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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/
Elorie 00:07
I asked a bicycle brand leader one time this year, I said, Please tell me that somewhere somewhere in the industry, there's a collective consciousness around like the dealer surviving this. And someone said to me, there's not
tyler jordan 00:20
I think for sure, a human emotion coloured every decision we made. And that includes our own ambition level at wanting to grow our own excitement to be growing after years of kind of laying the groundwork for it. A little bit of euphoria from that interest
Josh Poertner 00:33
rates change and you know, the debt in those deals is typically held by the company. And so now the company's looking around going oh, hey, guys, shit, we gotta we gotta cover I don't know, pick a number, you know, quarter million dollars a month in in debt service. Looking
Jake Dudek 00:47
at things all the way going all the way back to 2008 is like this is not a COVID problem. Yeah, it's a big problem, like COVID has really spiked things, but like they've been doing this for for decades, like this is a problem that's been around since the dawn of time for these guys.
wade wallace 01:11
In episode three, we heard about what much of the bike industry experienced during that dramatic slowdown of bike sales. And what resulted. In this episode, episode four, we'll hear about some of the learnings and takeaways from the past three years and put forward some tough questions for the bike industry to ask itself, you'd have cashflow issues with the amount of inventory you're holding. You're not making any money on these sell throughs. What is the shining light in any of this? Is there is there service that you can make up for on that? Is there anything else?
Elorie 01:45
I'm very curious about the bike industry's argument that bicycle dealers will survive on service alone, if you've been a bicycle dealer that like, Okay, let's go direct to consumer or if your margins get cut in half, you'll just do more service. Really? I would really love to know how many strategists said a bicycle manufacturer have ever actually run a bicycle service department. Why? Why what like, what is the data that would make anyone think that we're just going to fill a gap on service? It's like something that people love to say. Like there has to be demand for service. Yeah, right. Yeah. Where's all the extra demand for service gonna come from? Especially
wade wallace 02:19
coming in your winter? Yeah.
Elorie 02:21
I mean, like, oh, just fill the gap of service? Oh, okay. No problem. Like, I think it's very interesting when people say that, like, oh, what's the shining light? You're making it? Well, where? where's the where's the service demand gonna come from? In general? Wait, I would say that, again. I'm a bit like honest heretic that says these things. I have not seen as an independent bicycle dealer. When I'm talking to a representative of a manufacturer that I work with. It's not often I'm presented with like really compelling, compelling macroeconomic data, or even really sophisticated target market analysis, like, This is who our buyer is, this is what we think we're going to do next year, largely because they don't have that first person data. What
wade wallace 02:59
have you been doing at sports garage to be able to manage the situation, we
Elorie 03:04
decided that we would do whatever it takes to sell our ageing inventory. And we decided that we would cut back on what we were ordering. I mean, now it's kind of tough, because we're in the opposite situation. Remember the conversation we had about like, order everything because if we happen to get Model A unloaded in the port, then we can give you model a right will take us back to that time and 21, where the demand was so constrained, like you try and sell bikes based on what manufacturers could deliver you. Yeah, right. I can't get that. But I can get that I can get everything now. And after nine months of buying things, and then manufacturers dropping their prices, buying things manufacturers dropping their prices, we have several top performing models in our store that have the exact same MSRP that they did in early 2017. Yeah, okay, we'll price bikes with MSRPs, top performing models that are now back to 2017. Prices. Why would I place a normal preseason order? Now the exact opposite thing is happening, where you're like, Oh, I gotta keep ordering, because I wanna make sure if vice to sell now, I'm like, why that he double hockey sticks? Would I order more, because this year's performance looks like I'm gonna buy it, and you're gonna cut the price, and I'm gonna buy it and you're gonna cut the price. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'll wait. And since I know, you have more than enough inventory, I'll order bikes when I need bikes. And so it's like ground to a halt. I mean, we had to have another couple uncomfortable conversations in that situation, right? Because here we are, we've been a good dealer slash buyer. And I say that jokingly, okay, everyone that's listening. I'm saying that with smile on my face, we can see that I'm smiling, because we love being bike shop owners. Like what I want to say though, is when you are a good dealer, you may have certain sort of whatever the manufacturer's preferential statuses, right. They'll say, Oh, that's a gold dealer, or that's a premier dealer or that's a preferred dealer or that's a partner dealer or that's a ride centre or like whatever right like a lot of brands will say they'll try to find a way to point to the top performing dealers. Usually those top performing dealers may have demo equipment, or they may have more bikes available, or pick up better Google reviews or like, you know, every manufacturer kind of does it a little bit differently. We had a couple manufacturers, not one, not two, I think about three, say, All right, well, while you're gonna lose your pricing status, then if you don't put in your full order, we're gonna knock you down out of the water, you know, we're not going to give you any price preferential pricing treat me anymore.
wade wallace 05:29
Is there a difference between distributors or brand direct? With how that's, we're
Elorie 05:36
brand direct with all of our brands? Right.
wade wallace 05:38
Okay. Okay. It did take and take away the the the the over inventory. And back to your point earlier, you know, from what are we descending from? You? Would you say that, because people have in the industry have told me that the high end is actually doing really well. It's the $3,500 and less bikes that are too low. Would you say that the demand is still there? If you were to take away all of this stuff, this would be fair, fairly normal situation, or is that changed?
Elorie 06:07
I think it's a, it's cyclically appropriate.
wade wallace 06:10
Right?
Elorie 06:11
You look at the history of the bike industry, right? It there's been like some flat trajectories, some climbing trajectories, there's also been some segments that boomed like if we go back and look at it. Let's call it a 70 year history of cycling. We've seen road bike booms, we've seen mountain bike booms. This is a whole nother great podcast topic for you, by the way, right? It's like how much more you know, what's the what's the new technology we're pushing now? Right? So are you know, are we gonna see the ebike? Boom, I think it's cyclically appropriate. And, you know, even though our year end profit and loss statement this year does not look like where we want it to look to. Our unit sales were the same, it was just that our margins were so much smaller. Yeah. So I've actually I did the calculus on it the other day, and I mapped out where we were in 2019. And kind of like where we wanted to get to in 2004. Because we always are kind of looking at this 135 year plan, like trying to be good business owners. And then we saw where, you know, that was the line. And then I mapped out what were actual results were in 1920 2122 23. Right. And I'm talking about net income. And then I drew the curve back up to match where we were in 24, which is like half of what it was in 23. Right. But more than it was in 2019. And if you do the calculus on all that money we earn, and then the money we gave back this year, you know what, we're pretty much exactly where we'd hoped we would be back in 2019. Yeah. So, you know, you know, when I think about the silver lining, when you said, what's the silver lining here, when really savvy operators are not freaking out? Are you freaking out? The operators have built a stable base of demand base? If they look back and say, hey, if we dollar, you know, if we kind of average what our goals were, like, are we where we would have been? Are we doing what we could have been doing? If the pandemic had never happened?
wade wallace 08:06
Would you have done anything differently? Being at this point right now? Is there anything you're not even would have? But could have? I don't know? That's a really
Elorie 08:14
good question. I mean, you know, like, Would I or could I have done anything differently? You know, armed with today's knowledge, I think, oh, yeah, I would have just been more vocal? Well, no, I didn't know none of us knew, like, didn't know, yeah, it's kind of all doing things. I actually, I hate to say this, but I don't think I would have done anything differently. I mean, you know, in the rearview mirror, I think maybe we would have come into 23 with slightly less inventory. But at that time, having come out of the chaos, or kind of like, you know, still kind of like emerging from the chaos. It didn't seem like an egregious number. At the time. If I did anything differently, I might have called the whistle on our business a little sooner than we did. But that's again, that's totally the rearview mirror. And it's a timing thing versus timing. Yeah, absolutely. a timing thing. So yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, we had to absorb that, you know, rat go into the belly of the snake, I think are, you know, right now, if we started in 2020, with the cautious optimism, and the conversation ends in 2023, with cautious optimism, because back then our cautious optimism was like, how are we going to get the bikes? And now it is? How are we going to keep our you know, how are we going, what's our buying strategy, so that we can get back to, you know, full margin transactions? Yeah. I know, manufacturers would like to get back to full margin transactions. You know, and now we have a whole new group of dealers who are going to need another windfall because they've got bikes that have effectively you know, they don't present any income potential for them. Yeah.
wade wallace 09:46
The obvious nuances all that is you have to make a profit on these bikes. There's needs to be a margin on these bikes. A lot of people think that just selling bikes, they're doing fine, but that's not that's not the game.
Elorie 09:57
I think something I thought about before we were going to visit that is that I wanted to say something that's gonna sound kind of weird. And so I'll explain it. But like, in a way, I understand that bike manufacturers don't owe us anything, right? There are other industries for which the independent dealer has become irrelevant. Like how many independent shoe stores are there, how many independent ski dealers are there, like, think about the number of stores that just used to be owned by a mom and pop, right, they just sold shoes, they just sold fishing tackle, you know, they just sold fabric that women would sew, whether men would sell with, they just sold, you know, whatever, right? And main streets were full of mom and pops. Or were running stores that were just independently owned running stores, right? They weren't franchises, or they were part of a large chain, or they weren't baked into a great big sporting goods store, right? Or their brands that are super hot that are online only. We can talk about that for days about the transformation of our economy. So in a way I understand. I asked, I asked a bicycle brand leader one time this year, please tell me please, please tell me because I didn't go to car. I didn't go to any kind of bicycles. I said, Please tell me that somewhere somewhere in the industry. There's a collective consciousness around like the dealer surviving this. And someone said to me, there's not. Yeah, so I just want to say I just want to publicly acknowledge right that like, the manufacturers don't owe us anything. That's just kind of sad. Right. And I think that there will be I think more dealers will go out of business.
wade wallace 11:23
Yeah, that middle you were talking about? Or is it vulnerable? vulnerable,
Elorie 11:27
there's a vulnerable middle finger, you know, everybody feels a little vulnerable this year, like, there's still this massive inventory that has to get camped it has to be absorbed somewhere has to be digested somewhere. Yeah.
wade wallace 11:38
Maybe my last question is, are there any miracles that need to happen? Or just things that need to happen to start seeing the industry start seeing its way out of this? Anything that whether it's a miracle or just Yeah, yeah, I
Elorie 11:53
think I think, you know, if we could come up with some sort of like, micro organism that safely digests carbon, that could just start eating bike frames that are in warehouses and shipping containers, we'd
wade wallace 12:07
be okay. They just need to sell it to a imaginary
Elorie 12:14
smartphone, just like that would be a miracle. Right? Yeah. Like, make this stuff go away. I mean, that's, that's that that's the facetious joke I make about a carbon copy, you know, like, a environmentally friendly, sustainable carbon eating microorganism. Yep. That's a joke. But it's my joking way of saying like, the miracle is like, just make the stuff go away.
wade wallace 12:32
Yeah, like that's, that's how far off it? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's
Elorie 12:36
that's how it feels. I mean, you know, the probably the first year ever that some manufacturers are like, we're not releasing any new models, we're not even changing our colours. I'd love to give you some honest answers that are my personal opinion. When you say like, what can we do with obviously the like, sustainable, environmentally friendly carbon eating microorganism is probably not a reality. But what if out of this situation, manufacturers decide that their biggest investment next year is going to be filling the gaps of the first person data that perhaps could have led them to better forecasting? Yep. Right. What if one of the shining lights is that IBDs are like, I have to stop reading too much news from the cycling industry online, every morning, I need to start studying my p&l and my balance sheet. I need to build a cash flow plan. The shining lights are the opportunities that businesses will take to improve. Right, it let's say that you are a component brand. And you are building to an order. And those orders are coming from a manufacturer with the name on the downtube. What if you're a component brand and your commitment is to have better information about the target market then the people that are giving you their order? Right? Like Yeah, somewhere. I think for me, I just kept I just kept feeling this entire time. Like why don't we think that this is like, Why is it okay to believe egregious numbers that there's nothing macro economically, this substantiates? Yeah. And like, what were what was the the timing, of course, somewhere, I'm sure there's some very intelligent people that threw a red flag. But you know, I think that that's what I'm left wondering and hoping for. That's what I'm left hoping for, is that the businesses who can sustain as we, you know, digest this inventory. They will use this as a period of reflection on a deeper level of what in their business process, they have to improve.
wade wallace 14:33
Here's seven mesh SEO again, Tyler Jordan, is there light at the end of the tunnel right now going into 2020. For that you can see
tyler jordan 14:40
whether I can see the light or whether I know the light is there. I feel weirdly optimistic about the future for our brand. And I say that I have a sum total of things that I know about what impacts us personally. So I can't speak to the industry right now. I don't have enough viewpoint on that. We know that we have a product pipeline I know good innovation. is working to launch and we have some really strong stuff coming. For future seasons we're really excited about, we had pretty sustained growth on the consumer side and our consumer business still continue to grow last year. So we're seeing, you know, we're hearing some positive developments on the wholesale side of our business for the whole industry. But we don't see a strong uptick there yet. And we're kind of waiting and working with our retailers to see how things developing for them. So, you know, we're continuing to see optimism for the future, and what we're building everything, you know, we're, we're talking about everything on a two year timeline. And we're consciously communicating deliberately, with all of our staff with all of our partners and stuff that we almost feel like we could predict 2025 better than 2024. At this point, there's still a lot of uncertainty around this year around how things are going to unfold. Whereas by 25, we expect to just have a bit more clarity. And so not necessarily seeing the picture is going to be a lot better, we are expecting an improvement. And we're expecting to kind of resume growth at a at a better cadence and stuff. But it's unclear exactly how that's gonna unfold to me right now, I do expect 25 and 26, to be to be good years for us. But that's with a specialised knowledge I have of the things that we're going to be deploying and kind of some of the exciting, you know, exciting things we can do. Because we can't just sit and wait for people that decide to resume business with us, we have to make sure we're building great things that have a deal. And we have to help, you know, we have to control our own destiny and kind of create some opportunities for ourselves. So we have that motion, we have some great things coming. And we're excited about that. But I would certainly love to see more positive signs that 2024 was going to get a lot better. And I will say that I think from a behavioural point of view, there's a lot of people behaving like this is not going to get better the same way there was a lot of people behaving like the pandemic, boom was never going to stop. And I definitely have concern that we have not learned our lesson about about supply chain trauma, and where we could end up a year from now. And so people forget how quickly that inventory went from everywhere to non existent. And we're not in the same situation today. But are we paying attention to it? I think you're I think you're asking the right questions. Wait, I'm looking forward to hearing some other answers to the last
wade wallace 17:02
question, in hindsight, in totality, with what you know, now, is there anything you could have done differently? Not would have, but could have given the choices you are forced with? Yes,
tyler jordan 17:15
absolutely. I think it's fair to say that while I'm comfortable with my choices, I don't think there were optimal, you know, we were operating, trying to make good decisions in a very dynamic environment for two, three years, where things were changing weekly, or daily, in during periods of that, and making the important decisions for our business in that context. And in that context, which was scary, exciting, dynamic, supercharged, and hitting a group of people that are particularly small business that had been working for five or six years as a micro company, like like, not paying yourselves like you know, the whole thing to get off the ground and to get some lifting, get some traction right before the pandemic and then have the pandemic accelerated a bit, he was extremely hard to know what was going to happen. And so I think for sure, human emotion coloured every decision we made. And that includes our own ambition level at wanting to grow our own excitement to be growing after years of kind of laying the groundwork for it. A little bit of euphoria from that, like I see people online, talk about companies being greedy, or forecasting infinite growth and stuff. And it's like, no, no, it's, it's, it's not like that at all. But when we have orders from our dealers saying, Hey, your product selling through, this is fantastic. Send me more, you know, the first thing you do is and put your hand up and say, Are you sure you want that, like when you've been working out for five years, the first thing you do is take the order. And the second thing you do is deliver it. And the third thing you do is figure out how to sell more. And the fourth thing you do is think should I build more. And under normal circumstances, something like the pandemic doesn't happen that radically changes demand over a narrow period of time. And so I think we all didn't have the none of us had the job experience mental experience, the decision making framework to know how to play that. And so I just think like, I think we made pretty reasonable and prudent choices and generally did okay. But I look back and think well, you should have built a little bit less inventory than that kind of thing. Yes, I probably should have. And I probably should have done a better job, ensuring that we had a way to pressure tester on decisions and make sure we're doing them properly. And medium splitting hairs. Like I said, I think we did a pretty reasonable job. But I think I could have done that. And I think I should have done a better job of sourcing information that could corroborate my view on what was happening. This is all 2020 hindsight, I'm not much of a regret sky. I work hard and do try to do try to make the right decisions. And I do my best every time. And so if I find out later, it was a mistake. There's only so much beating yourself up you can do. We live in a world where the future is unpredictable and I'm happy with that about that. So you know we make our best decisions and move forward. The next time I'm in in a world changing pandemic and the whole world is falling apart. I'll try to be really thoughtful about the signs of how that might it might be. Might be reversing anytime soon. But I don't have big regrets but I think there's some nuance that could have helped us all go a little bit further. And I'm, I kind of think as an industry, I'm concerned that we haven't learned a global message as, like, if you want to think of the industry as a community, are we going to behave any differently next time, other than how it impacts us? Personally, I don't know. I, you know, we're not coming together and sharing information and ensuring transparency, and, and all coming together in a kumbaya moment. We're fighting for our lives. And so it's understandable that that's the way it went. Next time, I think, have more personal human conversations early, make sure you want to understand the impact of your choices on the businesses and the people that you're impacting. And make sure that people that are important to you understand that if they make choices, it's going to impact you as well. And I think that's maybe the one takeaway lesson that I really have. I use the word partnership. And when I say it, I mean it. And I'd say that I'm going to use that word more carefully again, after the pandemic, because there were some partnerships I witnessed and heard about, I would have thought there was a strong partnership. And when I heard about what happened, I'm like, well, that's not much of a partnership. And, and we saw some of that ourselves, too, obviously. So you know, people got understandably selfish pretty quickly, in a way, I would expect it a little more compassionate with the impact that had on other people. And they did it and they didn't always see it. So I thought that was a little that was a little disappointing about human behaviour to me.
wade wallace 21:22
This podcast is brought to you by our members that escaped collective, they paid for it, along with absolutely everything we do. But instead of giving ourselves a shameless plug in this mid roll, I wanted to give a shout out to all of the outstanding people who run independent bike shops who are getting through this time. If you're a consumer of cycling goods, please support these small businesses in your local area who service your community. If there's ever a time they need your support. It's now no matter how small it is, it will make a difference. Thank you. One thing that's been missing from this series is having someone from the big three, that's giant specialised or trek on the record about their experiences during the COVID boom and bust. I've spoken to many, but understandably, none have wanted to put their voices on this podcast. But over the past week, I got chatting to a gentleman named Matt Laidlaw, who worked for trek Australia from 2020 to 2023. Matt agreed to share his experiences with me when he was hired by trek as a logistics and operations specialist. He was tasked with the massive job of improving their systems, processes and technology to handle and scale treks ERP systems throughout the supply chain, which he says were totally manual and siloed when he came in, now, some of what Matt has to say backtrack a little bit towards topics in previous episodes. But I wanted to include this because it's difficult to imagine the enormous scale of this problem many of these brands face and are facing. And Matt's experience gives you a good insight into this.
Matt Lalor 23:00
So what happened then, the perfect storm happened for trek were locked down and Shanghai were underway. We were still getting by drip feeding in from Taiwan, because they had all the high end stuff. And there was obviously supply issues with Shimano and whatnot. So I think a lot of your high end road bikes and dual suspension mountain bikes coming out of Taiwan, and then we're getting a lot of sort of low end, you know, hybrids and all that sort of stuff coming out of Cambodia, the devil coming in pretty well. And we managed to fill orders and fill up, but probably demand probably new demand for bikes probably started dropping off a bit somewhere in 2022. But because we weren't feeling all these backordered, retailers didn't start cancelling backwards because they still thought there was shortages, right? They kept their don't cancel your back orders, because you'll miss out on the queue. But that was probably the first underlying sign and it probably got mixed. And then once the lockdown in Shanghai was relieved, it was a tsunami of bikes, really absolute tsunami of gear, it was incredible. Like we shipped, like we just kept breaking records on what was shipping per month. It was just ridiculous for the record 2022 All of a sudden, if you remember that we had bikes that were mod in the warehouse. So retailers backordered. What they're the dates that I would say we're going all the way up to the purchase order. As soon as things were relieved the bottleneck in Shanghai, they dropped the date and they shipped them. That's when I started entering or we start entering the data. They're going to arrive in three weeks, and retailers the like hold on like I don't, I can't handle hundreds of bikes arriving to me three weeks. So what started happening was sales and customer support started working with the retailers and cancelling 1000s of back orders. Like I'm talking 1000s in the space, I think of like a week or so. In Australia there was 30,000 backlog like units by Kuna cancelled Wow. And there was no communication to logistics department. So we're really box gonna go into a warehouse Like, and we, all of a sudden, and we weren't told that there's no communication. So we were getting these bikes in our warehouse to go Hold on, why the tonnes going into storage? Why are there no DAC audits for these? And I thought, oh, no, no, there's some that because we were given monthly reports from forecasting on medicines, our inventory forecast for the next month based on sales based on inbound, but it was a manual static report that we didn't have access to that to request it. So we would do that, we'd get it. And we would rely on communication from the rest of the business on what's going on with sales and backorder. But there was none. So we had a total blind spot, basically back to started coming in in 2000. And filling our warehouses to the point where we reached capacity and we have to panic open the warehouse. So like, what do we have? We had three in Australia, so one of them, our main Sydney warehouse filled up in like, a month or two out of nowhere. This is in the back half of 2020. And then we had we just had to panic like work with our three PL who will unreal through this. And they just managed to find storage facilities and dump bikes and really, totally don't one of them was like a makeshift carpark. Underground, like secure carpark. Yeah, incredible. And they were just putting bikes in there. So we knew what was on the shipments. But once they went in there, there was no inventory tracking, no control, there's no system set up. So we're like, I think there's those bikes over there. These bikes, and they were just stacked randomly. So it was a nightmare, like with up to around 60 to 70,000 bikes in the store in warehouses. For reference,
wade wallace 26:42
what would you know, pre COVID levels? Oh, how many bikes would be stored in a warehouse where things were normal?
Matt Lalor 26:51
I think I wanted to have like 90 days of inventory. Yeah. And I think it was probably around automated like 10 to 15,000. Maybe at a pinch. I'm not sure how accurate that is. And that that's in like 28 30,000 unit warehouse. Yeah, it was crazy. And it was the same situation in New Zealand. I think they had something like six different storage in places like, because there's just not the facilities in New Zealand. So then the knock on effects were that we were putting on our warehouse, we're putting bikes into these temporary storage facilities effectively, that weren't properly operational from inventory and pick pack and dispatch function. Just put put them away. What happens if someone wants to order these bikes, and those models are in the temporary warehouses but not in our real operating warehouse. So what they what we have to do is get transport to take bikes out of here and put them into annual like, drive them to the operating where money just going out the door. Yeah, it was just it was incredible. So that was the same thing. We had all sorts of inventory mismatch, what was in our main operating warehouses, really low end bikes that filled up early heaps of kids bikes, things that weren't moving, right. So we actually wanted to fulfil orders, it was becoming a mess, to ferry them from a temporary storage facility. It just paid 1000s of 1000s of dollars.
wade wallace 28:17
You got 80,000 likes sitting in the warehouse. Yeah, you got to turn that into cash.
Matt Lalor 28:21
Do we work to get those like secondary facilities up and operational, which was good, but the car back when we couldn't, because there's no proper storage, no racking. And then what was happening was because we had, like shipments of boxes coming like containers coming out the proverbial and nowhere to put them apart from these, because we had a lag before we could set up these these new warehouses and accept and we could only accept a few containers a day or a couple of containers that we just couldn't dump 50 containers in one day and unpack them all right. What was happening was we had this huge backlog, where containers were getting taken off the ship, and there was nowhere for them to go. So we were accruing to marriage and fees from the wolf for not pulling containers off quickness. And I can't remember what it is. But let's say it's something like 250 to 300 bucks a day, maybe, maybe not quite that much. $200 a day, per container. And then once we would take them off our off the wall, we still couldn't put them into our warehouse and luckily our freight forwarders and that was amazing. During this time they found a temporary storage facility to put containers that we weren't paying off the marriage will last but then we have to pay them fee for storage, right which was less but better. And then eventually so once we started dropping containers off and then returning them to the wall. It had gone past the detention date but as generally think it's like it very shipping line but seven to 14 days. You have to return an empty container after it arrives. Otherwise I start charging a similar rate $200 a day per container. We couldn't make that right so we Which bleeding money like million, like getting up over millions of dollars in detention and demurrage fees, and temporary storage of these container. And this is all unaccounted costs. Yeah. So these bikes that we can't sell, and that we were just putting into storage, and then cost of living across the street cheating, right? So utilities go up, rent goes up of new warehouses, there's huge competition for getting warehouses because a lot of other retail and other industries are in similar situations, but they need to quickly store excess stock. So you're, you're paying premium, right? That went up by storage, a box went up like three to fourfold. So it was the perfect storm.
wade wallace 30:41
If you had implemented some of the systems that you wanted to successfully, could have this have been avoided at all, or it was it's still inevitable. I think
Matt Lalor 30:52
it was inevitable to face drop, it was the the other end of the face, is I think that it's got too greedy, I just thought it was going to, we're going to be able to continue to sell ridiculous, you know, right, the bubble burst on them. And it all just happened because of some of those locked down effects and whatnot. Just it all happened at once. Because the tricky the great company, but in my opinion that it's a leisure company, it's a business, which is set up for the leisure of management, rather than a professionally structured business. I can't see, in my opinion, many lessons being learned and implemented from this. They're just not structured to be able to, to be able to attract and retain talent, who will be able to drive the business forward. I think they've lost like 35% of their wholesale staff this year, or last year 20, calendar year 2023. Like I love my time at trek, and I'm not bitter or like I loved it, and it was great. But I think that the saddest part is, is all good stuff leaving. Yeah, the other thing that disappoints me, is seeing the price of books. It's just, and me seeing the operational inefficiencies, which probably lead to the fact that my prices are so high, it just kills me that that was the part that frustrated me was an entry level roadbike, aluminium rode by four grand, three and a half grand
wade wallace 32:12
paying for all these cars in efficiencies.
Matt Lalor 32:16
Just yeah. And how are you going to get more people on bikes
wade wallace 32:25
that is no longer with tracking, nothing that he was hired to do was implemented, there could be very good reason for that. But the end result was that nothing has changed. If trek is going through this, it's a safe assumption to make that other big brands are to actually I've been told this directly from some of the biggest brands in the world. So you don't need to assume anything. If the magnitude of the problem that Matt describes for trek exists in little old Australia, New Zealand, multiply this problem by 10 for the US and 20 for Europe, and keep going with many other regions around the world. And then do it again for the other big brands. Now with all the doom and gloom that the bike industry is facing around the world, the one place that's flourishing is China. I spoke to a gentleman named Sarge Liu, who heads up the direct to consumer operations for specialised China search told me about the previous bike boom that China experienced in 2008. And then it saw a dramatic slowdown in 2014, which saw a similar problem as the rest of the world is seeing now, here's what's going on in China. Now, according to Sarge,
Sarge 33:36
the equipment suddenly becomes quite valuable. It was discounting before the pandemic, and and then it got really popular, everybody wants it, the market shifted to a consumers market to a manufacturer a seller's market. And then you know, retailers are demanding full prices for the product, some some of the products even got a markup. But still, the suppliers are really, really short. I would dare to say up to today, we still don't fully meet the demand of the market yet. Don't know about 2014. But in 2023, we're still short of inventory. For many models. I was
wade wallace 34:24
speaking to someone just before you who works in the manufacturing side of the supply chain, right at the top and or second from the top from the raw goods. And he said that China has taken a lot of the load off of many of the brands who are just overstocked, right? They can't take any more into say North America or Europe or whatever. So it's been diverted to China. Is that something you've seen or that's for sure.
Sarge 34:52
Yeah, it is. It is very common. And also when they sell those products in China, you know Sometimes they they stick something in as well, like you want to take the road bike? Sure you want, you must have take some mountain bikes as well. They do stuff like everybody does that. The distributors, the subsidiaries, everybody does that demand
wade wallace 35:16
is at 2020 levels? Well, actually,
Sarge 35:18
they are more than 2020, we experienced growth every year since 2020. And, and yeah, every year, we have a big percentage of growth. And we do expect growth in 2024. However, we have been in the industry long enough, know that when the demand will start to drop, it's going to be painful for everybody. So we are very, very cautious about what kind of people we bring into the industry, what kind of people we work with, at retail, for the cycling industry, we need to have people that are passionate about cycling, if we work with people, they're only in for the money, then you know, they're when the when the cycling industry starts to drop, and you know, or even when something else is is, you know, climbing up and and they think they can make money more easy in that area. And then they will pack up and go. So we have seen industry crops and we have experienced that firsthand. And that's why we're very cautious right now. Do
wade wallace 36:25
you look to that time to learn lessons about how to manage this increased demand? And if it were to stop, and how to make sure that it's a healthy business? Or do you look to other countries and what they're dealing with in the cycling industry at the moment through COVID. For those lessons learned?
Sarge 36:45
Well, people never learn that. So when you have demand, you naturally want to want to have more inventory to meet this demand. But no, no one can really say for sure when this demand is going to decrease and when there's demand is going to diminish. So I dare to say that inventory problem will exist for China at some point in the future, it's going to be a painful process. When the demand drops and inventories still high, it's going to be the same as the Western world right now. What we are trying to do is to limit the risk to be not so optimistic. And to be really, really careful when we are working with and what kind of inventory we keep in stock. And really be precise about the forecast. And one thing I would like to add is that flexibility of supply chain that is also quite important for for for cycling industry. For the past few years, I think the ramp up of the of the of the production capacity is quite limited. Compared to what we've seen in China, you know how the how the cars are made. Cycling industry is just so primitive, even even even compared with Chinese motorcycles. Where we're at right now we're seeing a motorcycle market trending down, starting from, I think the mid of last year. So we have excess stock inventory. And we have, you know, the huge discounts on different motorcycles imported or made in China. It's inevitable. But the motorcycle industry seems to have solved their problem in just six to eight months. They have new models coming out. I mean, that's the Chinese manufacturer, they have new models coming up. And they have new price points. And I think they have they have cleared their old stock quite quickly. So the flexibility of their supply chain is quite impressive. Even with the decline in market demand, they can still innovate and produce new models to meet the changing market price points for cycling industry. The years I've been in it, I think our supply chain is way too slow to react. I will say our our reaction time is more like double of what the motorcycles can do
wade wallace 39:30
established brands in markets like the US or Australia or the UK grow at around a steady five to 7%. When you speak of industry growth figures in China, what are we talking about currently?
Sarge 39:44
Well, I'm going to just say for the for the whole market. I think in the past few years, the market has been growing at least 50% per year. 500
wade wallace 39:53
Nice. Yeah. Reading Okay. Geez, that's, that's amazing. Yeah, well, it's coming from a low base as well. distils the
Sarge 40:00
Yeah, it's a it's coming from a low base. That's one point. And it's just that the pie is getting bigger. And we have so much space, empty space around this pie to grow. That's why we have this growth. Yeah, I think more than 50%. Every year, year on year, yeah. Well, it means the past few years. Amazing. That's the scale of this market. Yeah. And also, that's, I think that's limited by the supply.
wade wallace 40:33
Back to the United States market, here's silicas, Josh Portner. making some predictions. Do you see this as being? When you say we're close? a year away? Two years away? Six months away? Do you have a ballpark? gut feel?
Josh Poertner 40:49
I think this next season will clear most of it out. So call it 2024. Call it a year. Yeah, I mean, I think the the very real possibility that the US achieves the so called soft landing on the inflation situation, which, you know, you never want to get too optimistic, but kinda looks like it's happening. I mean, you know, there's already debate, we may already need to be pulling interest rates back, you know, I should talk to you that to Tuesday, I think this week is the week that would kind of solidify the trend to say, Is it is it really real or not, and then that'll probably set up the next Fed interest rate move in q1. If we get there and the Fed lowers, even 25 basis points, q1, I think we're back to the races, that would be the indication to the market, that it's real rates. I mean, as we've seen, you know, even a small Fed rate change will pretty dramatically pretty dramatically affect mortgage rates, you know, I really feel like a lot of the stuff people are feeling now is, you know, it's real, but a lot, there's a lot of angst with it. And I think if you can just make a couple tweaks around the edges, that some of the issues will still be there, but the feelings will improve dramatically. So little consumer confidence bump, mortgage rates coming down gas prices, I think have to stay low, you know, as much as you'd like to think that high gas prices, so bikes, they, they just make people feel poor. And I think with those, those things in our favour, we could probably see a massive clearing of inventory backlogs in the 2024 season, both in the US and in Europe. And with that, I think it would, would set us up for a much more sober and and realistic 2025 Than You Think where we are today. Do
wade wallace 42:40
you think zero interest rate phenomena in this period had anything to do with much of the bike industry and to where to where they've gotten to now or
Josh Poertner 42:50
you get? Oh, totally? Yeah. Oh, god. Yeah, like, like macroeconomics is like, one of my hobbies. So you don't get me started? Yeah, no, I'm going to take you all the way back to September 11. Right. I mean, 0% interest rates fueled the housing boom, and subsequent bust. They fueled massive accumulation of wealth at the top, because you know, so much of that money that the Fed, particularly here in America, but it was happening in Europe as well. So much of that money that the Fed was pumping in was just being reinvested by those banks, you know, the division was, will give the bank's all this money that they can lend. But the bank's realised, well, we can just put this in the markets and drive the markets up. And certainly there was business growth and Lenny, I mean, other stuff was happening. But, you know, you look at the growth in income and wealth disparities over those time periods that are crazy. And then 2008 kind of wiped all of it out. But then the bailout again, got interest rates and kept them super low. And you had this, we were back to kind of the same old stuff. And then with COVID, I think it was our first it's interesting macro economically, to me, it was really the first time certainly in America where you bailed out the every person, right? And the wealthy also got bailed out. But lower middle income people got these huge bailouts. And I mean, you look at it, like poverty declined, with not too much compression of wealth disparity, but middle class, you know, both kind of money in the bank, you know, like, I think there's some stat that, you know, at any given time, like 25% of Americans couldn't afford a $400 catastrophe. You know, that's terrifying, right to be in the sink by God, like 25% of people in this country couldn't, couldn't cover up a tire blowout on their car, or, you know, medical emergency or something. But yeah, so I think, you know, this was the first time that the euphoria of the arts and then the Obama years was really doubled down on with you know, not only were we pumping money in the Fed level, but we were now putting it into people And so much of the spending had to come from that. I mean, that was another kind of in our calculus thing of my God, I, you know, I don't know how much of this money going out to people is coming in to companies like ours, but it's nonzero. That's where some of it's coming from. And so yeah, I think absolutely that fuel that end, I think it absolutely seems to macro economically we have all of that stuff. But then you think of it from a company perspective. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you could get, if you could get money for percent percent in half, why not order that next container of bikes, you know, in a way, where some of our smaller companies, you know, like me, like, you know, the core of this company, like, who's the financial guarantor of the company? It's me. Right? So if, if the company takes out a million dollars and low interest loans to buy inventory, and that inventory doesn't sell, and the bank calls that note, I lose everything. And, you know, I willing to take some risks in my life, and in my career, and in my business, but there's limits. And I think, certainly, you know, when you look at some of the private equity stuff, and these other things that have happened over the last few years, it was a good example, right? Got into this kind of amazing, you know, chips, a great friend, and I love him to death and, you know, company almost imploded, because they got into this thing, because money was cheap, and it was, you know, all this, we could explain how all that works. That could be its own podcast, right? And I do not know all the details there. But, but essentially, interest rates change. And, you know, the, the debt in those deals is typically held by the company. And so now the company's looking around going oh, hey, guys, shit, we gotta, we gotta cover we're gonna pick a number, you know, quarter million dollars a month in, in debt service. payments, and yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah, the company is now like, well, the our first payment has to be to this bank. And then we can pay the rent and the electricity and the employees and and and, and so I said it a million times. But you know, it's my, my favourite Warren Buffett line. I think it's everybody's favourite Warren Buffett line, right? You know, when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked? And that certainly was the situation, you know, there are far more people out there swimming naked, due to cheap money than there would have been had that. That not been the case. And I, I think you could make a very real argument that year, two years into the Trump administration, Powell put the rate up, and Trump absolutely threw a tantrum. And they capitulated and they lowered it. I think that's a moment we can really, really point to and say that really made things a lot worse in the future than could we, you know, I think if we'd been at a spot where we'd gotten it up to a couple percent, and then maybe we wouldn't have had to cut it quite as low and then there's a million ways you could game plan that out.
wade wallace 47:50
Here's Tae Huang again, formerly of QB P, the largest distributor in the US, all
Tae - QBP 47:57
the shops that I ever I ever worked in, always had bikes, you know, in the basement that should have been gone years ago. Or, you know, multiple. Oh, hey, look, I just found two full dirt race groups in the back corner of the basement. Right? How many generations back? Are these? Wow, someone screwed up? Right? Is it fair to say that for a lot of retailers, this situation is similar to that. I mean, I go back to thinking that I feel bad knocking on retailers, but most retailers should have come into at least this calendar year with the plan of carrying as little inventory as they could, right. If they bought heavy into 2022 I get that. But then we also had a normal return to seasonality before that. I mean, 2020 into 2021 was unusual because winter never happened, right? We just had that big fat bike revenue flow on through, but 2020 into 2020 2021 into 2022 There was that seasonal dip came back right? And nothing about the sales in the 2022 season I think indicated that they should have gone heavy into 2023. Again, that's easy for me to say from my perspective, I had a lot of information you know, we're talking almost a year removed from all that.
wade wallace 49:23
Is it just the bike shops that are overstocked or because from my understanding that as I said earlier, brands were pressuring by shops to order to your orders in you can cancel if you want and many did. So is there a backup of well I mean it sounds like it is because you know buy one get one freeze and and brand direct on online discounting there's a backup in the the brands or distributors as well, isn't there?
Tae - QBP 49:51
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's a tough one. And frankly, that was that was one of our selling pitches for retailers. You know, we'll never hold it over your head that you have to get minimums, right? Maybe you lose out on some discounts. But our discounts are just margin patterns anyway, it's not going to make or break your business. Our default margins are tried to be set so that they're profitable for retailers. But the reality is, is most shops can't cut themselves free of trucks specialised giant or don't know how to or don't want to right. There are plenty of retailers that don't have them and they're successful. Or they choose to partner with a smaller brand like Cannondale and Kona. And they can, you know, push back a lot more effectively. But yeah, if if you're in a situation where a specialised comes and says, You have to, you have to take on this debt, and you're not in a position to say no, yeah, you're kind of stuck in an unenviable position, I suppose. In that situation, I would hope that specialise is working with them, like actively working with them to figure out how to move that inventory. You know, I want to see bike retailers continue to thrive because it's, it's the home base for cycling, right. But the flip side is, folks at the Big Three, if they're now moving inventory through their dealer channels, then they're gonna find somewhere else to move that inventory. We already seen that, you know, sales from track and specialise on their websites. I don't know what the retail situations like where you're at. But track can specialise in buying a tonne of retailers over here. And so to some extent, they have a place they can put all that product and no one's gonna say no. Yeah, yeah, of course, that just makes it harder for any other non company owned, you know, truck dealers in the vicinity of a truck shop. And yet, but
wade wallace
Jake Dudek, formerly of wiggle chain reaction, made a comment in his LinkedIn post that I've put up in the show notes about capacity never leaving the way it should in the bike industry. In many ways. He said, it's similar to the airline industry. I asked Jake, to elaborate on this point, because I thought it was really, really interesting.
Jake Dudek 52:33
It's interesting. Like there's when you look at an industry and like how attractive or unattractive it's, it's potentially going to be, you have the of course, there are many factors involved. But one framework to use is thinking about an industry in terms of like, barriers to entry, and the barriers to exit. So how high are the hurdles for someone to get in to this industry? How much investment is required for someone to get in to this industry? And then the exit? You know, like, if if the industry goes upside down, and things are bad profits below demand declines? Like how hard is it for somebody to exit that industry and the airline business. So you'll have, it's kind of interesting, because you always want to think of it in terms of the capacity, like can the capacity leave or not. And then the airline industry, the capacity never leaves. Because even if you have a carrier that that they go bankrupt, you know, like if they, they leased a bunch of planes, and you know, they get the convinced Boeing and Airbus folks to make these things. So you've got all these plans. And then even if that carrier goes bankrupt, you know, it's not like the plane just like goes to the recycling centre, like someone that go there, someone buys that lease for pennies on the dollar, and the aeroplane remains, and the capacity remains, you know, you still have a bunch of seats that need, you know, to get used. And so what happens with that is, is the new owner of this plane, like they need to utilise the capacity. And so that puts pressure on price on the bike side of the world, there are a lot of different reasons that you know, barriers to exit, would would raise. And in some industries, it can really be a function of just it's either the shareholders or the management team or the owner operator. They just they have like an emotional tie to the industry. There's, there's, there's some irrational tie that's, that's keeping them in this space, when by all logic and reason, it's like they should exit you know, like, you'd be better off just like taking this money that you have and like putting it in, you know, like an ETF fund because it's going to generate better returns than you're getting and what you're doing right now right? And for a number of different reasons like psychological reasons, you know, they ignore this and they continue cleaning into the space. Even when you have a bankruptcy occur. You can have you know, new money that comes in and they see this as like, this is a romanticised space and And they've always wanted to be a part of this romanticised space, not really understanding the characteristics of the industry structure, and how difficult it is when you're in an industry that has high barriers to exit. And so then the brand remains the capacity remains. So you know, the industry hasn't been through a real, they don't have it's ever really been through like a major shakeout period. I want to say a shakeout period that's, it's, it's a time a difficult time and an industry, the folks that shouldn't be around, they die off, you know, in like, liquidation bankruptcy capacity leaves over the course of the next probably six to nine months, there's going to be more bankruptcies, you know, like, without a doubt, you've already started to see a couple, I think orange just went into the insolvency, are they going to stay? Or is, is new money going to come in, try to keep these things on life support, you know, like, rather than keep a brand, you know, living in a persistent vegetative state, sometimes the capacity genuinely needs to leave. And it'll be interesting to see what happens like during the ShakeOut period, so there's, there's that aspect to it. And then the other thing that probably caught the most attention from from bike industry people out of my article was the chart that kind of looks at like, the percent change in real value of us bike imports, you know, versus the percent change in US cycling participation, I pulled this data when I was when I was working for Cigna, you know, I was I was trying to try to frame up like, the aspects of the industry structure, and what are the hotspots? What are not the hotspots, and when I came across this, and I started to manipulate data in a certain way, and especially became apparent, you know, when I changed it all to 20 $19, which means like, I eliminated the effects of inflation, basically, that percent change, you know, relative in what you're importing relative to a basic driver of demand, which would be participation. I was like, holy cow, these guys are all over the map. They're so volatile, and the procurement just relative to like, basic indications of demand. And so what that said to me, looking at things all the way, going all the way back to 2008 is like this is not a COVID problem. Yeah, it's a big problem, like COVID is really spiked things, but like they've been doing this for decades. Like this is a problem that's been around since the dawn of time for these guys. You know, I think that obviously, going through a shakeout period, and if capacity goes away, that's that is helpful. Participation does pretty predictable thing, right? And it hangs out around zero growth. So you know, you have folks that age out of the sport, and you have folks that come into the sport and more or less happens at the same rate. But procurement doesn't reflect that at all right? So like, what a massive supply and demand imbalance. And while if you, I'm looking at this chart right now, just to remind myself about it, it probably averages out around 0%, which is, right where, where participation is, but boy, it's very volatile around that 0%. You know, you have these like huge spikes in procurement growth. And then several years later, it falls off of a cliff and then fears after that you're like backup at, you know, 20% year over year procurement growth. And it's like, I personally believe that the drivers of this are not going to be the teeny itty bitty tiny brands that you know, might go into insolvency. The drivers of this type of volatility, like these are major procurement people. So these are the trek a specialised Cannondale, a giant the pawns of the world. You know, like they need to be kind of thinking long and hard about how volatile this procurement pattern is that they have in their industry.
Remember when Elorie said at the beginning of this episode is that the market has normalised to be ‘cyclically appropriate? This is what Jake is talking about when he refers to participation averaging out at zero, and procurement spiking all over the place.This is the cycle we’re back into. And it also is good insight into how the bike industry sells the same stuff largely to the same people each year..
It's certainly not, maybe it just hasn't been pieced together in this way. You know, like, looking at it in terms of a percent change, or maybe folks haven't, you know, tried to pull the effects of inflation out of it, which it does change the chart a little bit when you change it, you know, to to $1 value. Yeah, I don't know, I guess I'm not I'm not sure why people haven't tried to kind of understand aggregate supply and what that's done, it's actually pretty easy for us to understand the bike space to understand aggregate supply because, you know, 90% of bikes are are being imported. So you can at least like there's Kelly's clock that that you know, that the ports It'd be different if there were, you know, people making 50% of bike units, you know, out of us factories and if it wasn't tracked as well, but these are coming in through ports like these numbers are pretty trackable. So the folks that need to stay very important that you know, the person loved loved the bike space, you know, like love, love cycling love bikes. I'm not so passionate about it that like I will irrationally stay in place. But it, I have a soft spot in my heart for it right. And so I think like my advice to businesses to brands that like you're gonna face, there's going to be some turbulent times over the course of the next 1218 months still, if you have a competitive advantage, like meaning, you know, like, if you look at the landscape, whether you're on the retail side, or you're a brand, a competitive advantage means that relative to your peers, you know, you either have lower costs, or you can charge higher prices are both like period full stop, if you don't have that, you need to seriously consider like, is it worth, like staying in the space? Is it is it? Was it worth, like your capital that you've committed? You know, like, think about the risks that are associated with operating in the space? It's, it's really, it's volatile? You know, like, I think the supply diagram kind of already implies, like, there's a lot of volatility here. And with volatility, there's risk, is it worth the risk? You know, for what you're doing? Like, if you're operating a brand that doesn't have a competitive advantage? Is it worth it? Or not? Should? Or should you? Should you rationally egg? Like, that's a serious question that people just need to be, like, intellectually honest with themselves about, right? The ones that there's some phenomenal shops out there, right, and that they're well run, they deliver value to consumers. And, you know, it's like, those are the guys that I hope they can fight and claw, you know, to do make it go the distance, you know, like, make it through the marathon, the ones that if they're, I guess we're just talking about shops for now, which is obviously different than the brands. It's almost becomes like, those are maybe even harder questions for the, for the shop owners to answer because they are so many of them are like very passion induced projects, right. And to Russia branch is not an easy business by any means. And so they are like, they're almost inherently willing, you know, to take, you know, lower returns, like a lower return profile on their capital, that they're that they're investing in these things than you would otherwise. Because it's like, well, they just, they love doing this, and they want to do this and like they don't care if they're not going to make that much money doing it right. There's a lot of emotion that's in there and to weed through that and approach, assess your position of your business, the performance of it, in the financial position of it in the future had to assess that objectively, for them is like it's very difficult, understandably. But I do think that everyone owes it to themselves to, to at least, ask and answer that question.
What you’ve heard in this 4 part series are a selection of anecdotes out of many many conversations I’ve with people in the bike industry that are representative of recurring themes I’ve heard again and again. This isn’t intended as an inquiry or postmortem of what went wrong in the bike industry during the pandemic, but more to tell the human side of story.
I hope I’ve captured the general themes accurately. Since this series has been published, people in the industry have told me it was traumatic and cathartic listening. And there are many topics that I didn’t get into that I wish we could have.
All good stories finish with a resolution at the end but this is far from being done and I honestly don’t know how to wrap this story up with a satisfying conclusion. Many bikeshops, businesses, manufacturers still need to see this through.
Throughout this series I’ve referred to the ‘industry’ as hard and softgoods businesses, but spare a thought to all the event organisers and tour companies who didn’t experience a boom through covid and their businesses came to a complete standstill. Many of them never got back up and running again, and they play an critical role in the ecosystem.
The term ‘rightsizing’ has been thrown around and while we all understand what this means, it’s a coldhearted way that an economist would look at a macro view of the industry and it removes the human cost to all of this. The bike industry is full of passionate people, many who could be making better incoime elsewhere, but they choose to do this because it’s wonderful thing to be a part of. There is an activity and sport at the heart of it that we all want to see grow. The community we’re all a part of is held together by the local bike shops, clubs, brand support and volunteers. Part of it’s charm is that it’s largely a cottage industry and what type of place would this be if it were full of cutthroat businesspeople who are only here to make buck.
I’d like to thank Elorie Slater, Josh Portner, Tae Whang, Rob Gitelus, Jake Dudek and all the other people I spoke to about this series for your time and insights and sharing your stories.. And thank you for the countless messages from everyone i’ve received. Also, thank you to Will Jones and Huw Owen from Redbricks media for producing this podcast, Ashley de Neef for composing the music, our executive producer Craig Bruce, and the rest of the Escape Collective team for sharing their industry contacts and ideas towards this project.
We’re going to do an Episode 5 where we’ll be doing a Q&A from our Escape Collective members, and looking at some of the things that came out of the woodwork during the release of these episodes.Stay tuned for that
This is Wade Wallace from Escape Collective. Thank you for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai