Priority Bicycles

“At the time, I don't think you could find a belt drive bike. Under a thousand dollars.”

“And we were getting approached by VC and PE firms rather consistently. And a lot of the people that run those companies ride bikes and they were hearing about us and they were reaching out. And the timing just didn't feel right. We didn't have enough staff to …”

“Five 50, so half a million dollars.”

“But the higher-end gearing system that we're using on, on our higher-end bikes, we, some of them we still are six months out.”

“You know, I don't remember the exact number, but it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was not a little amount of money. I approached John, who was one of the founders of Coal Systems, and I presented him what my plan was for Priority Bicycles, an…”

“That was our single biggest expense before we launched.”

“Doing software programs, I became a project manager. So I handled this the same way I would a big software implementation. I had every step. I had every supplier. Everybody was in my database. I knew who I was contacting which days. I knew who I was following …”

“And I think in the first day in Kickstarter, we sold over 200,000 dollars in bikes.”

“I don't know if it was five. I would say it was a little south of that, but it was a couple million dollars. And we were cashflow positive. Not by much, but we were cashflow positive every year.”

“Taiwan is still where, where, where most quality bicycles are made, because all of the suppliers are there, from the frame welding, to the seats, to the handlebars, to the grips, everything is made in Taiwan, or at least in, in, if you want a high quality bike…”

“Yeah, if I remember correctly, we sold about 2000 bikes that year, 1500 in the first month, and then 500 in the next six months that follows.”

“I built a bike that I wanted, not a bike that our customers were telling us they wanted. And so, the first lesson there is, is, you know, listen to your customer, because if, as much customer support as I was personally doing at the time, I was hearing from cu…”

“No, we were getting it up to the thirties. We were getting the margin up there, but we were also starting to buy in volume.”

“Innovation is the only way that we can gain market share in a market that is declining right now.”

“A lot of bicycle companies Not priority. Still have too much inventory from the COVID days.”

“Now between hotels and corporate campuses, we have over a thousand locations using our bikes, which is amazing.”

“Now we sell about 70% of our bikes consumer direct.”

“The classic bike was still doing well. So I knew that we had a win that could carry the company, though it couldn't carry me.”