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A podcast about the founders, the innovators, and the remarkable people in the cycling industry and the stories about the icons they've created.
Escape Collective is entirely member-funded. If you like this podcast please consider supporting us by becoming a member: https://escapecollective.com/member/
rob gitelis 00:04
There was a point at the start of covid where we had $35,000 in the bank. And so that was a pretty uncomfortable feeling. I was at a point where I couldn't personally put any more money back into the company. I had gone as far as I could without jeopardizing my family's future, and so that was pretty scary. I remember going to my sales manager. He's still my sales manager today. His name is John ebson, and I told him, we only have $35,000 in the bank. You need to, you need to turn over every rock and sell anything you can to try to make it to next month.
wade wallace 00:42
I from escape collective. This is overnight success, the podcast about the entrepreneurs, the personalities and the passionate people who make up the sport of cycling and the stories behind the icons they've built. For many years, bike brands have been known to collaborate with Formula One teams in order to align themselves with a halo of high level performance, innovation and technology. But factor bikes actually started in reverse to that. Factor might seem like a relative newcomer in the market, and that's partially true. It's been a mere eight years since their bikes have been widely available, but they got their start almost 16 years ago when a gentleman named John Bailey came along who owned a Formula One data measurement company. His company was called British Formula One, or BF one for short. John wasn't even a cyclist, but he wanted a project for his team of engineers to work on that showcased BF ones capabilities and technology to his automotive market. He did this by launching a bike into the future and breaking every rule in the book.
Johny Bailey 01:55
There was over 100 people at BF one, and our day in, day out job was, was racing cars, basically. And it would be similar systems year after year, either updating them or completely changing them. But it was, the theme was always the same, if you if you want to me, and I always sort of thought that the depth of talent we had do with a little bit of a, you know, a change and a completely different, sort of alternative project to sort of mess around with in the background, just to keep the sort of, you know, the enthusiasm and all those good things. And the
wade wallace 02:28
main function of BF one was data telemetry,
Johny Bailey 02:32
yeah, essentially electronic measurement systems, composite components and electrical items, such as wiring harnesses, that kind of thing to all the f1 teams in one form or another, indie Racing League, NASCAR, World Rally Championship, motor GP, all of those sort of very top categories of of the motor sport on a global, global scale. And then we later got involved with rolls, Royce and Airbus on some of our new technology around composites. Quite a you know, top level, high level industries to be working in, but obviously that comes with a lot of stress. Yeah, yeah. I bet this is opportunity to just do something with that was like fun with no pressure from any anyone outside. And it was initially a part time project. And what it was designed to do was to sort of demonstrate all the capabilities that we had as a business within the four walls of the business. So they would split into three simple elements. Was the composites design, manufacturing, mechanical design and manufacturing, and then obviously the electronics, hardware and software. And it was, what could we do to combine all three of those things? And you know, it would have been lovely to have done a motorized vehicle, but budgets do not stretch to something of that grand. So the bike was the obvious choice. Were
wade wallace 03:42
you a cyclist yourself? Did you have any No, not at all. No,
Johny Bailey 03:45
no. And you know, I'm probably best holding up my hand now and say, I'm still not really a cyclist. Am I more? I just, I just enjoyed the engineering side of it and putting the team together and seeing us do something different, but doing it well, which I think we did, were any of the team cyclists? Yes, they were, yeah, quite a few of them, actually. And you know that I still in touch with quite a few of them. They still are very, very keen cyclists, if not more so now.
wade wallace 04:11
So this was, this was started to sort of demonstrate the three pillars of the business and all of the things that came together on the bike. What were your ambitions for the project, what, where was it going to go? What was initially the purpose of it?
Johny Bailey 04:25
That's the, probably the most pertinent question that we have no ambitions whatsoever to get into the industry and sell bikes. What, as I said, it was a halo project, and I just wanted to sort of see what we could do, or how the Marketplace would react to the things we'd done, because we obviously did it without a rule book, which was, you know, to our advantage, of course. I mean, you know, no rule book makes things, all kinds of things, possible, right? The electronic side was a fairly simple one for us to to approach, because, you know, that's our that was our bread and butter business. So applying the same sort of philosophy to, um. Bicycles we did for f1 cars was a very straightforward exercise. What
wade wallace 05:03
were the electronic systems that you put into the bike and what did it allow it to do? Well, the
Johny Bailey 05:09
key one was the power measurement, which was a derivative of our force measurement systems that we put on f1 cars. So there were power systems available then obviously, I think it was sort of right at the very beginning of that kind of item, being on a on a cycle that anyone could buy. Our system was somewhat more advanced in terms of how it measured and what it measured, and the speed at which it measured, which was like the key, the key difference to what systems were available at that time, and that enabled us to demonstrate what one rotation of a crank actually does look like if you measure it fast enough and dynamically enough. So in other words, not just one axis, but three axes so you can measure wasted power, negative torque, um, angular rotation or angular velocity, sorry, and all these kind of things that you don't even think of or deem necessary to know, interestingly, that was probably the electronic side. Was the one thing that we did have an ambition to pursue outside of the industry or within the industry. So which led us to work with the GB team before the London Olympics with that same power system, which, funnily enough, when we, when we went there and ran the system with them, they saw stuff that they didn't really at that time, understand or had ever seen before, because obviously it wasn't being measured. So it was quite quickly realized that that data is important and can help you know, it's all about the minute changes that you see that you can utilize to make minute improvements. And that certainly became a thing with those guys, and very successful. Did they use it? They did. They didn't use it in the races, but they used it for the for their training. It was because quite heavy system to race with, right? But they certainly used it a lot for training. We supported them on a number of occasions in London prior to the Olympics. What other data were you collecting? Well, I mean, the list is, I've actually taken a liberty of printing some of it off because I couldn't remember half of it myself. But essentially the power data, which isn't just the left and right crank, it's left and right crank, power, wasted power, tension, so tension in the crank both sideways and longitudinally and then obviously forward power. And then from those we would derive a number of mathematical channels to create other bots. Essentially, we're able to plot an entire ride and then sampling it 1000 times a second, and that creates an incredibly accurate picture of your pedal stroke and your pedal efficiency. So that's one area, and from that, we created about there's 10 different channels related to that. We then got to geological data. So ECG, not heart rate, but full ECG measurements, breathing rate, core temperature, skin temperature. And then the bike itself. You've got lean angles, both of the rider and of the bike, so you can do some interesting things with cornering speeds, all that kinds of stuff. And then there's the 2009
wade wallace 07:59
from reading the history. Yes, it
Johny Bailey 08:01
is, yeah, 2008 2009 but as I say, it was all standard stuff for us. And then on the other side, you also got the logging of all that data, and the interpretation of that data, which kind of really precluded it from being something that we could make commercially available to anyone, a because of cost and B, because of without selling too insulting, the ability to operate a data logging system and a data analysis system to comprehend what you've actually collected. This is why, when we work with the London the GB guys, we were supporting that as the data guys. Do
wade wallace 08:33
you remember how much your first prototype or bike that you took out cost? Was there any thing that sounds like it would be ridiculous.
Johny Bailey 08:44
One of the reasons we didn't continue is, is that very fact, I think, I think if I, well, yeah, hundreds of 1000s just didn't really, and if we, if we don't count people's time, cost, manufacturing, cost, all kinds of things, you know, we did. We did crazy things we did, like carbon ceramic rotors initially, which cost us a fortune, because we have to have them made specifically for our bike. You know, there's quite a painful process to manufacture one of those things, particularly the ones we had. But in the in a dry condition, those brakes were, they were literally too good. We just kept breaking forks and because the torque generated was just colossal, amazing, but, yeah, so things like that added to the cost. But, and you're in hindsight, you'd probably say to yourself, Well, why on earth did I do it? But you get to a point where you suddenly start enjoying it quite a bit, and you forget that it's actually a business, which is the danger in anything that you enjoy, isn't it, right? But I mean, the culmination of all of it was once we'd actually built the bike, the level of interest we generated within the cycling industry brought brought us an awful lot of viewers, if you like, because back then, obviously the internet and everything else wasn't quite what it is today, but it still worked. It was very powerful for us. And then obviously led on to the Aston Martin blight so which, again, we didn't make it really. Am, and it was a nice project and brought to see more notoriety, really. So I've got a
wade wallace 10:04
picture of the factor one sitting in front of me that I'm looking at. You know, you have these, what, eight spoke wheels. You've got this front, front fork that doesn't really have a head tube that goes through the frame. It's
Johny Bailey 10:17
kind of this an external, like a motorbike, basically. Yeah, right, okay, that's
wade wallace 10:21
the inspiration, pretty
Johny Bailey 10:22
much just the positivity that gives you in steering and handling. Yeah, it's very much, I mean, similar to the factor one, basically, you know, you've got external forks, yeah, yeah. And it looks very did you guys
wade wallace 10:35
make the wheels as well?
Johny Bailey 10:36
We did make the wheels. Yeah, everything on that bike? Yeah. The group set components apart from the levers, which we did, um, is, yeah, levers. They look yeah, everything, generally, yeah, we didn't outsource anything. So yeah, the wheel is one piece wheel, by the way.
wade wallace 10:51
Do you remember how much it weighed the wheel? I don't think, no, I
Johny Bailey 10:54
think the whole bike weighed about nine kilos. Nine kilos. That's not much. That's fully instrumented with the power cranks and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
wade wallace 11:01
Amazing. Amazing, yeah. The Aston Martin. How did that one come about?
Johny Bailey 11:05
So this is so our other place of operation was automotive, in the niche sort of bracket, you know, Ferrari, Lamborghini, all those guys and Aston Martin were one of our customers for tire pressure monitoring systems. And they were launching the 177 car at the time, which is like, if you remember, that was their, their very first sort of swarmy into like super, super car territory. So we were doing the tire pressure system. So now the steering wheel for that car, and they seen the double oh one, and via a marketing agency, they decided to be a good idea to maybe launched the car and have the bike as an option to bike alongside it. So we basically kept the bike as it was, but we did some updates electronics, and changed the head unit to sort of resemble the front end of an aspen Martin, as you do, to change the esthetic very slightly. And then we did seven different colors that were designated by a number. So you had the 177 double Oh, one, double o2, double o3, etc, etc, up to double oh seven.
wade wallace 12:08
How many of those sold with cars? Do you remember?
Johny Bailey 12:10
I I'm not sure. I think was about 15, and we only had one client come and look at it.
wade wallace 12:15
And they would have been all hand built at your Yeah, yeah. They
Johny Bailey 12:19
all just, just bought off spec, yeah, I guess to hang on the wall. I don't know. I know there's a there was a guy in London bought the bronze one, and he was riding it around London quite a bit. So I don't know where that one is, right, yeah. But again, it we didn't make any money. It was more of a kudos thing. And, uh, sort of, you know, cemented our relationship with us and Martin a bit.
wade wallace 12:36
Was this starting to serve the purpose of getting some attention behind your capabilities and using the bike for that? Yeah, that's
Johny Bailey 12:46
a good question. I think I don't I think it got to a point, and then I think it stopped. And we stopped and took a breath for some several months, and then we were approached by a guy called Steve Dominique, who was with Niner at the time, and he was being very complimentary, and he said, You should do a production bike, and blah, blah, blah. And I sort of fell for that. That's when we decided to resurrect it. But this time, go for something that was going to be commercially available and see if we couldn't make some of our money back.
wade wallace 13:19
This is where a gentleman by the name of ROB, to tell us comes into the picture. Rob is an American living in Taiwan who owns and runs a carbon manufacturing plant, and at this time, he was making bikes for other mainstream brands.
rob gitelis 13:31
I think when I first saw it, I didn't really think that much of it, you know, when I first saw it in that French magazine, but obviously, in 2013 when they were looking to actually make something to commercialize, I got to see it up really close, and I was like, Wow, you guys really made your life difficult here with this twin vein down tube, as they called it. And actually, at that time it had a I'd had a twin vein seat tube as well. Then when I started to, you know, understand it, in 2013 I realized this was going to be a very difficult to make bike, to commercialize it.
Johny Bailey 14:04
It was one of the it was a time that we were sort of like debating just whether to drop the whole thing and crack on with our normal core business. At that point, only just from nowhere, came out of the blue with this, with a phone call. So we met him. He discussed what he could do for us in terms of getting the manufacturing process sorted, lining up the supplier, all the key sort of logistical parts of it, and also some of the design, particularly on the industrial design side of things. So he gave us a cost that he thought it would come to I thought that that was worth taking the risk, so we did, and that's how I met Rob. What was in it for him? Well, I guess the longer term view was that it would be a success, and he'd be working for me full time. That was the, the original sort of, sort of, you know thing that was on the table. He was the first, he's probably the first guy we went through, but I'm so I suspect he would have been the only guy that would have entertained the project, given that we were only looking to make it under bites. But as you know, Rob, Rob was, at the time, getting, I think, frustrated. Listening to his ideas or his input on Tony, the desired side of the bikes he was making for the big brands. So it was like an opportune time to hear about us, and then he saw what we'd come up with, with the visor as which we can come on to in a minute. And that's how our relationship started, basically. So yeah, Steve army persuaded me to go into the cycling industry properly. And we did. We had a lot of help from some outside parties on this one, because obviously this was going to be more involved in terms of how we connect with people in the industry, from a manufacturing point of view, and all these things, and where we have it manufactured, more importantly, to make it a bike that can be afforded by the higher end of the market, but at least not 25,000 pounds. It was for the double, oh, one, etc. So
wade wallace 15:45
and was your thinking quite on a practical level, knowing you had to make some compromises in order to make this commercially viable and a sellable product, or was this something you didn't necessarily want to compromise? I
Johny Bailey 15:58
think a bit of both. There was a complete understanding, because we come from a carbon manufacturing business ourselves, we understood the processes that we use, which are all autoclave aerospace standards, so super expensive and labor intensive and take a long time, which is clearly not going to work for, shall we say, more mass produced bike. So we took that on board. And at the time, I didn't, I didn't really have any understanding of what the manufacturing processes were in China and Taiwan and what could be done and how quick and how complex. But I gave, I gave Steve a very specific design brief, which was to, you know, to retain all the, you know, the twin down tubes, the steering and everything else, because that was clearly like a standout feature for us. And above all else, full integration. And you want to see a hose or a pipe anywhere, because I feel, you know, that's the one thing that really spoils the look of a bike. It bike, to me, a bike needs to be, needs to look like it's not finished, but it's finished was kind of, was really important to me, okay? And then that's when we got Rob involved quite heavily, and to his great credit, he was able to produce the bike very quickly, because it's a very complex frame to manufacture because of the twin down tube stuff and the molding everything else is done. He'd be better off to explain that to you than I would but, and he was, he was super cooperative, super willing to make just 100 bikes, which you know is it's nothing, is it?
wade wallace 17:21
Did you guys do a mold for 100 bikes? Or were they all hand? No,
Johny Bailey 17:25
they were, they were all they adopted the the more mass produce, so, you know, the hand laid up, but into sort of a different, different sort of tooling to be cured, etc. Yeah. I mean, if we done it the way we made the one, and we'd have, we wouldn't have made 100 in two years, three years, you know, and they'd be three times the price. So yeah, and I guess from all of from all my experiences of factor, the one thing that has amazed me is the manufacturing ability out there, and what they can make, and how quickly and they can make, and how good it is. That really took me by surprise. That's probably the biggest thing I took from all of that, that project at that time.
wade wallace 17:59
So what led you to discussing with Rob selling the factor bike brand company,
Johny Bailey 18:07
so the bit breast was quite successful in its own right. In terms of it got very strong reuse and great recognition by you've got the I asked Gold Award at the Euro bike show at its first bear appearance, and then we got the same award at the Taipei cycle show six months later. So it hit the mark straight away, and all the reviews were four and a half five stars. And everyone was getting sort of excited about, oh, this all this technology is going to come out with this bike and everything else, but I very quickly realized that my knowledge of the marketplace and the depth of my pockets probably wasn't as good as it needed to be to take it to where it needed to go. And obviously my my motor sport business was doing very nicely and was very successful and a great team. And I think we want to jeopardize that in any way anymore, but at that point, I felt that I we'd got out of it. What we needed to get out of it. It'd been fun. And, you know, by some freak of nature, whatever Rob was looking for a brand. So the stars aligned very quickly from nowhere. One day, Bade and cook turned up at our doorstep, took one out for a test ride, just to tick the box, as it were. And then within days, I got a call from Cal Yeah. So he called me, and he just sold his his business, and sort of explained he was trying to set up this, this deal with Robin, with Leighton, and they'd like to take on the factor brand. And yeah, that's pretty much the way it was. I when we say I sold it, it wasn't big money. It was more about me thinking, well, if anyone can take the brand further, make it successful, and that, that's kind of good enough for me, as it were, so we retained a very, very small shareholding in the in the new company, and obviously, the rest is history. It's gone on leaps and bounds since then.
wade wallace 19:50
So how did it feel handing over the keys, so to speak, over to Rob and kind of being done with it? Was it with a heavy heart? Was it with x? Excitement that you're going to see this grow bigger. It
Johny Bailey 20:02
was a semi heavy heart, I would say, I just didn't have the well, because I didn't have the balls to do what needed to be done from a financial point of view. And that's purely that's the only reason we didn't continue. Was the cost. If I'd have done anything and not sold to Rob, I wouldn't have sold it to anyone. I would have just buried it. It's just the fact that I'd known Rob and what he could do. And I thought if anyone's going to make it work, it would be him, because he's very much open to ideas and new things and buying new things and just just just being different to everyone else, which is what I like. So I felt I had a good chance of, you know, doing something. So I sort of took, took value in that, if you like, and I think it was the right decision based on what's happening at the moment.
20:42
So I This podcast
wade wallace 20:48
is fully funded by our members at escape collective. In fact, all of our content on our website and our podcast network is 100% supported by our members who believe that cycling media should be independent from the sport and industry we cover, and that we should exist to serve you rather than live or die by our ability to be a platform for the sole purpose of selling you more stuff. If you enjoy this podcast or any of our other work and believe in our mission of independence, please go to escape collective.com/join and become a member today. Thank you for your support. Now we come to the part of the story where Rob, to tell us, takes over. Rob is the now owner and CEO of factor bikes.
rob gitelis 21:33
Well, in 2013 I was I had a very successful manufacturing business located in Dongguan, China. I was producing almost all of cervelos carbon fiber frames. I was definitely producing all of Santa Cruz's carbon fiber frames. I was working with focus. I was working with envy. I was working with zip. I probably had about 15 different customers that I was producing products for at a factory there in Dongguan. And that's how I got to meet the Bf, one guys who wanted to then come commercialize this. It was called the visvarez. And so taking this bike that they originally launched, you know, in 20, 2009, and then try to commercialize it. And so that's how I got to know them. What brought me to Taiwan? Actually came to Taiwan working for the very first carbon fiber factory, which was a golf club maker, and I helped them sort of start the bicycle division. And I worked there for a few years before then moving on to profile design, and then later starting my own company. And so I am kind of the considered one of the godfathers of carbon fiber production here in Asia, because working at the very first factory, almost everybody, in some ways, is connected to that factory or another factory that I worked with later. And
wade wallace 22:57
were you one of the few Westerners working in Taiwan, in that industry at the time, and is that kind of why a lot of people had to go through you, or was there a different scenario
rob gitelis 23:07
happening? I think that there was very few foreigners here when I first got here. Obviously, there's now probably hundreds. I was probably one of a handful that was sort of working in the industry living here. I wouldn't say that people had to go through me. I think that, you know, we created a factory that was pretty much, you know, the most state of the art. And so it was the one that all of those premium brands wanted to work with. And so we had kind of our pick and choose of who we wanted to work with. And so obviously I chose, sort of, you know, the creme, the creme of, you know, companies that were also sort of similar mindset. They were much more engineering driven than they were simple marketing companies to work with.
wade wallace 23:48
So how did John Bailey, who was responsible designing factor within BF one, what led him to you
rob gitelis 23:56
there was an intermediary. I got the guy who actually started Niner bicycles. His name is Steve domahidi, and Steve was contracted. He was no longer working for Niner he was contracted with developing a bike for BF one to be commercialized. And so Steve domahidi knew of me, and so he reached out and came to China, visited me, and then I looked at his project, and I knew commercially, it didn't make a lot of sense, but I always liked big engineering challenges, and so I took this on more from the challenging part than, you know, thinking we were going to sell, you know, even 1000 of them. I I didn't think it really had the opportunity to be a very big project, but I knew it was going to be very challenging. So it's always good to also push ourselves to try to do something outside the box, even back then,
wade wallace 24:47
working with the complicated carbon layup challenges with the split vein seat tube and down tube. Rob produced factors, first production bike, the visvarez,
rob gitelis 24:58
we produced about 100 of the. Them. We delivered about 100 of them. They started to sell them, and then they kind of discovered, as a company, that this wasn't a business that they really wanted to get into. I think there was a little bit of a disagreement amongst some of the shareholders, and so they kind of just put the whole thing, you know, on hold. I think they had sold maybe 30 of them. They had about 70 bikes in stock, and then they just kind of stopped the whole thing. I was already like, I had done my job. I delivered them. And then I kind of, you know, got back to doing what I do. I was making bikes for other people who didn't really pay attention too much to what was going on there, until, you know, decided to think about, you know, having our own brand. But I'll leave that to you to ask the next question. Well,
wade wallace 25:45
no, no, that. That's a good segue into what was happening with business at that time, because my understanding, pon was starting to buy some of the brands that you were manufacturing, and what was, what was the situation at time for you personally, with the business,
rob gitelis 26:00
I think it wasn't that at that time. It wasn't really quite starting yet. I think pond was definitely, you know, in that time frame is probably one or two years later that that we started to see a lot of consolidation. So I was working for for zip, and Schram bought it. And of course, SRAM, they wanted to learn as much as they could about the way we did things, and then they were going to do it in house. And so we saw that that happened. And then envy was also sort of change of ownership. Some things happened there. And then, obviously, then pond comes along. They bought first focus, then they bought Cervelo, then they bought Santa Cruz. And whenever these brands buy these companies from the entrepreneur owners, the way of working becomes a lot different. I was always known as pretty much the most expensive in the carbon fiber industry because I made the best products and I did the most complicated products. People would never come to me if they wanted something simple and cheap. They'd come to me when they wanted something special and difficult. And so Han comes along, and I remember really clearly I got contacted by the purchasing department, and they told me we're going to send you an RFQ for this next project. And I'm like, Well, what's an RFQ? And they're like, Oh, that's a request for quote. And I'm like, Okay. And I'm like, and how do you then determine, you know, who gets the business? And they're like, whoever has the lowest quote gets the business? And I'm like, Well, then don't bother to send it to me, because there's, it's not the way I work. Yeah, the way I worked, when I worked with, you know, Phil and Gerard at Cervelo, or Joe grainy and Rob at Santa Cruz, was always, here's the project, execute on it, give us a price at the end. And I did that for years and years, and everybody was happy because they always got what they needed. They always had good delivery, good product. And there was never this big discussion about, oh, it's $10 too much, or anything like that. It was always focus on the product. And that's what I did. And so I wasn't very interested in the RFQ process of working.
wade wallace 28:02
Yeah, so what was the impetus for you to start thinking about, maybe I should create my own brand or buy my own brand? When did that start, and what was happening to spur that thinking on?
rob gitelis 28:13
Quite, quite honestly, I never really had exactly that thinking so much in the sense that, you know, I was approached by Baden cook and Cal McCulloch.
wade wallace 28:26
The name Baden Cook, you'll probably recognize an ex professional cyclist who won the 2003 Tour de France green jersey. He's based here in Melbourne, Australia, where I am. And the other name Rob just mentioned is Cal McCulloch, who was actually a friend of mine and owned the first cycling team that I ever raced with, where I moved to Australia, called oh two racing. And later in the story, one of the first factor bikes would be named after this team, the oh two,
rob gitelis 28:53
they wanted to start a brand, and they wanted me to be their partner in it, but they I was going to be sort of the silent partner, taking care of manufacturing. And, you know, they were going to have this bicycle brand, and you know, I was going to own 1/3 of it, but I was going to keep doing what I was doing for the other brands. It was only after I kind of ended up owning the brand, you know, almost by myself, and all of these consolidations happening at the same time that I decided, wow, I should really be focusing on my own brand, which was factor and black ink, rather than than trying to continue to chase after this contract manufacturing business. Why
wade wallace 29:32
did you decide to buy factor, which was an existing brand with not much behind it at that point, rather than just starting a completely new brand.
rob gitelis 29:41
Well, again, going back to Baden cook and Kel McCulloch, I think that we had a number of sort of like brain, or what would I call it, a brainstorming session about, should we start a new brand? You know, come up with our own name, or should we buy something that already existed? And we tossed around things a lot? Like Scott peen and thomasini and rosin. And we actually went like, who owns these brands now? Where do they exist? Because, you know, the three of us are all kind of in that same age group that we remember all these old heritage Italian brands. And we're like, hey, they're all gone. Now, maybe we can get one of these names. And we actually did some work. And then I thought about factor. I'm like, Well, wait, what about factor? Because it's a little more relevant. And, you know, I was making this bike not that long ago, and then I think that it was, you know, I think I introduced Kel to to John Bailey, and they just started talking. And it just sort of made sense that we could, we could kind of take over work that was recently done, instead of trying to completely revive something that had completely evaporated or come up with a new name. And so that's how we decided to buy factor, as the three
wade wallace 30:52
of us, I suppose factor had quite a bit of brand recognition just through the super bike status that it already held was that part of the decision definitely,
rob gitelis 31:02
it had won a lot of the awards at Eurobike. It was like a gold medal bike, a Euro bike for innovative product and new product and lots of things like that. And so it made sense that it already had brand recognition, even though, you know, it kind of stalled for maybe a year and a half or something like that. And they had also already done all of the trademark work, all of the patent work, and all of those things. So, you know, that saves you a lot of lot of energy, of you know, you don't have to worry about trademarks. They had already gone through all of that, those things. So it all sort of made sense, that factor was a good way to go.
wade wallace 31:37
And what were the first steps of buying the business, what were you actually buying from them? And then where did you have to take that?
rob gitelis 31:46
What we got was we got that inventory of 70 bikes, and we bought that inventory of 70 bikes, and we had then all of the IP and that was essentially what we had. And of those 70 bikes, those bikes were UCI illegal, so they couldn't be erased. So really what we got was the group sets off of those bikes, and most of the frame sets ended up in the bin because there was no way to really kind of recycle them, and we knew we needed a bike that was UCI illegal. So from the point of buying the company to actually having a sellable product was almost about a year and a half.
wade wallace 32:23
That's not very long. I don't need to tell you that it
rob gitelis 32:28
wasn't very long because, you know, obviously I had experience making bikes, and so that was sort of the easier bit. Yeah, what
wade wallace 32:34
did you have to change from the the models you inherited and the mold you created? What did you have to change to make that UCI legal and to actually get a commercially viable product.
rob gitelis 32:44
It was mostly all around. The fork was outside of the UCI boxes, so we had to change the front fork also then use that opportunity to update the hand of our STEM, going to a one piece bar stem. They were had this very clunky stem that they had built, and then they were using an ND handlebar. And so we went away from that to a one piece handlebar and stem and a new fork. And then we were actually able to continue to use the frame molds after updating them a little bit
wade wallace 33:14
the handlebars post. Were they black ink at the time? Did you was that the necessity to create black no
rob gitelis 33:21
the wheel, the wheels were black ink at that time, but the bar stems and the seat posts were all labeled as factor.
wade wallace 33:36
So the you have a bike that's now sellable, what did you do for distribution? What did you do for promotion? How did that all go at the beginning and what decisions were made?
rob gitelis 33:48
We went to Tour Down Under, and we sort of launched the brand we had.
wade wallace 33:55
This is 2015 or 16.
rob gitelis 33:57
I think it was 2015 I'd have to go back and look. But we just celebrated this last Tour Down Under, which was now six months ago, was our eighth anniversary. So maybe you're better at math than me, yeah. So 2015, right, yeah. And so we created another model called the oh two, and we went, and then what? What was the visor as now became the one right, spelled, O, N, E, yeah. And we went to Tour Down Under. And we basically like, okay, here we are. We're open for business. We're factor. We have this booth, we have black ink wheels, we have these two models of bikes. We're ready to go. And we thought, okay, that's what it takes. And we found out very quickly that people weren't particularly all that interested. They're like, Oh, that's cool, but it's just another new bike brand. And I guess new bike brands come around, like every other month. Even though we had, you know, not just gone to China and bought some open models and slapped the decal on it, we had actually gone to the price. Process of doing everything right. And so at the same time, we started to sponsor one Pro Cycling which was a pro Conti team. We got that introduction through bait and cook, getting to meet the owner of that team, because he represented some of the riders that were actually on that team. And so we got a little bit of brand recognition, because now we're sponsoring, you know, one pro cycling, and this was kind of a shiny new team that a lot of people were interested in, and so that got us some brand recognition, but we still weren't really selling any bikes, because we didn't have a proper working website, and we didn't have really any kind of sales channel, these things that they kind of fail to tell you you need in order to sell bikes. So, you know? And we thought, yeah, we posted pictures on Instagram, you know, and things like that. But it really, you know, it wasn't quite, you know, accelerating at any real speed, because we just didn't have a way for people to actually buy the bikes, because we had so few, what I would call distributors, you know, that were willing to take a risk and take on this two new brands. I think our first distributor was actually Singapore, and probably our next one might have been Hong Kong. And they were more because they knew me from sort of the OEM side of the business, and that or my reputation, and so they were more willing to sort of take this risk. I think Thailand was also very early as well. I think the Asian countries were more early adopters than certainly the US or Europe, because a lot of them knew of my company was the one that was responsible for the development of lots of other bikes, so they trusted it a little more, but it was still super small. But then through a real, you know, I don't know what to call it, turn of turn of luck, Roman bar day somehow got interested in factor. And Roman bar day got his management to sort of reach out to us, saying, I'd really like to try one. And then he pushed the team. AG, two are like, Hey, why don't we, why don't we see if we can work with these guys? And we were very lucky that Pon, who was sponsoring the team with focus, was interested in leaving early, because they still had two years left on their contract. And so Pon wanted to leave early, and we had a bike that Roman wanted to use, and since Pon wanted to leave early, they were willing to subsidize part of our first year with ag 2r so they paid half of our first year with ag 2r for us to then go supply bikes to AG 2r that
wade wallace 37:40
still couldn't have been a cheap exercise, because you would have had to provide dozens of bikes. We
rob gitelis 37:47
had to provide 250 bikes, and we we still had to come up with about one and a half million euro of payment. Um, so yeah, it was still quite expensive, and it was still quite the the undertaking. By this time, Kel had already exited the business, so now it was just paid and cooking myself. And yeah, it was very stressful, both, you know, on a personal level of having to pay that money as well as, you know, on a professional level of not wanting to to screw things up, really. But, you know, we took that risk, and I would say that's what started to sort of catapult the business forward. But still, we still weren't there. So now all of a sudden, we're with ag to our we got third place at the Tour de France, but we still don't quite have that sales channel, and so it still took a good couple more years to really get that sales channel built out to where it actually made sense to be spending that kind of money, you know, to be present at the Tour de France.
wade wallace 38:52
How were you funding this? Because that's only about a year from launching to sponsoring a world tour team as many concessions as were given, but there's, there's a lot, and you didn't have a time trial bike either, which you would have had to develop. I might be bringing back nightmare memories, but how were you doing this at the time financially?
rob gitelis 39:12
Well, you know, as I, as I said, you know, I had a pretty successful manufacturing business, and, you know, I had done pretty well over, you know, those 15 or 16 years of doing that job. And so I think it was, you know, it was basically, you know, kind of risking, you know, all the, all the money that we had earned, you know, up until now, on that manufacturing business, or with that manufacturing business, to take this plunge, you know, into the world tour of providing these bikes and and paying this the sponsorship money, it was, it was very significant, and it was very stressful. We we, in fact, were in going into the very last year of our contract, we were not able to keep up with the payments to the team, which is why we didn't continue. You know. And we had to take that one year out of the World Tour. But for everyone's benefit of knowing we were able to square up with AG, 2r and, you know, because I'm always a man of my word, and it always bothered me that we fell behind in our payments, but we did, you know, pay what we were supposed to pay them, you know, over the lifetime of the contract.
wade wallace 40:19
Yeah, right. Were you in parallel still manufacturing bikes for other brands to keep things running? At the time
rob gitelis 40:26
I was so, I was still, you know, working with, you know, all of those companies that I mentioned earlier. But what was happening is, you know, normally, when you start a project, you know, it can run from, you know, two to three to four years. And so what was happening was I wasn't getting any new business, but I was kind of winding the business down, and so I was able to still, you know, I definitely still had OEM business, but it was shrinking pretty rapidly as this was all happening. Tell
wade wallace 40:54
me what the effect was to the business of not only sponsoring the World Tour team, but also seeing Roman bar day get a stage win third overall with the Tour de France. Was that something that took, I think you used the word catapulted the business? Is it true that that was the effect, or was there more to it? Not,
rob gitelis 41:11
not financially, it wasn't so, I mean that we It really wasn't the impetus. I would say it wasn't like the next day we had 1000s of orders or anything, but I think it showed that, okay, here's a brand that's willing to take a very big risk, because essentially, they're selling by they're at the Tour de France before they're really even selling bikes. And so it started to open up, you know, I would say, inquiries. So all of a sudden, you know, our Spanish distributor, our French distributor, guys that are still with us today are all a little more open to taking on the brand, and so it kind of started the ball rolling. So maybe we had done, maybe we were probably $2 million a year when Roman won that stage. We were probably, you know, 6 million the next year, and then 9 million, but then we kind of started to plateau at 9 million, just because we didn't have the cash to continue to push the business forward. Yeah. So it took, you know, we hit this plateau at nine, but then we started to sort of grow again, after sort of stabilizing at nine, because we continue to develop new products. And I would almost say that, Oh, 2v am was the product that really sort of catapulted the business forward. Was we came out with a bike that was really at its time, you know, it was 675 grams, or something like that. And it was, you know, all internal, and it was disc brake, and it was like, I would say that was sort of really more the turning point was we really put our engineering foot forward, and that really kind of gave our distributors an impetus to really get behind the brand, because they knew how. You know, this was kind of a game changing bite.
wade wallace 43:00
Maybe, let's just back up for a second and talk about maybe something more foundational to that engineering in 2019 you hired an ex Cervelo head of engineering named Graham Shrove How did you come into contact with him, and how did he ended up working with factor? Well, I had probably
rob gitelis 43:17
been working with Graham for 10 years. He was always the engineering manager at cervella in the time that I was producing frames for Cervelo. We always had a really good working relationship together. And so he sort of became available because Cervelo decided to leave Toronto. He has a very young family. He wasn't interested in following Cervelo down to the US. He obviously had been watching what we were doing, and we were kind of still keeping in touch. And also, when he saw the oh two vam, he understood sort of what our capabilities were. And then he decided, yeah, this is a pretty good, maybe logical next step. Let me go work with Rob, you know, add factor and help, you know, sort of bring this brand forward. And so the first bike that he did was the LS, probably a little less important, but obviously, then it was followed up by the Austro. And the Austro really was, you know, took that what we had done with the o2 BM, and then really started to push things forward. But obviously, we were back in the world tour with Israel premier tech. And so we had, we had a place to show the bikes again. And so having the Austra that was kind of like we were, you know, a new category, you know, this new all around bike, and we were definitely the first, or one of the first, early end of that category. What
wade wallace 44:38
consequences of not being in the world tour for those two years. Did you see? Was it noticeable at that stage of the
rob gitelis 44:45
business, we were out only for one year? That's the only year that company didn't grow since we founded it. Yeah,
wade wallace 44:52
is that right? So you would put a lot of emphasis on being in the world tour as a bike brand. Is that what you're saying?
rob gitelis 44:58
I think it depends. Is what kind of bike company you are, you know, but I think for a brand like factor, which is very engineering and race oriented, I think you have to be on the biggest stage
wade wallace 45:11
when hyacinth signed Chris Froome. That seems to be the beginning of a relationship. But also, from what I understand, quite a another bump in sales of factor bikes. Tell me about when he came on and what effect a signing like that had on your business being a sponsor of the team.
rob gitelis 45:32
Chris, obviously, he joined the team. We sent him a bike to try and he was kind of blown away by the bike, and he, right away, reached out to us, saying, Hey, I'm blown away by this bike. As this is kind of like the last chapter in my cycling career. You know, I'm going to be with Israel. It was isn at that time, Israel premier tech. Now, you know, I'm also looking at making some investments in the industry. He had already invested in hammerhead. He's like, Would you be interested, you know, in an investment? And we're like, yes, absolutely. It really made sense. Somebody like Chris from who, you know, he wasn't asking for sweat equity, he was putting in real money. And he really, you know, brought a lot of great feedback about our products, where we were at, where we needed to go, and a level of professionalism. And so, you know, we were very happy for him to to join our company. Obviously, you know, that was all, you know, made public. And so it definitely, you know, I think, gave us a little, you know, yet again, a little more cache behind the company, when you have, you know, such a historical writer like Chris joining your team.
wade wallace 46:45
Was it when, when Chris joined the isn team and you were a sponsor of it? Was that when he started to invest? Or was it a little bit
rob gitelis 46:55
later, it was about six months after joining the team that he invested? In fact,
wade wallace 47:00
the other person who invested, maybe not as well known to the cycling world, but in the tech world, Scott Farquhar, who's the co founder of Atlassian, one of Australia's biggest success stories. He also became an investor in around 2003 I think, around the same time his room, or at least the announcement at the same time. How did you get hooked up with, with Scott. I
rob gitelis 47:22
think there was, there was a few sort of, sort of serendipitous moments, I would call it, I think, as I was mentioning, you know, Kel as a shareholder, had, he had stepped away. Now, Kel had kind of come back into the picture, and was doing Australian sales of factor. He had set up a showroom in Melbourne, and he was selling bikes almost globally out of Melbourne. And so he was able to connect with Scott, who was just, you know, inquiring about some bikes. And so he and Kel started chatting more on Scott buying a bike than anything else. But I think that Scott then became kind of, you know, aware of factor, interested in factor, and then we started to work with a investment bank in Australia, and one of the persons that they reached out to was Scott Farquhar, and he's like, Yeah, I know this, and I'm very much interested in investing. And so it did all come together. It was about the same time. It's about 2020 I believe, yeah, 2020 21 that he invested just just before covid, or as we're going into covid, yeah, I always think of things as, you know, before covid And after covid, yeah,
wade wallace 48:35
there's a three year blob in between. Yes, yeah. And how does that change factor in what its capabilities are? You said you plateaued and you needed cash to get going again. What did that cash allow you to do?
rob gitelis 48:50
Quite honestly, we took on the investment from Chris and the investment from Scott more about thinking about the future than actually needing it at the time. And in fact, both of their monies sat in the bank for a good year and a half two years. It was only used later once we needed to start to move into complete bikes, and our range started to get bigger, that we needed to start to have more inventory, and start of, you know, getting into mountain bike categories and things like that. And so what it enabled us to do was to start to scale by having that additional capital available. But if I look at where the business was, we were, we were already at a break even point, actually making a little bit of money when they both invested, because we had lost money up until then. So we were loss making for almost four years before sort of hitting that inflection point. And it was at that inflection point time when they both invested
wade wallace 49:49
and you were the only person you really have to pay back with the initial investment.
rob gitelis 49:54
Is that correct? I'm still waiting for the payback. But yes, yes.
wade wallace 49:57
And how did it change the, you know, the governance. Of the company with, you know, taking on a chunk of investment, with, with board and oversight in that did it change how you operated in that way? Absolutely.
rob gitelis 50:09
I mean, I would say we had no corporate governance up until, up until then, it was pretty much me doing whatever I I felt like what was best for the brand and what was best for the company. You know, we didn't have a board of directors. We didn't, you know, have quarterly meetings. We didn't have audited financials in the sense of, you know, through a, you know, a big four or something like that. So all of those things changed. We had to get on a very expensive ERP system. We had to start to work with Ernst and Young we and so it definitely made things a little more complicated. You know, hiring now needs Board of Director approval at certain levels, things like that. But I think these were all a real positive for the company, because had we not done those, you know, it had the company got to the size is now doing things the way I was doing it back then, it would be completely out of control now, but now we're in a really good place, because we put all of those checks and balances in place.
wade wallace 51:08
Yes, hard to be disciplined, to do without the need for it, I suppose. And you've stated publicly and let me know if, if I'm mistaken, but you're around a 10,000 bike a year company right now, is that in around?
rob gitelis 51:22
Yeah, I think we're north of that now. So we're still we've grown, you know, every year since, except for that one year that we were out of the world tour. And we've grown between 20 and 30% per year, basically every year since we founded the company. And obviously that kind of growth, you know, growing 20% when it's 1000 bikes, is pretty easy. Growing 20% when it's 10,000 bikes is a bit more complicated.
wade wallace 51:50
Yeah, you seem to have navigated factor through the covid crisis and gotten through it relatively unscathed. From our previous conversations. What were some intentional decisions that you can tie that back to, and maybe, what are some of the other forces of good luck that they were simply out of your control that you can sort of thank for the position you're in now,
rob gitelis 52:13
I think that a couple of things I don't believe making people redundant because business has any sort of stressful times. I've never let anybody go. And so maybe to backtrack, you know, we run our own factory. We make our own bikes, which is very different to most of the people in the industry. So our bikes are made, you know, in my factory that you know, used to produce bikes for many other people. It's the same group of people, and now they're just making bikes for factor, on a smaller scale, covid started. We obviously, living here in Taiwan, saw it a lot earlier than everyone else. I remember watching it unfold almost on TV in real time, telling people, you know, back in the US or in Europe, I'm like, this is going to be a problem. And they're all like, nah, this is a China thing. And I'm like, No, I think this is going to be a problem. And of course, it quickly, you know, unfolded here. It was a problem because Chinese New Year holidays came, and then all of a sudden, Chinese New Year holidays got extended, because the government's like, we're not really sure what's going on, but we're going to keep people at home. We don't want people traveling until we can kind of figure out. So the holidays got extended by about two to three weeks. Finally, people came back to the factory. And these are people that, many ways I feel responsible for, for them and their families and, you know. And so they came back to the factory, and, you know, they were there to work. We already had paid for the materials. We already have paid the rents everything. I'm like, well, just keep making bikes. We don't have any demand for them right now because demand fell to zero. But keep making bikes. And so we kept making bikes. All of the other brands were running around telling all of their contract manufacturers, cancel the orders, cancel the orders, cancel the orders. So then all of the contract manufacturers, as I used to be told, all of their workers don't come back. You know, there's no orders where you're you know, you don't come back. We're not going to restart the factories. So then all the factories went mothball like straight away during Chinese New Year, we were still making bikes. Then there was this huge whiplash effect. It was about two months later, all of a sudden, demand starts to pick up again, because people are all like wanting to buy bikes. It's the pandemic, and they need to get out and exercise. And all of a sudden there was this demand, and we were able to fill the demand when nobody else really had bikes. And then it got even worse. Now all of these big brands are telling their factories we need bikes. We need bikes. And the factories are like, we have no employees. You cancel the orders. It doesn't work like that. We can't start calling them now and telling them to come back to work because they've gone and gotten jobs somewhere else. And so it took the factories a good nine months to a year. To get back online, because generally you hire once a year at Chinese New Year, and if you haven't hired, then people don't look for jobs. They take one year contracts from Chinese New Year to Chinese New Year. And so they were in a pretty precarious place when we had our factory running and we had bikes for sale. And so we kind of, you know, we were the lucky benefactors of of
wade wallace 55:23
those decisions. Yeah, interesting.
rob gitelis 55:26
I would say the other thing we did is we didn't just, you know, I think a lot of people like Shimano didn't have any product to sell, right? But we didn't just, like, sit on our hands, oh, Shimano doesn't have any product to sell. We scoured every internet site, and we bought everything we could, you know. And so it's like, well, this guy's got shifters, but this guy's got no cables, and this guy's and we're like, just buy everything. We'll figure out how to make this work, right? And so we didn't just like, like, go lambs to slaughter, like, oh, there's no Shimano. We just figured out how to make it work by just getting a lot more creative. And we weren't worried about how much money we would make, you know, obviously, if we're buying stuff, you know, almost at retail from Shimano side. But we were building a loyal customer base by doing this, because we were getting them onto a factor. And
wade wallace 56:11
your market being at this stage of your business, who knows what the future holds, but you do, your market is the high end customer, the performance leaning customer. Is that a situational blessing that you know kept you through covid, or was there complications in that as well? Well,
rob gitelis 56:33
I think during covid, anybody who had a bike to sell could sell one. But I think coming out of covid, it has definitely been the case where we can see that there's a very big oversupply of bicycles out in the market, but I think at the premium side of road or gravel, there's still a pretty strong demand for our products. And so while the industry is is really struggling at sort of that low to mid, I think the high end side of the industry is still doing quite okay, and that's thankfully, the where we occupy the space.
wade wallace 57:07
Yeah, Rob, getting back to the World Tour sponsorships. You're the bike sponsor of Israel premier tech. And since the war broke out, the team owner Sylvan Adams has been quite vocal about his stance on the war, which puts his team in the crossfire of the politics of the atrocities happening in Gaza, has factor as a sponsor faced any blowback from the situation. I
rob gitelis 57:31
would say it's an unfortunate situation, not just for selling bikes, but, you know, just the entire scenario. It's just a really unfortunate situation. I would say that people pretty much have been able to separate the team from what's going on in Israel. I think that it's important to understand Israel does not sponsor the team. Sylvan Adams sponsors the team. He puts the name Israel on it because he's very proud of his heritage. But it's not a team that is sponsored by the nation of Israel. I think that people have been able to understand that, and sort of, they've sort of separated the team from, you know, the conflict that's happening in the region. Yeah,
wade wallace 58:11
last question, what are your long term ambitions for factor, is there anything that you can state that is nebulous enough to sort of show where you want to go.
rob gitelis 58:24
I think we're going to just keep doing what we're doing. I think, I think that, you know, when I first started the brand, I think, you know, we were very much the, you know, the long shot, or whatever you want to call it. Now, I think we're starting to get almost to that incumbent, you know, place where, you know, we just want to continue to grow the brand. We think that, you know, we're kind of just getting started product development wise. I think our range right now has gotten to that place where we're at a really good base now, and now we have a lot that we can build off of. And so I think the products that we have coming over the next, you know, three to five years are all pretty amazing. We've got a really strong roadmap, and I think that, you know, we want to just continue to to grow and dominate the categories that we're in.
wade wallace 59:10
Coming full circle to where factor began. John Bailey eventually came back into the business by becoming the UK distributor for factor bikes. Here's John again. Do you still have your own vision for what factor could become, even though you say you have no input to that? Do you still dream and think of, you know the future of what I mean, the bike was ahead of its time in 2009 and do you still think it could be that in your own head, I
Johny Bailey 59:38
think factors already on that journey and they will undoubtedly get there. I just think the only thing holding them back would be the rule book, and whether you you deviate from that to make yourself more appealing with the machine that you can't use in competition, but the end of the day, you can use, you're fully entitled to use anywhere else that I guess that'll be doing. By cost and then by desirability from a mass audience, they're the only things that hold anything, any development back is the rule book, right, which is the one thing that inspired us to do it in the first place. So unless that changes, I can't see there being other than instrumentation. I can't see there being any other way of doing things radically. I'd love to see that happen. But again, it's, guess it's like any sport that involves a vehicle, motor sport, for example, if you open rule book to anything, then the budgets just go bananas, don't they, and only the rich wins. I guess it's a cost thing. But I'd love to see something, and I I'd love to see some more work done with E bikes. I'd love to see the laws, changed in terms of, you know, ultimate speeds and all that kind of stuff. And see some developing EBO, because it's one of those, one of the few things that gets people on bikes, which, you know, super important, not just for the human but for the environment. And I think there's a big future there. But again, it that dust down to lawmakers to change the rules in terms of what bikes can and can't do, yeah,
wade wallace 1:01:00
why the name factor? Why did you call it factor?
Johny Bailey 1:01:04
Everyone asked me that question, and it's quite a lame, lame story, actually, because we couldn't, we couldn't think of a brand name, and we struggled really hard. And then so we put it out to an agency see if they could come up with anything, you know, and all these names were coming through. No, no, no. They could. This came up with factor, and the C and the T was highlighted within the word, and they said, Well, why don't you sort of say it's a cardio trainer? At the time, I thought that was incredibly lame, but at the same time, there was nothing better. So we said, you know, we'll just go with
wade wallace 1:01:35
that last question. Where is the original factor? 001,
Johny Bailey 1:01:41
it's in a very safe place,
wade wallace 1:01:42
do you have, I do? I
Johny Bailey 1:01:43
have the original one that we exhibited in the Science Museum and Harrods as the oh one serial number. There were about, there were about, I think we, I think we have five prototypes, three of which we broke the testing purposes. One went to somebody who I can't mention, who actually bought it. We didn't want to sell it, but he insisted, so we did sell it to him. And then I've got the other one. Is it rideable? It is, but I wouldn't write it, yeah. So it's safely locked away in a Yeah, in the storage, storage place. And then I've got one of the we've got the racing green Aston Martin as well.
wade wallace 1:02:24
And what do you have for your I know you said you're not a rider, but I'm sure you have another factor that's more up to date.
Johny Bailey 1:02:30
Yeah, if I, if ever I do ride, it's on a one, because the one is, is a derivative of the bike we did before we sold to rob. Yeah. And I still think that's the quickest thing on the planet.
wade wallace 1:02:46
That's John Bailey and Rob to tell us, telling us the origin story of factor bikes. This is Wade Wallace, and until next time, thanks for listening to overnight success from escape collective. This episode was produced by red bricks media. The music was composed by Ashley Denise and a special thanks to our executive producer, Craig, Bruce you.
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00Transcribed by https://otter.ai