Hello and good day to you from episode 23 of our podcast series Project Breakaway. I'm 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 Godian, the other co-owner, CEO, lead designer and engineer, and West Coast kid at Predator cycling. How's it going? Uh, it's going really well. Um, happy to be back in Tennessee and uh, we had a nice little break in California. So it's been a minute. Yeah. We took a little planned week hiatus and that turned into a two-week hiatus. Um, two weeks ago, we were hosting our friend Kurt from Ansis here. He'd flown in to shoot a little customer video about Predator and how we use Ansis software here in the shop. And I'm not sure when that video will post, but I'm sure it'll post here soon. Yeah, I think it's a couple parts and it's going to be one coming here soon and then some other videos will drip throughout the year. Yeah, so Kurt was out here and he brought with him Adam, who's a freelance videographer and editor. Um, and it was just a really uh, chill shoot. Yeah, it was nice. It was cool, plus it was kind of fun. I've known Kurt for years. Yeah, it's always easier to shoot like that, those type of things with like friends and people you know. Rather than we've had other people here and it's just a little bit more professional. Not not that we're not professional. But it's just like easier to like sit down for an interview and it's just, you know, friend with friends and not. Yeah, it's easier because you just have a relationship with the person. And with with Kurt, we already knew what the topics were. Anyway, it was good, it was a good, I think it was a good shoot. It was fun. Um, and luckily this one features um, you and not me. So I don't have to sit there and worry about talking on camera and like, my hair and flyaways and hair, I mean it's just ridiculous. Uh, yeah. Um, yeah, you didn't, you did not want to be in this one. No, I, I, I like to be behind the camera. There you go. Telling you what to do and say. You're good at that. I'm always behind the scenes telling Arm what to do and say. That's my job. This is true. Um, so that's cool. So we're looking forward to that. And uh, yeah, it was cool. We just went downtown and, you know, ate some, or no, we ate some barbecue at the house. Mhm. And then we tried to go to a beer garden with a two-year-old, which apparently did not work. Did not work. They were recording. Yeah, we were trying to pick outdoor spaces and anyways. We got some burgers and they were delicious. It was good. So, um, there was that and then last week we missed, um, we were closed locally. But we were still operational online. Um, but we made our first pandemic post vaccinated flight back to Los Angeles. Yep. To visit your family. Yep, that was nice. Um, so it was interesting to see uh, pan mid pandemic, post pandemic LA. Yeah. Um, and how it's affected, um, just like the economy. And businesses. And like. All of our old stomping grounds, we kind of drove through Santa Monica. And most of the places that we used to go were closed, but some were still struggling with minor changes. Yeah, it was, it was pretty crazy to watch, like look at the difference between, you know, a year and a half ago. And now, like last time we were in about a year and a half ago. Last time we were in LA. And now it's a big difference. I'm wondering if we would have survived pandemic LA. Because I mean, we were online, but also we had a lot of people stop by the shop. And I assume that bike shops were. Though bike shops. We're considered. Essential. Essential. I don't know. Businesses. I don't know what would have happened. Yeah, I don't know. It just seemed apocalyptic. It did. Uh, it, it did, you could definitely see how bad it hit. Parts of LA. Um. Yeah. So we went to uh, Griffith Park for the first time after. My first time. I don't know. You'd been there. Yeah. Been there. Before. We rode the trains. We did. Um, we rode the trains. Uh, we went to the train museum. What was it called? The train train town. Travel town. Travel town. Travel town. That was super cool. Yeah. Um, Mika loved it. So. That was good. And then uh, another highlight of our apocalyptic Santa Monica Pier trip. Oh my God. Was uh. I don't want to name the, I'm not going to name the coffee shop. But there's a coffee shop. That we a chain. Local chain. Local chain. I don't know. I've never seen outside of California. Anyway. Most of them have closed. We were looking for them. Looking, looking, looking. Every location. It closed. But found one. Yeah. Santa Monica Pier. Yeah. And got a muffin. And there was a little surprise in my muffin. There was. A little gray furry animal baked right in the center, the gooey chocolatey center. It was pretty gross. We could be sitting high right now. With our probably a nice loss. No, we would be in litigation. Right now. Probably. Oh, whatever. Spending too much money, but I didn't take a picture of it. Because I was so grossed out. Um, and then of course our son was like, wanted his muffin. He's like, where's my muffin? I was like, throw in the trash. Throw in the trash. Throw everything in the trash. Everything went in the trash. The coffee, the muffins. Everything. It was disgusting. And he wanted to go on rides, so it was not worth. The feeling. Oh man. But no one wants to find an animal. Baked into their muffin. No. I don't know if. I thought I'm pretty sure I thought it was vegetarian. But I guess it wasn't. Oh hey man. Well, we're back in Tennessee where I've yet to run into any sort of animal baked into a food. By accident. It was so perfectly aligned in the center. I don't even know if it was an accident. I don't know. That was pretty gross. I was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh. I don't even know what animal it was. It was great. I assume it was some sort of mouse rodent. It was pretty round and it was meaty. Oh, I'm getting sick thinking about it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So. Next topic. Let's. Yeah. We're back, back in Tennessee. Anyway. We. just got back. Uh, yesterday was our first day. We're getting reacclimated to the shop. And I spent all day yesterday just returning emails, catching up on the books and orders. And then we're spending uh the rest of this week um here after the podcast working on the RF 20 size 56 production mold. Yep. Um, so I thought we would just quickly um use this episode to discuss. uh small business restructuring. Yeah, that's it. Um, since we're not technically working on anything at the moment. Or we spent two weeks not working on anything. Yep. Um, we would just kind of discuss like how we operate and how we did operate. And how we want to operate. Um. So nothing too in depth. But we do get asked a lot about. Um, you know, because I guess we went back to visit your family. And everyone's like, how's business? Yeah. I don't know if that's an Armenian thing. The men, the men always talk discuss business. I don't know. And then the women always end up like. watching the kid or in the kitchen. I mean, it's not like I'm not saying like, you know, 1950s over here. But just how it naturally happens. Uh. Okay. Um, I don't know. I don't know if that's a. Okay, that's that's another topic. I just noticed it. Anyway, so people are like, how's business? And so we get asked a lot about like volume of frames. And how many we we currently have and like why is. Yep. The major pilot not out yet and, you know. Yep. Well, we're all trying to like fulfill kit orders and cleat adapters like nationally. And, you know. In conjunction with you're designing new product at all hours of the day. And you're teaching online. And we're trying to retain these um very important relationships with all these software companies. That we have forged. And then um of course just all the back end jargon of keeping a business operational. Books and taxes and bookkeeping and. Anyway. So. It's a lot. Um, I just wanted to remind everyone that when we left LA. We also left all of our employees in LA. Yeah. We had. downsized at that point. Um. And we really tried to focus on bringing in automation. I mean, not just machine automation, but software automation to assist in. Yeah, it was, you know. We had a big, I mean, we boomed pretty big about eight years ago. We had. That was pre Courtney. That was pre Courtney. So you you boomed, you boomed out right before me. Well, that was when we had a lot of growth. We were doing carbon repair. We had our we had our major bars. We had we just released. We had our carbon frames we had just come out with. And we were kind of just really we were busy. We were cranking out. I mean, we were running on all cylinders. Just pushing product out. And, you know, one of the things like we learned really quickly that like some of the headaches that were stopping us or slowing our growth wasn't actually like the the amount of work that we could do like on the products. But it was like the small things. It was like you know, we sell on a couple different platforms. We have different ways customers can contact us. And keeping on top of how customers contact us. Making sure we get back to them. Phone calls, who called first. Um, processing orders. Um, managing inventory, shipping product. All of that was a huge portion of our of our workload. Just your day-to-day. I mean, if you think of a medium to large-sized business, they have departments. Right. So we we don't. This our marketing department. This is our communications department. Yes, yes. And so, you know, that was a big thing that slowed us down very quickly. And then, you know, when you're we were always trying to push predator to the next level. And as we started pushing things to the next level, we started developing new systems and new procedures and new models and new processes. And that just added more and more work to the entire assembly. And it started becoming to a point where it was like we were innovating stuff, but we couldn't actually it was too much of like the nitty-gritty work to get it to production and to get it out the door. It was really difficult. So, one of the things when we moved from Santa Monica and we moved to our Canoga Park shop, it was to really focus on streamlining that process and revisiting it all. Mhm. And then And there's no right answer when you're trying to find this. It's literally testing. Well, and there's no one there's very few people that actually talk about it too. Because it's such a complicated system. I mean, one of the things that's that's different about predator from a lot of other places is that we actually I mean, come up with our own product. We do all of the concept sketches. Uh, early on simulation, design, the assembly system. We we manufacture our molds. Half the time we build our own custom machines. We take the product to testing, physical testing, prototyping, manufacturing, and then distribution. So we're doing all of that in house. And trying to manage that whole process is really difficult. Um, and that's kind of what we worked really hard on when we went to Canoga Park, trying to streamline that. And then again when we moved here and kind of like, you know, I've called it Predator 2.0. Really look at that so that we could build something that was scalable and efficient and um, we weren't redoing work that we hadn't, you know, we'd already done. Um, which our old processes we did. We did. I mean, probably 60% of our work. Um, so that was a big focus. So when we're talking about like you said the nitty gritty details of running a small business. Yeah. So I'm talking about like um like you said ERP, which I had to look up was enterprise resource planning. Yeah. Like software and marketing and shipping and and inventory, supply management, keeping all the records in one place. Yep. Um purchasing the software to do it and then of course testing them because you purchase the software and you find out it doesn't work and then you got to new software and also keeping all of that affordable. Yeah. Um. Yeah, and also I mean like, yes, absolutely. There's all that and then on top of that, all of the modeling and assemblies and part lists and keeping all of that organized. And and kind of give you an idea like when we first started Predator cycling with our first arrow frame. Um, we were talking about, you know, 12, 15 tubes plus little parts and assemblies. Um, we had a little add-on parts that we had, um, you know, you're talking about 20 items. that built up the entire frame. Mhm. Um, we're now on the RF 20, if you count our entire part list. I mean, we're well over. If you include molds and everything and assemblies that go into the bike, we're well over 5,000 parts. Well, your product design has become more complicated. Right. So you sit and you design all of your products. Yeah. And then we have to prototype them and test them. And bring them to market. But like, so the one. And the manufacturing though, you were talking about 20 parts. Yeah. And some epoxy and tube to tube construction. Now you're talking about we're doing our own cutting our own molds. And when, you know, you're testing your supplies, I'm just doesn't test like, hey, I found an epoxy or a silicone. I think it'll work really well. It's like, oh, hey, I found this probably five silicones we could try and then um this other bagging material. But I'm not sure. We could try this other other bagging. So it just like it just adds up. You got to but you have to test them all. To see which works. Yep. No, there's a lot, we have to test a lot of different systems and procedures and parts. And, you know, we're we're talking about thousands of parts now. Thousands of designs, um, hundreds of cam operations that are running different parts of of the molds to to make the parts. Um, and managing all of that and then you make an update and trying to make sure everything updates correctly. It it's very, it gets really cumbersome. And then it's time consuming. It's very time consuming. And so one of the big things that we focused on in in in moving here was streamlining that. And um the new products that we've been putting out are a demonstration of that process. Um, the RF 20 is the first example and then obviously the genius uh bottle cage and the cleat adapters, um that have come out. These are all examples of streamlining that process so that we could actually produce things efficiently with efficient modeling. Um, simulation, validation. Well, you always talk about scalability. that you're not going to do a product. that we can't scale. Because I mean. Right. All of our bikes are always custom one-off pieces and you have to measure each individual. blah, blah, blah. Yep. how you're realigning. Right. Because I was starting to test like stock sizes. So on the RF 20, we have the option of a custom frame, which you can get fully customized in any which way you want. Pretty, I mean, with within the restrictions of bottom bracket systems and like disc brakes and things like that. But geometry wise, we can do essentially any geometry. And that's custom done to the order. We're also doing stock sizes. Um, so we'll have an off the shelf stock size that you can pick from, which I have the geometry on our website. Um, so we have that as well, so that we can try and scale it better. Because one of the things we always got was like, you know, I don't really want a custom frame or I, you know, like I fit on a lot of these stock frames. Fit me just fine. So we tried to make a nice selection of stock frames that you can pick from. Um, and it helps us scale a little bit. And, you know, one of the things that we did with the Predator 2.0 is is talk a lot about scalability. Talk a lot about touch time and what could be manageable from our perspective. So one of the things that we did was our original tube-to-tube carbon frames. We're done using a tube-to-tube system. So we miter and cut all of our tubes and put them together. But then more importantly, it would take, you know, 40 to 60 hours to make a bike. You know, to get it all done and finished. Now our touch time on the product is is much closer to like four to six hours. We've drastically reduced our touch time. Now, we've reduced our touch time and increased our quality. We've increased our our our product's efficiency. Our overall product is a lot better. And we're doing it in less touch time. Now we've spent way more time on the design, way more time on on engineering, simulation. And be able to validate the process. But that's a huge accomplishment that we did. And then with the evolution of our workflow so that we could streamline everything. Our direct to print 3D 3D printed parts like the the genius cage. Um, are able to actually be produced. And we could actually do, you know, hundreds of variations of it, validate the process, validate the simulation. Produce it, test it, validate it, and then take it out. You know, actually ship them. So, um, yeah, it's been a, you know, we we may not look like we've been doing a lot of, um, products have been coming out. But the back end infrastructure of our of our company has been completely reworked. I think that's what a lot of uh customers that I mean. Because we we stick we stay to ourselves. So we don't. Our marketing department is horrible here. Um, but uh basically we got a lot of customers like, oh, you know, what have you been doing? I don't see any bikes, blah, blah, blah. I can't express to you how much we work. I'm tired of working. Um, we're we're not we're a bike company. Yes, we're a manufacturer. Yes, but like we've just propelled ourselves into this design world as a technology company. Yeah. And that's why we highlight a lot of these technology companies on our podcast because they're such an integral part of where we are trying to get to here in the future. Yeah. And I think we're going to get there quickly because Yeah. Arm has um does a lot of side projects for these companies too that just like their minds are like. Yeah. Like this can be done like in a, you know, Yeah. product market field, not just this like imagineer. Yeah. Imagineer is specific to Disney, is that? Yeah. Imagination. Imagination world. Yeah, it's just not, it's not something you see like Right. in a in a movie, that's what these companies are striving to do is to make their products applicable to like US manufacturing. Yeah. So we can, you know, get this economy going and get. Yeah. Yeah, like, you know. For sure. Um basically what and and in recently we've gotten interest uh from customers who want to tube to tube construction. Oh yeah, our old bikes. Yeah, and we we have to say, you know, we would love to make bikes for you and we want you to ride predator, but like we don't want to revert to our old ways because we've worked so hard. Yeah. to make this new manufacturing platform. Right. So just last week or just this just this week. This is what we're talking about. This week I got a request. Yeah. It was a just, you know, hey, can you guys make me a custom tube to tube um uh. We've actually what what break? Uh rim break. Rim break. Rim break bike. Bike. And I was like, Yeah. Nope, sorry. Um, yeah, we've actually had past customers reach out that wanted to replace like replacements to their old frames because, you know, it just it's eight years old, Yeah. 10-year-old carbon frame and it's, you know, they want a new frame. Yeah. And um, Yeah. we had to say no. Yeah. Um, you know, most of them have gone off and got bought. Yeah. RF 20 custom RF 20s, but like some of them, you know, wanted their old frame style that just new standards. Yeah. And we just. Yeah. We had to say no. Yeah. Um, because it also comes back to the to the labor side of it. Yeah. Like we just for us right now to dedicate that much of our man hours to sanding and prepping and mitering. Yeah. We just we just can't do it. It doesn't make sense anymore. They need a sanding robot. That's what our next project is. Well, but that's the point, but like the thing is though, Yeah. like the way we redesigned our parts, we don't have the sanding. Right. We're doing net finished parts. Right. I mean, there's still a light scuff before paint. Yeah. But like we're not filling and smoothing and doing it. Yeah. And I mean, you can get into the whole argument. Yeah. Anyway, on the composite side, there's some interesting things to discuss about that. Yeah. But that's something that we've stayed away from so that we can scale our business and scale the bit. Yeah. You know, scale predator. Yeah. And that's kind of the cool thing. Yeah. So I mean, something maybe we'll highlight in future episodes is talking about our framework that we've kind of built to run predator. Yeah. Um, which we're actually um following in the footsteps of how Amazon and everybody else um have done it successfully. Yeah. It's actually making it as a. framework, which is something we've been working on really hard, um, and integrating all parts of the business aspect. Um, for a true ERP PLM system, like What's PLM? Um, product management, life life cycle management. Well, none of those say have PL or well, product. Product life cycle management. Yeah. Yes, there you go. Um, so talking about like, you're talking about the product itself and how it's built, assembled. Um, drawn, specified, sourced, material. Right. All that. Organizing all of that. Organizing that in conjunction with, yeah, digitally and in conjunction with how that's correlated to your actual business. Mhm. So we've been working on our own framework. That's hard to keep all that. And, and, and. We're going to be introducing soon, adding all that into like VR and AR. We are. Which we discussed two, two, three weeks ago on Omniverse episode. Yeah. So like. There's just like things in the works that we're trying to prepare for. Well, yes. And but that's what kind of makes us an interest. I think that's what makes things interesting for us is because because we have all of the assets, because we have all the original concept designs, drawings, sketches. Um, actually the machinery, the electronics for the machinery, all of that stuff is designed and done. I mean, I think it makes us more interesting for, you know, things like Omniverse. Things like, you know, VR, AR applications. Um, talking about digital twins, I mean, we essentially have all the assets to create fully functional digital twins. Um. Right. And again. We just don't know this stuff. There's a learning curve. And guess what that takes? Time. Well, it's not only just like a learning curve. I mean, some of this stuff has not actually been implemented. A lot. I mean, some of this stuff is like been concepted. But like, I was talking to somebody the other day. Right before we left. And you know, we were talking about like applications of some of the stuff we're trying to do with like this digital twin AR VR type environment. And you know, one of the things that he mentioned was that, you know, no one's actually really done it with a fully functional place in a full digital twin. And like with real time feedback, like it hasn't really been done. There's no documentation for it. There's no road map with like, this is how we did it. Um, or like a course in some university that's taught on this. Or maybe, I mean, other people are doing it in these giant corporations that they're secrets. It's not even, I mean, not even. No, it it's so difficult to do because you can't actually do. Like somebody, like let's take BMW for an example. They did an amazingly cool demo of Omniverse at GTC. This is what we're talking about. But like they did it from an assembly perspective. Where they're looking at complete machine assemblies and where they are and how they respond. I mean, we're taking it to a much more granular. where we're actually having the full machine simulated, where we have full assemblies within our machine simulated and data logging it with process control. You don't think they have their machine simulated? Okay, but I'm talking about not from an operational standpoint. We're like you're looking at the machine, the play goes up and down. Or like how to lay out the factory. I'm talking about this is the pneumatic control on the board. This is the chip that processes this. This is the assembly linkage. I'm interested some of them BMW maybe want to jump on here. And explain what they've been doing with it. I mean, I don't think, I mean, from the demo we saw. They're not doing it from that point. And I understand why they're not doing it. Because it's not entirely relevant for them. They're using it from a factory layout perspective. Um, but we're looking at it from more of a full immersive AR VR digital twin. Like almost assistant, what we're trying to get to. Is is that we're allowing, we're using AR as an assistant to help us build out our facility. Help us build out our product. Um, and to do that and to do it correctly, you would have to have everything modeled. You'd have to have everything in it and fully digital, I mean, digital. Mhm. I mean, we have that. Now it's just a matter of integrating it all together and getting all the data assets together and linked. And pull all that information together and display it correctly. Um, anyways. That's that's. It's yeah. That's that's another episode. But anyway, the point of this episode is uh, you know, making a business better. Yeah, it's and also it's it's kind of revisiting on the topic. A small business too. Very small. Um, it's also revisiting on the topic of. We've been focusing very hard on making sure that the products that we come out with now and going forward. Are scalable and and viable products that we can actually push to market. And are cool. Because that's what we do. Yeah, we make cool stuff. So basically I just wanted to talk about small business restructuring. Started a business when you're a kid. Glued some tubes together, made a bike. And went fast. Oh. We learned. Yes. You built some machines. Yeah. You learned some more. Yeah. You learned you you got some software. Mhm. You became real smart in that. And you know, now we're going to make futuristic awesome things. And you know, come on. I like how you simplified the last 15 years. Flying bicycles. 15 years. Flying bicycles here in the next 10 years. Wow, that's setting the bar pretty high. Anyway, yeah, and and all, you know, arm still all the, you know, that hard. Work with your brain and stuff. And I keep everything running in the background. So that we don't lose him in some sort of like black hole dimensional field that opens up back there. Yes, you do. You keep this entire place running and operating smoothly. Um, for sure. Life manager. Life manager. So, the universe manager. Yeah. Uh, so things to mention before we go. Um, we've gotten a lot of customer feedback on new products that we launched. And we're actively making plans to improve those. And to gather some more educational video type materials. So for like the cleat adapters and the bikes, um, making maybe little three to four minute videos just explaining the process better. Um, so maybe if you get, have more questions about a product before you actually buy it. You can watch these videos and learn more and you don't like, not buy it. Yeah. So, um, it gives you a better idea of what to expect. Or maybe like how to measure like, I don't know, your foot or your angle. Your breaking goals or Yep. Uh, we're going to have a lot more informational stuff coming out. Yeah, so we decided. Yeah. That's also a whole department, right? That's an educational training department. Yes. Yeah. It's your department, right? That falls under me. Um, so anything else for wrap up? No. We're I got to get back to work. Yeah, you got to go to work. I do. I got to do other stuff too. Okay. 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.
EpisodeJun 9, 2021 · 28:54
← Podcast
Project Breakaway with Predator Cycling
23: Restructuring of a Small Business: Hey, It's Complicated, Ep. 23
Co-owners Courtney B and Arm Godian return after a brief hiatus to tackle the complexities of small business restructuring. They dive into Predator Cycling's operational evolution, discussing how they currently operate, how they did in the past, and their strategic vision for the future.
Loading player…