Kodlin USA #457

What's up everyone and welcome back to the Fast Life Podcast.

On today's episode we're sitting down with Holger, the man behind or one of the men behind

the Codland USA.

This brand is known for some killer motorcycles, some very sleek, very classy designed parts

for your motorcycle.

They're now located here in the great state of Texas, which I'm very honored to have them

here.

Had a great time talking with them and you're going to learn a lot about this brand and

this podcast.

But before we get into it, I want to tell you guys real quick about the sponsors that

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Now, let's get into it with Holger.

Hey, guys, you ready to let the dogs out?

Fast Life 5.

All right, man.

First off, thank you and you, who is off air for coming in today, making the trip up here.

I'm glad both of you guys moved to Texas.

And we're kind of doing a two podcast day here, but we're going to focus on individuals

right now and how, I'm not going to try to pronounce the name now.

Which one?

My first name.

No, the brand.

The brand even?

Brand is a little easier than my first name.

I do agree.

And so before you say it, though, let me just give you my point.

Let me tell everybody why.

I feel like my education allows me to sound out things and I say it like, like, in a way

that I think like Americans would say it, like sounded out, you know what I mean?

So how do you say it and go?

I'm sure there's different people that pronounce it in different ways.

I'll just call it Kotlin USA.

Kotlin?

So cod instead of code, I don't know why I like to say code.

Is that, does that change like the meaning of it?

If you say it that way?

The code, I guess it depends on the language.

Oh, I'm trying to shove that thing right up.

So yeah, yeah, just pull the arm.

Yeah, yeah, you got to overdo it and let it rest back like that.

Yeah, yeah.

But, man, I've actually been following, I guess, the mother page Fred, right?

Is that the main guy behind the whole thing?

Fred is the main guy behind the whole thing in Europe.

He started Kotlin in Germany in 84.

84.

And then the main guys behind Kotlin USA is his son Len Kotlin and myself.

We own the company.

Nice, nice.

I've been a fan of the bikes that they've been building in Germany for years.

The paint works always top notch from the, I think there was like errors of like,

I would say kind of big wheels, not.

Yeah, I would say some big wheel stuff back in the day.

I saw some pretty cool ones that you guys had done.

And then you'd always tackled bikes that one of my favorite ones that y'all had done.

And I think maybe you guys did this one.

The American side was the BMW a couple of years ago.

No, that was Germany.

That was Germany.

So Germany is a lot about bike building.

And, you know, it goes like I said, it goes back to 84.

Is when Fred started the company in Europe and he became the number one bike

building in Europe, period, right?

Whatever you heard or read, otherwise.

Kotlin in Europe is associated with Harley Davidson and custom bike building period.

Fred and I used to be friends in Europe.

I used to run custom Chrome Europe and custom Chrome was like the Coca-Cola

in the industry.

Yeah, this is like mid late 90s.

They picked me to build their European presence.

And Fred became Kotlin motorcycles became one of our largest customers, but also

supplier, and he would build custom bikes for the business.

So he would build like a catalog cover bike back in the day.

They were big bikes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were big bikes, right?

You can almost buy everything out of the custom Chrome.

Like, I want this style, this style, this style, right?

Exactly.

So this is when the custom bike building was at its prime, both in the US and in

Europe and custom from Europe.

We would have, you know, all the engine brands, we would have RefTech, of

course, our house brand, but we would have a great partnership with SNS.

We would be exclusive as TP engineering.

And then what we would do is we would make all that stuff legal, right?

Before, you know, before carb and EPA became an issue here, this shit was

going on in Europe, like on steroids, right?

You had to approve the frames.

You had to, you know, get emission approval on engines.

All those components break parts.

You name it.

Why do you think it was so like harsh out there?

Well, I guess because the Germans came up with the idea, right?

We're like, you know, we'll have things in the box where we can say these are

the rules and that's how you stick to them.

But it's, you know, all the, all the emissions, all the compliance.

Actually, how does that work?

You know, with, with all this, the countries over there, does there become

like one kind of umbrella encompassing type regulation that works on all the

countries and the way we have in the States?

Or does it become like individually as you cross borders?

It's different rules and regulations.

It's kind of both, right?

So you have everything that's called EC approval.

That's like lighting its emissions that comes from the European Union.

But then there's also standards for different countries.

Germany is very strict.

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, kind of the central European countries.

They're really strict.

And they got TUV, TÜV, probably heard about that.

That's where testing of frames and things, you know, become very relevant.

But then there's still countries out there that don't really care, especially

once you get really up north to, you know, Sweden, even the UK is not that strict.

But, you know, my experience back is like what I said earlier is in the 90s

and early 2000s nowadays, it's like nearly impossible to build a custom bike

and to, you know, ride it, leaving me on the street.

It's getting really, really hard over there.

But, you know, back to Fred Kotler, that's how we reconnected.

So we would have the components.

He would put his, you know, individual parts on it.

We teamed up a lot on building these bikes.

Nice.

There are other brands that we teamed up with, hardcore cycles,

Marcus Wilds, I'm sure.

Yeah, I mean, the hardcore would always have those like single sided

swing arm, like V-Rods and stuff, which the V-Rod never took off here in America

the way, but like when you would see those pictures of the hardcore ones,

you'd be like, man, that's pretty badass.

But it just never seemed to really take off here, though.

No, I think that especially the Germans had a special relationship

with the V-Rod because I think Porsche did develop the engine with Harley

back in the day, Marcus was famous for his drag style bikes.

There were a lot of stuff that was different.

But that's where the brand started.

That's where Colin started, was in Europe.

Yeah.

And then I'm sure we're going to touch on that later, how we ended up doing it in the US.

Yeah, I'm very fascinated because I've heard so much and done so many podcasts

with so many people that have been a part of the 90s industry culture that was going around.

Like you said, the custom chrome and how that was like kind of the top dog

and how it's kind of shifted now or actually custom chrome isn't around anymore.

But but yeah, when it comes to Europe, like I never even considered

like the things that were going on there in the 90s and how the culture

of custom motorcycle building was was being played out over there.

If that makes sense, you know?

Yeah, if you haven't lived through it back then, there was no Instagram

and no social media in early days.

It wasn't even really like an internet.

But most of the trends really started in the US

and then they ended up in in Europe with like two year delay.

But there's also some trends that started over there in Europe, Germany, Italy.

It was like you look at Scandinavia.

There was really strong shops, right?

So some of the stuff went the other way.

Yeah.

But the bottom line is in we

however we look at this thing, the core of the culture

right started in the US and there's a generation

you know, that that, you know, we're there in the 80s, I guess,

in the early 90s, that was inspired by easy riders.

And there was, you know, different inspirations down the road.

But it all started here.

There's no question about that.

Yeah, you know, when you think about styles of like Air Coast choppers,

you know, the different styles in different parts of the country

were fit to ride the different types of styles of terrain and traffic

and shit like that.

You know what I mean?

So when you're out in California, you got really tight bikes for lane

splitting, things like that.

You get up in Frisco, you got taller stuff.

Yeah.

You know, you get out here, you have the D Ray or the Midwest.

You got the D Ray tall bikes.

Like a lot of different styles kind of fit the the the I guess the the

not the terrain, but like just the areas, right?

So I wonder if that also works because, you know, you mentioned

like Swedish style choppers, which is a whole style that come almost

kind of gets into the D Ray look a little bit, the high and tight and stuff

like that. I wonder how much that is out there.

Like is London have a style of bike?

Does Italy have a style of bike?

And, you know, you have a little bit of that, but I wouldn't call it the London

style, but you definitely have, you know, there's a lot of German bike

builders that inspired a lot of others.

And there's a lot of trends that came from that.

There's South Europeans, but put it put that into a category and then

there's kind of things that happen in the North, Eastern Europe played

a role at one point.

But but you have we have a lot of that going on and then it's all, you know,

as Europe is, you know, obviously the whole of Europe with so many countries

and so many different languages, cultures.

I mean, you can fit it into the US a few times, right?

So you look at that and you see how all those those different cultures

inspired some of the custom bike building.

I'm sure once you really dive into it, it's kind of cool.

It's kind of interesting.

You know, I'm a new, recent lover of Porsches.

I've just, you know, basically just got turned on here recently, always

known they existed, obviously, but like just really started to fall in love

with like the design and the aesthetics of the thing, of the machines,

the cars and how they've kind of carried a lineage their entire existence,

not like one day they look like this and then next day look like this.

They've just kind of been a refining of itself, you know, the kind of question

I guess I'm kind of trying to ask is like the culture of Germans, like being

creative in that kind of way of like, like precision and making like, you know,

so many great car companies, you know, from from there, you know, BMW, obviously

that's a big, big motorcycle thing now too, right?

So like, is that something that I think is like just in the people of Germany?

You know what I'm saying?

Or is it more culturally that you kind of get drawn to be into things like

that or the design and it's a good question.

I did a shitty job asking the question, but you know, but I know where you get

into that. I think Germans just like to make the best shit.

Yeah, I think that sums it up.

And engineering is so deeply rooted into the culture.

Sometimes they over engineer stuff too.

But trust me, we've worked on cars.

That's why the stuff works, you know, to me.

And I think that kind of leads us later into what Kotlin USA is about.

Yeah, I like kind of taking the best of all worlds, right?

You got you got really good stuff coming from Europe, particular Germany

in our case, then you got all this cool stuff going on in the US, right?

And we just like to blend all the stuff together.

This is where Len Kotlin, my business partner, how he's so great at is.

He has such an eye for all that and bringing all this together, right?

But in the end of the day, with all this

blending that we're doing, what we should never compromise,

what we never compromise with is quality.

Yeah, the stuff got to work.

Yeah, you put it on a motorcycle, right?

And, you know, we talked about that earlier, how, you know,

you go and cross country with them, right?

You want to make sure you get there in one piece, right?

And nothing falls off.

So for us, that was always like the like the goal.

Absolutely, you got to make sure the quality is there.

You know, I make sense.

I just like I said, I just wondered, you know what I mean?

Because when you think of the different cultures, you know, whether it's

Japanese in the way that they kind of do everything better than like

they do our culture better than us sometimes, you know, Americans, right?

So like they have a style of like craftsmanship that goes into everything they do.

And you can see that in the German engineering and the styling even, you know,

like I said, Porsches earlier, but like I'm really, really horny with

all kinds of 80s and 90s, BMWs, Benz's.

I don't know what it is.

It's just like something at the time I wasn't into it, but maybe it's

tapping into some nostalgia to my millennial nature or something like that.

But I'm just I'm fucking in love with them, man.

And if I open my marketplace right now, it's literally like nothing, but BMWs,

a couple like S 500, you know, the convertible one from like a 95.

It's just prime drug dealer cars.

You know what I'm saying?

I love that shit.

I worked at that dealership for 15 years.

Yeah, he worked at Mercedes.

Yeah, they did a bunch of different brands, but Mercedes and Porsche

mostly is what I like to work on.

And I got to drive them and be around them, worked on some classics too.

Yeah.

Well, I grew up with this stuff, right?

I moved to the U.S. when I was like 30, right?

But you grew up with this stuff.

It's everywhere.

You just take it for granted.

Actually, when I was like 16, 15, 16, 17, I worked in the little town

next to where I grew up at this guy that would restoration 50s and 60s Porsche.

And you bring a bunch of stuff you actually bought in from California

because they were not as rusty as the German stuff, right?

So and that was just that was just a side job to make some money as, you know,

the teenager.

We look to the U.S. and said, oh, look at look at the muscle cars, right?

Look at all the cool stuff that was done here in the 60s and 70s, right?

That got us a kick.

My first dream car was a Chevy pickup truck with a long bed, right?

And I was, shoot, I was maybe 21.

Yeah.

And I wasn't having when I bought that car, right?

Here, it wouldn't have been nothing.

It's just, you know, everybody in the neighborhood has like three of them, right?

Yeah.

So so it's just like the perspective.

Like, yeah, where you look at the stuff that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, they the old Chevy trucks were they were pretty affordable here

until like Instagram, right?

Essentially, Instagram made them where they're all of a sudden they're 100 grand.

So it's a mess.

When you guys, you know, when Lynn came and you guys connected,

what was the the initial goal coming to the United States?

Like, how did you pick where to start?

What year was it?

You know, I believe it was when y'all brought the blue bike to Daytona.

Was that kind of the kickoff?

It was some of that.

The blue bike definitely was part of it.

It was, you know, things sometimes happen for a reason.

You know, I was getting out of corporate.

I was, you know, obviously I was a CEO at Custom Chrome of the U.S.

there for a bunch of years and I joined the Mac group.

I did all that.

I was running Kuri Alkin and Mustang Seats.

And the more I did that, the less I felt connected to the actual industry

and the scene and the parts because you just hang out with a bunch of,

you know, investment group people at board meetings.

And, you know, it's important, don't be wrong, right?

Everything has a time and a place.

But once it consumes like 50 percent of your time, you start questioning yourself.

Why did I get in the motorcycle industry to hang out with those guys?

Right, to be out there and work on cool motorcycle shit.

Right. So I left that world and I started, you know, a small business,

just do a bit of consulting, help some friends and their businesses.

And then, you know, sometimes things happen.

I go to Daytona.

I think it was in in 18. Yeah.

And I hung out with Fred and Len and we had a beer and, you know,

just talk about some stuff and they needed some help.

They were manufacturing some products in-house for the European market

and they were hitting capacity, right?

Because how much can you do?

They were building the best bikes in Europe.

Yeah. They were manufacturing products in-house.

They were powder coating in-house, they were painting in-house.

They had all the stuff going on.

So they asked me if I can help them.

And I said, sure, you know, so we kind of worked on a project or two.

And at one point, we would just talk about the U.S. market.

You know, and obviously the brand was known definitely from people

that used to go to, you know, Daytona Bike Creek in the 90s and 2000s

where Fred would win a Red Soul show, Best of Show, Red Soul.

Walk all these things that he did with one-off crazy creations, right?

But just in general, there was always demand for their product.

But between making it in Germany and shipping it and exchange rate

in customs and nowadays duties, right?

All this stuff made it really hard for the average guy to buy their product.

And they were just really not set up because they were so focused

on the creative side, on the builder side, on the manufacturing side.

So we talked about that for a little bit.

And we just came out with a small line of products

that we thought could do really well in the U.S.

And, you know, I've seen people that come up with great ideas

and then they go all in and throw a lot of money at it and they fail miserably.

That was not really an option for us.

So I said, well, why don't we just leverage my little company that I got?

And then, you know, basically started from my garage.

So we came out with, I think it was 15 part numbers.

I bought a few of those.

I'll show you later.

Right. First, first big hit was our M8 Soft Day lowering kit.

And we just started to create a website and start selling it on the internet.

That was 2020.

Yeah. Right.

So we got started in late 19.

We get into 2020 and then COVID hit.

Yeah. And you were based out of California at the time?

Yeah, up in the Bay Area, just half an hour south of San Jose today.

And that was like the point when it started.

I'm like, OK, we've got to find a real job again at one point here.

Yes. We all thought that was the end.

And then the opposite happened, right?

People were sitting at home, nothing to do.

They were playing with their motorcycles.

They had additional income, right?

All those things happened.

And suddenly our website starts going crazy.

Right. And that's when I started to set up distributors.

So, you know, we had Suzuki and Associates in Japan,

Rollies, Speed Shop in Australia.

People have known for a long time.

Yeah. They like the best in their market, right?

So, we're setting these guys up and they're starting to do really well.

And at that point, we realized this was like mid-2020,

when kind of that first COVID dip was over and it went the other way.

Yeah. We were like, OK, we got something here, right?

And so, Len and I worked really hard on on increasing the product offering.

We moved to, you know, out of the garage, into a real facility.

Yeah. And just, you know, started to build up from there.

But that's really as simple as it is.

It just happened that way.

I always wanted to own my own company, but I always knew

it's got to be the right timing.

It's got to be the right thing.

And, you know, pretty, pretty fast.

I realized, OK, this is it.

This is going to be fun because between Len and I,

we compliment each other so well.

You know, Len is an amazing designer,

but he grew up in the workshop in probably the best workshop

in all Europe and our industry, right?

At Kotlin Motorcycles in Germany.

So he he knew how to weld.

He knew how to, you know, work on the CNC machine.

He can paint. He can fab.

He can do all those things.

He can build a motorcycle, a really cool chopper,

whatever you want to build from the ground up.

But at the same time, he got the talent to sit in front of a screen,

use solar works and come up with the next great product.

Nice. Yeah.

So he is taking care of all the design engineering, all that creative part.

And then I take care of the rest.

I make sure the stuff gets manufactured at the right place at the right time.

I take care of sales and marketing and the day to day operations.

Things that really doesn't really bother them too much.

Right. Yeah. So that makes us a great team.

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That's important.

It is. I mean, as Don's obviously dealing with to and I'm dealing with,

it's easy to do what we're good at doing.

But there's always those two sides of the business, right?

There's all the paperwork, all the, you know, online, the, like you said, the marketing,

all these different things that go into play that, you know, when you're sitting there

racking your brain over designing a part or designing a paint job or whatever it is.

If you tap in, oh, yeah, I need to go do a meeting, a marketing meeting with someone.

You know what I mean?

It changes a different part of your brain all of a sudden. Oh, yeah.

You know, and it's like switching from those different parts back and forth.

Sometimes can be just to cause you a crazy.

Well, and some people make that mistake.

They think they have to be good at everything.

They think they have to do everything yourself.

Now, obviously, when you build a company, you have to do a shit ton of stuff.

You got to know how everything works.

But you also need to surround yourself with people that can do things that you're not good at.

Yeah. I mean, this is my philosophy when I was running companies.

I always tried to find the best people to do, you know, to run a certain department.

And I wanted them to be a hell of a better than me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because otherwise, I would probably still be sitting in that, you know, shop there in Germany

and help the guy, you know, how to fix the old portions, right?

You got to surround yourself with good people.

Now, obviously, when you build a company from scratch, you got to get your hands dirty.

You got to do everything for a while, right?

But don't be a fool and think that you.

Some people think it's weakness not to be able to be doing everything yourself.

And that's total bullshit.

Right. I mean, look at the look at the technology road, right?

You know, whatever I figured out when we started five years ago on the website,

it's completely obsolete now, right?

Yeah, yeah.

In your case, right, when you do your social media, your YouTube, you know,

you got to stay on top of this stuff.

And you just think you cracked the Instagram code.

Yeah, then they change it.

And then two months later, it's a whole new game, right?

So you need people around you that that stay on top of that and are good at that.

Yeah, it's it's an ever changing thing.

And I think that's the maybe for, you know, I'm I.

I got in the industry in 04, it was my first year.

And there felt like things move, things change slower.

Like it was things had longer shelf life the way you did something.

You know, whether it was advertising through a magazine, whether it was

building a bike and hitting the easy rider shows and they tone it.

Like there was a there was a system that if you built a cool bike

and you brought it to the places, then opportunities were waiting at those places

to exploit you basically, you know, you get invited into magazines.

And there was 40 of them to showcase your bike.

You get invited to different bike shows and there was actually money in purses.

And, you know, we're going to take you to the big boy across in Europe

for the grand finale and stuff like that.

Yes, none of that shit exists anymore, you know, and then when social media comes out,

like I think my generation did pretty good because we we knew how to kind of

we already had established ourselves in some form or fashion.

And then this thing came out that we kind of been practicing since my space, right?

And then we start, you know, posting our shit, it does well.

And it's kind of like, you know, for the first six years of Instagram

and Facebook and stuff, it was pretty the same.

And then when the algorithm shit got real fucking good or, you know, not good for us,

but good for, I guess, stealing your attention away, it made it to where

you have to constantly change how you you you show your shit to the world.

And it gets complicated because it's like, I guess, you know, not to bitch

and not to complain right now, but I am.

It it's not about like nowadays to stay on top of the shit.

It's not always about like building like the best stuff.

And it's not like you're rewarded for being the best at it sometimes.

I slightly agree with you on that.

OK, I agree with the philosophy, but for us internally.

For us, it's always product first.

Yeah, yeah, we have.

And I said that earlier, our products got to be the best in our opinion.

Right.

Our opinion is the best looking and it's definitely, you know, top quality.

Yeah.

Just that's just how Len and I operate.

If it doesn't meet, if we wouldn't be able to meet that criteria,

we're not going to make any noise about it.

Right.

So I know where you're going from a marketing perspective.

Yeah.

But for us, it's a product as a center.

The product's got to be bad ass.

Then we build a marketing campaign around it.

Right. If you can't accomplish this, we will not bother.

That's just how we are.

Maybe we're just in a position where we're able to do that.

I 100 percent agree.

That's the way to do it.

That just thrown to the years, right?

I've been doing this for 30 years and I've found people thrown out some stuff

where you look at it like, wow, what's that?

Then they put a huge marketing campaign on it and it explodes

and suddenly disappears again.

Right. Then you look at brands.

Let's talk about the brands in my opinion that do it right for centuries.

Alness, right?

They've been building the best shit for years, decades.

Right. And and yes, they also are really great at marketing, right?

But even with Al and now Corey and Zach and the whole gang,

they're always first class and the product was always perfect.

Right. No, it might not meet your taste or this guy's taste, right?

But they make a beautiful product and it's great quality.

They have that stuff figured out.

That's their role model for us.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

I mean, that's the best one to have, right?

King of custom.

Oh, yeah.

I agree. And that's kind of what I'm getting at is that I guess what I'm seeing,

maybe not so much in the products side of things, but maybe the skill side of things.

Yeah. You know, that like people can oversell their skills now through social

media because their content's good and it overshadows the product.

You know what I mean?

And most people are making decisions and choices to buy shit based on social media,

not based on seeing it in person anymore.

Like we would like what I was saying, we are accustomed to of I saw that

back at Daytona, I got to meet the guy that built it and I love their products.

Now I'm a buyer for life.

I'm a fan for life now.

You know, it seems like a lot of that stuff is shifting in ways.

And I was kind of mentioning earlier that like I'm just being in this

and doing this podcast stuff, it's kind of like I just bet I want to put the question

on the table, does it change?

Does it evolve?

And if it does, does it does it is it good or should we talk about it now

so that people see it?

Maybe they avoid some of it or do we got to let it happen?

It is what it is.

Yeah, it is what it is.

Yeah, you got to, you know, you got to, you know, adjust yourself

and make sure you follow that market.

But isn't it a little painful for like really talented, hardworking people

that spend hours to kind of create like this amazing part?

And there's somebody else that cuts corners and just throw something

out there and is potentially more successful.

100 percent.

That's unfortunate.

So you know, we cannot build a bike anymore, like the best bike ever put

in a bike show in Daytona, right?

And then just stand there and wait for people to call.

Yeah, that's not going to happen.

We know that.

So you got to play the game.

You got to be involved.

And it's fun to you want to.

Yeah, marketing is fun.

I love it.

But for for some people, that's just what I said earlier.

Right. It must be very painful to see others being successful with

something that's just mediocre and it happens.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah.

But I still believe in the end of the day, if you if you if you come out

with a really cool product with something innovative, a product or service,

right, and the quality is there, you eventually going to win.

You got to make sure you put some behind it to promote it.

But you're going to be you're going to be OK.

Yeah, at the end of the day, no matter how, I mean, you can always stand

behind that, right?

That's the main thing is that, you know, you can stand behind

whatever you created, whatever you put out, whatever you build, you know,

like at the end of the day, like there is still the real world that exists.

And that's what happens, you know, in when you can touch it and feel it.

And I think that's probably an important place.

And then you could figure out how to do the marketing, you know, later on.

But yeah, it's a, you know, I I love that.

The having the conversations about it, just seeing where other people's

minds are in the things.

Because when you think about it a lot, like you can kind of put yourself

in a weird little rabbit hole or in a dark place of just thinking it's all

going to shit, you know, a little bit, you know, negative about the things.

But on the other side to play devil's advocate of what I was saying is that

when the things change, it kind of shakes up the market and it makes people

have to stay on their toes.

And I think it keeps things fun ish unless you lose it all.

But for the most part, I think it's fun to like know that you can't just do

the same thing you were doing 20 years ago, and it's going to work today.

You know, to know that you've had to grow yourself, how you connect with the

world and all these different things, you know, 100 percent.

And you've seen, you've seen big brands in this industry, right?

That I don't want to say became irrelevant, right?

Some of them maybe did, but definitely lost its edge.

And it's in its share of the market.

Yeah, 100 percent throughout the years.

I mean, you look at the different categories, look at exhaust, right?

Big one. You look at, you know, would you say a lot of that's happened

once they became, you know, private equity type stuff?

When you you get like a when these companies get bought up and then

there's no creative, there's no hungry.

That's just a check for these people now or what?

Maybe not so much the people, but like it it snips a lot of things in the bud,

do you think I get asked that a lot because I was involved as private equity

quite a bit. And I should say, I didn't always see it end well.

Yeah. And because it's it's it's just suddenly it's, you know,

I mean, I don't want to go too far right now.

Yeah, I think about what we're doing here.

Right. I've been 30 years up in playing with motorcycles, basically.

And and I would I was able to make a good living, raise a family, you know,

buy a house, live a good life because I'm fortunate enough to be in the motorcycle

industry and there's people out there that buy product and are excited about it.

Right. But it's it's based on that, you know, where we're here

because we have people out there that are as enthusiastic about something that we are.

They don't necessarily need all those, you know,

crazy parts that we that we create, but they love it. Right.

So we love it too. That's that's why we do it every day.

That's why we excited to go to work on a Monday morning.

Right. You can't wait for it.

And when some of these and I don't want to call it private equity,

but but if some of these investment company get involved,

their focus changes, you know, they build these groups and it's all about paying

paying down the debt, right, that they had to take on to buy the company.

So from top to bottom, the focus shifts a little bit

and you suck a little bit out of that passion and that love out of those businesses.

Right. And then suddenly you talk about improvement plans and and turns.

There's all it's all important stuff.

You have to make money. We got to do inventory.

But this becomes the center. Right.

The nerdy guys that you put, you know, in the office and you close the door

and you tell them to work on something, they take over. Right.

And these guys take over innovation, you know, gets less.

The excitement becomes less. There's less product launches.

There's the owner of the business spends more or less time talking to

the consumer and to the customer out there and goes out and rides with them

and figures out what they need.

He spends more time in the boardroom and in board meetings. Right.

So it's very dangerous.

I can see how you were good at the consulting because you're you're paying

a great picture for me right now, how this worked.

It's just how it works. It's just a reality.

Right. So so that's why some of these brands suddenly don't come out.

And I'm not going to name the brands, but they don't come out with the new

products that they usually came out with.

There's a company that would launch like 100, 150, 200 new part numbers a year.

And suddenly there's some some stuff that they announced. Right.

So then there's other passionate hungry people that take over the spot.

And that's why a lot of these new brands that are out there.

Kotlin is just a small part of this. Right.

There's a lot of other brands.

Kraus, right. Yeah.

And Trash and, you know, 20 years ago,

you know, Sacha was building some bikes. Right. Yeah.

Right. But suddenly he saw this as opportunity, right.

And he came up with a cool line of products.

Same thing with Trash and same thing with some of the others.

Right. And they just take over that market share and people get excited about it.

Now you've got the social media.

You get all the marketing on top of this.

But the core to me is when these guys lost the passion,

I mean, these guys lost the focus.

That's when they're open for for new brands and new companies.

When you started that whole spill, like it, all I could think of and we don't

have to say names, but all I can think of is the exhaust companies that were so

massive when I got into this industry 20 years ago, that you would open up the

drag catalog and it was just like every year is a new new style, new design, new

finish. And now the market share, I feel like in a lot of ways has become a lot

of the private small groups that are coming up that are, you know, can produce

three pipes a week out of their garage and does a really good job and becomes a

hot thing. And maybe they're not selling in drag yet, but like you said, it opens

up the door for these new people to come in that are passionate, hungry and

things like that. Because I mean, yeah, I'm just thinking in my head, like all

the lot of brands, a lot of brands have kind of gone to the wayside because of

that, I think, you know, and they want to, you know, when you look at the rallies

too, right, when you go to rally and the average consumer, right, he just walks

out that he does not want to have any corporate feel. He might work for Bank

of America. Yeah. Right. And then now finally he's out there, you know, with

his buddies, you know, with his wife, whoever it's right. He wants to be out

that have good time. So so when they go to some of these big ricks, right, that

out there, they still need to get that feel that the people that are there are

doing it for the passion too. And once and this is where again, when these

investment groups come in, once that feeling gets lost a little bit, it's

not really authentic anymore. Right. And then I don't really want it. Yeah. Because

I have the corporate bullshit I got at home. I got when I go back to being a

clerk at Bank of America on Monday, right? Yeah. If I'm out there riding with

my buddy, they want to have a good time. I want to I want to feel like the

people I'm dealing with have the same passion for it. No, that's, that's,

that's well said. That's that's exactly what I, you know, on both sides of the

coin as a rider myself and as a guy that has a brand, I want it to always be

about the passion of going and, you know, being stoked that you got this part of

this paint job or this build or, you know, this cam, whatever it is, like, you

know, I think about, you know, Black Hills Harley during Sturgis, you know, and

I think about all my friends that are set up in Booth and how everybody's

waiting to go get a trash turbo because they want to do it there at the

rally or, you know, a Thunder Max or whatever the case may be. You know what

I mean? But how cool is it when you go and wait in line to get the trash turbo

to meet Nick? Yeah. Because he's probably just hanging out there or

wrenching himself. Exactly. And you can talk to Nick Trask, the guy that started

that whole thing. It's all in his, it was all in his brain. Yeah. And he has

obviously an amazing team to be there too. Yeah. But you get that opportunity,

right? I mean, how often can you go to an Apple convention and well, meet, I was

about to say meet jobs, meet past, you know what I'm going with. You meet AI

people. And that's that's key. Well, sometimes you, you know, these companies

that you get, you know, I'm not talking shit about any of them. I don't think

either one of us are. But you think about the big brands and maybe the ones that

started as families, but then it's gotten to the point where the family's not

really involved in it anymore. You know, and, and it's basically whatever

marketing team they have brought in for this timeframe becomes the face of the

company or the, the, the, the presence the company has in the culture. And then

when you go buy something from it, it does kind of, you don't feel like you're

buying from passionate, like you said, you know, I'm trying not to say any

names because I'm thinking of 100 of them right now. But here in Texas, when

you're ready to level up your ride, there's only one dealership that I go

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once again, 1-800-LAWTIGERS, the first call you make. And it's not to talk shit

about. I'm just saying like, yeah. And then you know what? Here's the sad part

about it. 90% of the staff in those companies, they were passionate. They

loved it. Yeah. They probably could have found jobs that made them more money, but

they love the brand. They love the product. They love the industry. Yeah. And

those were the ones that that suffered, right? And that's why I got so upset

with it, right? Because I had, I was in positions where I had to let these people

go. Yeah. Because other people, other brands in the group didn't hit the goal

and the short term investment group was like, take cost out, right? Yeah. So

that, that gets to a point where you're like, look in the mirror in the morning

and you're not so sure if this is the right thing. That's why that's why I

stepped out of it. And I was, for a while, I was passionate and trying to change

it. But I realized at one point I hit the ball. So my remember that one, one

year I was at the Mac group, right? And we had to go as presidents of these

different brands. We had to go to the board meetings pretty often. So we had

that one board meeting and they were debating about like, okay, where should

we have the next board meeting? And I told these guys, I said, why don't we all

go to stretches for that? Right? Because it wasn't that, you know, that July,

August timeframe. Yeah. And they were like, oh, that's good idea. Yeah. Yeah. And

then they start to pull out their smartphones. And they realized, you

know, there wasn't a freaking five star hotel there. And it was a pain in the

ass to get in. But I wanted these guys to come out and actually experience it

there with the customers. And it never happened. Damn. Unfortunately, I still

think it was a good idea. But they kind of liked that out of the boxing game.

In actual impracticality, they didn't care for it. So, you know, you guys got

the brand off the ground here in America in Morgan Hill, basically in, you

know, NorCal, the southern part of NorCal, essentially. What made the push

to come to Texas? Like, what was the thought process behind that?

You know, it was pretty simple. So we kept growing the company, you know,

obviously, that covered effect kind of disappeared. And a lot of the brands,

Taplish brands kind of had that rip effect, the opposite, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Where they had to kind of reinvent them a little bit. We didn't because we kept

launching new products. We were the new kids on the block, right? So the company

keeps growing. We keep adding different categories to it because that's a

cool thing. Len and I making all the decisions, right? Yeah. The only people

we argue with about some of the bigger things is Len and I, right? Yeah. So

and we probably look at the same direction 95% of the time where we're

completely aligned. So we keep coming up with new products. We added drag

specialties as a distributor, which was a huge step for us. I'm sure we get to

that later on the bike that we built for them. But where we got to the point

where we were like four years into the thing, the lease for our building was

up, you know, in the last year in November. And we're looking at this and

that we selected the building kind of under circumstances where we were not

100% sure who we want to be when we grow up, right? Yeah. So we had a showroom

and we had the warehouse and we had a shop and, you know, at the beginning,

we were thinking we do a lot more bike building for customers. We figured out

pretty rapidly that this is not really what we want to do. So we only built

like three, four bikes a year. We usually built one for Len and one for me. And

then maybe one or two more for certain projects or just to showcase new

products, right? So we cut to that point. And we were looking at, OK, where we

want to move to, we need a new building. And I think the shortest way to describe

it is we both realized at one point that keeping the business in California is

going to make it harder, right? We still be successful. We still do good.

But why make it hard on yourself if there's, you know, better places to do

business in the United States? So we were looking at different options. And of

course, there's families and, you know, they look at this thing too, which we

have a very small team. But, you know, you want to make sure everybody is on

board. So we threw a really weird circumstances. I learned about New

Brownfields, particularly the whole country, but then, you know, being on

that corridor between Austin and San Antonio. So I found that and I was

able to sell it to Len. I was able to sell it to my wife, you know what I

mean? But everything just lined up. You know, it was a brand new, beautiful

building available, which is more of a warehouse, R&D and shop and not so much

showroom and not catering for consumers, really. When somebody comes by, we're

happy, you know, to show what we got. But there's not much to see on purpose. And

we just felt like this is the best step forward for us as a business. Texas

being extremely business-friendly, the Hill Country being beautiful, where you

can actually ride. We love to ride, right? We love to jump on our bikes and

go for a ride. So it's all that. And then, you know, New Brownfields, just as

icing on the cake, we got that German heritage, which is kind of funny. We

didn't move there because of that, but it's just kind of cool.

Major coincidence.

Yeah, you know, but it's not like Disneyland Germany, you know, it's just

there. People, they have the Worst Fest, which is freaking awesome. And we went

there when we moved and it's cool. It's like a smaller, classy version of the

Oktoberfest in Munich. So we love all that, you know. And then, you know, we

had a friend and customer from us, Don, you mentioned him earlier from Miami,

who worked with us in Daytona. He got a performance shop and, you know, jokingly

he lost at Daytona by Greek. He said, well, if you guys ever decide to move, let

me know, because I'm thinking about moving out of Miami. So we could just

build a nice package. So he's next door. So if somebody ends up, you know, in our

place and he wants to buy a cart and product and he wants him, you know, he

wants somebody to put him on. We just, you know, set him next door and don't

care of that. So that was just a little, there's also a little nuances that were

great, but we knew we had to get out of California in order to continue to drive

the business at a pace that we wanted to. And we've been very happy. We've been

there since last November. So it's, what is it, in February? So we're heading

the four-month mark soon and we've been really happy. The people are great.

Everybody's very, very supportive. I think Texas in general is kind of

hungry for more motorcycle industry to kind of make a home here. We have all

year riding. It'd be really dope if we can get some lane splitting legalized

here and some, at least some filtering. It's such a, we're just, we're getting

so populated in our highway systems and our roads are just so congested that

I personally feel that that would open up to a lot more commuters on motorcycles,

which if more people ride motorcycles and there's more maintenance, there's more

sales, there's more everything that, you know, maybe not the super nice custom

stuff, but the tires, the oil changes, the batteries, that stuff is just a rising

tide that floats off ships, you know? I don't know what it would take to kind

of like go be legislative, whatever. I'm just saying words I've heard. I don't

know what none of it means, but I feel like as more motorcycle brands choose

Texas, you know, like I said, Lindahl also moved from California here in San

Marcos just north of you guys. There's a lot of great brands, especially in

between that Austin and San Antonio situation now. And I think it's only

going to grow. Yeah, you get racetrack right down the street in there. Yeah.

Caputo, you got to get a bunch of really, really cool brands in the area. And I

actually, I've been advertising a lot. I'm still very connected to the industry that

people ask me about it. And, you know, there's a lot of brands that are still

in California or other places that are considering, you know, to move. And I

think where we are, it's a great place. You look at it, if you get, you know,

two major cities, you get Houston, you're kind of the triangle there, right?

Between those three, you got the Hill Country as we talked about, but then you

got two great airports just around us. You like, it takes an hour to three

hours to be pretty much anywhere in the country. Yeah. You know, when Lennon's in

town, he flies in from Frankfurt in nine hours, you know, so he can go pretty

much anywhere from there. We drive now to the MVP show, for example,

especially it has in Kentucky in Louisville. And well, this year was not a

good example because the weather got so bad on us on the way back, but you can

just haul your stuff. You can bring more stuff. It's easy. You don't have to pay

like, you know, all the freight companies or drainage fee. You know, I remember

the first time we went to MVP, we had to pay drainage. I'm like, what's that $50

not a buck there on that bill? Well, that's for this one guy that took

the crate from one corner of the building to your booth and back.

You're like, okay, got it. So now we're at a location where we feel like we can go

to some of those events a lot faster. Daytona by Greek is not too far, but even

if you go back to Born Free in California in late June this year,

you know, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a haul, but it's not stupid.

Yeah. It's logistically, it has advantages. And, you know,

well, back in the day, you had in California used to have the IMS shows,

international motorcycle shows. You had it, I think two stops for the Easy Rider show.

I know that they used to do one in Sacramento for sure. And I don't know if

they did one in, I would, I want, they had to have done one like in Long Beach or

somewhere south, I would think. But you were kind of, you had Reno,

which was a street vibes, it still goes on. And then you had like Laughlin and then

all the stuff in Phoenix and then Vegas, you would have a lot of stuff.

So, but it seems like a lot of the bigger events are kind of spread across the country now.

Born Free is one of the best events there is on the West coast for sure.

But other than that, like industry wise, there's not much of a draw to be anywhere out there.

Yeah, it changed. There's a lot of really cool little events now.

Yeah, the smaller ones.

I mean, we had the Bay Area Swaddle Fest that we attended to it three times

with Jackie behind the helm. She has such, such energy and she's again authentic.

She put that together, but that's a local thing, right? And of course,

you got Born Free, which is awesome. But man, you look back, you think Hollister,

right? The independence rate, it was huge. It was huge. It disappeared, right? Because

I don't know. I don't know if they don't like us bikers in some of these areas, but

politics gets involved, especially in Hollister. Got all messed up there. I mean,

there's not a lot going on in that area. Once you check off the Born Free show,

it's crazy, right? Because you got so many brands, so many companies in the industry

that are headquartered there.

Yeah, yeah. And you have like Phoenix, Hotbed as well, a lot of companies, a lot of brands.

A lot of weird things going on with Arizona Bike Week and Bike Week Arizona depending on how,

which side of the fence you're on. And such a great area, but like it still feels like it's,

as a business, that if you're going to go there to go set up, nobody really wants to go set up

at Westworld. It's like you got your motorcycle brand next to a roof company, next to a window

company. You know what I mean? You want to go set up in like Cape Creek or something or one of the

it's lost its luster. The same way Rock Rally was in Austin, it just kind of lost its way.

The city grew too big. The rally didn't have a home. It couldn't really fit into the,

to all the other things going on in Austin anymore. And then when you made, they tried to

move it to the track, it just didn't fit a track thing. It's not a racing thing. It's a

different event, you know, but Austin, we don't have a lot of events here in Texas. We do have

Born Free Texas and it is growing. It's getting, it's, I keep telling everybody to get in now and

help build the show instead of everybody that complains because they can't go be a part of

the Born Free show in Cali. You know, like that event, it's been there for, it's going on a year

17 now. And, you know, 10 years ago when they had space and people wanted to become vendors,

nobody cared. Oh yeah, it's not a big event. I mean, it like industry industry and now

everybody wants to be a part of it and there's no space. You know, so I would love to put on an

event at New Braunfels, to be honest with you. We got the Westfest that I mentioned earlier.

That whole area is, is beautiful. I don't know if you've been there, but it's beautiful. It's

cool. They got the, they got real structure. They got these, these older, you know, houses and they

got, it's cool. You can build something there. We're doing our grand opening in a few weeks on

March 26th this year, right? And we're doing it on a Thursday for a reason because there's a motor

GP weekend, right? But we love doing events and I, wide array when I, when I got to New

Braunfels, I'm like, this is perfect for it. You get, you can ride, you can do, just the whole

city is catered towards, you know, tourists in this case, you know, us all having a good time.

So I think you can build something there, but you know, where do you start? It's always a question,

right? Yeah. I mean, you go on the other side, you know, of Green and other side of River Road

and you're in like a little bit more rural, better riding areas and it's, you know, this is a whole

another topic and whole another rabbit hole, but it just, there's a lot of new development going

on everywhere. It seems like every field is getting a new home housing development and that

once that all gets built and it gets way more populated with that, you're going to get a lot

more pushback for people trying to do motorcycle events and rallies. So you're going to have to go

further west, which trust me, it's not a bad thing. There's some really good spots out there.

A lot of good events to do, take place, Texas Hill Show, obviously they're,

they're in Austin proper, but they've done a lot of their events in the Hill Country area.

But I'm with you. I think it's got a lot of potential and it just needs,

it really just needs structure, people that have structure and they know how to like get in and

get things done and, and like kind of going back to what you said about the business,

like put together a team of people to come in and do different aspects instead of just trying to be

the one person like, this is my event. You know what I mean? Cause that, you know, your event,

when it's a good event, but then when it's bad event, it's all in your back. You know what I mean?

So if you do something big, not one person alone can pull it off. But you think about it,

if you think about motorcycle events, right?

Wells and like South Dakota or Texas, do you think you can, you can do something cool and fun for

everybody, right? Without too many restrictions, I think so far my impression is this is a place

you could definitely do it. 100%. I think a lot of it has to do with just, I think the right,

like a lot of it, like Lone Star Rally is a big event. It takes place in Galveston.

It's a good fucking time. It's not, it's not a riding event. I mean, you get a nice little,

it's like a, in my opinion, it's a better version of Daytona. I said it, hate me, all you want.

It's better because it's just more together. It's more put together. Like Daytona is like

everybody's trying to rip that place apart. Like you got Orlando trying to get a piece of Daytona.

You got, you know, Teddy up there with the, the dealership getting a little bit of Daytona,

then you got Daytona itself that's pulling some and then you got the track. It's like,

it's just spread out thing that you feel like you, you jump from bike rally to bike rally

instead of like you're just at a rally. You know, when you're in Sturges, like every,

there's not an exit you take off a 90 that doesn't feel like the rally's going on.

Well, and it's a riding event, right? I mean, and that's a cool thing about Sturges. You just

out there riding all day long. And then, you know, you're right for half an hour, an hour,

and you end up at Deptwood for, for a drink or something, right? And it's, boom, it's happening.

To me, Sturges is its own league, right? It's its own freaking sport. Daytona, to me, was always

kicking off the season, right? That's why it was always important. Exactly. And, you know, like,

like we did, we did, we set up there for a few years. And then this year, we're just going to,

you know, go out and hang out a little bit, check everybody out. I had a lot of people

and it's just, it feels like even though we, we don't really have a winter here, right? But it's

like after the winter, you finally get out and see your buddies, right? And, but we definitely

want to check out Galveston this year and just go out there and see what's going on. So it,

Galveston is definitely more of a party than it is anything else, but there is, it is a good

time though. Like I have, as a consumer, like stripping away the business side of it as a consumer,

you get out there, you're riding along the ocean, there's restaurants and more importantly,

like the city wants you there. That's awesome. That's the thing about Daytona that I felt,

like it felt like you were in the way a lot of ways. And when you're in Sturges, come on,

they're Airbnb and they're, they're houses out. Like it's like they, they need that money and

that's the way Galveston is. Galveston's the end of the year. It's like you said, Daytona, I think

it's always going to be what it is because it is that kickoff for the season, especially for the

Northeast. But I have struggled to enjoy Daytona myself personally, but that's all I'll say about

that before I say too much and get into a rabbit hole with all the East Coast dudes.

But no, the, the products man, like I, like I, I remember when y'all came out with the

risers and things like that. Like I said, I've been following the brand for a very long time,

even before you guys were part of, you know, in the American market, the way you are now.

And I agree. I've always been drawn to the, at least the perception of the quality that I saw

through the internet of the paintwork, you know, and I, when I say to the paintwork, when a, when a

brand chooses to put quality paintwork on their bike, it says a lot about the rest of the work

they do their bike. When you apparently are the best at everything you do, then you cheap out on

paint or you do some half ass paintwork on it. It kind of null and voids the rest of your bike to

me because you don't care enough to put quality work on top of your quality work. Does that make

sense? And not to talk shit about anybody. I think paint can sometimes be subjective as to what

people think is good or not, but sometimes like subjective or not, if that, that color don't work

or that graphic scheme looks like shit, like it is what it is, right? Always been a big fan.

With you guys building this product line now here. How did the, you know, before we start talking

about products all the, how did the process go with like building the bike for drag and

being on the catalog? How is that? You're fast forwarding now. Yeah, jump over to that. But you

know, that was pretty straightforward, right? So when y'all get in drag, like, yeah, so we

start to sell through drag, what does it know, 26, four years ago, four years, okay, January of

22, I think is when we started to get the deal finalized. And then the following September,

August, I think it was late August, that's when MVP show was still in August. We went to Madison

at our first MVP show. But that was a hit because we're again, we're like the new guys with everything

we had on display was new for drag. So we got the, we got the reps fired up, you know, they got

60 plus sales reps in the field, right? And those are your best friends. And they're, by the way,

they're cool, cool guys. But those are the people you want to make sure they're educated and they

know what's going on. So we got them hyped up. And that was a great kickstart. And then, man,

it wasn't too far. I think maybe a year or two later, I, yeah, it's when I, when I had my,

my, our first made road bike, that was my personal bike. And it had the fat tire and

big engine and the air ride and all this. And Tom Motsko, who, who actually just retired after 50

years of drag specialties, that guy is a legend, right? But Tom was the new vendor guy. I've known

Tom for many years. We've been friends for a long time. And he was tremendous help to get the program

started. But Tom used to come to, you know, whenever I had my bike with me, or we had it at the show,

he's like, man, I love your bike, right? And it used to be a joke where I'll be like, well,

you know, everything got a price tag, right? And you know, Tom Motsko, he can build himself

10 other bikes, right? But that was kind of our thing. And then at one point, after a year or so,

I said to Tom, I said, well, if you want your own Kotlin bike, you know, we can, we can always,

you know, build one for the catalog, right? And he just looked at me with a straight face. It's

a, well, I don't want to speak for them. But yeah, yeah, yeah, we can do this. And so,

but the conversation, you don't want to push these things too hard. It was just, it was just

good conversation. And then he calls me, you know, a few months later, he's like, Hey, remember,

we talked about you guys building the catalog cover by, I thought about that, that would

actually be great. I think you guys could do a good job. And I told him, I said, Well, Tom,

I said, think about it for a little bit more. But I can guarantee you that if we get that

opportunity, we're going to put everything in this that we have. Now, we're still going to

stay within the frame of a drag specialties catalog cover bike needs to feature parts that are in

the book, right? You don't want to step so much up, which is for, for somebody like Len growing up

in that custom scene, right, his whole life, you have to slow him down a little bit because he

wants to just do stuff. It's in his nature, right? But we knew we had to stay in a certain

parameter. But then the next MVP show came around and Tom came back to us and says, Hey,

you know, I really want you to do this. Do you think you can build the 2026 catalog cover bike,

which means you start kind of working that in some time in 25, because you hand it over in

August that we handed over in Sturgis 25, because then they take it and then they do their

photo, video, all this because a catalog needs to be printed and all this.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that they changed it from where, like,

do you keep the bike now as opposed to before they used to like, it just became drag specialties,

and they'll be like a warehouse full of their bikes. Yes, exactly. They start and they start

to auction them off, I think. Yeah, dealer shows. Yeah, you keep it. So we bought the bike

and they send us the product that we picked, you know, other than our own. And then they have

a budget for paint and all this. But, you know, again, for us, we said, Oh, are we going to go all

in? So we decided again to stay within the parameter, but to not just, you know, do like a

simple paint job and just do a bunch of boat on stuff. So Len took the bike apart completely.

And then we powder coated the frame, powder coated a little budget matching components.

He still did a lot of details that average guy doesn't see right away, but then you start

looking closer at the bike. You're like, Oh, yeah, that's all this is going on. We wanted to be

a performance inspired bike. And we decided to go with chrome finish because it hasn't been done

for a while. And we feel like there's more people are going back to using chrome parts.

So yeah, Len took it completely apart. And then we called our buddy Marcos file from

file design in Austria to paint it. And people are like, Are you guys nuts? Why would you do this?

But it's we've known him for 25 years, right? Len has done multiple bikes with that guy in Europe.

He's extremely, extremely talented. One of the best. Yes. And so we shipped all these parts to

Austria. He painted them and shipped them back, right? And then then let them put the bike back

together. And it was so worth it, right? Yeah, it was not within the budget. But we said,

what the hell do it plus Marcos talking again about, you know, being being excited, you know,

being passionate. For him, it was also a huge honor for us to be the guy that painted the bike,

right? And wait, you know, for us, it's a motorcycle that, you know, you can always argue,

right? And then pick the green base coat for reasons, you know, I think I told you, I think I

told you when I was at your shop, the couple weeks ago, like, I am very into that that green right

now. Like, I think my bag is going a version of that. Sweet. It's just, I don't know what it is.

I don't know if it's just the, I feel like a lot of that color is starting to come back right now.

Maybe it's bikes like that one that you guys just did for the cover, it's going to help

reinforce it, you know what I mean? And a lot of us, but I feel like I got two customers that

want to go green route. I'm trying to go green. So it's probably going to be the year green,

to be honest with you. Well, it's sweet. Well, then you have the book down there? Yeah, the majority

of the people said, you know, majority of people said, I love the bike. Oh, yeah. But there's always

a guy that says, how can you paint the bike green? And that's fine. And that's their opinion.

And that's good for us. We actually, we actually like it that way. But the overall feedback was

amazing. Yeah, I feel like sometimes the color you do paint the bike becomes, if you do something

that's off of your red, white or your red, white, blue, black, gold, or orange, pretty much are

always a safe bet. But like when you do a green or a purple or these off colors, you either get them,

they either love it or they keep staring at it because they hate it or they keep staring at it.

And then it, you know what I mean? It gets their attention more. So

But here it is on the on the cover, right? And the way I look at this, we love doing this stuff,

right? Yeah. Len is extremely talented bike builder. We mentioned that earlier, right? But

then you start thinking about our business here. And we started the US business only five years

ago. And here we are on the cover of the of the largest distributor on planet Earth for

motorcycle aftermarket parts. This thing is going to be at every Harley shop on the planet and at

every custom shop, right? The motorcycle is going to be at every major event. We did again, we kind

of went above and beyond like the average guy that probably get this opportunity. We took it down,

we were still in California, we finished it, we took it down highway one, did a great photo shoot

and videos and all this. But this is why it's used, you know, a lot on, we got on their magazine

too. We got a poster somewhere. So for us, it's just

combining to do what we love to do with being on this platform. So been phenomenal. And even,

I mean, we had our distributors from outside of the US at our somehow competitors to drag

to they ask us if they can use the bike images to and we double checked and it has a big drag

logo on it. And it's fine. And it shows you too that they just appreciate a cool bike with a lot

of products. So we had a lot of fun just diving deep into the catalog. Now, of course, we used a

lot of our own parts. We have a lot of products for the for the for the new touring bikes, right?

From the license plates to the risers to the water reservoir covers, etc. But then, you know,

going into deep and picking nest parts. And, of course, legend got involved, custom dynamics,

trash and bizani is a bunch of really cool parts that we're able to use. I'm sure I forgot one or

two, right? And then we leveraged some of our partnerships. We put a Kotlin seat made by Mustang

on it, which is just a cool opportunity to show what we think is one of the best quality seats

combined with, you know, lens design talent. And then the same on the rotors. We used the

the SPS by Kotlin rotors, the black version of them that we just launched with that bike.

We had them before for the softails. Now we got them for the touring bikes. We got, you know,

a black spokes. They match those nests. It works well, right? Split spoke. Is that what that is?

I think that's what they look pretty good. They work with it. Well, that's why I was

because I'm running the same wheels on my bag. And I was like, man, that's actually going to look

pretty good. Yeah, we're happy with that. I mean, the Nests quality, that whole front end

is Nests was awesome. But then our rotors just fit great with it. And they have that's about 500

miles on them. So you see a little wear from the brake pads, of course. But it's like a polished

black. But the way SPS does it, that was very important to us is in a way where the black stays

black because the black is in the material. So it's not a coating. And you can just use anybody's

brake pads, right? You can you can use stock ones, of course, SPS. Yeah, we say that to SPS makes

great brake pads are used as good. If you're into EBC, whatever your thing is on the brake pads,

yeah, you can use a bottom lines, you can use a high performing brake, show the road. Yeah.

You put it underneath there. Very professional. Yeah. So that's one of the soft tail designs.

So you got the seven spoke and black

for the for the M8 soft tails. We got, like I said, more fitments now we got the touring

fitments. That's a 10, a 10 spoke that is very similar to the one put on the touring bike. Nice.

Yeah, you can see the different shape on the pad or on the friction rings here.

Yeah. They did a nice job. And for us, when we started the partnership, we told them that,

you know, if we do this, we want, you know, there's certain things that need to work. And one was kind

of those parameters on the black finish. Yeah. And they nailed it. I mean, we're very excited

with the SPS partnership. They hired actually sales and marketing manager now, specifically for

the S. Her name is Angel. She's from San Diego. She worked at San Diego Halle. She worked with

Indian before. I think she worked for Polaris as an OEM. So she really gets what the dealers need,

what the consumers needs. She's a rider too. She got a low ride ST. She really gets it. So we're

excited about having her being part of the team now to send the message.

Are you planning on these rotors, like these different designs? Are they going to come in

the different carriers, basically? Well, this is an initial launch, right? So we are open to

anything. We're looking at different sizes. We're looking at different carriers. We get another,

we get a nine spoke design also that I didn't bring. We're going to build out the touring

offering. So this is just the beginning. And obviously, again, we're doing it

because we love what we do, but also because we got to make some money. Having it on the cover

of the Drag Specialties catalog is really going to help to send that message out because

here's the bottom line. A lot of people don't know about them yet. We launched them last summer,

then we add now the touring version. And so far, people see them. They go crazy.

What's that? Why didn't I know about it? It's a new product, right? So we're just at the start

of that partnership. Yeah, push it out there. So what you were saying, like when you first kicked

off the brand, I mean, I kicked off the product line, what was your soft till lowering kit?

Like so lowering it made it. It's crazy because when basically when you got to this point,

it's like the culture was kind of shifted where half of them wanted to lower it and the other

have wanted to raise it. We got both. But remember the brand was inspired by what's going on in

Europe. Initially, that was me helping Kotlin to manufacture a few products where they didn't

have to do it in-house. So this was the very first product we did together. Of course,

Kotlin did many products years before without my involvement, but that was the very first one

that Len created and it's an M8 soft till lowering kit. It is made out of steel for a reason. It's

not aluminum. Man, I didn't butcher the word aluminum this time. I think it's my first time.

So it's made out of steel. It get pressed in bearings. It's sealed up. We sell thousands of

them. They do great. We got two versions. One is for the shock with a remote preload adjuster and

one with a preload adjuster. How far is it? Is it adjustable to load or is it just like a single?

It's about an inch and a half. It depends on the setup, but it's between an inch and a quarter

and an inch and a half that's lowering. What this thing does, there's two things. One is what you

and I thought about first is the look. You want to lower the bike, but then there's also some people

that are vertically challenged and they want to get more control of the bike. Sit somebody that is

below 5.5 on a low-rider ST. The ST has the extended shock. It's like the S after 22. That thing is

high. You put this on and you're just a few more comfortable on the motorcycle and it does not

impact the way it handles at all. But then for the rider that wants more ground clearance,

we have a lift kit too. We have two versions. One is a one-inch and we have one that is 7.16 where

that would be the maximum lift you can do on low-rider STs and low-rider Ss with the extended

shocks that would be doable without hitting the swing arm. So those came right after.

Maybe our most unsexy product. Well, probably definitely. There's nothing great about this.

From a look perspective, but it does a great function. Yes. When you make a product that is

kind of invisible but solves a problem in one way or another, that becomes your like flagship

product. Exactly. That you're like, this bike has that product on it. Where's it at? It's just in

there somewhere. You know what I mean? Exactly. But that was for a lot of consumers. That was

the first impression with the brand. And to this day, we got two back out of all the thousands we

sold and it's because of installation error. And I remember this was very, very early. The guy

sent us pictures and he says, you know, his hair screwed up here. He just didn't install it. The

whole bearing was all banged up. But he was very honest and direct and it was very early in the

day. And I said, look, here's the deal. You take this thing because you said, I'm not a good

mechanic. I said, here's the deal. We're going to set you a new one for free. But we take your word

that you're going to take it to a qualified mechanic. You take it to a dealer or you take it to

somebody that's a qualified mechanic and you have that installation done. But that was the first

impression a lot of people had with the brand. And then they started to look for more. And we

launched shortly after we did a ton of new lighting options with our tiny

LEDs, our three in ones for the rear or two in ones for the front, soft tail fitment,

later on touring fitment. Did y'all kind of focus more on the soft tails initially coming out?

Yeah. Absolutely. Because there wasn't a whole lot of brands that I felt like jumped on the soft tail

thing quick, you know, like it was more, I mean, obviously, as a company's going to make products,

you want to make sure that the bycast staying power that's going to people want to buy it,

you know what I mean? You don't want to design parts for the V-Rod in America, right? So it makes

sense that a lot of people waited a couple of years to really go full force in creating products

for it. But like, I did notice that you guys had a lot of stuff forward out of the gate.

Absolutely. There were two reasons why. One is in Europe, the soft tails were way more popular

than the baggers, right? We're talking, you know, 2019, 2020. So we did it for the European market,

but then I also felt that there is an opportunity in the US because there was an underserved market,

right? And we had the mini fender struts indicators for the for the M8 soft tails. It's one of our

top sellers too, right? The three in ones that you put in right there where the oval is on the

strut. Those products were launched, but we even did and we still sell that and we're doing good

with it. We sell a, you know, stretch gas tank for the M8 soft tails. We have a right fender for

the fat boys and the breakouts, right? We have a chin spoiler. We have a lot of products that are

specific around some of the software models, all of them were specific ones like the breakout

really a headlight conversion kit. If you don't like that, you know, the original breakout light

right now, they changed to a round headlight in 24, 25, right? But if you don't like that,

we have a little bracket where you can just put a regular bait style headlight on, make it more

look like a chopper, right? If that's what you want. Then we get into the risers and into, you

know, the, I think, and we really like looking at Harley Davidson, what they launched and you

can see kind of what we did with it, right? So Harley Davidson launched the low rider ST and

that's where Len designed a line of products specifically for the ST. And then obviously some

of them work for other software models, but this was our fastback risers. We had a specific two

and one city mount and the low ride ST for the, for the front on the fairing. We have our engine

guards that came out. We were, we were, we were told that our bronze that we use for our engine

guards matches the stock bronze with the wheels better than anybody else's, right? But we had a

bronze version, we have a black version. They were a little more high end than just like a regular

engine guard. And then we had the little, you know, guard in the center, we call it the spoiler in

the center to protect your regulator too. So we kind of launched that. And then there was just

other products kind of coming out along with it, you know, floorboard line and things like this.

And then the next huge step for us was when Harley came out with the new road bikes and the new

street lights with the 23 and a half VVT style touring bikes. That was the next major step for

us. That's where we sat down and really looked at that bike and looked at opportunity and came out

with, I don't know, good 10, 15 parts for that platform. And that was kind of the next, and

you always have like one, you have, you have always have products that do better than others,

right? But you always have like one or two and they're like just crazy, right? And that for us,

but that bike was the water reservoir cover that I mentioned earlier. And the,

and the ledge covers because we were the first to market with a lot of this product.

So here's your water reservoir cover. The thing stocks ugly. I like to show the chrome one,

especially on the bike, because otherwise it's kind of black on black. But you basically,

you just slide that cover over. There's two set screws that you put on and put the, put the

cover in place. And then you have the top cover, same thing. You have two set screws, you know,

and so on the, on the, on the reservoir itself from Harley, it has like the radiator cap and

all this. So this goes over it essentially to kind of just completely cover and do that.

There's a little slot. So you see a water level on the side, right? Exactly. And then, you know,

if you need to add water, if you need to add coolant, you can take the top off, but you know,

with the two set screws, you just take off the whole piece. But as I mentioned earlier to you,

that thing installs in like minutes, it takes you longer to find the right

Allen in your toolbox, you know, put it on then the actual installation process takes.

It's a cool product. You know, it's, it's 200 bucks. It's priced right. And then, you know, then

that's not bad for that's a lot of, that's a lot of material that gets taken away for 200 bucks.

Yes. And a bunch of machining that's going on. And it's our signature lines. So we have

matching parts in, in the ledge covers and the, in the, we have that horn relocation

kit where there's a cover. We got the master cylinder cover though. These are all the same

machining lines, you know, across the line. Yeah, that's it. That's crazy. That's actually

a really good price point on that. Thank you. I mean, you're talking about a,

a, does it start off as a, it's probably more cylindrical, huh? Like this piece,

it's like a cylinder. Not so much. No, you think it starts off as a block?

It's pretty round. No, no, it's pretty, it's a, it's a, it's a, what we do is we do the forging

for it and then have a forging and then a machine around that forging. Otherwise you

wouldn't be able to hit the price point, not, not with that sophisticated. Yeah. If you were

drilling all that material out, that would be, yeah, it'd be gnarly. We're coming out with a,

I don't want to call it 2.0 version, but like next level cover along that line, but it also

includes the bracket that is, you know, the stock one is plastic. So that will be a little bit more

sophisticated and we have to charge a bit more for it. But we're trying, you know,

let's cover the same thing, the 200 bucks that lowering kit is 150 bucks. You know,

we try to price it, right? And then sometimes you have a part like our fastback riser,

that's machine porn on that thing, right? And it's 6.99, right? But then we also have,

no, the S&PRO risers, they're 5.49, they're not as sophisticated, they have a pullback,

they get internal wiring, so they're kind of the opposite of the other one. So we're always

trying to stay in line with everybody else, but every so often you just also want to show the

guys, hey, this is how it really can look like. You know, when we were talking about them earlier,

but when, did you ever meet the MJK, MadJab, those guys back in the day? So when they,

of course, that whole thing kind of crashed and burned with what he was doing, but what he was

doing was making such high end stuff and charging whatever, I mean, just whatever he thought like

it, you know, it's like price is right, just running a thing down it. And people wanted it,

they ate it up. So it's like the price point, it really depends, like when you look at those

risers, like the, your higher end ones that has all the machining and everything going on, like,

I think it would absolutely have no problem selling at that point, as opposed to, you know,

everybody this wants to kind of dumb it down and that's the only thing they offer because

they're trying to be affordable all the time. It's like, you got to have a level, a swing,

you know, from the highest end to like, I just need the same to do the job,

but still look good. You know what I mean? That's what we're trying to do, you know, we're,

obviously we got to pay the bills too. And we think we got, you know, we do plenty good with

some of the products. And here's another great example. This is our track bar, right? And we

got them in one inch, this is the one with the inch and a quarter clamping, right? This is a,

this is a VVT star one.

We got product liability too.

But this one here is made of aluminum. And for the black version, we charge 140 bucks.

Okay. Yeah. So it's on point with most of the market.

It is. And the product is cool. We coming up with a, with a high one and a low bar too now, but

sorry, you're, you're not doing this, this thickness on all the bars, are you? Or how does

that work? The logo or the thickness? No, we got a one inch. And then this one is an inch and a

quarter. So the one inch version works great with our fast spec risers. And then the inch and a

quarter works with our S and 12. But you can also, we have people actually the inch and a quarter

that we have people put them on a breakout, right? Because they got the inch and a quarter

clamping, right? So we have those two versions. Then we do have the VVT style for the, for the

new touring control, the new soft take controls. And then we got the throttle bar via version too.

Nice. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I was saying earlier, I really like a 29 inch bar, but

I think these, it's got a good pullback. I just hate when they're wide and, and they don't have

pullback, you know, they're four and four. And I think I remember they're 31 and a half inch white,

31, 31 and a half. Yeah, that's not bad at all. But then, you know, like I said, we also want to

show the industry like what else can be done and what hasn't been done. So this is our

NXL line in this particular case, we call the red line. So what makes NXL cool is it's an

aluminum base, right? Now I did butcher the word, I think. Yeah, I think, yeah. Anyway,

it's hard. And it got a stainless steel top, right? So that was already created to be very

customizable. It's super light, it's a performance product. But then when the new CVOs came out,

we added this red plate. So it matches the exact powder coat that Holly is using for the lower

boxes and some other components they do in red. So the CVO crowd, they see this, they want to use

it right away. But we actually use this board for the drag cover bike too. And just to show

that you can actually also use your own creativity, we took the red plate out,

powder coated the same color and that same green. Yeah, got what it was called, but that green

sparkly green that we use for the frame to match it. So now this is matching your frame.

And then there's, you know, your imagination is a limit. You can heat treat the stainless,

for example, you can powder coat the base. And the part is super light. But we were still able to

sell it for 549, which is very competitive with other floorboards that are out there, right? So

again, we're trying to be fair on the pricing side, but we also every so often we want to kind

of push the limits a little bit on coming up with something new and something different.

No, yeah, that's nice. Well, the stainless stuff, I mean, you could engine turn this stuff,

you could brush it like it is now. Yeah, you say put some heat on it, get a little color in it,

different spots, that'd be cool as hell. Yeah, and we started to see customers to send us pictures

on what they did with it. Yeah. And that's, that's very exciting. It is super light. Yeah. Nice.

And then just to wrap up the parts, you know, just talking about how we start to use different

categories. Now, though, this is a brand new mirror that we launched a few weeks ago.

Again, our, our machining lines that are matching some of the other products that we do. It's very

thin. We, we're going to use that same stem for for different mirror designs. We're coming out with

with a new arm that actually has a two in one LED in here. So you can actually use them as

turn signals to for if you're on a touring bike, you know, just to have additional

signals, but, you know, especially like on some of the softels would be really cool.

You can go back to twin cams and put them on. Yeah, yeah. Or the softels just have really,

really funky like turn signal locations, like some of them are, I don't even know.

I usually, whenever I've built softels in the recent years, like I would just get rid of the

front turn signals all together. You know what I mean? But yeah, like fine, like these right

here, your other ones that I know you're going to pull out in a minute, having the LEDs on this

stuff would be super clean and just not having these bulky lights hanging off the front of the

bike. You know what I mean? Yeah, we like that. We like it small, but we also like it to be very

visible. You know, that we're working on a project right now that we're going to launch this summer

to replace the rear lights on the new touring models. And one thing Holly did with those is

they're bright, you know, they work. Yeah. And for us, the challenge was how can we make them look

cooler and make them work at least as good, if not better. And we have a project that's coming

out that's using three of our new LEDs that we developed for each site. So they are super,

super bright. And the products are in prototype phase. That's why I didn't bring it, right? Because

there could be some changes. But they would be pluck and play, right? You take the stock ones

out, put ours in. That's an exciting new product. And then I did bring, we just finished the

new soft taillights. So we do have four, four M8 soft tails up to 24. We do have the Perchmound

indicators for the front. So they kind of go right under the exactly bars. Yeah. And then the new

and 25 Holly changed the handlebar controls for the soft tails too. So we had to start from scratch.

So we have the different on the left and the right side. So we have a kit out that's launched.

This is like the world premiere. Yeah, yeah. The first time we've shown it in public.

These are is a kit where So the one on your left hand, that's for the new

new hand control stuff side and then break side. Okay, so you take the lower piece of the handlebar

controls off with the lights, the whole thing goes off. And then you put ours in. And they have this

round LED in it that we it's a brand new that we're going to use for all of our new lightings

going forward. It's a right running in and return. The right side is not as complex. It's a little

different, right? But this is a break side. And same thing, you take the stock piece off. Yep.

And then you mount this guy in and you're good to go. Very excited about that. A lot of people ask

us because people used our, our, we call them ellipse two and ones for the front on the old

soft heads. Now they got a new bike and they want the big clunky one, right? They want the small one

and they disappear and the bikes turn off. Yeah, I feel like some like good, good design elements

is some products need to just disappear on the bike. You don't need them all to stand out, right?

If every little piece of the bike stands out, it becomes too hard to look at it becomes,

you know, a Jackson Pollock painting or something like that. It needs to have,

you know, so like some lighting, some things that are functional, like turn signals and stuff,

they need to just be seamless in the bike. You know, I feel like sometimes people do their

seats a little bit too flamboyant. And it takes away from like the, the just the rest of things

going on, you know? So lighting, I mean, I think, uh, you know, 15 years ago, lighting was definitely

something that the aftermarket, there was a big opportunity to make better stuff than what, what

the manufacturers are coming out with. Now they've kind of caught wind of, or not caught wind, they

just kind of elevated their stuff to where the new headlights and stuff that's coming on, like

especially the touring bikes, it looks pretty badass, right? It's a, it's a kind of an iconic

look now, in my opinion. So the lighting that comes that people are bringing to it, they kind of have

to, it's like you have to do as good as that and be cooler now, which it's a tall, it's a tall order

in some aspect. Yeah. I'm gonna hop some with you. And that's why, you know, it's just got a little

harder, but I think, um, you know, to your point, and especially around the lights, you know, they

shouldn't be, when the bikes turned off, they shouldn't be in your face, right? Yeah. And we

had, at many shows, we had, you know, the rear ones too, we had our bike parked, right? And then

people just kind of checking it out. And then we turn it on for them. And then, you know, it blinds

you. That's how bright they are. And they're all like, Oh my God. And that sells a product without,

you don't need to do much other than that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's our philosophy on the lighting

side for sure. Small, you don't see it when the bikes turned off, but very, very bright when you

did it. It does its job. So yeah, I mean, you got, how many, how many products do you have now in

the catalog? Like, I mean, is everything you make available through Drag or is there still

like stuff that you're only through, uh, like your own personal website? No, the majority, I want to say

95% of the product that we have is available through Drag and their dealers. Um, there are some,

you know, some, some, some kits and stuff that we do on the website that's specific.

We, we have over 200 part numbers now. I think we're like in the 220s. And by end of the year,

we'll probably be around 300. I don't think people realize like when you like different products,

having that many excuses a lot, you know what I mean? It's, it's, I mean, there, you, you,

that's a, that's like a percentage of this book saying. So, um, yeah, that's a lot of parts,

man, like to keep up with, keep, keep up with manufacturing and stock and all those type of

things. Like it's a lot. Yeah. And it's funny because you are so in my, my old world, I was not

as hands on of course, right? Because I was managing a big group of people. So of course,

you, you know, you love the parts and you have your favorites, right? But, but now, um, I don't

love the kids, right? Everybody's special in its own way. And of course you get your favorites,

right? But, um, uh, you have a relationship to every part because you're involved from

the idea all the way to, you know, marketing it and selling it. And that's just, that's great.

It's exciting. And, you know, we, you know, at one point I'm sure, you know, we're going to obsolete

a few, you know, uh, but right now we're still, everything is still selling, selling good, some

are better than others, of course. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we'd be at 300 by the end of the year.

We got a ton of stuff at the pipeline. I was, uh, I was, we were just going through the list the

other day and it's like, oh my God, there's a few things you just don't have in the radar because

they are like in the sampling part or out there in the quoting area. And then they come back and

you're like, oh my God, I forgot that one in the pipeline too, right? So there's some exciting

stuff coming out with the whole new line too, um, of covers, you know, for the, for the new touring

bikes, again, the, the whole LED product line will be revamped. Uh, but you know, even brand new

product or updated LEDs that we developed. And that's, you know, creating new LEDs. It sounds

like, oh yeah, they came up with a new LED, but to us it's really like going from iPhone 10 to

iPhone 15 and one jump, right? Because technology is developing that fast, but we kind of tool up

for, for new LEDs every year. So that's, that's pretty exciting for us too. So what all like,

you know, as we, you know, we're kicking off 2026, right? So you guys are going to Daytona,

like what's some of the other events that you guys are trying to have a presence at this year?

So we, what we, what we decided not to do so much is, and I'm going to say that very, very

respectfully, but it's spending two weeks on a parking lot in front of an alley dealer

simply because we're not set up for that, right? We did that in the past and Daytona specifically,

and it just takes so much resources from our company where it's a pretty small company,

right? And then Len and I, being away for two weeks, it feels like you come back and you like

miss two months, right? So we teaming up with RigRack for a lot of those bigger events because

they have a big show drug, they got five, six mechanics on the team, they're great, they have

the same values, so they're going to be out there representing some of our best selling

products at those events, and then we're going to support them at certain events.

Yeah. What is this RigRack place? I've been hearing about them more.

Oh, they're from the East Coast, they got a nice business, they got a great website,

they got their own little product line too, in fact, we used their shift-a-link,

a carbon shift-a-link on our drag bike that we built.

Because I just ordered their little dongle so I can use my carplay.

That's how I found out about their company because I just googled it real quick and then I

got it and it does the job. Same thing, private ownership, Shane owns it, he's a great guy,

him and his dad started it with just some being bikers, riding bikes forever,

they came out with a few product ideas, now they got this big show truck, they go to

all major events for a few years now and they focus on different brands and one of them is ours,

so we wanted to be part of this. And then there's other events where we would just go

ourselves, so Born Free for Us is a highlight in California. We're going to be out there and

we're going to set up and there's a lot of our people there and there's a lot of industry people

too. Were y'all set up there last year? Yeah, we were. What area were y'all in?

San Diego costumes. Oh, okay, nice. We were actually, we last year were making German

brats and German beer and handing them out, so we're always... I'm going to eat at this,

I'm going to come get some this year. I'll make some brats for you, we might do something else

this year just to keep it fresh, but that's definitely a highlight for us, we do all the

all the track events. The bike's going to be at the truck like I said, so we're going to show up

here and there and just talk about the brand and the bike at track events or at track rallies.

We're going to ride to Sturges, we're probably going to do some pop-ups here and there,

and then we're going to check out some of the local stuff. We're going to be in Galveston and

see what's going on there. I want to ride over to the Texas Born Free, check that out and see what

the rest of the year brings. When you ride to Sturges, let me know because you kind of got to

pass me and I'm riding that bag of Sturges this year. Oh, you do, huh? Yeah, it's going to be a

good one. Yeah, let's hop on. I'll show you some good routes from here up there because this is

where we go every year. Yeah, I used to ride in from California a lot and we did all the Norse

and Sours and I've done that many times. All that beauty you get to see, none of that.

You got to find the beauty. Probably go into Colorado a little bit. I mean, the problem is if

you go in there, you could, but then you're just sitting in traffic in Colorado because you're

on 25 and it's just city and then traffic and city and traffic, but you have to go deep into

Colorado and go through the mountains and then there's not really a good north-south Colorado

route because most of it's east-west. Like 70 goes across. Million-dollar highway goes north,

but it ends in Grand Junction and you kind of zigzag through it. But there are a couple gems

going across Kansas. I think it's just a mindset. Get to a cool little town, pull over,

grab a beer or two. We usually try to jam up to, once you get to Western Nebraska,

it's rolling hills. It's kind of like, I mean, it's beautiful, honestly, especially because

you're riding in flat all the way there. And then as soon as it starts to get nice and rolling,

you're like, oh, this is pretty sick. Well, I definitely want to ride from here. We're going

to go back to the West Coast to ride with the Hamsters out. You do all the stuff with the...

That's the yearly thing we do and I've probably done it 15 times. My first one was actually with

Fred. Fred and I were riding in 2004. I had probably one of the most radical choppers in Europe.

That was the Custom Chrome Europe catalog cover bike back then. And it was an extreme

hit-and-break system. It was a Richard, first of all. It was one of those bikes when I shipped it

over and the other guys at the Hamster saw it. Apparently, they were putting money down on it

to make it or not. And I did make it and then they threw me the yellow shirt when we got there.

Oh, that's better. It was a little easier with that. So, is that how long you've been in the

Hamsters? 2004, yeah. So, that's awesome. What is it? 21? It's two years, yeah. We expect that beer

look even grayer than it is, but yeah, that was my first ride with them. Two Sturges. I've obviously

been known most of these guys before and then we got into it that year. So, that was... There's

always been a great memory. And again, it was before social media. So, I think I have two pictures

of that trip, me on a bike, right? Nowadays, you probably have 500 and a freaking... In the cloud.

Yeah, following you and the video being made of it, but it was authentic. It was fun back then.

I remember a quick story on that, but I remember we were... Always, you had the big group and then

there was smaller groups. And one time, it was probably 10 of us and it was Arlenness leading

the group, right? And at one point, it was like four o'clock in the afternoon. I was maybe like

two bikes behind Arlen. And I saw him looking next to a guy riding next to him and he did one of these.

That was Arlen's way of showing the group. We're going to stop for a drink. We're going to have

some beer or a Montini. And you're just behind that and you're like, it has hurts, right? You've

been on the bike for a day and your leg hurts because you've been sitting on it like a madman.

And then he just puts a smile on your face. You're like, man, they got to figure it out.

That's wild. Every route from basically San Francisco up, I mean, even if you go straight

across 80, it's still nice. You still have some cool stuff. It's fun. It's fun, right?

I wish... I've been working with the Ness family for many years. I'm very close with them and very

love that brand, love that family. So they always ask and I'm like, man, I just,

I don't know if I can swing getting all the way to Cali to then come back up. It's just like,

it's hard. Do it. I want to, yeah. Do it. Do it. You will not regret it. You will look back and

it will be one of your best memories. I promise you that. It's just fun. It's a great group,

but it's just so much fun riding from the West Coast to Georgia. To me, that was always

a highlight. Once you get to Georgia, it's great, right? But then you get pulled in a hundred

different directions. I think it'd be cool to do it with, because I've written a lot of this country

and not to say that's a brag or anything. I'm just saying, I've got to experience it all,

but when you change the bike and the people you do it with, that changes the entire experience.

So I think going up there and riding with them on their ride and just seeing how they do it and

what the vibe is, that would be such a unique way to experience all that stuff.

It's all of that. For me, some of these rides, I associate with meeting some of my best friends

for the first time. I got Maury and then Terry and Klik who passed away back then, a few years back.

I remember riding into Sun Valley and we hit the hotel. We were exhausted. Again,

on the chopper for like freaking 10, 12 hours. And there's these guys and they're wearing yellow

shirts. So I'm like, okay, it's part of the tribe, right? Hey, how are you doing?

You guys want to crown in seven? Yeah, right? And that was just the first conversation, right?

And they became one of my best friends. I was still in Europe at that point and

I invited them to a dealer show. We had the Custom Chrome dealer show. We had the European

Championship of Custom Bike Buildings. That was a big deal, right? And after that thing and after

the ride and get to know, but I'm like inviting him and you're going to come to that show and

forgot about it, right? Sure enough, these guys a day before the show, they're like, hey, we're

coming, you know that. So they stayed there. I mean, this is just friendship and connection that

you take away from doing that and it'll be with you for your whole life. And there's not a lot

of other things in motorcycling that get you there, I think. So I'll agree, yeah. To do it,

you will have a good time and you will meet people that might end up being your best friends.

Yeah, I mean, it'll happen. I'm for sure going to end up doing that stuff, but I think it's

been cool. I'm glad that you guys have moved to Texas. I think it's crazy that you guys

came to America and I remember watching this stuff happen and now I'm able to begin a friendship and

whatnot with you guys, have you on the podcast and everything and get some connection to this

thing I used to see through Pinterest and other apps back in the day, these bikes I used to find

and shit. It's cool, man. I'm glad you guys chose Texas and great products. I've always

loved everything and I do appreciate you coming out to do this, man. Sure. Thanks for having

us. Thanks for having me. We're excited to be here. It's one of those stories that you never

know life is full of choices and now we're in Texas and we're loving it. Yeah, I feel bad though

because I kind of told you about all the wild shit we used to do in here and this has been super

proper. Yeah, where's the drink? Yeah, I know. There's a bunch of half-drank whiskey bottles over

there and it's just, I don't know. I guess I'm trying to grow up or some shit. I don't know

what's going on, but I do appreciate it. Thank you for doing this and yeah.

You got it. Thanks for having us. All right, man. Yeah.

Hope you guys enjoyed this. If you listen to this podcast throughout, then you've probably heard

about the grand opening that both Kotlin USA and Evolution Performance is having down in New

Braunfels. It's on the, hold on, hold on, pull it up. It is on Thursday, the 26th down there in

New Braunfels. I'm going to be riding one of my bikes down there to hang out, check it out and

support the show. Also, we have Nitty Gritty popping off next Thursday, the 19th of March

going on until the 22nd. We are hosting a performance motorcycle show within this event

and that is thanks to Law Tiger's Dallas and big shout out to my man, Loudomah Devin, for all the

help with that. We're awesome. We've got some cool belt buckles courtesy of LFG. LFG will be there.

It's going to be a great time. It's got the camp out vibes that are, you know, fast life camp I

used to have with a lot more attractions, to say the least. Hopefully see you guys there.

Yeah. I really appreciate you guys support watching these, listening to these podcasts,

however you're taking it, consuming it. I appreciate it. It helps feed the algorithm,

I guess, you know, daddy algorithms out there. If you guys want to see more, support more,

do more with this, go check out our Patreon. There's links down in the description,

along with all of our sponsors to help keep the show rolling. So don't hesitate to give them a

gander. All right, we'll catch you on the next episode. You guys have a good one.

Kodlin USA #457

About this episode

BMW

custom bike building

Harley Davidson

Custom Chrome Europe

carb

EPA

emissions compliance

European Union emissions regulations

country-specific vehicle regulations

TÜV

Porsche

Honda S500

Ford Mustang

lowering kit

Indian

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Drag Specialties

powder coating

motorcycle aftermarket parts

touring bikes

risers

water reservoir covers

license plates

rotors

Harley-Davidson Low Rider ST

soft tail

engine guard

VVT (Variable Valve Timing)

set screws

LED lighting

turn signals

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