16: Predator... A History, EP. 16

Hello and good day to you from episode 16 of our podcast series Project Breakaway. A metaphorical and literal time in the day when we here at Predator Cycling take some time away from working in the back shop to come and share with our listeners what we're doing, how we're doing it, what it takes to do it, our ideas, our innovative success stories and even our missteps and failures. If you find yourself with an interest in bicycles, composite manufacturing, out of the box design, or even curiosities beyond, I encourage you to stick with us, settle in and learn a little. I'm Courtney B, co-owner and project manager of Predator Cycling. I'm here with my partner, Arm Goan, the other co-owner, CEO, lead design and engineer, and kid entrepreneur of Predator Cycling. How's it going, Arm? It is going wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, I we got a special guest today, so I'm excited. Yeah, so you jumped ahead. We have a special guest in person in the real life here today with us. Um, she was the original co-owner of Predator Cycling. And she birthed you. So. Yes, my mommy. Your mommy is here. Saza is here. Welcome, Saza. How are you? I'm well, so good to be here. Yeah. Happy to be in Tennessee. Love it. Love Nashville. Beverly Hills let you out. Yes. Great. So, um, welcome. And that's your first day here at the shop, you're going to be here for another week or so. And, um, we're going to put you to work. Yes. Never afraid of work. Yeah, there's there's a lot of things for you to do here. Yeah. So, um, I just wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little about a little bit about the history of Predator Cycling. So, uh, let's jump right in. What do you remember about 13 and 14-year-old Arm and what was your reaction when he said, Mom, I want to make a bicycle? So, at 13, Arm was uh, in high school. And all he thought of was to come home and get on his bike and train. And he always wanted to make a fast and effective, um, bicycle. Um, and he started designing bicycles, aerodynamic bicycles at that age. I remember him drawing in his in his bedroom in our little Santa Monica condo. And, um, one day he took his drawing to uh, Russ Denny, who was a, um, you know, renowned bicycle designer. And Russ was just blown away by Arm's design. And that's when it started. But who pays for 13, 14-year-old Arms materials? Who supplied all that? Would you just scavenge in the local dump? No. I actually, I had saved up money from birthdays and like washing cars and pocket money. And I I I ran, I I paid for it with my money that I had saved up. Yeah. Okay. Um, it was it was more than I wanted to spend. But yeah. So how long did it take you guys to, how long did it take you to build that bike? The first bike? I think it was about six months, six months, eight, nine months. It we we ran into a lot of problems. We ran into a lot of problems. Oh yeah. A lot of a lot of changes. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of changes. 30 years. It hasn't been 30 years. Oh, okay. Sorry. Um, yeah, we ran into problems like sourcing some of the tubes. Because like originally, you can't buy things like Alacarte. I mean, they don't nobody sells like one tube. They want to sell you 100 tubes. So like I had to get stuff like I was we tried to we had to get tubing companies to sell us like samples. And like I wanted a specific tube, of course. Because, you know, I'm particular. So, um, I I didn't want the other. Anyways, there was a it was a mess to get it. But we finally got all the tubes sourced and everything. Um, yeah. And we we got it made. And you just constructed it right there in the house. Did you paint it in the house? Uh, no. No. We had it, um, we got the frame, um, Russ Denny, uh, uh, uh, helped us build up the frame. And then, uh, the first version of it was raw. It was just raw aluminum. And we just, I sat in the on the balcony with uh, um, my mom's uh, Scotch brush. Like scouring pad and I sat there and and brush finished the frame. And then built it up and I think I raced it like a week later. The next week I raced the frame. Mhm. Um, and I had some problems with it. So we had to go back and get it, we had to fix some stuff and change some things. But, um, yeah, we got. And back then was it Predator Cycling or was it just my bicycle? Uh, well, there was nothing. It was just a raw aluminum frame. And I the original name was. was was uh was uh Pegasus. We wanted to go with Pegasus was the original name I wanted to use, but I couldn't. So, um, we later came up with Predator, but I think it took us it took about a a year before we started branding it. I think we incorporated it in 2005. Yeah, we incorporated 2005, the first one we built though was 2000. Mhm. So, um, and it's the the black frame that's floating around here in the shop. It's still here. We have it. So what was the timeline between that and when you said I him I'm I want to open a physical store? Uh, the oh. So Aram was um graduated college and he was ready to go to um uh well, he did his two years at the Santa Monica College and he was ready to go to uh Cal State Long Beach to do industrial design. Yeah. But his his people were started coming into our apartment. There was our garage, our apartment was like a Just to interject here. There's always a lot of people that just walk into your apartment. It seems like it was an open door policy when I came. Yeah. There were there were so many bike riders coming and going and there was gears everywhere and and tools. So, um, it was then when we decided to um get a storage space and it was my father who really believed in Aram and and he he just knew that Aram was going to be successful and he's not the type of person that would say, um, you know, things to please people. He really believed in him. And he gave Aram $15,000 to um start his business. And that's how it started. And then you found the shop and Kenny. Um, we did the the store and Kenny came a little bit later. Because we actually tried to get bike shops to carry, I mean, originally we were trying to get bike shops to carry the predator. And that didn't work. Nobody would carry us. Um, because we had at that time we had a a range of bikes, so we had some like more entry level frames and we had some more like higher end frames. Mhm. Um, and shops didn't want to carry us because we were price competitive to like production trucks and Cannondale. So they would just say, no, we're not going to touch you. Like we, you know, we don't want it. We don't want this bike. Um, and so we got rejected enough times and then we just basically said, well, let's just open our own store. You're like, screw it. Basically, let's go to Kenny, which probably wasn't as like expensive or bougie as it was when I got there. It was. It was. It was. So you went, you shot for the moon, you're like, let's let's go here. Well, also the property the the space that we got was an awkward space. So it was going for way less than what the street rate was going for. Right. Um, and we had, I think what, 600 square foot shop, but we had like 1400 square feet of yard space in front of it. It was an old house. Right. So we turned the front into like an outdoor showroom, we had our entire bike work area. We had made like a tarp over like a. It was it was interesting, we had like this tarp area that we had covered so that we could have an outdoor basically bike shop. Like our whole service area was outside in the back. So you did retail and service. We're doing retail and service and we ended up doing like a bunch of events. Like bike events and stuff. You were doing like lifestyle branding before it was a thing. It was a lifestyle branded boutique. Like come drink coffee in the morning and then come party at night. It was too early. Cuz you were doing art shows. Or you were. Yeah, we did art shows. Collaborating with other people. We had it was a cool. It was it was a little too early for the bike scene to kind of quite get what we were trying to do. And also I was not I wasn't good enough at retail to know how to like quite pull it all off. And I had we had the idea, the vision we had, we knew what we wanted. Um, we lacked some of the retail skills to execute it to its fullest. Also, I mean, we didn't have the the massive bank roll to to just go full gas. So we had to always kind of like piecemeal it. Um, but we did. I mean, we did pretty well. It was a hit place. So many people wanted to hang out there. And I planted these beautiful Mexican plants. Remember? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The purple flowers. The purple. Yeah. It's not. Well, it was cool because it would literally, so like we had this like patio front in front of the shop. And so my mom had planted all the flowers in front of it and then we had these bikes on display next to it. Yeah. And there was this Ivy wall and so I had mounted bikes along the Ivy wall. So it was just really cool. Like you go down Kenny and you saw us. Because like there's literally like a six-foot concrete wall dividing these two buildings and then there's just like $10,000 bikes hanging up on top of the wall. all into like in the sky. Right. So like everyone saw it. It was you were just before your time. It was before our time and, you know, I didn't know as much as I know now. It would have helped. I had a lot of information now that would have helped me a lot back then. So. And that's such a thing now with like bike shops. It's like, come get coffee and have some food and it's like a restaurant/bike shop/hang center. Well, yeah, I mean, actually my mom and I had that conversation like when we were first starting it because our theory was not to be a bike shop where like, you know, at the time in the biggest shop in LA, I mean still I think to this day is like Helen's, especially on the west side. Helen's Cycles is the biggest. We weren't trying to be Helen's Cycles. That was not our objective. We were trying to be a very boutique and more on the service side. So like for us, I mean, we had half of our interior space was dedicated to bike fitting. I mean, it was bike fit studio, um, service center. I mean, we were the first shop in on in Southern California. I think in the nation to be a Campy certified pro shop. I mean, we were going after like mechanical certifications and like all just high-end stuff. That's all we went after. Um, and like we actually like we were one of the few shops that like delivered like picked up and dropped off bike services to customers. I mean, that's things that we did. Oh yeah. Yeah, like we would literally go by people's house in the morning and do a round and pick up bikes, take them to the shop, service them and drop them off in the evening. Um, for like some of our, I mean, our our our good customers. Mhm. Um, and I mean, we had, yeah, we had a lot of really high-end customers that did a lot of, I mean, they came to us for everything. They were the shop once a week, twice a week, they were there. And you and you sold quite a few bikes there. Oh yeah. I mean, that's how the Abbott, the Abbott bike came out because of that. Um, Mhm. Yeah, it was. And we had fabulous neighbors across the street, remember? The barbecue place. Oh yeah, the barbecue joint. Yes, we had a lot of cool neighbors. Yeah, the barbecue neighbors. It was a cool, it was a cool street. There was there was there was highs and lows of it. Yeah, that was my next question. What were each each of you, what was your highlight and your low light of that era? Abby Kenny? Yeah. I'll let you start. It was just a really quaint, uh, space, especially the front. Uh, we had, oh, we used to do the Tour de France evenings there. We used to screen. Tour nights. Mhm. That was a mistake. I mean, we had made a nice poster. I I used to record, which I I don't think is legal, but I used to record the live broadcast of the tour of three days and then I would cut together my own highlight reel, um, down to like an hour and rebroadcast it at our shop. I think once you cut it. I don't know. I don't know about copyright law in college, but I think once you edit it and make it your own and then I think if you have less than like 12 people, it doesn't count as a showing. Well, as long as long as you weren't collecting money for them to get in. No. No, we had tour nights. I mean, we had a tip jar in the on in the office. Um, but no, it was super fun though. But it was, oh my God, was it so much work? It was so much work to cut those things down and do it. But it was a lot of fun. Um, we used to get, I don't know, anywhere from like a slow night was eight to like I think 35, 40 people would come out and they would all sit in the front in our front courtyard. Mhm. We'd have a TV set up in the front. And it was cool because it was a ton of people that weren't cyclists, which just come as like it was cool like, um, and people would order pizzas and like, you know, grab some beers and just everyone hung out in the front and just watched the tour. It was cool. So what was the low light of being there or or retail in general? Or the hardships of starting a business? I I I think I I mean, I think for me, I could say definitely the retail side of it, learning the retail side of it and the the day I I think one of the hard things for me was was the day-to-day grind of retail. Like you can't get ahead. It just this endless like you're always behind kind of mentality and like always trying to get to the next thing. It's it was hard. Um, that was definitely hard and trying to balance that while we were also manufacturing. I mean, we were like, we were manufacturing bikes. Mhm. So that balancing act was super hard and challenging and I mean, that is why we ended up closing the store. And expensive. It was yeah. I mean, well, I mean, that kind of rolls into like expensive. It was an expensive undertaking not just the the store, but like the the inventory, like the day-to-day inventory we had to carry. And especially on the high-end side, you know, at that time, we couldn't get a lot of replacement parts same day next day, like by from distributors. Like we had to stock a bunch of stuff. Yeah. So there was times when I mean, we had, I mean, we would have we could have easily had $80,000, $100,000 of inventory sitting in the shelves of just spare parts. I mean, and those are like, you're not even talking about a lot of parts. I mean, Campy cassettes were Yeah. 600 bucks, like. Yeah. You got a couple of those, some chain rings, some tires, you know, we used to carry all the sew ups. 100 a pop cost. I mean, it adds up really fast. Mhm. Um, so that that was definitely a hardship trying to figure that all out and balance it. Yeah. Um, and learn it. Mhm. So. So then you took predator and you kind of revamped how you wanted to uh operate, I guess. And you went more towards um, maintenance and um, Yeah, we got. making things less retail. So you you moved the store to Santa Monica. Yep. And to a tiny little garage. Yep. The cinder block, the cinder block garage. Yes. So, which was not front facing, which kind of only knew it was there if you knew it was there. Yep. So, um, Well, that was, I mean, to to yeah, one of the problems that we had with the old shop on Abby Kenny was we get a lot of people that walk in and talk to us about things and whatnot. And they never would buy anything. And then there your day went. Yeah, so like literally we just like. Which I actually thought was the case at the Santa Monica location when I met you. Well, that's kind of my situation everywhere. That's why no one's now the doors are all locked. No one's allowed. Yes, I locked the doors. Um, so what do you remember most about Predator at that time in Santa Monica? Highlights, low lights, anything spectacular happened? Other than I came. I mean, that's the highlight. I mean, you and Charlie are the highlight of Santa Monica. Uh, Santa. But you were there for like two or three years before I got there, right? I got there in 2012. When did you move to Santa Monica? 2008. 2008. Oh, yeah, so you'd been there for a while. Yeah. I mean, Santa Monica was a cool. That was a really cool shop because I think Santa Monica shop is where Predator kind of became Predator. Or at least in my opinion of what we always wanted to be. Um, it was, I mean, we had. Um, I mean myself, we had Larry, we had CJ. Um, you know, we're like, I mean, those are the main guys we had there and. just bike racers building race bikes and race parts and maintenance for other bike racers. I mean, that was kind of our thing. Um, Mhm. I mean, not everyone we serviced was was a racer, but I'd say 80% were. Um, I mean, we did Taylor Finney's bike for the World Championships. We redid his bottom brackets and did all his sizing and stuff to get his bikes together. I mean, we had top pros in the shop on a weekly basis. Mhm. It was pretty cool. Um, So it was it was fun. I. And there we kind of really just went into our niche of what we, you know, what we are today. Is of just. You started going more online there. We we started online, I think it was like 09. ish is when we started. We. Okay. So we knew. at Abby Kenny, we knew that the future of our business. was always going to be online. I mean, we knew that then. Um, but we didn't know quite how to do it. Um, and so in Abby Kenny, we actually sat in the back of the shop with Zach and my friend Zach and I would sit back there. trying to figure out how to build this website with e-commerce and trying to figure it all out. It took us almost two and a half years to build something that made sense. Um, and we launched our first online store. Um, and it kind of has taken off ever since then. Um, but yeah, so we focused more online for our consumer products and made the shop more of a retail space for like retail work on. I say retail. Service for bike service. Carbon. Carbon repair. That's where carbon repair took off for us. Um, You had the team. We had the team eventually. That's right, right when I met you. Um, was when the team we started the team. Highlight and a low light, all at the same time. Yeah, that was fun, but also like a lot of work and expensive and just. Yeah. Like. That was a lot to take on. Um, but no, it was good. I mean, Santa Monica was a cool. It was a cool space. And I took care of the books. You did, you took you took care of a lot more. books. You took care of the whole thing. Yeah. So, anything else about that time? In Santa Monica? Highlight, low lights, that's all. Um, Anything? No? It was hard work. Um, there were times when Arm was down on himself and always he's always so hard on himself. Um, so trying to encourage him. Pick himself up again. I just laugh him in the face a few times. Here. Wow. Say man up. Get work done. I'm glad my mommy's here. Yeah, well, you know, two different types of co-owners, so. Um, so speaking of, you stopped being a co-owner when we moved the business to Tennessee. So, uh, do you miss it? Or or even Kaga Park, do you miss it? Oh, yes, I forgot Kaga Park. Because we deserve to forget Kaga Park. Oh, yeah. There's Kaga Park. That was only like a year. Two years. Two years. Yeah. handed it over to you, Courtney. Yeah. Well, I still wasn't a co-owner. I was just No, you're officially, I mean, officially tired worker. Yeah. So, but that was the same as Santa Monica. That was service and Yeah. But that's when we started getting more um tech techy, CNC, um Yeah. That's where we started tinkering. Yeah. Oh yeah, we still tinker. Yeah. But that was like learning curves. Yeah, I mean, I think Kaga Park was also again, well, so it's kind of been a a a a trail since Abbot Kenny. Abbot Kenny we got away from more of the face fronting retail and then in uh Santa Monica, we got rid of more of that retail we got rid of and started focusing more on service, more nichey. We were just prisoners of the valley. Kaga Park, it was appointment only, the front door was locked. Yeah, I mean, like we didn't even, I don't even think we published our address. No. I don't I think it was we made it difficult for you to find us. You just had to follow the police helicopter. Yeah, there was two police boss like a block from us. Um, But uh, yeah, and I think that's where we kind of started getting into our rabbit hole of like designing the new all the stuff that we've been talking about on these podcasts like for the last 15 episodes, 16 episodes. Um, All of that is what we've been working on in Kaga Park is where that kind of really came together. Right. That was more of a like, I don't know, learning atmosphere where we just like dove deep into like you started getting into more of your software, which Yeah. Then segue quickly into our location here. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, back to my question. Do you miss being a co-owner of Predator Cycling? No. Do you enjoy your retirement in Beverly Hills? I do. And I'm so proud of you, Courtney, that you've kind of Mhm. taken over and taken pushed the company to another level. Mhm. Together, both of you. Yeah. Well, I said two different types of owners. Yeah. I just push them. Yeah. Apparently slap me. Just giving you some slaps. Wake you up. Yeah. Um, and then uh, so, but you are staying constant with everything because you talk to arm very frequently. Yeah, every day. Every multiple times. Sometimes. And um, so do you understand half of what arm goes on and on and on about when he talks about the technology side and what we're doing now? Goes right over my head. But I listen and I try to learn from him. And what he what he the end product is just so beautiful. Arm makes the most beautiful bikes. Mhm. From the get go. And water bottle cages. Mhm. And other components we're going to release. And he and he knows how to fit people on bikes like no one else. Yeah, and we've been doing a lot more of that lately, bike fitting. Mhm. That kind of went um by the wayside for And then I guess they heard about you. Tennesseeans are coming. I guess. I mean, Yeah, I don't know how I don't know how that happened. I don't know. I don't know how that all happened. But yeah, we said we weren't going to do bike fits when came here. Um, But you're such a good, you're such a good bike fitter. And you're I'm just so proud of you. You're just like you have these huge companies coming and interviewing you. Mhm. Yeah. We've been we've had it's been pretty crazy. Yeah. Thank you. Um, yeah, we've had a we've had a lot of uh got a lot of cool opportunities in the last couple years. So, it's Cuz you're cuz you're smart. Now, who did he get his smarts from exactly? My mom. Your mom. My mom. I got all, yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, and then just the last question to kind of round out the conversation, what do you see for Predator in the future? Near future. I see huge success. I see Um, you guys, you've pushed forward already and I and I can just see it going even further. Mhm. And just um, I know you're going to be very successful. And I wish you all the best, both of you. And what do you see for the near future Predator? Um, Sleep. Sleep would be nice. Definitely running low on that lately. Um, No, I'm excited. I I you know, I I think we're going to do really well. I I'm really excited because um for the first time, it's funny when I when I first started Predator, started talking about Predator and like I would tell my mom these crazy things. I'm like, look, there's all these I would read these articles like in popular mechanics like these robots and all this design stuff. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, you're going to make bikes with robots and they're going to weld things together and piece it like this could all happen. And it's just like And like now like looking at it, I'm like, it's I mean, yeah, it's, you know, almost 20 years later, but it's like we're actually doing it. Like We're really close to like all those crazy ideas, all these simulation stuff that I wanted to learn back then and um, Mhm. And all these like manufacturing platforms that we ended up inventing that kind of sat in the way side. Um, you've kind of in the last couple years been able to put it all together into these like manufacturing platforms. So it's been cool. I'm I'm really excited to see, you know, all of these platforms come to life this year and really see what we can do. Yeah. Well, I see some big investor coming and cracking your head open and taking the brain and then giving us lots and lots of money. I see a private jet. I see a beach. I see bicycles on the beach. And I see a drink in my hand. Oh yeah, let's have an in it. Yes. I could get behind that too. Oh wait, did I say what I see for predator or what I see for me? Um, cool. Well, And and all made in the USA, all made in house. That is incredible. Yeah, that's that's something we've I mean, that's something we've kind of always stuck to um from the beginning, but yeah. Yeah. Made in Santa Monica, made it at uh uh what is it Venice, made in the Valley, made in Tennessee. So you're the golden team. Dream team. Golden Dream team. So, okay. Well, let's wrap it up. I'm going to talk about some recent news first. Um, engineering.com posted an interesting article about Arm and Predator last week, um focusing on our use of the Lenovo P620 and how we're implementing implementing new workflows. Um, check that out on engineering.com. Arm is also getting ready to record his Ansys Semi World course and his GTC course here this week and next week. So that should be happening soon. We're working diligently on the Genius water bottle cages. They are printed. We are trying to perfect our our painting techniques because we are not painters. And anything else you want to add before I wrap it up? No, I think that's that yeah, that wraps it up. Okay. Well, look, actually, we thank you for choosing to take some time with us and we look forward to future breakaways. Look for us on Instagram and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and in person here in Tennessee. We ask our listeners to please share, like, and subscribe. We're available on all major streaming platforms. Thanks for listening. Have a good one and find some time to break away.