The NSMB Podcast
From the team behind NSMB.com, The NSMB podcast will go behind the scenes with the makers, breakers, and risk-takers of our favourite sport. Interviews, news, and other important topics will all be on the menu.
The NSMB Podcast
From Welder to Toolmaker: How Jason Quade Built Abbey Bike Tools
Precision isn't just a goal for Abbey Tools founder Jason Quaid—it's a religion. From humble beginnings as a welder crafting nuclear-grade pressure vessels to becoming the creator of the cycling world's most coveted tools, Jason's journey exemplifies how passion and craftsmanship can transform an industry.
The story begins with a simple phone call and a modified lockring tool that would become known as the "Crombie Tool." What started as a favor for a fellow race mechanic quickly evolved into a business when Jason brought his first batch of 100 tools to the Cascade Cycling Classic in Bend, Oregon. Every mechanic with cash in their pocket bought one, and those who didn't returned the next day. That immediate validation launched Abbey Tools into existence.
Unlike most manufacturing operations today, Abbey maintains control over nearly every aspect of production at their facility in Bend. The five-person operation machines, weld, and assemble each tool with meticulous attention to detail. "We spend almost as much time inspecting the parts that go into the HAG (Hanger Alignment Gauge) as we do making them," Jason explains. This commitment to quality is evident in products like their titanium hammer—a tool that Jason initially thought was "one of the dumbest things anybody had ever asked me to make," but later realized had elegance and utility.
What makes Abbey's approach unique is their unwavering focus on function while still creating tools beautiful enough to be considered functional art. Though initially designed with professional race mechanics in mind, their tools have found an enthusiastic audience among home mechanics who appreciate quality equipment. From bottom bracket sockets to their renowned truing stand, each piece reflects Jason's philosophy that if you're going to invest in the precise engineering and execution, why not make the finished product visually stunning too?
Whether you're a professional wrench or a weekend warrior who takes pride in maintaining your own bikes, Abbey Tools represents the pinnacle of quality in an industry where precision increasingly matters. As drivetrains evolve from 8 speeds to 13 in the same hub space, the margin for error shrinks—making tools that deliver exacting results more valuable than ever.
Want to see craftsmanship elevated to an art form? Explore what happens when a skilled tradesman brings his expertise to the cycling world and refuses to compromise on quality.
At the time it was only 10 cogs in the space that we used to put eight. Now we put up to 13 cogs in that same rehab body. Like your, your market for error gets way smaller, and so that was kind of the I don't know. You could call it a cornerstone product of the tagline precision is our religion right. There's a lot of we spend almost as much time inspecting the parts that go into the hag, as we do making them.
Speaker 2:Before starting Abbey Tools, which happened by accident, jason Quaid was working as a welder. He was sparking together things like nuclear grade pressure vessels and airplane parts, but his heart was in the bike industry. He spent some time as a race mechanic and one of his friends from that world asked him to weld something. That tool changed Jason's life. Abby now makes the most beautiful precision crafted tools you'll see in any industry crafted tools you'll see in any industry. Luckily for us, jason only makes them to work on bikes. You may not need a $1,500 truing stand or a $190 titanium hammer, but you might want to have a look at Abbey's T-Way tool or 4-Way multi-tool, both of which are very handy for the home mechanic. Despite a function-first ethos, abbey has turned bike tools into elegantly engineered art pieces that top mechanics drool over. Have a listen as he talks about Abbey's origin story, the growth of his company and running a manufacturing business in Bend, oregon.
Speaker 2:I'm Cam McRae and this is the NSMB Podcast. Nsmb podcast jason quaid, welcome to the nsmb podcast. It's, uh, it's, it's nice to have you on. Yeah, thank you for for reaching out. I, I'm happy to have you on. It's great I. I'd like to start off with how you'd introduce yourself to somebody and if they asked you about your life's work, how would you, yeah, describe that?
Speaker 1:it kind of depends on what the setting is. Just telling people that you're a tool maker is, um, seems very obvious, like, oh, I make tools, but then people don't. It's like, huh, you know, sometimes I just joke and tell people that I measure things for a living. You know, which is pretty accurate. I spend a lot of day with micrometers in my hand and QC and parts and whatnot, and then, yeah, it is. But then if you talk to somebody from kind of more of a manufacturing background, to them tool maker kind of implies tool and die, which is a small part of what we do here, we do have to make tooling for the tools that we make, oddly enough, but yeah, so it just kind of depends on what the context is.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it was a welder by trade, um, and kind of fake being a machinist, and and uh, here we are, um making bikes how did you get into welding?
Speaker 1:um, it was kind of this. My dad's an electrician, so this kind of like skills trade thing was something that was familiar to me growing up and it was like a trade that I felt that I could go learn and then still potentially apply it in the bike industry. A couple of years after I finished trade school, trek and Cannondale both kind of abandoned what little metal bike production that they still had left in the US and that went away. Little metal bike production that they still have left in the U? S and that you know went away, and yeah. So I built everything from nuclear grade pressure vessels to certified airplane parts, so kind of like running the gamut.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, first, first welding job was building giant heat exchangers for the power generation industry and thin material was half an inch up to about six inches and you picked up everything with a crane or a forklift, like you weren't lugging anything around by hand. So in comparison to what we do now, it's fun to look back on. I'm glad I don't do it anymore. Much heavier lifting like it's, I don't know. It's fun to look back on.
Speaker 1:I'm glad I don't do it anymore Um yeah, much heavier lifting, obviously, and in some ways it's easier, cause you just know that you can't pick it up so like, oh, we gotta go get the crane Whatever.
Speaker 2:So, uh, we talked about at Sea Otter, about the, the origin story of uh of Abbey tools, but I'd like to hear it again.
Speaker 1:For sure. So I've also tried to run away from industrial forever, from the bike industry a few times. And yeah, it had kind of gone back and forth when I found myself unemployed at kind of the bottom of the recession. It was running a service department of a bike shop here in Bend that had gone out of business during the recession and decided that I was going to go to USA Cycling's race mechanic clinic. Over the couple of years leading up to that I had worked a bunch of kind of national championships or Cascade Cycling Classic road and cross races here in Bend Oregon and then wanted to go to this clinic and just never.
Speaker 1:The scheduling never worked out. And so I, finally, was unemployed went on a whim, met a guy named Jeff Crombie, and so Jeff and I stayed in touch. Jeff also kind of had a background in aviation, used to be a helicopter mechanic in Canada and gotten out of that. Jeff and I stayed in touch and then one day he called me up and said hey, do you, do you have a Shimano quick?
Speaker 1:release skewer and was like yeah, I think so. And he's like can you go out to your garage and check? He's like does that nut fit in the lock ring tool? I'm like, yeah, and he just said he's like drill a hole in that weld a handle to it and mail it to me. Let me know what I owe you. Jeff, at the time lived outside of Calgary, so I did what he?
Speaker 1:asked and I was like this is a pretty good idea. So, before Jeff even got that tool, I ordered 20 or 30 other you know cheap lockering tools and made a small batch of these things in my garage, borrowed, used the lathe at work at this part-time job that I had in the winter, um, to drill the holes out of the stock tools. Like, got this diy black oxide kit and uh, dipped them in the garage to resting and then gave them to some other race mechanic friends, um, and then gave them to some other race mechanic friends, um, and then that was what, 13 years ago, so like that was in London. That phone call was like January, february and by the end of April I got a phone call from um, some random guy that was a friend of a friend from the race mechanic community that was out on the East coast somewhere.
Speaker 1:Um, he's like hey, are you that guy that made that thing? Like, uh, I think I know what you're talking about, but like I'm I'm guy, I've made lots of things. Uh, which? Which one are you talking about? And um, and so he was like that's, that was kind of the moment where I was like all right, let's put um, let's make a batch of these for sale, and so the first batch of those tools. We worked with a local machine shop here in town that's still a vendor of ours to this day and they made heads specifically for us.
Speaker 1:We got half inch bar stock remnants from another job that they made parts with and that's where the original handles came from and for two or three years that's where all of our handle stock came from were overrun from this other job that they ran a ton of.
Speaker 1:And so that was kind of rad and this weird little bit of upcycling and repurposing of things and and yeah, so we made it was probably around 100 tools out of that first batch and went through the pit at Cascade Cycling Classic, a longstanding road race that we had here in Venns, and I sold one to every mechanic that had money in their pocket and I was like, oh, okay, and then anybody that didn't have money like came and found me the next day and bought one.
Speaker 1:Um, and some people bought a second one, because sometimes people have multiple toolboxes and one at home and one with a team truck or whatever and uh, and I like we're this kind of feels like we're onto something, um, so, yeah, since the last two tools out of that batch off as press samples like I'd never been part of a product launch or anything like that before um, and I just sent them to two editors that I enjoyed reading their stuff and um, who was. Who was that? Uh. It was zach overholt at bike rumor and nick legan at uh, who was writing for velg's at this point.
Speaker 2:So um both those guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was Nick's very last piece that was published for Velody's, which was kind of cool, Um, and we still have like Nick's pull quote uh from that articles up on like a trade show piece, uh, that we use as a backdrop that like made, um, made and whatnot.
Speaker 2:So but yeah, and nick was kind of he's like this thing's awesome, like I want to buy more of these and I'm like, well, I'm out, but I'm making more, like you know, um and so nick and I are still nick.
Speaker 1:All three of those guys both of those guys are are still friends to this day, so it's been kind of cool, um, but yeah, and then we, we do this product launch. Like we didn't, we had a website up, but it was like there was no ecom component to it. Um.
Speaker 1:So I'm like shopify was maybe a year or two old at this point, so I'm like had a friend in the tech world that had recommended them as a platform and I'm like trying to figure all this stuff out, Like it's literally just me, Um, and yeah, like build a website, have all these email lists, but like the weird thing was maybe a third of the emails were like what else do you think? And it was like people just saw the execution of what of the original crummy tool, Um, and they're like that's really cool, you've got to have something else up your sleeve, but that was literally it.
Speaker 1:So we kind of get over that and then you know things start flowing. And then it took a couple of years to like, all right, this is what I'm going to do, and kind of stopped working on bikes remote in town and then stopped doing event work. So kind of phase that out over the next couple of years, but yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean 100% sell rate more than 100% sell rate for your customers is pretty good. So that's pretty good market research to start off with. So obviously you can scale up production of the Crombie tool. How do you follow up something that's so successful and such a good idea? I have no idea what your second tool was was, um, I think it was the chain whip.
Speaker 1:Uh, was close to the second one, um, yeah, and so I mean the reply to those people that said what else do you make is like, well, what do you want us to make? Um, and so, obviously, a cassette lockering tool and a chain web, two tools that you know get used together. Yeah, so that one was kind of a, an easy add, I think, the Geisler, the Turing stand adapter, which, josh Geisler, was another team mechanic, a friend of mine that was at the same clinic, so even though he didn't really have a whole lot to do with the development of that tool, we named it after him, and then we did.
Speaker 1:I think Shimano came out with either a Dura-Ace or an XTR group set that needed the smaller socket, and so that was an opportunity that we kind of jumped on of like, oh, here's a tool that everybody's going to have to buy, let's offer that too. And like we're small and agile, we can be faster to market than a lot of the established players. And so, yeah, now bottom bracket tools are kind of a staple for us. We probably do more of the weird stuff that everybody else doesn't think is worthwhile. Yeah, we plug away Just little niche products. More of the weird stuff that everybody else doesn't think is worthwhile, yeah, we plug away.
Speaker 2:Just little niche products.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the the hag was the hanger alignment gauge was kind of the, the one that a lot of people had asked for, and it was like all right, what do we, what do we need to do to make this tool excel? You know, those tools of that type really hadn't been updated a whole lot in a long time and they just didn't have the accuracy that I felt modern bikes benefited from. Right, the straighter that hanger is, you know, the better the bike's going to shift. And now that we're putting at the time it was only 10 cogs in the space that we used to put eight. Now we put up to 13 cogs in that same pre-hub body. Like your, your market for error gets way smaller, and so that was kind of the I don't know you could call it a cornerstone product of the tagline precision is our religion.
Speaker 1:Right, there's a lot of we spend almost as much time inspecting the parts that go into the hag as we do making them, and so there's a lot of nitpicky things that go into that to make them easy to assemble but then also make them really easy to use and really accurate. Right, there's a lot that goes into keeping all the little, the last little bit of play out of the head of the hag so that it doesn't amplify when you're up at the rim taking a measurement.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious about your ramp up when you went from making a few of the Crombie tool on your own and all of a sudden you need some volume, and I were you working out of your garage at first with yeah, so, um yeah, was working in the garage, had a tig welder, a couple other.
Speaker 1:You know basic hand tools. Um, you know the thankfully the cnc shop had. You know the machines that were great to make the little splined heads for us. They made them on these citizen Swiss style waves for people out there that understand that kind of stuff which are machines that are usually reserved for really high volume production, hundreds of thousands of pieces.
Speaker 1:People will set up jobs and run them for months nonstop. So the fact that they would do stuff at a scale of several hundreds, maybe up to a thousand pieces for us is pretty unique in the Swiss world or Swiss machine world. So, yeah, we didn't have any constraints there. It was really more just like my travel schedule, and that was kind of the first thing to get cold right. It's like no, I can't, I can't go to Europe again to go work another bike race, I can't go do this or that. And so that stuff started to fall back. So we worked out of the house for two and a half years or so and then we were in our first industrial space. You know that felt huge at the time.
Speaker 1:And now it's looking back on it it's like, man, we couldn't fit you know a quarter of our machinery in there, much less have space to move around. So, yeah, and then things like employees got added to you know, do things. And I mean, at heart we're definitely a manufacturing company, so that's kind of, yeah, driven a lot of that Like there's a lot of labor that happens under our roof. So, and then there's been some other big steps. The first batch of decades were made by that same machine shop and it didn't go super smooth and that's what led us to buying our own um live tool, dual spindle lathe. And so now we in that one machine we went from making machine, we went from making 15 to 20 percent of our parts in-house to like 80 um, and so, yeah, we can do, I mean, kick out chromie tools um all night long while nobody's here, which is pretty awesome, how you have to do it.
Speaker 1:if you're going to make things domestically, you know, if you're going to make your own stuff, uh, in a first world country, you kind of need to invest in that lights out, automation, manufacturing and be able to do that. So I mean, what we're doing isn't at a super high level, but, yeah, it still allows us to keep up.
Speaker 2:So so how many, how many people do you employ at this point?
Speaker 1:There's five of us, so not a huge outfit by any means.
Speaker 2:And what? What are their respective titles?
Speaker 1:So we've got a customer service guy that kind of does all the order fulfillment as well. We have a machinist. We have a machinist, um, we have a back-end kind of uh, gosh, uh, non-producer, um, you know, that just keeps track of all of the uh, the bookkeeping and the margins and all that stuff, um, and then I still weld everything that we ship at this point.
Speaker 1:Wow, hasn't always been that way We've brought in some other help over time and then I still do kind of product development stuff as well, and then a couple of people doing assembly tech type of things and then some part finishing.
Speaker 2:Do you still have any of your original batch of Crombie tools?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we, it's kind of a don't know at some point and I don't know if you had the same, uh you know, moment with nsmb but you, you kind of like realizing that you're building something that's going to be around, uh, for a while and it's going to like people are into it. And so, yeah, I've got a box of prototypes and, you know, early development things. At some point we'll put it in a display case and put it in the front room, but at this point, it's literally just a box of old stuff.
Speaker 1:The very first Chrome tool that I made for Jeff is in there. Four or five years ago he immigrated to the united kingdom and so, as one, when one hops countries uh across bodies of water you've heard your uh, heard your life he's like you know, I think you'd probably like to have this back, so he sent it to me, but yeah, kind of cool so so I I can imagine that, compared to what the crombie tool looks like, now that one looks a little bit rudimentary, or is there not a dramatic difference?
Speaker 1:no, it's, it's quite a bit different. Um, I could definitely get you some, some photos for show notes or something if you want. But, um, the first ones were literally just, uh, like eighth inch thick, inch wide, flat bar handles that I kind of like hand notched on a bandsaw to fit around an off the shelf lockering tool that had like the one inch hex drive on it. It just kind of welded them of them, um did some, I think, out of the first batch there there were two or three double-sided tools that had a shimano on one side and a campanile on the other. Um, and then, yeah, you look through, like some of the other tools in that um, in that box.
Speaker 1:Some of them are really crude. Um, some of them go from like a beta batch of HAGs. Does it look all that much different to what we ship today? But yeah, it's kind of interesting to see the evolution Like there's been, even since we've been to production. We've done a couple of small tweaks to the Cromby tool. I remember Nick Legan was like hey, can you make the spline depth longer so that'll work with a Stein, uh, hyper handle, which was kind of his king whip style tool of choice.
Speaker 1:Um, and it required a little more depth, so that you could put the uh, put that plate style deal that had the three nubs on it. So, uh, jim Stein was the first guy to do that.
Speaker 2:since then a couple of people have knocked it off, but um, yeah, so I'm wondering when you went from making tools that were utilitarian but, in your words, a little bit crude, to making ones that are almost have become fetish objects, that they're like jewelry and beautiful and um, when, when, when is that? Was that a gradual evolution, or did you decide one day to start making things beautiful?
Speaker 1:I feel like it was pretty, um, pretty much from the get go. It was you know people, people that use tools for a living, want things that look good, right, they? People like shiny things, you know.
Speaker 1:and so it's like, hey, if we're going to put all this, other work into these tools and pay attention to these, um, these specific angles on the inside of a cassette lockering tool. Um, why are we going to short change and uh, uh and do sub rate finishes? Right, we're going to, we're going to hand weld all these things and they're going to look pretty good. Um, you know why, go through all these other things and then cut off that last piece of it. So, um, the very first batch or two and tools were all, um, like a satin bead blast, so they kind of had that, um, that kind of moves, titanium, askesque. Look to it.
Speaker 1:Even though they weren't Thai, we would get people all the time that were like, oh, those Thai cassette tools, they're not titanium, but they had that look. And then we went to like a burnished finish which is kind of a little shy of a polish just because it was faster and required less labor.
Speaker 1:So but that machine, I mean, you basically put the tools in it and there's a bunch of vibratory finishing media in there and it kind of saves the crap out of them until they're shiny. And so for the first two and a half years that we were making tools, that machine was in my garage on the other in the kitchen, and so it would be running sometimes till 10 o'clock at night. My wife would be like are you seriously still working on?
Speaker 2:tools and you're like yeah, how loud was it uh, it was.
Speaker 1:It wasn't so much that, like, the decibels were loud, but it just shook, and so it was like, yeah, I mean you would just feel the vibration, um, in the house, um. So yeah, I mean there were times when it would run 18 hours a day, like I'd get up and make coffee and then I'd go turn the tumbler on and throw tools, so, and then it would run until 10, 11 o'clock. So now, thankfully it's in, it's like sound insulated room and it doesn't. It's miserable to be in there, but you don't really need to be in there for more than five minutes.
Speaker 1:So but yeah, you can close the door and have a normal conversation just outside of it.
Speaker 2:So when did you go from it? Obviously, you started out making tools for professional mechanics, and not even professional shop mechanics, but professional mechanics at the pointy end, the ones who were working on the best riders in the world's bikes. When was the transition to starting to make products, first for mechanics and shops and then for Joe consumer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean in on some level. There was never a a um, like an opposition or like designing away from what a home mechanic or even a shop mechanic needs. Um, you know, one of the the cool thing like so, um, to back up just a hair cascade cycling fast where we sold those first tools, was always held in the month of July, kind of halfway through the tour to France. It just picked up um, which, even though I like your readership, uh, is all mountain bikes at this point, but um, there's a big bike race in france. It just finished, um, fast forward 12 and a half months. We had tools with four different teams um, at that race. So it's like that was a pretty cool moment and something that we shared with all of our vendors early on, of like we're doing this thing at a pretty cool level. Like, hopefully you guys can see the pride that we have in this and you guys are definitely pivotal in helping us do this. Um, but um, yeah, I mean we never really shied away from or like designed outside of what a shop or um home mechanic needed. It was more just, you know, because I came from that race support background, kind of had the ear of those guys and they were like, hey, this tool would be awesome if it was lighter, if it was shorter, if it fit in my toolbox. And I think maybe only in the last three or four years have we really kind of started to do tools that are aimed more at a home mechanic than they are at a race tech.
Speaker 1:Right, like something like a chain wear tool. If you're a race mechanic you've got dozens you get changed by the case Right? Just, you think it's more, just replace it. There's no need to measure it. By the case, right? Just, you think it's worn, just replace it. There's no need to measure it. You know, sram, shimano, kmc, whoever like they're paying you money to have their equipment in good working order. Like, just put a new one on right. So it's like then you look at the chain wear tool and it's like that's way more of a consumer shop facing feel. But yeah, I think early on there was definitely a notion that we only made tools for team mechanics.
Speaker 1:I think if that was true, we probably never would have stepped outside of the garage. If we didn't make tools for anybody but professionals, we wouldn't be in the size building and the size crew that we have today. So I think you know we definitely try to welcome anybody that wants to buy nice tools. So, yeah, I think the durability standards and the functionality, the ergonomics are always going to be built around that professional use case. But at the same time, like you know, there's a lot more people that are willing to buy tools of that caliber that don't do it for a living.
Speaker 2:I'm wondering who and you may not even know who is purchasing these things, that they're purchasing online, but who steps up for $190 US titanium hammer?
Speaker 1:That's actually the least expensive titanium hammer on the market I believe it there. I didn't even know there were other ones yeah, I mean, this is uh stiletto, I think is the company that, um, that's done titanium like framing and drywall hammers, uh, for trades people for a number of years um, they've been out I think all of theirs are north of 200 bucks and have been for a while.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you know that was the titanium hammer was one of the dumbest things that I feel that anybody had ever asked me to make. And then I made one and I was like this thing's actually really awesome and so I showed it, had it with me at a race, and a friend of mine was like I want one. It's like I don't have any more.
Speaker 1:Well, you, made that one right like yeah, he's like well effing make me another one and I was like it'll be expensive and he's like, how much and I just kind of like jokingly threw out like two hundred dollars, and he's like how much? And I just kind of like jokingly threw out like $200. And he's like okay, I'm like okay, and I think we sold the first batch of them. They were maybe a hundred and a half, you know, and I made all of those tie hammerheads on this old manual lathe in my garage?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so it's. I don't know, it's a fun tool to make getting smoke out of them, if that's your thing. Uh, just kind of a nature of needing to purge the titanium gives it that pass through piece by. Uh, flare, know, it's, um, but for people that you know do travel the world and they're working at a different parking lot every other day, uh, on the same bikes, like you, think of what you need a hammer for on a bicycle. That's reasonably well maintained. That it's not much so like a titanium tapping hammer is actually kind of a cool little tool.
Speaker 1:It's not, it's never going to be anybody's only hammer that they own, you know, but it is kind of a cool application specific hammer. I've got one in my kitchen that I modified to be a meat tenderizer.
Speaker 2:So there's. I mean, the utility of it is that it's light for transport, and if you've got a job where you don't need a lot of force, a lighter hammer works fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you can definitely get a press fit bottom bracket or you know bearings out, whatever It'll do that stuff just fine.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. What are some of your most popular tools in different categories?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the Crombie tool range has always been the cornerstone. You know, the hanger tool we sometimes say that it's a precision instrument surrounded by pry bars. Everything else is kind of crude, and so that's another cornerstone product for us. In spite of recent developments in drivetrain technology, that tool still sells well. So thankfully, the new Shimano group still needs a derailleur hanger. So kind of keen on that one.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I mean, I think the bottom bracket sockets do well, because I feel like people know that we do everything. Um, you know there's so kind of like, oh, we can go to abby, and there's that retail aren't really any more, uh, expensive than anybody else that you're going to cross shop us around. So, um, we just know that they'll do it, um, or have that option available, so yeah. And then there's some things that you know, like the truing stand is a big ticket item. Um, you know we don't, we don't sell a ton of them, but we only make them a batch a year. Um, they're out of stock, more than they're in stock. But it's kind of just this thing of like we know that there's a finite market for 1500 electric stands, um, and that's another one that I'm shocked at how many people have bought those that are not professional mechanics?
Speaker 1:um like well, um, and they're beautiful yeah, I mean they are one of those things we always try to dole out. You know, to pack for trade shows. Whether we're going to see Otter here in about a month, we're going to go to the handmade show in Portland, you know, these people just don't get to see them right, they're like, hey, we want. Maybe one of the more challenging things about what we do is you don't kind of hard to sell pro-grade tooling through photos If you can't pick it up. Thankfully, I think our reputation is really strong and so people are willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. Read some reviews, realize that this stuff is very well regarded. But when you get something that's a little more personal and tactile, as anything wheel building related, it gets a little tougher.
Speaker 2:Do you have the sense that people doing work on their bikes at home is on the rise or waning?
Speaker 1:I'd love to know the answer to that question. I mean, I feel like during the pandemic, right, it was definitely blew up for sure. Months out, um, you know, dealing with reduced workforces, all of that stuff, um, I'm curious how many people hung on to that and what the what, the where in the cycling evolution or life lifespan that person was when they, you know, were they a long time cyclist?
Speaker 1:and then the pandemic hit and they wanted to start, but they just were bummed that they couldn't get their stuff repaired at their favorite local shop, and so then they went out and bought tools so that they could do it themselves. Are they still doing it themselves? Or if they were burning back to, um, you know the professionals. So, yeah, be be fun to know the answers to that question, but I don't, apart from just surveying everybody that orders.
Speaker 2:So so, like like everyone else in the bike industry, the, there was a big boom for you during the pandemic yeah, I mean, we definitely, definitely saw it.
Speaker 1:I guess somebody that makes you know the majority of their parts in-house we were in a little bit better shape to deliver on that. Um, you know, our fill rates throughout the pandemic weren't gosh, weren't more out, weren't farther out than about eight weeks at any given point, um, which sounds crazy, given that you know some of the forecasts were like, oh, we're two and a half three years out on product, so, yeah, oh. And then it was nice that you know, at least for us, that people couldn't get that new wheel set or that new frame, and so they're like, well, I might as well fix what I've already got and what about the rebound that the bike industry?
Speaker 2:I mean obviously you wouldn't have tons of overstock issues like some bike companies have now. But did? Did you experience a lull, or maybe still not at all? No, really, I mean.
Speaker 1:That maybe answers our earlier question then yeah, um 22, 23, 24, we're all pretty similar. Uh, this year is different story. There's stuff going on in the world that's outside of our control and it brings a lot of people out. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's nice to not be as affected by that cycle as the rest of the industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of work for us to overstock something. Right, it's a very like you see tons of material that show up and you see hours of spindle time getting used. If you see truckloads of things going to the anodizer and then you like, it comes back and it's way, it's, it's a very it's a. It's way more than an extra digit on a spreadsheet. Um, like, it's just, that's kind of how contract manufacturing works, right, you're like, oh no, it would change this from 100 to 500 pieces one keystroke on an excel form. Um, you know it's a lot different. Uh, yeah, when you do that stuff, kind of cradle to grave.
Speaker 2:So is there something? I mean it may be two different questions whether you have a favorite tool that you make or have made, or something you're most proud of something you're most proud of.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so favorite tools to make? Um, obviously, being a welder by trade, um, I love welding the hammers. Um to just sit down and melt titanium together. Is is cool. Uh, it's fun at all, you know, it usually turns out really well. Um, I mean, I usually turns out really well. I mean I basically weld sticks to things Super repetitive and over the last 13 years I've gotten pretty good at it.
Speaker 1:It's also really cool to machine the Harbor gauge, which is our big billet aluminum dishing tool. So those go into the CNC mill as a, I think, 28 pound raw block of aluminum. Um, and then it comes out. We make five arches out of one of those billets and just in the first op I think, we move or remove like 18 or 20 pounds of material from that thing, and so it's just it's cool to see modern machinery, just z, hanging around big blocks of aluminum and you know the metal shavings are hitting the cabinet. You can like hear them. Um, and you know if you open, when you open the door, you see kind of this beam roll out.
Speaker 2:It's like this is this is cool, um, at least I think so um, how long did you machine those, those out of that big chunk of aluminum?
Speaker 1:um, I think we just did a batch of them out of our new mill this year, which is way faster, um I want to say it used to take us an hour just to do that first operation, um, and now it might be down to 25-ish minutes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, what are the things you do in-house? And obviously you mentioned, anodizing goes out.
Speaker 1:What are the things you do in-house and things that you don't? So we do most of the machine work. There are some things like long, skinny parts that are tough for our machines to make. So things like the pin on the chain tool and the big long handle and then the part that actually threads into the derailleur hanger we call that the T-bolt. We don't. Those are kind of too long and skinny for our machine and so those get made on those Swiss machines that our original vendor does Do all of our own mill parts, most of our own turning, except for those handful of parts.
Speaker 1:Anodizing goes to Tualatin. It's a place that specializes in like kind of outdoor recreation stuff, but they do a lot of parts for people that have a little bit more aesthetic, um, you know, uh, aesthetic issue or requirements that oppose to like an aerospace part where it's all about just dimensions and build rates and all that stuff. So, so, um, and they do a bunch of other stuff for bike manufacturers in the Northwest, so kind of nice to have them in our pocket. Um, we don't, yeah, so we don't do any of our coatings in house. We do all of our laser part marking. We do all of our assembly, uh, all the welding.
Speaker 1:Um, we started doing our own heat treat in town, uh, in-house, earlier this year, which if anybody's familiar with that it can kind of be a cruel mistress. Um, you know a little bit of black magic. So thankfully we've been pretty pretty quick and easy ramp up on that. Um, and the alloys that we're doing uh with that are a little more forgiving than some of the stuff that you would see in high-end knives or whatnot. But yeah, so that's.
Speaker 2:The majority of it is in-house, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is pretty neat. There's not much of that happening on this side of the Pacific anymore happening on this side of the Pacific anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean even our pre-hag, which is an injection molded plastic tool that's kind of meant to be a way to approximate derailleur hanger alignment without removing the derailleur. So that's an injection molded tool. Those are still made in bed. So even that thing that would have been ripe to send off offshore. My mindset's always been hey, let's start local and we'll start moving out as we need to and find vendors. The closer somebody is to where you are, I find that it's just easier to do work with them. I know a lot of people you know they're in charge of manufacturing that happens all over the world and they're like, oh, it's not that big of a deal and on some level I'm sure that they're right. But like if you could drive five minutes away or take a short bike ride to your injection molding shop, like I'll pick your's easier, especially when they're late, and you're like hey, it's really easy to ignore that email, but it's, it's a lot. When I darken your doorstep you know like, hey, where's my stuff?
Speaker 2:What's the percentage of products that come from requests from mechanics and the percentage that you dream up yourselves?
Speaker 1:I think most of our product catalog has come at the request of either customers or our ambassador crew. Yeah, it's, you know, every once in a while, like the chain word tool and in the decade, I think, were projects that I wanted to do, you know, and then we still see, kind of ask the ambassador crew it's like all right, well, what are features that you guys want to see in this tool, what are things that you want to be able to combat or handle in the field? And then just dealing with some of the weird things that the bike industry has thrown at us historically Chain spacing is definitely one of those things. And kind of getting into mountain biking, my first mountain bike was a seven speed, uh, drivetrain, and so, like I've been through most of these changeovers, uh, in my lifetime and I'm not even that old. But, um, yeah, it's like okay, well, how do we, you know, let's make this little bridge thing, you know, replaceable so we can, you know, realize that all the compatibility and chain is like the thickness of that little bridge that holds the link, that holds the roller and it's spacing to the backside.
Speaker 1:So if we make this one little part comes out, then we can kind of theoretically. Hopefully future We'll see. I'm sure, now that I've put that into the world, somebody super crazy that we won't be able to adapt the tool for hopefully it doesn't sell well enough that we have to make make it. But yeah, I we always. It's maybe one of the biggest challenges of of my evolution personally over the history of the company is like I'm not a bike mechanic anymore. You know, I still get out and ride but I've never been all that hard on stuff so I don't break a lot of things and my own bikes don't need a whole lot of maintenance.
Speaker 1:And so you know, listening to people at trade shows, that come up and you know, hey, you should make this tool that come up. And and you know, hey, you should make this tool. Um, you know, and taking all those people seriously, um, you know, sometimes it's a super niche tool. You know, sometimes it's for things that are obsolete and it's had been for decades. All right, cool. Um, you know, sometimes we we order Cool. You know, sometimes we order custom cutting tools and we see, like, what the costs are for those things and it's like, yeah, we could make one of those, but like you're the only person in the world that wants one.
Speaker 1:Is that thing worth a thousand dollars to you? Because, like, that's the reality of what it's going to cost us to make it, and I don't I don't say that to like scare people off, but it's like there's a lot of time that goes into this thing that you drew up on a napkin. Uh, sometimes it's super simple and we can accommodate, right like custom bearing drifts, no big deal. We just go turn them on the lathe. Um, you know, don't even do little napkin sketches and and send them out with a very press or something.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, the way the industry is going, it's becoming a lot more electrified, both in, you know, bicycle propulsion and, obviously, componentry. Do you see opportunities there? Are there things that you can supply?
Speaker 1:um, something that we've always stayed definitely in tune with um, I think for our customers sake, not so much for us on a business standpoint, but, um, all of the e-bike drive systems, uh, have been really good at recycling previously obsolete tool patterns, so things that you know a lot of shops, if they've been around for more than 10 years, probably have sticking around in a drawer somewhere from like an old ISIS tool, or I think somebody was using like the old XTR oxalate tool that had like eight prongs or something and that was the lock ring for their mid-drive chainring mounts or something. So yeah, I mean I think there's definitely the potential there for that to be open kind of another category of tools and for us.
Speaker 1:but to date, it really hasn't brought anything uh through the door that uh is worth the makeup. So always happy to do oe projects with companies like that. We really don't have any desire to be, you know, to start making bike parts. We just kind of want to be cool people, um, and we're definitely we're experts at that. Also can be a great resource if you don't want to ask your competitors what tool patterns are out there.
Speaker 1:Like ask me, I'll respect those privileged conversations when need be and can like hey, here's the bottom bracket tool that you should use that will cover all of your fitness, instead of you designing something proprietary by accident, which we have multiple tools in our catalog that I feel fit into that realm.
Speaker 2:So do they? Do the companies reciprocate and tell you when they're using a new standard and that you might want to build a tool for it?
Speaker 1:uh, it depends, right, we we get um a. We request from different manufacturers um, sometimes. You know, earlier this year we um launched the nine tooth version of the crumbie for the new shimano group set um for that 945 cassette. Because that cog was so small, they needed a. Basically they turned the cassette lockering from an any to an alley um is maybe the best, so now it looks like a tiny second um. We got a heads up on that um. You know, through um long-standing relationships. One of the guys I used to work bike races with is now a product manager at Shimano. So pretty good friend to have. Yeah, so he. You know, when we start hearing rumors and stuff we'll make those phone calls and like hey, are there anything tool-related with the new group set?
Speaker 1:And you know anything tool related, uh, with the new group set and you know, a lot of times they answer that questions no, sometimes, yeah, we've got something. It's really just an optimization. I don't know if it would really make sense for for a third party option, um. And then sometimes it's like, yes, we need a tool for this, um, and then ironically, sometimes we can have it to market faster than they can have a shop. It just kind of depends, right, like just yeah, being small and nimble and being able to crank that stuff out, so yeah.
Speaker 1:And then sometimes we think that we get notice on something and then come to find out that it's different. Sometimes you don't want to be too early, because then you find out that the dimensions shifted as they got closer to production.
Speaker 2:So you're like, oh, I'm glad we only have 20 of those instead of hundreds, because now they're all uh so one of our guys is is testing a, a new suspension product. Won't be too specific to out it, but uh, the company in question, he needed to get it serviced and the company in question didn't have the tools for it yet and the product is released in the wild. Another one had to wait. He it was a product he purchased, so it wasn't sort of going through media channels and the shop he was getting it serviced at had to wait six months to get the product to service the suspension.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a tough one, right, and once again, maybe that's where we could be a great resource for those kinds of companies to handle their tooling for them. Yeah, and suspension is something, especially things at a high end right, people are of the knowledge that, like hey, we need to maintain this stuff. It's like doing an oil tank you don't replace this when it's broken. You maintain it preemptively so that you don't get those big repair bills and have to replace a CSU or whatever.
Speaker 2:Are there any changes to the way you do business or what your product line is going to look like in the near future?
Speaker 1:I think we definitely chose an uphill struggle with our business model early on.
Speaker 1:A lot of the bike industry works on this three tier pricing structure. So you'll, for somebody like us, small to medium sized company, you're not going to do your own distribution, and throughout the world. But our thought, you know so, we don't offer shop. Right, our thoughts always been that we build tools for professionals and we, our thought, you know. So we don't offer shops wholesale price on tools, right, our thought's always been that we build tools for professionals and we price them for those customers. And it just makes more sense than handing out EP coats, you know, all day long. So, yeah, uphill battle, but something that at this point, I think our type of customer understands that. And when we're like, hey, take a little more snap on it and a little less bike industry, um, they get it. I mean, we stand by those tools in those applications that were blue in the face. Um, you know, if somebody breaks something, it's like, hey, we'll get it, get it back, we'll either fix it or send you. But yeah, and then in terms of like, new product stuff, I mean we're always working on new stuff. We were a little shorthanded earlier this year and R&D tends to be one of the things that gets cut first, being a pretty small crew, like know, then that's the stuff that we cut back on. So, yeah, I think there's definitely some product categories that we're not present in that I think have changed a lot in the last five or six years across the industry. It makes sense that we can actually do something innovative there or something that's different. Makes sense that we can actually do something innovative there or something that's different.
Speaker 1:We've never really we've always kind of shied away from doing what we think of as kind of like me too product. You know it's like oh hey, let's, let's go do an electric inflator. It's going to look just like everybody else's right? How many of those things do we need on the market at this point? Like they're all. I'd be shocked if those came out of more than one factory, and not that that's bad, but like do we need to throw our hat in that ring? We're not people that we don't have electronics as part of our core competency, so we rely exclusively on the ability of a manufacturing partner and that's just really not our, our mo, um. You know I love making stuff and if we can't make something, um, it's got to be a really good tool, uh, to bring the market to justify that extra hurdle.
Speaker 2:Maybe we need a green one. There's not a green one yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ace has a whole row of spray paint.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they've got 10 different colors of green. Have you used one of those? The jury's still out for me about whether they're something I would like to carry around.
Speaker 1:I played with the neighbors for the first time last night. I don't know, it's uh, I feel like they're just manufacturing. E-waste at this point is kind of my hangup. Um, I'm you know. I feel the cornerstone is sustainability, is durability. Nothing about those really seems durable or serviceable long-term. I'm not sure if it's really the way that the industry should be going. It seems that if we're going to be putting high-end batteries in things that maybe touch like electric inflators, isn't the best use of you know those resources. I don't know, maybe I should go outside and yell at some clouds while I'm at it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, for me a little pump does the job. I mean, I guess the gauge is is an advantage. Yeah, just they make so much noise they get hot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. And then you're worried like, is it charged? Is it not charged? Um, you know, if you're using it for pre-ride inflation, maybe a little less of an issue if you're, if it's on the bike, flat repair, you kind of need that thing to work when you need it to work, otherwise it's worthless. So I don't know, I mean, and even using CO2, right, those cartridges? They're a single metal. They're super easy to recycle. It's not this little brick full of all different kinds of things that needs to be, um, you know, torn down and manipulated before it could be recycled. Uh, assuming that that was even worthwhile. So you know, on the rare occasion that I need to use a co2 cartridge, I bring it back into the shop on monday and I chuck it in the recycling bin with all of our other. You know, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I don't know, I think I'll be a pump guy for, uh, for many, many years to come so now that I know you're a mountain biker, I'd like to ask you about kind of bike your ride, what kind of rides you do around bend and uh yeah, just about mountain biking yeah I mean thankfully ben's got gobs and gobs of uh mountain bike trails, so things around here, uh, don't get old too often.
Speaker 1:Um, I usually ride like a 120 mil chassis bike. Um, although I have been really surprised and impressed with like 150, like the next class up, uh, that kind of 140, 150 mil and how efficient they are. That kind of 140, 150 mil and how efficient they are. And I kind of sometimes I scratch my head. I'm like when are we going to start seeing like cross-country race bikes that just have longer travel but still have like more aggressive geometry, like something you'd find on a 120? Like I feel that suspension designs have gotten so good that maybe just classifying bikes by how much travel they have is a little dated. I don't know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, for the last couple of seasons I've been riding an Allied BC40 with a bike that I originally got because I needed a UDH bike to run transmission on, to kind of evaluate tool considerations and whatnot and just see like, hey, is this, are there tooling considerations that we're not getting requests for? That we might have, and we had some pretty good ones around that and then kind of got a bit hamstrung by needing cooperation from drivetrain companies to play ball with us a little bit and they're like ah, that's a great idea, but we were struggling to answer your questions. So I don't know, maybe at some point we'll um, bring that tool to market anyway, um, but uh, yeah, so, um, and then, guys, probably seven, eight years ago, I built a custom 29er to kind of be the forever bike. You know I tend to turn over full suspension bikes every couple of seasons.
Speaker 1:And so it's like I just wanted a bike that was kind of always like home base to use as a yeah, kind kind of old faithfully. So, um, I've got freakishly long arms so it's got a really long top tube on it. Um, and yeah, a bike that just every time I throw a leg on it I'm like this bike feels perfect. So Cool.
Speaker 2:Are there still riding up in Smith rocks? When I was there for a camp, we rode up there and it was a pretty cool ride.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely a little more seasonal. I think people get out there in the wintertime and stuff because it's just so stinking hot but given the location of it, it doesn't get a whole lot of snow up there, so it can be good to hit that up in the wintertime. Good to hit that up in the wintertime. But yeah, I mean COTA, our local trail advocacy maintenance crew, has been building a bunch of stuff out in the Ochoa Coast towards Prineville Kind of. I think is the guidance of the Forest Service, like there's two. I guess there's a lot of people kind of on the Deschutes National Forest which is just west of Bend.
Speaker 1:And so they're like yeah, let's maybe go, let's encourage people to go to other parts.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of public land around here.
Speaker 2:So before I let you go, I've been very generous with your time. I've got two potential tool suggestions that will probably be totally useless, but I'll give them to you anyway. Um, one is, uh, something to make the job of taping rims easier, because it is the it's. It's one of the very few tasks I have to do on my bike that I really don't like and struggle to get right. I've seen one where it's a jig that holds the wheel and spins it for you, so you've got both hands free to tape it, and it's at a company's wheel building facility, but that's obviously prohibitive for regular people. So that's one jig perhaps that would help you straighten your um the cage on a t-type derailleur, because they're bent to begin with, so when it gets bent it's really hard to bend it back to the right kind of crooked um.
Speaker 1:What is so the tape? What is it that you struggle with?
Speaker 2:um getting getting bubbles out, um getting a really good seal. Sometimes just getting tape to stick to some rims like the right tape, will not stick to some rims. Carbon usually Metal is easy, but if you're dealing with carbon rims sometimes they just don't stick Even you know, I've got them, given some friction to them with Scotch Brite and done all sorts of things, but that's probably not a spot for a tool but just something.
Speaker 1:It totally seems I guess I'm. This is not anything that I feel I've ever struggled with. Um and so I'm like what am I? Doing differently than you. Um, that's creating this gap in. Or your request for a tool? Um, yeah, do you do them in some kind of a touring stand or do you do them just loose like on the shop floor?
Speaker 2:I do it on the floor and provide tension with my feet to push the room away yeah, um, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I've always been well served by like putting, putting the wheel in between two like shoulder width feet, and then you can kind of like I'm right-handed, so I'll hold the rim firmly with my left hand and then pull the tape pretty tight, uh, with my right hand, and then I can kind of guide it and stick down I don't know six to 10 inches of tape at a time and then kind of roll the wheel and do the same, and I don't usually fuss too much about like as long as I'm getting a seal in the flat parts of the rim, like right below the sidewall, let the tire do the rest right, like air pressure is going to stretch that tape out and push it into the rim bed.
Speaker 1:I don't know, it's always certainly skills. Yeah, it is one of those things that um on a in a production environment to like have a machine to do. That makes a lot of sense to just pre-apply the tape, and I've seen some homegrown setups for that uh, as well, as I don't know if it's holland mechanics, the wheel building machine people, uh, I don't know if they they do the one that I've seen um in places like the santa cruz wheel factory and whatnot, where they where they assemble all that stuff. Um, yeah, and then the other one is actually pretty similar to the tool that we were scheming up. Okay, you know, we kind of wanted a derailleur alignment gauge and like because transmission is a bit of an extreme example of those cages having like some funky geometry to them, right, like they're bent from the factory in a very specific way. But knowing how they're bent is a bit interesting, and I guess those cages are still relatively expensive.
Speaker 1:So, just because you can't, theoretically replace them doesn't mean it's all that cheap.
Speaker 2:If you don't replace the whole mechanism, including the clutch, you can get just the aluminum for 42 bucks here in Canada, so that's not too bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it is, and so that's one of those things where sometimes there's a boundary of the information that a manufacturer is willing to provide us. I think at this point we've got a lot of trust. We try to be Switzerland's of the bike industry and be pretty friendly with everybody, and so a lot of times we can get dimension drawings of stuff like that. You know, we ask for just something that they're not willing to do or provide, or there's a way that those parts are, you know, go through quality assurance that doesn't lend with, doesn't lead itself to like a final location of where that cage should be.
Speaker 1:It's like and this is purely speculative, right, I don't know how the manufacturing of derailleurs works at the various different companies, but if they were to inspect all of the individual components and then they stick them together and then they just accept whatever those, wherever it is, is where it is, but there's not like kind of an end result that's also gone through a quality control process, it could lead to, like, you know, we develop a tool and these brand new parts are coming out and they're not in compliance with the tool, because we're kind of guessing on where these things are. They don't get built with that final step and obviously what everybody is doing works, uh, because you know, mountain bike parts at this point work phenomenally well for pretty much everybody. Um, so yeah, I mean I don't want it to be construed as like a second rate process by any means, but, um, yeah, so just kind of pure speculation there of what potentially is is making it difficult to answer those kinds of questions, so like where does?
Speaker 1:this thing hang into space, and are these surfaces that we're going to judge off of? Are they something that has a level of a tight enough tolerance to be an inspection point or a data? Is what we would call that to like reference other dimensions off of? So it gets to be a very nuanced conversation. But I think you're definitely onto something there that we because now I mean $1,000 derailleurs are not uncommon, right, and you can get them from a multitude of different companies and whether you're in a professional environment or a home tinker, you don't necessarily want to buy that derailleur as a troubleshooting step.
Speaker 1:You'd rather, you know, call it like hey, is this derailleur still a viable part? Is the cage still in alignment? You know, you'd rather troubleshoot that and then go spend. Okay, I'll buy the cage, or I think I need a whole new derailleur. You know, thankfully, the guy I think his name's Aaron, maybe at Madrone down in. Southern Oregon and all of those you know. Service parts and picking up where other stuff hasn't been traditionally supported is kind of a cool thing. To be able to rebuild your derailleur For sure Ashes.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I did one of his kits. It worked really well. Yeah, all right, well nice.
Speaker 1:Thank you, sorry, go ahead oh, I said yeah, it's cool to hear first hand experience of that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, it works, it works great. Thank you very much for your time, jason. It's been great talking to you and, uh, I look forward to seeing what you come up with next in the tool world and I'll continue to drool on your tools whenever I see them.
Speaker 1:I do have one, one from the t handle I got from strong yeah which is which is great that's, and that's kind of how sometimes those oe projects turn out right like that. One started as an OE launch deal to hand out to journalists and then now it's been in a catalog item for us for a couple of years. So you kind of never really know where new tools are gonna come from that's great.
Speaker 2:I use it all the time. Thank you much, jason, your time. Look forward to talking to you again.
Speaker 1:Are you going to come down to Maine at all?
Speaker 2:I've got something in my schedule that I can't, and I'm not sure if anyone else is going to. We, uh, we were talking about it in a meeting, um, and uh, we'd, we'd all like to, so it's just, uh, a bit of a tricky time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I was Billy's a friend of mine and we've been chatting about moving dates and stuff around and whatnot. But uh, definitely my favorite show of the year, kind of that hand-built community always delivers. So, uh, it'd be cool if, uh, yeah, get down there there and and come check it all out.
Speaker 1:So it's tricky, after spending 10 days at crankworks, to be able to bugger off again right away in the middle of summer yeah, how do you feel like is crankworks good from a like a brand exposure standpoint, or is it just kind of all about racing and, uh, being up on the Hill?
Speaker 2:I think the expo is is pretty well attended. We were just looking at the exhibitor list today and we definitely spend a lot of time in there and the uh, you know there's, there's lots of, there's lots of it's right in the middle of the Worcester village. So there's there, there's lots of, it's right in the middle of the Worcester Village, so there's lots of walkthrough and, I think, lots of opportunities to talk to people yeah, logistically it seems like a really challenging, like you got to tear down your booth every night yeah, that's a pain and it seems like there's maybe a lot of really bad spots in the venue in the expo areas
Speaker 2:it's like yeah so yeah, from that perspective it would be a bit dodgy. I I we've exhibited way back in the day. We always used to go to one show every year and it is a pain in the ass there you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all of a sudden it makes the the hike in and out of sea otter feel like a walk in the park.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's right.
Speaker 1:Excellent, all right glad we could finally make this happen yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:It was very enjoyable talking to you, jason, totally appreciate it. Bye.