Making Money in the Bike Biz - Starting Your Own Company
dw: Dave Weagle – I guess this is a pretty unrehearsed answer here – off the cuff, I’m just a regular guy. I happen to own my own bike company. I like to spend a lot of time refining things, not necessarily just bike products. I guess I take it pretty seriously in the way I approach my work. Other than being pretty neurotic about getting a product out or building something I’m just a regular dude who happens to ride bikes a lot. I’m all into efficiency I guess.
PB: You’re pretty well known as the mad scientist on many of the message boards out there. You’re revered not only as a product knowledge guy, but also as a suspension wizard. Care to give us some background into your education, qualifications and experience?
dw: Sure, I went to school in Boston at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. It’s a pretty small school compared to other big engineering universities. In the program I went into, the teach you not only the theory you need to be an engineer, but also a lot of hands on. I learned a lot about manufacturing and I was lucky enough to commandeer my own lab when I was in school that had the best machines and all kinds of stuff in it. It was probably the best shop in the school. I was able to strip some of the best parts from some of the other machines in the school and fit them to the equipment in my lab. I used them to build these mini baja cars for the SAE competitions. That was a blast, we were always pretty under-funded which definitely sucked at times, but I learned a lot about project management, engineering, and manufacturing. I was really driven to win this thing. It was a great learning experience. Through all that, I landed a great job with a company called Solectria when I was in school. I took a year off school to work, and while I was there, I learned a great deal about composites. Solectria builds electric vehicles from the ground up, all composite, it holds the world record for range right now. Pretty crazy, it goes something like 380-something miles on one charge. Basically Boston to New York in one shot. That was when I was 20 or so, I was trying to tailor myself, what I really wanted to do was design Formula One cars in England. That was my goal, then I met my soon to be wife (in August) and all that changed. I decided I didn’t want to move to England and ditch her, so I needed to find something else. That’s where the military thing came in. It was the closest thing I could get into. Just doing heavy R&D work, I got involved in making military ground robots, I was lucky enough to make a name for myself in that industry. I did some pretty cool stuff there, it’s all about the same type of stuff as bikes. It’s all about as much efficiency as you can get, as lightweight as possible, as high strength as possible, as much impact resistance as possible and you know, it’s all sort of the same goals. The stuff I wanted to do, and the stuff I eventually got into. Finally, I was lucky enough to pursue my passion, which by this time had become mountain bikes.
PB: That’s where Evil Bikes and e13 comes in?
dw: It was pretty nuts, I mean, I really wanted to build a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) gearbox for a bicycle and I started looking into these full-suspension mountain bikes and I thought, wow, these are pretty cool. I was really into motocross bikes when I was growing up but living in the city, I couldn’t afford to keep it anywhere, so I bought a full suspension bike. I was pretty into it, I went out a rode a shitload of bikes and ended up choosing a Santa Cruz Superlight. Now that I know better and see what I did, it probably wasn’t the best choice. This was probably 2 weeks after the Superlight was first released, I dropped a ton of money equipping the bike with all the right goodies on it, like Hayes brakes, 521’s… it was cool at the time, it was a pretty sick little bike. I just wish the Bullit had been around at that point, I would have bought one of those.
PB: Yeah, hindsight always seems a little clearer than when you lay down the cash.
dw: No kidding, I guess then, I realized I wasn’t too happy with what I saw in the suspension arena and just started to learn on my own. There wasn’t a lot of text out there at the time, there still isn’t so I started writing my own rules… wait, that doesn’t sound right, not very professional… I started to do a lot of research basically, and it sort of went from there. I began talking to a lot of people obviously and eventually got it all figured out… I think!
PB: You’ve recently quit your day job to pursue Evil/e13 full time, care to share what made that possible?
dw: Well actually the goal here is, we really want to pursue e13 full time here. The component side of things is a lot of fun. It allows me to work with a lot of different bicycle manufacturers. I also have been doing consulting work for Iron Horse bicycles, which has been a huge help because, you know, it’s a paycheck. Working with Iron Horse has allowed me to do a lot with my suspension stuff without having direct ties to the company. I don’t have to be the guy selling stuff you know. Not being my company allows more freedom than on the e13 side of things. And the reason you haven’t seen an Evil full suspension bike is, we don’t want to compete with the guys specing our product. We want to be a component company and we don’t want any politics to get in the way of that. Evil as a frame company? We may do some very high end, boutique stuff in the future, but we’re definitely doing more hardtails. We’ve been working on stuff for about 2 years now, and we’ll be ready to release something probably right after Interbike. Yeah, the real drive is the e13 thing as a whole. What allowed that to happen was working with Iron Horse and the success of the e13 chainguides. Those things have been huge for us. Honestly Mike, we never figured it would have gotten as big as it has, as fast as it has. It was never our ambition to push anything, and we really haven’t. It was the consumers who got on the product, were psyched about it that put us where we are now.
PB: Seems to be the best way to do it, it’s worked the same way for Pinkbike I suppose. Marketing hype is just that, hype! There’s something more credible about word of mouth!
dw: It’s been great, I’ve had some other opportunities as well. Some consulting came up outside of the high end bike market. Between all of that, I’ve been able to make a go of it.
PB: It just doesn't get any better than being able to take your passion and convert that into a paycheck.
dw: That’s true!
PB: Describe a day in the life of dw.
dw: I wake up in the morning, cruise over to the computer – usually most of my time is spent at the computer – ‘cause that’s the tool I need to accomplish what I need to do. You know, I have a massive, massive backlog of projects to work on I guess is what it comes down to, so I usually have some high priority stuff that I have to get done for the day. That might include getting some prints finished for prototypes; we’ve been building prototype stems and pedals for a while here so I’ve been revising them, building new prints and sending new stuff to the shop. Obviously, I’m keeping tabs on chainguide production, and developing new chainguide products which is a pretty rapidly expanding market for us I guess. There’s a lot of vendors who are involved in that product and although it’s only a few parts, I keep pretty close tabs on it, I’m always refining it. For 2004, we’ll have some new changes to the guides. So yeah, it’s just a lot of engineering work. Usually by midday, I get frustrated or just sick of looking at the computer screen and I’ll go out and ride my bike. Depending on the day, or how I feel, if my ankle is in one piece, I’ll take my downhill bike or my hardtail out and just go jump off of stuff…or rip around the street, I do a lot of street riding, as you know street is a big driver in the e13 line and what we’ve been building, mostly because that’s what I’ve been doing. That’s the downside to living in the city, there’s not a lot of kick ass wooded trails within riding distance of my house.
PB: Nothing wrong with street, it’s a great venue. The fact is, not everyone has a set of wheels that can take them to the mountains, make the best of what you have, it’s great to see kids ripping it up in the urban environment. As long as you’re not pissing people off, it’s a great place to ride.
dw: Yeah, as long as you’re not scraping people’s shit up with metal bits, like marble ledges, it’s all okay.
PB: That’s where the e13 Makrolon bashguards are nice.
dw: Definitely less impact for sure, but whatever...
PB: Sorry to interrupt there, now where were we?
dw: Then it’s back to the office, work on the computer some more and usually by 10 o’clock I’m done, then I can go out for a beer. I put in some serious hours, I mean 14 hours a day is pretty normal for me.
PB: You get back what you put in I suppose.
dw: Exactly, I don’t mind doing it. I have fun doing what I’m doing. That’s what it really comes down to, I like to get out on the weekends. You know, get out to the mountains especially in the summer to get some shuttles in, or hit some lift serviced runs. I love that, it is so much fun. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be involved in this sport if it weren’t for lift service because it’s just such a blast. It really got my passion up for this whole thing in the early days when I first got into it. Now that we’re out there supporting races, the NCS tour with a truck and tents, it’s cool getting regular guys come by with busted stuff, broken derailleurs and stuff, fixing them up. It’s fun giving back to the privateer because they’re the one’s who’ve been supporting us!
PB: Speaking of fun, what are the crazy highs of owning your own company?
dw: Crazy highs? The best part of this year had to be hiring our first full time employee. It’s awesome to be able to give back to the community like that! I can’t describe how good it felt! As it goes when you’re working for yourself, I love my boss! I can basically do what ever the hell I want, obviously, there’s some pretty structured stuff I have to get done every day or I wouldn’t eat, but I love it. Time schedules are great, one of the big differences from Draper, or any of my other employers is, although the benefits packages were great, 3 weeks holidays to start, it just wasn’t enough for what I wanted to do. It’s definitely not enough for traveling around to the races during the summer. It’s very sweet not having that hanging over my head. I also have the freedom to work on whatever I choose. On a typical day, I’m working on prototype downhill frames for Iron Horse, my own hardtails, stems, pedals, new standards for chainguide mountings… all kinds of stuff, all in one day! It’s pretty cool, it’s really varied. Another great part of it is, I have a great partner in John Pentecost. We see eye to eye on everything, we share the same goals, plans and we both ride a lot. It’s perfect, just perfect! I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. If there are people out there with the drive and ambition to go for it and they think they have the right partners, brains and money to back it, which is important, it can be really rewarding! If you don’t have that stuff, and you don’t get liability insurance, or are designing stuff that maybe isn’t properly engineered, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
PB: Which brings us to the terrible lows...?
dw: I started this company 3 years ago with 2 friends from Wentworth, Paul and Ryan. As we got into it, it became painfully apparent that from a business perspective, there was a lot of stuff that we needed to do to in order make this a viable enterprise, which is why we brought on John P. Without him, there’s no way this would have come together. With his help we incorporated, we got liability insurance, we took care of all the things we needed to do as a functional business. We haven’t hit any bumps and I’m hoping that’s because of all the design, engineering, time and testing we’ve done. We haven’t had anybody break a chainstay and snap their leg in half or anything like that, but if it did happen, you know, we’d be okay, and that person would be okay, and that’s one thing that really sets us apart from other small companies. We owe it to our customers to do that stuff.
PB: Any other downsides?
dw: Shit, I don’t know, I don’t even see that as a downside, can you think of any?
PB: Well, I know for some, traveling to the NCS for example, can suck. Driving, taking time away from family, losing valuable playtime… how about you?
dw: I look forward to it all year, I can’t wait! I’m just hoping the race series can keep it together so we can have events to go to, but if it didn’t, dammit, I’d hate to do it, but I’d have to get involved with that too. It’s an insane workload, organizing events, and I think NORBA has done a pretty good job. All the people involved have given so much to get it where it is, it’s probably a hell of a lot better than I could do.
PB: It’s a tough job that requires lots of sponsorship dollars. Those dollars seem to be fewer and further between these days… speaking of money, when you started Evil/e13, were you lucky enough to do it on your own, or did you have the added task of finding an outside investor who believed in your vision?
dw: Well, John P and I had some money of our own, I had a good paying job, and John P had sold his business so we did get one investor (actually we had a bunch of them lined up – I guess we still do) but we didn’t really have the necessity to do that, we were able to do pretty good on our own and the best part about it is we aren’t taking any money out of this company at all. Every penny we’ve made has gone right back into the company, not one cent has come out. It’s allowed us to grow pretty well, and we’re going to keep it that way for another year or two. We want to try and make it a solid business that is around for a long time.
PB: Good to see you’re here for the long term.
dw: Everything here is for the long term, there’s no such thing as short term. It kills me to see other people build products that I have been working on for so long, but I’ve been unwilling to release. Hey, you know, when it’s done, I know it’s gonna be high quality, something I’m willing to put the e13 brand name on, that’s what it comes down to.
PB: You mentioned some of the new stuff in the works, any chance we could hear what’s coming down the pipe?
dw: There’s some big stuff I’d love to share with you, but I can’t. Obviously, I’ve already mentioned the stems and pedals. We’ve been working on them for a couple years, that’s no secret, we’ve had prototypes we’ve shown, but the new prototypes you’ll see in the next couple months will be quite a departure from what we’ve done in the past, but they will be closer to the final product. We’re working on chainrings, they’re actually being cut as we speak… the reason that all came up is, we’re not really satisfied with the current offering of chainrings that fit chainguides on the market. Not just our guides, but all guides on the market. There’s some standards out there, actually “adopted” standards I guess, for where chainline lies in relation to cranks and things like that. Some companies follow them, and other companies just make some random stuff that doesn’t work very well in any chainguide. I’m going to try and tackle that one next, no shifting rings just yet, but just some single ring chainrings and new stuff along those lines. We’re also working on a trials bashring. They’re being tested by some world class trials riders, and local guys as well, that’s going pretty well, the street guide is also doing very well. We do have a new hardtail coming that I can’t talk about…
PB: Trials frame perhaps?
dw: No, I can tell you it’s not a trials frame.
PB: Do you see Evil/e13 sticking with the niche you’ve cut, you know the burly, freeride/urban DH market, or do you see yourselves expanding into the XC market and beyond?
dw: Eventually we’ll get into the XC market, even now, with our 3-ring guide, the 3RS that’s been starting to pick up with the XC guys. We’ve had the product sitting on the shelves for the last 7 months or so with virtually no interest and all of a sudden it’s started to pick up. The XC market is one of those things we could do well, you know it’s highly optimized, efficient structures… so, it’s a good match but it’s just not the kind of riding we do every day so it’s not our focus.
PB: Finally, you obviously answered this already but I’ll ask it again for effect, do you still have the time or inclination to ride?
dw: Yeah, absolutely! You kidding me? That’s what it’s all about. One of the best parts of owning my own company is building prototypes and getting to test my own stuff.
PB: Thanks dw, I’m looking forward to seeing more e13 products in our test stable! Good luck in the future!
dw: Thanks Mike, see you at Interbike!
