter of small town. Uh, we know the importance of it and, um, you couldn't, really you would, you'd blow somebody's whole credit limit. Yeah, if they were to have a proper demo fleet, right. So, and then you also.
Speaker 2:You know it's not always what you as a brand. If I've learned anything as a sales rep, you've always got a little. There's a time when you're always selling, but then there's always a time where you've got to support a retailer on their sell-through. You've got there's always a fine balance of sell-in and sell-out and if you're going to support a retailer, they're going to commit to your brand. You've got to support them with sell and that's where the demo experience comes in. One, you're teaching them, um, and educating the customers, educating, um, uh, their salespeople, their staff, on the technical aspect of the bicycle, how to do proper fit and feel and set up. And then people want to try these bikes before they buy them. Yeah, if you're going to drop five thousand dollars on the latest and greatest you know, and then now I mean we're seeing these e-bikes at thirteen thousand dollars, yeah, um, I don't blame them.
Speaker 2:I mean people want to try them before they buy them yeah, exactly, it's no different to spending that much money on a car or a motorcycle or any of that now yeah, so we got to the point where we had invested as a brand about $3.5 million in the demo experience across North America, hitting all the festivals and then doing individual retailer demos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then so that sort of works through. You built the teams out, you had five different teams, as you mentioned, and then obviously COVID hit and that's sort of where everything fell through our corporate retail store.
Speaker 2:But I talk about the covid hangover and yeah, I think that would be the first wave of the covid hangover is, everybody had to tighten their belts, uh, they had to try to reduce some spending and you had to find ways to you know kind of, you know, figure out what was going on. I mean, there's, there's a, it was a wave. It was a wave. There was a wave of success in COVID, where cycling was part of the solution.
Speaker 2:Um, we were all told to find our group of our safe six. Uh, we were all told to stay home. Um, you know, so the only thing that you could really do is is go outside. Um, so cycling, motorcycling, anything outdoors, became a hit, and I think bike stores ended up seeing all the product, or a good amount of their product, being sold. People started pulling out dusty bikes out of the garages and I think facebook marketplace blew up, even with people selling all their used bikes. I mean the resale value of a used bike or a used quad or a used motorcycle. It was. It was ridiculous it was ridiculous.
Speaker 1:yeah, I remember selling a bike that I had ridden for 12 months for retail price and it's like never heard of.
Speaker 2:So the industry felt like it was running out of product and we were told to heavily forecast, and we needed to not only forecast our traditional forecasting of 6 to 12 months for inventory at a retail space. We were told, as a supplier even, that we needed to forecast two and even three years in advance. I don't know where that all came from. I'm still kind of quite confused by it sometimes, because shortly thereafter, after somebody pushed the panic button, all this product showed up. Yeah, and then the pipeline got filled and what we would traditionally call turnover, where you would turnover product two, three, four, five times if you're an amazing retailer, turning your inventory four or five times to the point where everything just showed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the warehouses from every supplier had way too much stuff, to the point where we, even as a brand at Norco, were finding just basic warehouse space, not shipping warehouses, just docking bays where we could store stuff. Yeah, and there was just way too much product. And we're still dealing with the covid hangover today with that, uh, there's too much inventory, um, a lot of it's being liquidated.
Speaker 2:And uh, just quite recently, in the news that we've all heard and nobody likes to hear, this is, you know, with rocky and gt and some of the direct consumer brands pulling out of the us and um, I think the strong ones and I think probably the founding father at norco, he did it well. I mean, we used to have even a. We go way, way, way, way back now. Um, norco even used to have even a. We go way, way, way, way back now. Norco even used to have a warehouse in Seattle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we tried to grow in the US in they did before my time in the 80s and so on. But when times got tough, recessions got close, norco was always really good at circling the wagons and protecting home turf and making sure that we were wise, the way that we did our big business practices and um. So we ended up years ago closing that warehouse and that's where the 100 focus went on to canada and I think that's where we grew, uh, the pna distribution brands under the ltp brand name now and why we were so focused on canada. That's probably why we're not so big everywhere like other brands that would have grown in the us and grown abroad. Yeah, um, let me just turn that off. Sorry about that, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah so I think that's the COVID hangover and the repercussions that we're still kind of dealing with now. So you didn't really ask this question, but yeah, the end result is I had to lay off my team.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so after 20 plus years at Norco at the time that was the very first time I've ever seen layoffs so I had to lay off my demo experience team. We had to sell off some assets. We made some changes but, as I was indicating before, that was part of us circling the wagons making sure that our brand was still strong and that we would still be here today to have this conversation yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:And um, well, I can't even say this year, but last year was 60 years of norco as well, which is super impressive. Um, and then even having and having Alan just come back on as the owner, like the family, buy back Norco completely and him come back in as the CEO, and things like that, I think it just shows how they're able to just consistently evolve with the times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really excited. You know, again, definitely turbulent times and you know there's rumor mills and so on, and you know, I think this is a unique time to be in the bike industry and the strong will survive. But, as you said, the founding father's son, alan, so stoked that he's our new leader, he's sitting in the captain's chair and he's running the ship and it's very cool. I worked for his dad for a while. I even have some of his dad's memorabilia. I have his dad's license plate up on the wall here and a few other things.
Speaker 2:So it was, yeah, it's unique times, but I know us as a brand we're going to weather the storm and I think again, we're investing where other companies, unfortunately, are having to pull back, and to see what we're investing in engineering, what we're investing in bike design, high pivot, and just how we've always kind of, for a small little Canadian company, how we've always pushed the development and pioneered the evolution of the bicycle, or change right bicycle or uh, or change right, like so, even if it came from the days of free ride to just everything that we're kind of doing now right, like with high pivot and uh, ride a line. You know a bicycle setup, you know we're a leader and telling people what air pressure and and how many clicks a rebound and compression should be there. It's pretty cool. That's what I've always prided myself or prided the brand on, and why it's so rewarding for myself. Being with the brand is just to see this Norco's cutting edge. Not everybody knows how cutting edge the brand is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing I do want to touch on is you kind of mentioned, like the founding fathers, a couple other different people who were some of your mentors, because I know mentors and mentees are like such a big thing in your life and and even myself I know you've you've sort of mentored myself a little bit with me coming into this store and, um, I know that's a big thing for you. So, like, just tell me about a couple of those people that have shaped your life.
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of it did come with Norco Again, I think, like I indicated early on, I think early on I was pretty spirited. I felt like I knew more than I probably did, certainly a survival tactic, for sure, being a less fortunate blue-collar kid trying to fight to make it in this world. But at Norco I really found that second family and the environment, and it really was the first time, other than maybe some of the relationships that I built as a kid through my army cadets and and my early military thing is the relationships that I've have at Norco, or the mentors, um, and there's a few of them, you know, I think. Um, first and foremost is again I. I ended up inheriting the Whistler corridor, my first outside territory, from Jeff Nyhog and Jeff just retired, uh, this this year, so after my 25 years, but Jeff was, I believe it was 35 years or 38 years. It was a long time. Jeff covered Metro Vancouver and a few other things and he sold stuff to distributors in the Us. He had the whistler corridor and it was great.
Speaker 2:I was honored to take over the whistler corridor and I think early on the fit that I had in the whistler corridor was that I was very technical. Um, I knew how to talk about our vps bikes. We had these big crazy free ride bikes and I was very techie back in the day and I knew, like every nut and bolt or you know, the way to set these bikes up. And then, after working with all the athletes and the way I loved riding the whistler bike park, um, you know, hitting the big jumps, um, I even raced dh back in the early days.
Speaker 2:I started off, actually, I raced cross country, uh, when I was younger, uh, but a transition to racing dh was just so easy, yeah, and then hitting the hitting the bike parks and stuff, but being able to form a relationship with with bike stores like fanatico and understand their needs, I think from one, from coming from being a retailer, being a store manager, to being a race mechanic, to understanding these free ride machines and these dh bikes, to then being able to understand their needs. Um, that would come with summer resort business and it really almost comes to the new philosophy, or the philosophy that Norco's still running now, about no rider down. Something that I learned from Fanatico and Whistler was you know, the customers are paying. They're going to Whistler bike park, some breaks on their bike, like they don't have an option to check in a bike.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the consumer can pick it up two or three weeks, like they can down the city here where we're in, they need to turn around people's repairs in hours or overnight and you as a supplier need to accompany them, you need to be their partner and you need to make sure that they're set up for success to be able to turn this stuff around and they yeah, we would we'd even see, you know, back then, bikes break and parts break and stuff. So, um, I was really in tune with that side of our bicycles. So I think it made me an easy sales rep for the Whistler Corridor and build a different foundation with those guys. So Jeff Nyhog was really my first mentor and I always leaned on him for, hey, jeff, how would you deal with this? Or you know, learn that.
Speaker 2:And then, obviously, early on in this conversation, we talked about Chris Hennessy and I remember dealing with Chris because he was customer service supervisor and so when I was manager of a couple of bike stores, I would quite frequently talk to Chris on the phone. So when I first got in at Norco, uh, chris was, uh, an easy mentor. Um, and then, if you know me, jared, and I think some of my friends and people that may listen to this know that I wear a hat and I wear a hat every day.
Speaker 2:Um, I got lots of hair. I'm not losing my hair. I got quite a healthy head of hair, but I wear a hat every day for some reason. I have since I was probably 15 or 14 years old, um, but chris hennessey used to have a dress code oh yeah, in the office service.
Speaker 2:When we first started there, right like so we always had to kind of like dress clean, um and uh, and there was no hats, and you know, you kind of you know, and then even we were just coming off that era of the outside sales reps that used to almost wear like like business suits, yeah, like bike reps back in the day, who like went out with polyester slacks and a tie and stuff like that that's how they called on bicycle stores back in the day, right. So we were just, you know, in this changing of the guard. But, like I told you, I think I won Chris over pretty quick and I don't know, I think it was probably six months in at Norco, I started just wearing a hat, I just wore a hat. But Chris was a great mentor, you know. I got Steve Pookish, you know, shout out to him.
Speaker 2:Uh, tom Bastable. Um, tom was is our Alberta sales rep. Again. I was my very first job as an inside sales rep, was teamed up with Tom for Alberta, and so I learned a lot from Tom.
Speaker 2:Um, skip Swain, which was our sales manager at the time, and then, as it, through my tenure with the company he's you know, became, you know, vp Um, and then you know, I think one of my favorite mentors would have been probably Peter Staysmith, I think if, for everybody that knows out there, pete was the face in the brand, he was our marketing manager and I don't know if he didn't start as one being a marketing manager, but he was always the brand, he encompassed the brand and I always looked at him as somebody that I would want to be or inspired to be, and I, you know, he, if he needed somebody to ride shotgun to go to sea otter, if he needs somebody to ride shotgun to you, because we were going to interbike and instead of maybe flying or whatever, but or somebody that needs to be flying in tanner bike to help set up the booth or whatever.
Speaker 2:Anytime that I was had an opportunity, if I could spend some time with pete, I was I was volunteering and so when I was even in the early stages there, when I was helping out with all special events, I reported to pete and, um, you know, I think there was even some people, as you guys know. I mean, I'm not a little dude anymore, I've never really been, you know, being 6'4, I mean, but if you guys know who Pete is, there's a couple of people and I think it probably came from James Duran, which owns Wicked Cycles in Campbell River. Now he used to work with us at Norco, at LTP, but when I was our special events guy he always used to call me Two Peets. So you do it just like Pete, but you do it like.
Speaker 1:Two Peets. That's awesome, but yeah, before we wrap this thing up, two last things for you. Grizz, where does that come from?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a good one and it's really become my identity, which is kind of weird. So, as everybody knows, you can't pick your own nickname and if everybody knows Steve Pookish and a lot of people on here will, or within our industry, know I mean, if Steve wasn't a good salesperson or a good sales rep, he should have been a comedian like this guy missed his true calling. I think he could have been a stand-up comedian. He's the only guy you know that you would almost think would be an hr nightmare. Uh, for most, and I don't know how he's never. I've been written up at hr a couple times. I'm not gonna lie here. I don't think steve's ever been written up for hr. You're gonna have to ask him. And he has said some pretty colorful, funny things. Yeah, and he's just one of those people that can get away with almost saying anything and because people will just shrug it off and gone, ah, that's just one of those people that can get away with almost saying anything and because people will just shrug it off and go, ah, that's just Steve, right? Yeah, you know, and they'll share the laugh. But so back to that. So, steve, super funny guy, like if you're out having a few beers with him. I mean you're going to go home at the end of the night and your gut's going to hurt because you've actually laughed quite a few times through the evening.
Speaker 2:So the first summer that the Whistler opened up the upper mountain, the Garbanzo, steve and I were both still riding big bikes. I was riding a Team DH back in the day. By this point we were 50% monocoque, not a big full monocoque bike. And then Steve had the shore and, um, you know, we both just loved doing DH laps together and, uh, we were both about the same speed because Steve always used to ride road bike.
Speaker 2:When I was younger I rode BMX and so you know I was a little faster because I was a little bit better with the technical, but Steve always kind of had that extra little bit of speed in the cardio and so we hung together pretty well and so we were just great riding buddies and stuff. Even to the point where, like when I'm even saying like sometimes we do jumps and stuff. Even to the point where, like when I'm even saying like sometimes we do jumps and stuff, like everybody knows, on a mountain bike, if you don't, if you don't do something with your feet in your handlebar a little bit. When you hit some of these jumps in whistler, you're going to rise above your bicycle and we call that a bit of a dead sailor or something. I think that's what.
Speaker 1:That's what I call it anyway, yeah, yeah, I would agree and uh.
Speaker 2:So you always got to kind of like, you know, curl your feet, curl your toes, do something with the pedals, and then, if you got a little bit of style, you feel like you can kick the bike over just a little bit to the side, turn your handlebar just a little bit, and mine was never super stylish, but I always called it the pump jack. So Steve and I always had names for our own little jumps. Sometimes we also had like the no-no, look backs and stuff. But we would always, you know, after the app raise we would always have these funny reminisce about you know the run or how great it was and you know. But then we'd see the progression of all these young kids. But anyways, back to the original story.
Speaker 2:So, um, second time riding the garbanzo in the summertime first year it was open, the bears still really like to stay up in the upper mountain and they didn't migrate down as much. Lots of of bears at the top. Anyways, we're going down one of the trails, steve's behind me and I literally almost got T-boned and I'm clipping pretty good. We're going down, I almost get T-boned by a bear and then it turns hard kind of of whatever. That is hard right and it's like literally beside me I didn't slow down, I didn't pump my brakes, the bear didn't slow down, it didn't pump his brakes, and so we're side by side.
Speaker 1:Like drag racing.
Speaker 2:Which felt like forever To this day. I'm pretty sure it was between five to ten seconds, but if you go 1001, 1002, 1003 and you got a bear beside you, it seems like forever right so, um, we get down and steve's already in his head, he's already like and Steve's a bit of a musician.
Speaker 2:Like you know, he's a home musician, he plays guitar and a few other things and, again, the funniest guy I know. So Steve already started a song and then the more we drank that night, the more the song progressed, to the point where we had a full chorus. Um, in my early days and still in the summertime, I'm known for cutting the sleeves off my t-shirts and so on, and there was something like grizz, grizz, grizz, cut off his sleeve, I ate 10 kids. Um, and so on and so on and so on. And from that point on, steve just started calling me grizz and, trust me, this wasn't a grizzly bear, this was a black bear.
Speaker 2:so I don't know where he got the grizz from, but I think he just metaphor it yeah and next week at work he just started calling me Grizz, and to the point where then some of my coworkers started calling me Grizz. And then you go. A year or two later. Some people that would be new hires at Norco didn't even know what my name was. That was Jason. They thought it was grizz for some reason or that. Everybody just felt comfortable to start calling me that and I guess our, our world, the bike industry world is so small yeah that it just took off and I became, you know, so this would have been around.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's 2007 or 2008, but I've been the grizz ever since. Yeah, and even you know, doing all the special events. I was our, you know. I mean we missed a bunch of chapters within my career here because I was our trade show coordinator as well. I used to take care of getting all of our inner bike stuff set up, um, you know, within just people within the industry, there's again, there's just so many people that don't even really even probably know my name.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:All they know is is is.
Speaker 2:And um, and then how it even morphed to where I use one Z. I think this is again in the infancy. You know, there's a few things that I pride myself. Also with Norco as a side gig, I was the very first person at Norco to get a Blackberry or a smartphone. I was taking care of Northern BC when I discovered that I could actually get a device take care of my emails on the road, versus, like you know, because there's no Wi-Fi, yeah, you would have to wait here at your hotel room with an Ethernet cable and plug in your computer and so you'd be doing emails at 11 o'clock at night or 12 o'clock at night or five. You'd have to get up five, six o'clock in the morning to do emails before you went on the road again. So I was an early adopter of the smartphone. I was one of the reasons why we at the corporation have a cell phone allowance or mobility allowance on our cell phones.
Speaker 2:Now, um, and then I was an early adopter of social media.
Speaker 2:You know, I think as a father, uh, having uh kids three daughters Early on, when this Facebook thing was coming on, I quickly learned how to teach our retailers how to say goodbye to the yellow books, say goodbye to weird paid ads, embrace social media, and I taught so many retailers in Northern BC and in the interior BC here and converted their stores and helped them even do some of their Facebook stuff.
Speaker 2:I was actually even an admin in like half a dozen bicycle retailers here of their early Facebook pages back in like 2007 and 8, yeah, um, but then, fast forwarding to that is um, when I set up a twitter account. I was going to set up a twitter account and I was one of the. You know that was the second wave of social media and it wouldn't give me two z's for grizz, oh yeah, and it wouldn't give me like grizzly or whatever. So I I don't know why I typed it out, but, um, because of my nickname, norco used to do a bike called the mighty grizz. Yep, and it wasn't grizzly, it was mighty grizz, and so I had a cut out of the down tube of the bicycle that said mighty grizz, it was sorry it was in my cubicle at work. I'm in my office and um, so I looked up one day as I'm trying to figure out a name, a name for for my account, and I was just like I typed in mighty grizz and it was just like bam verified.
Speaker 2:It was good, and so that's how I kind of and then it also then evolved into an Instagram account I have now called Grizz Tour, and that was part of the special events stuff that I was doing on from our marketing team believed that our retail partners need to promote and drive some of the stuff that we do, so in the early days of us rolling into a town to do a demo experience, we would, in hopes that the retailer would advertise it with a newsletter, blast it out and or put it on their Facebook page, and back in the day it was Facebook events, right.
Speaker 2:So, you create a Facebook event and we would hopefully that they would drive their consumer interest and their customers to it. Well, lo and behold, as we know, you know, that was good and bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was only. It was like rolling the dice, it was 50-50. So we really it found out that that I mean we needed to drive the experience, we needed to drive the advertising and stuff. So, um, I created them, grizz tour, as in the kona tour or the giant tour. That was my inspiration yeah and when we would go around and do the demo experience. It was the Norco version of it was the Grizz Tour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which still to this day, is still being active.
Speaker 2:Well, I use it again. I have three daughters, so I turn my personal social into something where I don't advertise my kids. But, as everybody knows, my kids have traveled and been with me quite a bit. I love being a dad. My kids have been immersed into Norco and the Kool-Aid and drink it. But there's a lot of still personal stuff that I if I I don't post everything and if I do feel it's relevant or if it's family stuff, I leave it on my personal social, feel it's relevant, or if it's family stuff, I leave it on my personal social. And this gave me an opportunity to have a channel and a voice to do work related posts and keep work and personal separate, and that's why I just kept the grizz tour alive yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty fair.
Speaker 1:Um, last one before we wrap this up is where do you see the industry going? Just because I know and as we've listened for the last just over an hour, it's you've seen a lot, you've been through a lot, you've done a lot of different roles. You've you've lived a lot of different lives within the, the cycling industry. What do you see in the future for the industry? Like, do you see?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't even know, like there's so many different opinions, but I'm interested to hear yours well, again, a guy in his mid-50s here now shouldn't really be the first guy to say this, but it is 2025, jared yeah buzzword of this year is going to be ai yeah um, I'm a believer. I think that's the big. Those are going to be the big changes that we're going to see, uh, I think in the world first and foremost. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but my feed is even telling me that I can have an ai assistant now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so um, but let's take it back to the bikes. So I mean the latest, the greatest e-bikes are being shown. They were shown last week in vegas at the electronics convention that they always have there. Technology is going so fast. We're gonna see the current e-bikes that we see now. They're just gonna get better, lighter, faster and, as you know, I mean we're dealing with the Bosch CX stuff on some of these bikes now and this feature integration of your smartphone into your cycling and again I mean we've seen it in our industry if you're dealing with, if you want to kind of back it up and you go to your, your trainers and your smart trainers and stuff. But I mean this is really the first time that we're actually really integrating our phone, our smartphone, into our bicycle on the trail yeah not at home, right in house.
Speaker 2:So I think the next step is ai. I think I think when we talk about high speed, low speed, compression in our suspension, I think AI is going to come into that. I think it's going to be. It's going to start remembering how your bike setup is and I think there's going to be more computers on our bikes. I think it's going to kind of start adjusting our riding style and it's going to start controlling and playing with those devices like rebound and compression.
Speaker 2:I got a feeling, you know, we're already kind of seeing it. I think even with air pressure we're going to be able to. You know, probably through our valve stems we're going to be able to add and lower pressure from our valve stem somehow, and it's also then going to be ai. It's going to know if we're on the road. It's going to know when we're hitting sand. It's going to be very similar probably to like in a car where you got sand mode, snow mode, you know, and for sure. I think all this stuff's in the future, but I think it's um, I think the wave of it is going to be e-bikes, electronics and AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would have to agree and I think even some of those points you mentioned. Then we're even starting to see that, both in the automotive world, moving into the cycling world. But you're right, you've got all of the flight attendant, whatever Fox want to call their electronic control yeah all of that type of thing with their suspension.
Speaker 1:Obviously, as you say, you've got all the new e-bikes that are coming into play. Um, dji, they're coming in like there's some massive companies, and I like I completely agree. I think there's so many things that I do in my day-to-day that revolve around using AI tools and things, and I know you're the same with that. So I think, yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't even thought of that external influence of AI, how that affects cycling and how that builds it out. I think even talking about athletes and things like their training plans and all of that is going to be based around a bit of their history with ai and things like that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's pretty, pretty big thing for sure well, I think and that's going to be the biggest thing, because I think, in the industry we haven't seen big leaps of change, we've seen progression, and I really do believe that that's going to be the next, that's going to be the next step. I think we're going to see some big, big changes yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that pretty much sums it up. So thank you, thanks for sitting down for an hour and 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:Now, there you go, um yeah well, like I say, we kind of bounced around there a little bit like, I guess, just my final footnote to this is it's been an absolute pleasure to you, know, to be in the bike space. Um, you know, new bike day is always amazing. I love seeing people. You know that I sold a bike to 20 years ago that said you got me into the sport, or you know, or you helped me here, you did that or this, and you know, absolute pleasure to still be in the bike industry. You know, I can actually say that it looks like I'm probably going to retire in the bike industry and I don't know if I could have told you that 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:But you know, as I'm getting here now, it looks like you know I started in the bike industry and I'm going to probably end in the bike industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a pretty impressive run, for sure. Yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, all right Well.
