(00:00): Today, we have something a little different for you over the next several weeks, we will be showcasing our top five episodes of all time, enjoy the episode and be sure to join us next week, to hear the rest. Welcome to the ready Eddie park, where we tell the story startups in the outdoor sport industry through the voice of their founders. Hey guys, before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the ready Yeti membership. We've grown to have thousands of products from some amazing up and coming brands. Anything from skis and snowboard jackets, hiking, boots, even supplements and snack. Barss. It's an incredible way to save a ton on gear with discounts of up to 50% off. Join the ready membership and do your part to help support some of these incredible small businesses that aren't just making incredible gear, but are also putting a lot of effort into social action and doing their part to create an environmentally C business. Join today at www dot ready, yeti.com/members, and start supporting these amazing startups and saving a ton on gear.
(01:14): Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to give a special thanks to our sponsor roof nest roof nest makes hard shell rooftop tents that allow you to camp anywhere. You can pull a completely redefining car camping and turning your trips into an entirely new experience outside magazine, even listed them as one of their top gear picks, whether you're into overlanding or easy weekend getaways, a roof nest will turn any vehicle into a comfy bedroom on wheels. So how does it work while the beauty of roof nest is it's all piece, all tense attached, right to your vehicle's roof rack and come with a built info mattress. And once you have it in place, it takes less than a minute to set up or stow away, which means you'll be able to get outside faster and spend way more time doing the things you love.
(01:58): I mean, that's why we're here in the first place, right? They just launched their newest model, the condo XL, which is hard. She fold out tent perfectly suited for up to four adults or two, if you like your space, Hey, I get it. I like to sprout out too and definitely check out the Falcon. It's their most popular tent by far it's only six and a half inches tall when it's closed. And it's perfect. If you want to carry additional gear or your favorite toys with the optional set of crossbars, that Mount up to the top of the tent, I'm looking right at you. Skiers, snowboarders, bikers, and kayakers. The Falcon is the one that you're gonna want. Check 'em out@roofnest.com to see the gray variety tents roof nest offers or call 8 5 5 8 8 7 8 8 9 7 to speak with a roof nest team member. This podcast was originally recorded on October 8th, 2018. We've cleaned up the audio a bit and hope that you enjoy this episode with priority bicycles, CMO, and co-founder Connor Sigel talking about his journey and building priority bicycles.
(03:00): What is going on red Yeti podcast listeners, Josh Savo here host on today's episode. I am sitting down with one of the co-founders of priority bicycles, Connor Sigel Connor. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me. Hey Josh, thanks for having me. Awesome. So for the listener that may not be familiar with priority bicycles, how would you best describe your brand to them? Yeah, so we are a bicycle brand that's focused on making cycling simple with low maintenance belt drive bicycles. That's really awesome. So you're you founded it in New York city, right? It's a very commuter focused bicycle brand. Right. How, how did you and Dave really come up with the idea of starting priority? Yeah, so there's a couple things going on in, in the, in that name priority. And the, the name priority really helps tell the story. My partner, Dave and we've known each other since college, we met freshman year in the dorms at, at UC Santa Barbara. And our, our paths have, have really been parallel from graduating school, lived in LA, both moved to New York. What was divergent was Dave's goal to, to work in the cycling industry. And he was working at, at the world's largest bike manufacturer. And he ended up leaving that and going into software. And I went into digital branding. So after our, our work had hit a point where we were super stressed out and, and burnt out and, and we both had a bit of a gut check and Dave came first. So Dave called me up one day and he said it was a February.
(04:36): It was a Sunday. He said, Hey, you got a second to chat. And I said, yeah, man, what's going on? He said, Hey, I just quit my job. And my response was awesome. That is, so I knew how burnt out he was, how hard working at this company. And he said, yeah, I'm I really want to get back into cycling. I want to be able to get back in that industry. And so it was a priority for him to get back in that industry, but then also it was a priority I with as much work as he'd been doing, he just wasn't spending time with his family. He had one child, he had one on the way. And so it was just thing. Like I gotta get back to doing what I love. So that was really the first part of it. And then the second part of that priority was putting a priority back on the customer.
(05:16): So really thinking about product and Dave's thing as if somebody who loves cycling, he loves to just get out and ride. So it's not necessarily about being the fastest. It's not necessarily about going, you know, a hundred miles or training for a triathlon, but it's just the joy of getting on and riding. And what he had found is that even though he hadn't been in the cycling industry for 10 years, he still had friends who would say, Hey, I just wanna like go to the park or I wanna take my kids to school. What bike should I buy? So he is having tri trouble finding still a bike that he could just recommend that was low maintenance and great for everyday riders. And then also from a pricing perspective for you to get a low maintenance, reliable bike, you're spending 800, 900 a thousand dollars. And for recreational rider, it was just too much. So the idea was, could we create this everyday bicycle? It's great for somebody to just get online, get a bike that fits them and, and they can feel really confident in their bicycle. So that was the first model that, that we had launched. And that was the priority classic. And that was five years ago.
(06:14): That's so awesome. And, and you guys launched a pretty successful Kickstarter in 2014, like half a, over half a million dollars has gotta be in like the top performing Kickstarter campaigns for bikes. Yeah. I mean, there were a couple things, so, you know, it's funny, we, we didn't know what we were getting into. We didn't know what we were doing. A friend of ours CEPI who actually works at Google and is really tech forward guy. And he said, yeah, have you guys thought about launching this on Kickstarter? And we hadn't even heard a Kickstarter. We were just gonna launch a website and go, and yeah, obviously Kickstarter had been the huge thing already. And and so we used the Kickstarter platform. We had a goal of $30,000. We eclipsed that in a couple hours, we had a hundred thousand dollars on the first day, we ended up in a 30 day campaign selling or having a $565,000 Kickstarter campaign. We sold over 1500 bikes. And what it showed us was that there was a concept and a story here that had legs for this one product, but it also showed us that there was a big desire for us to make more of these low maintenance bicycles that were super accessible.
(07:24): So the Kickstarter campaign for us is this huge point of pride because it gave us so much excitement, so much publicity when we launched. But I think it also set us on a path of, Hey, this is the north star. This is what you guys should be shooting for. This is the promise you should be delivering on every day. And since then we've launched and we've, we've created over 16 bike models. We have 12 now, and we have bikes that range from four year olds all the way up to active ages who can ride as, as long as they want to. So it's very exciting for us. That's so awesome. Now, now, obviously Dave had background in manufacturing being in the bike industry. How long did it take you guys to really prototype, I guess that first model, which you launched the Kickstarter with and then going forward with that, was that like a laborious sort of process or did you really lean on Dave's experience there?
(08:19): For sure. So the thing with, with Dave that's really great is that I think Dave understands customers really well, and I think it's it what's really nice for me running our marketing and communications is that it's very clear where our products live and what their use case is. So then it's easy to tell a story about product when you know exactly who it's targeting. You know, we're not, we're not just hanging our hat on the color of something or the style of something, and that's where you really have to spin a big story. It's really about use case and making sure we're as pointed about that for each one of our models. So the actual prototyping and I'm, and I'm sitting in our conference room where we have our three original prototypes right behind me hanging on the wall. But the, the actual prototyping was a very focused year long period, which was a mix of geometry testing of components of sourcing, who, who can get us, what we want to deliver on this low maintenance promise.
(09:19): But the, the classic, our original classic, and now the classic plus really was a culmination at that time of over, you know, of 25, 30 years of Dave's experience, just as a, as a writer and, and really all of our experience of a writer and the woes that you have when you just want get on your bike and ride, you know, you, maybe you got a flat tire on your bike because there's cheap tires on it, and you don't know how to change a flat, it's just too difficult. So you never ride your bike again. Or your chain is really dirty and it's fallen off your bike. And, you know, you got your hands dirty with it once. So you're just disheartened and you, you move away from the bike. So we want to do is we just want this solve all these problems that were the most common problems for everyday cyclists. And that really led the development of that first bike. So it's funny in one way, it took us about a year to have a rock solid production ready prototype. But again, it was culminations 25, 30 years of just issues that everyday riders have had that that really guided us.
(10:16): Definitely. Now, when you guys started, did you did you bootstrap, it was, did you kind of have the intention of using hopefully the Kickstarter funding to kind of kick things off? Or did you have a more focus plan with like investors and things like that? Yeah, so we, our goal is always to remain independent and self funded. We we've always believed that it allows us to really listen to customers to custom. We listen to our customers first, we can be highly reactive to, you know, trends or demands in the marketplace. And we just have a lot more freedom with our decision making. So luckily that kick that first Kickstarter project really funded our first round of production and set us on a path. And we've when we've been able to remain independent and, and that's been really important for us. And it's, it's also just a source of pride. And then you see a lot of brands out there that are really buzzy business brands. And when you read about, 'em like, wait a second. You know, that company will lost 50 million last quarter or 250 million last quarter yet they're these darlings and we're out here, you know, we're working, we're independent and, you know, we're growing our company and, and, you know, we're growing our resources here and we're doing it all internally and it, it just makes us very proud and it makes us again very focused on what our customers want and us being really responsive to them.
(11:40): That's awesome. Now let's talk about manufacturing a bit. Yep. What was that process like and sort of sourcing manufacturers, and then also keeping sustainability sort of front and center and obviously quality. How do you really manage all of those things together? Yeah, so we, we have, I mean, first and foremost, we have a great partner in gates and gates is a Denver based company and they're our belt drive provider. So all of our bicycles have belt drives over chains. The reason is it's much cleaner. There's no there's no grease. You're not gonna stay in your pant leg and also belts last longer than traditional roller chains without any of the hassle. So that's really the, the, the core of our low maintenance promise and having them as a partner is huge for us because they have a great product, but then they also just have a, a huge amount of expertise in testing and engineering. So they're a great feed feedback partner. But in terms of, you know, the supply chain and the manufacturing from the beginning, it's funny because the way that Dave and I initially started working is he told me about what he wanted to make, and we didn't even have this.
(12:45): We, it's not like, you know, when you're first launching company, you don't have metrics. You can't say, oh, we've sold X amount of product. So we'd like for you to be our supplier. And we, you can guarantee you, you know, why amount of sales, it's a huge challenge for an in independent or new company. So what we were working on initially was just defining what the opportunity was and what the story was. And and with that, we were able to go to factories and Dave does have some of those relationships from his time in the cycling industry, but also as an entrepreneur. And I think it's a, a, a Val a really, a brand value here is about just being fearless and getting out there and telling the story and finding the right people and trying things and testing things. So, you know, we, we were over there and, and went to 14 different factories, all who, our premier creators of bicycles.
(13:37): I mean, they all create bicycles for brands that we've, we all know and and love. So we were able to, to sit down with these experts and tell 'em what we were looking to do. And, and, and I think luckily we were looking at a different part of the marketplace, really the mass part of the marketplace. And that was really exciting for these partners. So, you know, I think it was 14 or 15 different factories. We had seven or eight different prototypes that were turned around extremely quickly because we had the spec ready to go. And we had two or three factories and partners who we really felt great about within, you know, an a 60 day period. So it was really just about getting out there, meeting people, trying things putting yourself in a position to say no to the things that weren't working, so that you could be really excited about the things that were,
(14:22): That's really awesome. Now over the last since 20 12, 20 14, when you guys really kicked things off with the Kickstarter pun intended what would you say have been in some of the hardest parts about growing and building priority? I mean, the hardest thing for us is always awareness as a, as a independent company and, and anybody who is an entrepreneur has an independent brand, whether it's a side hustle or their primary hustle, they know that it's just about eyeballs. And if you have a good product, the more people who see your product, the more people who buy it. So if we have a great traffic day on our site, we may not have a great sales day, but I can guarantee in the next 30 to 60 days, we will have increased sales because of that traffic. So awareness as an independent brand is, is always the number one thing I think, spending money on lead gen maybe there's people who listen to the podcast who do lead gen you know, and sell advertising or performance marketing lead gen is really hard. You know, you can bleed money really quickly. We learn that pretty quickly. That was certainly a pain point. So I think what it's been about is, is efficiently finding ways to get greater awareness on the brand and also the right type of people. So people who are the right customer for you, and then keeping them in your ecosystem. So whether that's emails, Instagram, social retargeting, being able to say, Hey, we're still here for when you're ready. But as a, as a brand, the awareness thing for us has always been our biggest challenge.
(16:00): Yeah. I can totally relate to that if it's, it's this promise of of of traffic in sales, right. Where it's like, it's not just that you need the right quality, you know, if fitting inside of your demographic, right. Cause traffic, all traffic isn't equal and sort of fine tuning and working through all that is it's, you can spend so much money. Yeah. Cause as a marketer, I feel like you get excited about things, right. And when someone tells you they can do something for you, your initial reaction, at least in the beginning for us was excitement, not skeptic or like healthy sense skepticism to be like, okay, but let's make sure this meets like our parameters of like the kind of people we're looking to attract and all of those sorts of things, because you, like you said, you can just throw money away on these sorts of endeavors.
(16:47): Yeah. And we all learned to love our products. Right. We love our bicycles. But the thing that we learned pretty quick is that people may love our bicycles as well, but they may not be in a position to buy whether it's because, you know, it's back to school time, even though it's great bike, weather, bike, great biking weather right now. Right. But maybe kids are going back to school. You just had your big family vacation a month or so ago. So maybe you're not ready to buy, you know, a thousand dollars commuter or bike. And so I think a lot of that too, is just timing, making sure people are in the right position to buy giving them the right information and being able to, like I said, keep 'em in your ecosystem, keep telling them stories about what you're up to and where your value is, so that when they're ready to buy, they, they know where you, where you are and what you offer.
(17:32): Yeah. I think that's a really good point. Now I wanna shift gears to talk about some of the biggest mistakes that you guys have made up into this point and really what you've learned from them. Yeah. so biggest mistakes. That's a good question. And it's also probably we'll bring up some PTSD, but yeah, it's funny. The I'd say that the biggest mistakes are the times where we didn't try things. So if it was, you know, a new marketing campaign, you know, a product that we just wanted to try, I know for a while, for example, we have a, a really cool backpack that looks more like a daily wear kinda everyday bag. It's really nice wax canvas. And and the, the straps clear, or the straps slide into the bag, and then you can hang this backpack from, from a, your rack. And it's, it's cool because it's, you could like, I mean, I use the backpack more off the bike than I even do on, and it's just this really cool thing we wanted to do for a long time. And we're like, oh, we don't wanna do it. Like, nobody wants to buy a bag.
(18:41): Nobody wants to buy a bag from us. We just buy a bikes, they're just buy a bike. And, and so we just dragged our feet like a year or two, even though we had a sample of it that we all were loving and you using. And then we put up for sale and it sold out instantly. And it was just this thing of saying, you know, what, why did we drag our feet on that? It would've been such a small investment for us to give it a try. We already loved it. We should have got, 'em put 'em into stock, taken our photos, sent out the emails and boom moved on to something and something else. But instead we dragged our feet on it. It, and I won't say that we necessarily missed an opportunity, but it just showed us that pausing and waiting or waiting for somebody else to validate something just slows you down too much. So, you know, we always try and be as quick as we can to react, get product out there, get the story out there. And then if maybe something isn't sticking, we either tweak it. We move on, develop something new.
(19:33): Yeah. I think that's a really good point. And it's funny how obvious the answer is after you did it, where you're like, duh, how did we not realize this? But, and it's like, I think the, the closest analogy is like, when you have a friend going through like a tough relationship or something like, and they're coming to you for advice, and like, you're almost like blunt where you're like, you obviously just need to like end it. Right. And it's like, it's easy for you to make that decision because you're removed from the situation where, for them, it's a very emotional, you know, more complicated thing where it's hard for them to sort of see that. And when you're in the weeds, it's sometimes is the very blurry, you know? And then after you make the decision, you're like, oh, wow, that was actually very simple and easy.
(20:18): That's funny. I, I think back we, our first commuter grade bike was called the eight and really simple name. We try and keep things really simple. And it was because it had a eight speed internally geared hub. And, and I remember Dave and I were talking and it was November and he goes, Hey, I wanna launch the eight. He said, we're ready to go. I said, Dave, I feel like we haven't talked about this at all. I, I didn't know we were gonna have this in, in three weeks. He's like, oh yeah, yeah, we're, we're ready to go. Cause you know, we're doing a million different things. This a huge he's like, I mean, our team is so small. So he said, Hey, I wanna launch it. I said, Dave, wait, you wanna launch a, you wanna launch a bicycle in December? He said, yeah. I said, that's weird. It's not cycling time. He goes, I know, but I just wanna, I just wanna get it out there. And I remember just thinking that it sort of flew in the face of everything that you would think about the way that products are launched in timing. And it's like launch a bike in the spring because that's when people are ready to start riding and it's a commuter bike weather's getting better. And so we put together the launch campaign in two weeks time, you know, we sh we shot everything ourselves, develop the, the story for it. And we sent out there and we ended up selling a huge amount of this bike in December and January, which if anybody knows, and you're in the outdoor space, like that's a, those are very slow months unless, you know, you're selling skis or, or snowboard jackets. Right, right,
(21:47): For cycling, it's not a very popular month. You're gonna have kids bike sales, obviously going into the holidays. But you know, for a commuter bike, it's not a typical time to launch something. And we sat back and, and, and at the end of January, and I was like, Dave, like, I'm shocked that that worked. And I'm very happy that we just pushed forward and did it. And I think that, again, it was just that point of get stuff out there. It does you no good. If it's sitting within our walls, like these ideas, these concepts, these products need to be out in front of customers, so continue to, to push and get it out there and tell the story. I think that's such a good point. Now you with priority, you're predominantly direct to consumer, right. Do you work with any retail shops?
(22:34): No, we are a director consumer brand. And it's for us, the reason for that was that we believe that everybody deserves access to a low maintenance, great bike at a great price. And we felt like we could do that online and deliver best in class value. And, and I can say for all of our models, we have a best in class value. You won't find another bicycle with the features that we offer for a better price. And with that direct to consumer model, we can also do all of our customer service in house. So we do, we have seven day a week customer service. As long as somebody's awake here, you will get an answer. You can text us, you can email us, you can call us anytime with a question. And we're able to back up our products with our team here, which I think that really sets us apart. And so even though we are an online direct to consumer brand, we're very personal in terms of our touch and our contact. And we love hearing from customers. And we hear from them hundreds of times a day, and we get back to everybody usually within an hour during, during normal business hours, it's usually within 10 or 15 minutes.
(23:47): That's really awesome. And I, I think one another really good point about being direct to consumer is that you don't fall into. And I know this is a, a big thing in the ski industry where you are forced to sort of create models for every year and whatever to technology or new skis that you're working on right now. Wouldn't hit retail shops for another season, right. And that creates this like really weird lag between what's available and what's actually like being sold in shops. And I'm sure that also gives, like you said, with that pretty a story where you launched a product in December and January, that lead time is way shorter than in a traditional sort of brick and mortar retail business.
(24:35): Yeah. We can move really quickly. And I think because we're so embedded, I mean, you talked about from the beginning as a, in New York based brand, I mean, we're riding bikes all the time. So I usually you ride in, or outta work four or five times a week. Dave commutes every day. Our lead mechanic used to race. So we're on bikes all the time. So we're effectively prototyping constantly. And we always have bikes that we're riding that we're just playing with. So if something sticks, I'm like, wow, we really like this. And we think there's an opportunity. We can work really quickly to get products made in, you know, who knows like 120 day or 180 day timeline. And it allows us to be really responsive and it is important. It is important for us to have that. And if something, you know, continues to sell and it, we don't have to make a rolling change just to appease, you know, a distributor.
(25:30): And it's interesting though, we refer people to bike shops all the time. Like we are not antibi shop when we first launched. I think people felt like we were being antibi shop and it wasn't that it was just that again, we felt like we, that there were a lot of consumers for whom having an online purchasing direct to consumer flow was, was gonna be of great value, but we send people to bike shops all the time. We will ship bikes to bike, to a bike shop if somebody doesn't wanna do the home assembly and, and take it to a bike shop to get it checked out. So we'll send it to a bike shop and have them go through it. The other thing is you get little questions all the time. Oh, what about grips? Or what about seat? I say, you know, what, ride the seat that's on there for a little bit.
(26:11): If you don't love it, ride to your local bike shop, and then you can articulate to them what isn't feeling great and what you're looking for. And they're gonna have a load of options to take you through, and you may want to get some other stuff while you're there, all good go for it. So, you know, it's interesting for us from a product perspective and a bit, this perspective, we can be very reactive to the products that we wanna make, but we still send people to bike shops all the time for, you know, help on their bike or for looking for other products that they might need.
(26:44): Yeah. I think that, that brings up a really good point that I specifically with priority is you're kind of filling a big gap in sort of the market between like the super avid racers, mountain bikers, and like the super low level bikes that you'll find at Walmart, right. Where there's like that kind of in between level where it's like, I don't necessarily need to be going to bike shops regularly, or I don't have a budget for this sort of thing, or haven't previously right. Where I just want a comfortable quality bike that gets me from point a to point B either to work or recreationally. And I think that's a big reason why priority has been so successful up to this point.
(27:27): Yeah. Yeah. The accessibility is there. The simplicity is there. I think, and we really focus on again, like accessibility and simplicity. So, you know, all of our bikes have internally geared hubs and they have the belt drives. So you don't have the big greasy cassette that it's off the back. I, I would never go, go back to an external cassette again, after riding these internally geared hubs now for so long all of our bikes are aluminum. So you know, rust proof and, and ultra light. Again, you have a lot of people who maybe bought a bike. You know, they bought bikes for their family, four or five bikes. Everybody in the family has bike. They get into the wintertime. So the bikes get stuffed in the back of the garage. Then you have holidays and stuff piles up in front of it.
(28:10): All of a sudden you got these big, heavy bikes sitting in the back of the garage and you're like, oh, I that's just too much hassle for me to pull it out. And it's funny, cause it may sound ridiculous as we talk about it, but I guarantee somebody who's listening is like, yeah, I've got my bike. That's just been hanging in the back garage. Cuz I've been, it's been too much work for me to lift it off and take it out. And the tires are flat and it has to get a tune up. Well, our bikes, you know, they're ultralight. They don't need to get a, a, a routine maintenance or regular tune up. So you could just grab it and go you might have to put a little bit of air in the tires if you haven't been for a few months, but you know, that was our goal was just, Hey, couple pumps of air in the tire and, and get out and ride.
(28:48): Yeah. I mean, I we've had the continuum ons for the last two weeks. And we've been riding it all over the city and it's, it is really light. Like I've, I've taken it literally everywhere. And it's funny because I had like I was in Patagonia for a couple weeks skiing earlier this month and I like tweaked my lower back and then I got back and was riding the bike and I was like, man, I don't want to like pick this thing up and like Lu it around and like make my back worse. But it's such a light bike that I was just like, wow, this actually isn't making my back worse. I was like, I was very surprised. And so many with a lot of bikes, you don't really, they're very heavy, like you said. And it seems like they'll, they'll definitely hold the hold up in the test of time. And I really like the continuum ons. It's it's a great bike.
(29:36): Yeah. The continuum Onix is just for us, has been, you know, it's kind of the third or fourth generation of our commuter bike. It started with the eight, but that, that bike is, is really just a workhorse out of the box commuter. And there really aren't a, there really aren't a lot of those. So, you know, the continu ons, as we talked about, if ma goes to our site, you can check it out. But it has, you know, again, as with all of our bikes, it has the gates carbon drive on it, but it has the rear, N B O C B T. So no predefined gears. It's really great for when you're commuting and the city, or just going on a leisure ride. You can really feather the resistance about clicking through gears.
(30:17): Yeah. I really like that feature. Yeah. I love that when you have to stop it and go of traffic, you can lower the resistance without losing yeah. Fear of the chain getting disengaged, and then you'd be like, shit. Yeah. Maybe like catch back up again. It's almost like when you drive stick, you can downshift without having to pump the brakes or anything and then get going against really smooth ride. But there's no maintenance interval with that rear hub with the envi rear hub. It's ultra smooth and it's sealed for all weather. So it's rated for freezing. So for, we get a lot of people who will buy that bike in Minnesota, in January and, and commute through the winter. I mean, they may throw studed tires on there yikes.
(30:59): Through the winter. And so it's really, it's a four season commuter with fenders. It's got hub powered lights on it. And those and the lights we've developed ourselves. So they're really commuter focused. So with, with our lights, what'll happen is when you stop and you probably don't notice this because you can't see behind you all the time, but what'll happen is you, when you hit a stop the, the three bulbs in the front will, will go to one and then it prioritizes the power in the rear because you're stopped. So the rear light will actually continue to blink for a few minutes if you've been riding for a little while. So that way you have that visibility for people riding up behind you. So, you know, just focused on, on the safety of our riders and, and making sure that, you know, you just have a good time riding their bike.
(31:41): Definitely. Now, where do you see priority going in the next year? Two years, five years down the road? Yeah, that's a, it's a good question. I it's, we really focus on you know, where we're at in, in the given moment. Because we, again, we are just so responsive and we're always working on new products. I think as an independent bid, if you look too far ahead or set unrealistic goals, you can sort of not be responsive to the reality of all the good things that are happening right in front of you. But with our bikes, I mean, what we're working towards a few other commuter models, obviously electric just continues to an area of the industry that's really growing. So we do have one e-bike our, our embark we're developing or we're testing a few others right now. I think that, that I think that the e-bikes have really offered a lot of flexibility for everyday riders.
(32:41): So there used to be a little bit of a stigma. It's like, well, if I'm gonna ride my bike, I wanna get a workout. It doesn't make any sense for me to ride a e-bike. But then all of a sudden you have, you've had a lot of commuters especially in urban areas who have been able to get some fresh air in the morning without being covered in sweat when they get to work. And they're really seeing the value of it. So that e-bike area is really great. And then we just, we continue to refine our, our everyday recreational stuff to just give people the opportunity to get out and get moving. We'll always wanna make that easy for people. And then fleets, we actually have a huge fleet and partnership division. So, you know, we, we service over 300. We have partnerships with over 300 hotels where we'll do fleet bikes for them. So that's everything from two bikes at an independent Inn in Vermont up to 300 bikes in Mya, COBA at a resort. So that is really fun for us, that's growing. And then we just we do now a bunch of different part partnerships. So we did a custom dunking donuts by our Dunkin bike.
(33:43): Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So we have that in the office and it's on our Instagram. And then last weekend, it's really exciting for us. We did a, we worked with Adidas on an Adidas drop. So Adidas launched 50 pairs of an NYC cycling, inspired AMBA shoe, and every person who came in to get the shoe got a free custom design bike. So we did a custom design bike. We actually did it in our customization facility out in Montgomery, Pennsylvania, and 50 unique bikes. They're all gone. There are no more that exist in the world in our possession and doing something like that was just really exciting. I mean, to see people lined up down the street to get this amazing shoe bicycle hoodie pack was really something fun for us. And, and as a New York cycling inspired thing, I mean, that's who we are and what we do. So it, it felt really good.
(34:37): That's really awesome. And just hearing all the different creative ways in which the business can grow and the cool different projects you can work on. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun, really building the business For sure. I mean, we the thing again, like I, I've known Dave here since we were 19 years old, he, he, the way we met or 18, 18 or 19, we were in the dorms freshman year and he walked up to me, knocked on, or he said, Hey, I see you have a motorcycle. I just bought a motorcycle, but couldn't afford a helmet. Can I borrow a helmet that Is this guy coming to borrow a helmet? That seems like a very personal thing. But at the end of, at the end of the year gave me the helmet back. He said, Hey, man if you ever need a favor, let me know. And I said, actually, I, I ran track in college. I said, Hey, I'm sticking around to train in the summer. Can you get me a job? And he just kind of said it jokingly. And he was like, yeah, actually I, I, I'm working at this company that does software for bike shops. I'll get you a job come over tomorrow. So, you know, the end of freshman year, we'd known each other, but started working together. And and then again, however many years later, we're, we're still working together. So I think that's a big part of it. It, it just lends a lot of trust. It lends a lot of great dialogue and I, I think we're really proud of what we do and we, and we love what we do.
(35:52): That's really awesome. And just like a friendship like that, who would've thought that you'd end up in business together like this building a business like priority bicycles. It's amazing. And anyone who's listening to this episode before October 15th can actually enter to win a priority continuum. Onx bike along with a ton of other bike year. Just head over to ready Eddie for your chance to win before October 15th. And with that honor, I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast and share the story of priority bicycles. Thanks for having me. This is very exciting. We're excited to be part of the giveaway, excited to tell everybody about it. If you enjoyed today's podcast episode, then we would be incredibly appreciative. If you could log on it and leave us a quick review. This really helps us get noticed by other podcast listeners like yourself. And if you know anyone that would benefit from this episode, then please share it along. Well, that wraps up this episode of the ready podcast. We'll catch you guys next week.
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