S&YE215 - Sherpa | Car Curious

Hey, everybody.

My name's Alex with Sherpa.

If you want to check us out, we're sherpaec.com.

You can check us out on Instagram, SherpaEC.

Same goes for Facebook, YouTube, all the like.

You're listening to episode 215 of the Subi and You podcast.

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of the Subi and You podcast.

I had the pleasure of having Alex from Sherpa, as you just heard, on this episode of the podcast.

I met them at Overland Expo Mountain West in Colorado, and it was really cool to go

over there and talk to the guys at their booth, and then even more cool to go to

the after-party that they had after Overland Expo that evening.

That was quite an experience, and I talk about it some here in this episode.

I think I may have mentioned it also in the bonus episode from Overland Expo Mountain West.

But, yeah, I'm excited to have Sherpa on the podcast.

They are a great group of guys and just people working there, and also they have

a really great product, and I'm excited to share this with everybody.

I want to give a shout out to my buddy, Ben, who is the host of the Dirt Subis podcast.

If you haven't done so, go check out his podcast.

He releases episodes every other Wednesday.

I'm not sure if he's releasing one this week or not.

I can't remember what the exact schedule is, but look for that.

You can follow him on Instagram.

You can find him wherever you listen to your podcast.

So go check it out, Dirt Subis podcast.

He's got some really great guests, and they get into some really good conversations.

Also, if you haven't done so, go check out the Subi and you YouTube channel.

If you go to my link tree, it's the very first link there where you can click on it and subscribe,

and I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

It is going a little bit slower than I had planned, but I've got other things that

I've been working on, so I'm trying to do a lot of stuff all at once while I

have all this extra time.

But I will get some more videos up there, like the other two Overland Expo videos

that I can put together to post in the shorts, and then as well as just doing

some product overviews again still of the products that I have on my cross-trade.

So, yeah, go check it out, subscribe.

It would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much.

But now a word from one of our sponsors.

The Subi and you podcast is brought to you by Ascentric Designs.

For those of you who don't know, Ascentric Designs is a small community driven

business that offers custom fit vinyl overlays for most Subaru models.

This includes various designs for the rear reflectors, tail lights, and side tail lights.

I also offer fun, detailed designs like the popular fender stripes and stickers.

To find designs for your Subi, head on over to AscentricDesigns.com.

There's always more projects in the works, so be sure to follow

at Ascentric.designs on Instagram.

And as always, thank you so much,

Ascentric Designs for sponsoring the Subi and you podcast.

If you've not done so, go give her a follow on Instagram.

It's Ascentric.designs.

You can also go check out her website and see what she has to offer for your Subaru.

It's gotten a little bit cooler here in Houston.

It's not in the 90s anymore.

It's getting down to the high 60s, low 70s in the evening.

And then during the day, it's getting up to the high 80s.

So still warm, but not as cool or as cold as I would like it to be.

As all of us here would like it to be.

We want to see colder weather.

We want to see snow.

But unfortunately, we get that very, very rarely.

However, I know it's getting colder in other places.

So this would be a perfect time to check out some of the cold weather gear at Subarugear.com.

One item in particular is there is a new brat beanie that has just been released.

So you can go check that out.

You just go into the search and type in brat beanie and check it out.

Bucky posted about it a little while back.

I think right before Halloween, he's got a post with a skeleton wearing the beanie.

So it's a really nice looking beanie.

So go check that out.

But also check out the other winter gear at Subarugear.com as well as many of the other

items.

There's so many great products in there.

And as the holidays are coming up, there are some great items in there that would be good

for stocking stuffers or just gifts to give your best friend or your loved one, your

kids, whomever the Subaru enthusiast in your life can always use some Subaru gear.

When you fill up your cart, use the code SUBIENU25 at checkout for 20% off your

purchase.

If your purchase price is over $50 after the 20% discount, you automatically get free shipping,

which is a really, really great benefit.

So thank you so much Subarugear.com for sponsoring the SUBIENU podcast and bringing this great

offer to our listeners.

As you may know, I currently do not have a job, but I'm looking.

I have my resume out there.

I've been looking around for some stuff.

A really great way to help out and help support the podcast and also me through this time is

to join Patreon.

You can go to the link tree in my bio and it says support the podcast via Patreon.

It's just a little bit, but it really helps out.

So I would really, really greatly appreciate it.

And thank you so much to the patrons who have already joined up and helped support

the podcast.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

To SUBI Fest or Wicked Big Meat or Boxer Fest, you may have seen SUBI Mods.

I mean, how could you miss them?

They've got one of the biggest displays there.

SUBI Mods is one of the sponsors of the SUBIENU podcast.

Go check out their website.

They have a great membership program where you can earn points to get money off

of your purchases.

They also offer some products for the Crosstrek, the Outback and the Forester.

So go check out their website, browse through their site.

Let's see what they do as far as moving into the overland and off-road scene.

I know that they did some stuff.

A couple of photo shoots with Adventure One up in the northeast.

So it would be great to see them move more into the off-road and overland scene.

So let's keep an eye out for that.

But yeah, go check out SUBIMods.com, sign up for their membership

and start earning points today.

Before we get into this conversation with Alex, I wanted to announce

that their Black Friday sale is now live through the end of the month.

So be sure to go check out sherpa.com.

Also follow them on Instagram because they're posting about bundle deals

that they're doing as well.

So go visit their site and save on some products today.

Let's get into this episode with Alex from Sherpa.

Hey, Alex. How's it going, man?

I'm doing really good.

I'm excited to challenge you guys today.

Yeah, me too.

And I'm excited to see you again because I actually met you at Overland Expo in Colorado.

Right? Correct.

Yeah, I love one right in our backyard.

Yep. Yeah.

Because I've been to three of them now, so I'm trying to remember who I met where.

Yeah, it was I got to meet you all through Kerry and Milton

and got to saw or got to see one of your racks on their Forester

and then also on Chris's.

He goes by Silveroo off road.

He had one of your racks.

So it's cool being able to see two of your racks on vehicles in person

and just meet y'all.

So I was thankful to be able to go to these events

and connect with a lot of great people and y'all being one of them.

Yeah, it's it's definitely nice.

We're we're taking a big leap into a new market space for us.

And it's been really nice to see that same warmth

that we've seen in the Toyota community and all the other communities

who've kind of been in in the last few years, growing our company

and the energy in the Subaru space

and the excitement about us creating some product in that has been awesome.

Kerry and Milton, awesome to work with.

We got connected with them right before Overland Expo

and got to get one of our new racks on their Forester,

which was an awesome experience. Kerry and Milton are awesome.

Super fun to get to meet them.

Chris has been around us for a while.

He's a local guy.

So he's honestly been one of those guys who have been bugging us,

like, when are you guys going to make Subaru product?

When are you going to make Subaru product?

And he's been buying our accessories for other rack system

that he had on his vehicle prior to us making one.

And when we came out with it,

he was one of the first guys in line ready to put a rack on his vehicle.

And he was a early tester for us, which was really, really cool.

Yeah, and that's cool having somebody local to you like that

that you can work with and have on your have your product on their vehicle.

And then, yeah, of course, Kerry and Milton,

all the stuff that they're doing,

like the stuff that Milton does with his own personal vehicle.

And then the fact that Kerry is going to be doing the Rebel rally.

It's just it's such a great thing to be a part of.

And I think that's great for Sherpa to be a part of that

and have some additional representation at the Rebel rally this year.

Yeah, and it's super fun talking Rebel with Kerry is we do off road racing

in our business as well.

So we're racing ultra four.

We go race desert races like Mint 400 Vegas Sereno in our forerunner.

So it's really fun to kind of comparing and contrasting our experiences in racing.

And we know how brutal those environments are

and the testing bed that it provides for our product on those vehicles.

So being able to provide a off the shelf product

that we're delivering to consumers and put it through those race environments

where it's miles and miles of abuse.

We have things that pass to these roof racks.

We've even done an off road race with a rooftop tent.

It's a two mile race with a rooftop tent on our roof rack.

That's awesome, which was super fun.

Just to kind of like just show off what the racks were capable of.

Obviously, that's a lot of extra weight on a race car and some extra drag.

But for us, that's kind of part of the reason why we do it.

So it was definitely fun for us to do that.

And we're excited to be a part of the rebel with the carrying Milton.

Yeah, definitely. Great people, too.

And then the rebel rally is just such a great event.

And it's been going on for quite a while

and glad to see her in there again and with a different Subaru this year.

So that's cool, too.

Yeah, it's going to be awesome.

Yeah, so I want to get into more of like the origin story of Sherpa.

But before we do that,

I have my standard question and that is whether you prefer waffles or pancakes.

This one, if you asked me like a year ago, I'd probably be Team Waffles.

But recently, I cannot get over a good chocolate chip pancake,

especially from like IHOP, Village Inn,

like you just get like a nice little breakfast platter, eggs, bacon,

some chocolate chip pancakes and a nice cup of coffee.

Yeah, that's what I like to hear.

I mean, I've been a pancake guy for a long time, but I love waffles, too.

But nice to meet another pancake person.

I like that. Oh, heck, yeah.

I could use some pancakes right now, honestly.

Yeah, do it, man, after we get done, go make some.

Heck, yeah.

So where did the name Sherpa come from and like what's the meaning behind it?

Yeah, so it's kind of a funny story.

When we started our business, we were originally Rocky Mountain Racks,

which was kind of put us into this position of like, OK,

our name is kind of like a geolocator when we were talking about like growth early on.

Like, do we really want to be making roof racks for the rest of our existence?

Like, is this going to kind of put ourselves into a corner?

So at the same time, we were also really talking about like building a brand

and like what it entails to become a brand more so than just a product that you offer.

Yeah. So we decided to rename the company.

And we went through a lot of different naming ideas

and we kind of really landed on this like the figurative definition of a Sherpa,

which is someone that kind of like guides you through an adventure, right?

You think the quintessential Sherpa on Mount Everest, right?

They are experts in the space, like they know the area.

They are very well adept in the environments that they're in and they carry a lot of your gear.

So we really love this idea of like becoming the Sherpa for your vehicle.

So you can focus more on the adventure, more on the gear that you're bringing with you

or less on the gear that you're bringing with you as far as like how you're packing

it in your vehicle and kind of allow us to take that weight off your shoulders.

So when we kind of built our brand and our business early on,

we didn't have a lot of faith in the current products on the market

and we had found some holes.

There weren't fitment options for the vehicle that we had at the time.

So we love the idea of like, let's become the experts in this space.

Let's build a product people can trust and let's add to your adventure

by taking some of that stress off your plate.

So that's kind of where the name Sherpa comes from.

Nice. Yeah, that's a really good name, too.

Good story behind it.

Yeah. So when you decided to change the name,

you said you went through several iterations.

How long did it take you to come up with that as the name?

Like from when you decided like, let's let's change the name to when you said,

OK, it's going to be Sherpa.

Yeah, at the time, it was nice.

We were definitely still a very small company.

It was just the three of us, which I can introduce later.

So there was a lot of back and forth.

Some of us live together at the time.

So we're talking about it all the time.

Like it's not a during business hours at this time, too.

Some of us were still students.

So we had school on top of what we were doing with Sherpa growing that.

But we went back and forth for probably two weeks.

We would sit down and just talk ideas, bounce things off the wall.

We were also like into like the marketing side pretty heavily.

So like we like to picture the names that we were looking at.

Like, what does a logo start to look like?

How do you talk about it?

Where does that brand piece come into it and like the visuals

and being able to like sell a product with that name?

Does it resonate with people?

Is it easy to say?

Is it something that's easy to remember and search?

And we all just kind of fell in love with the idea of Sherpa.

Like we loved what it meant.

We love the idea that it conveyed.

It's a nice five letter word.

It's short and sweet, easy to spell.

Not easy to like mix up and think you said something else.

So we just kind of loved it and started playing with it.

And we all kind of just knew once all three of us were like,

yeah, this is awesome.

Let's go forward with it.

That's how we landed on it.

Nice.

So you said all three of you.

So there's you and then who are the other two founders?

Yeah, so right at the beginning,

we go all the way back to my parents' garage in high school.

It's myself and Will Oliver, my original business partner

that we kind of pioneered this thing with.

And this was taking angle iron and flat sheets of aluminum

and cutting shapes out of them with angle grinders.

After school, this was when I was a senior

in high school actually.

And we just started tinkering with stuff in the driveway

because this was when rooftop tents

were just starting to get popular.

And A, we couldn't afford a roof rack

and that was on the market that fit our vehicles.

B, a lot of bad reviews on the product

that was out there, long lead times.

So we were like, shoot, let's just build something.

And this was a year before we started the business.

The thing that we built was honestly pretty horrible.

But it held a rooftop tent and it got us out camping

in the new exciting rooftop tents

that we were just getting our hands on at the time.

And we kind of got to adapt from there.

And after a while, a good friend of mine, Hayden,

who I had met in this space and to give some context,

this all started with a third generation Toyota 4Runner.

So 1996 to 2002.

That's the vehicle that all three of us had.

Oh, nice.

And we're starting to build out and using them in high schools.

My first vehicle in high school,

I still have the same truck today.

I love it and continue to use it as much as I can.

But Hayden, who I had met in the third gen

4Runner community, we had been wheeling together.

He was a very tech savvy guy, very mechanical.

At the time, I think when I met him,

he was working at like a RC shop.

He was building custom RC cars and making like drones

and doing all this stuff that was like way above

my understanding of how things worked and doing electronics.

So I always knew like he was a tinker.

And fast forward about a year,

I started school at CSU here in Colorado,

Carter State University.

Hayden's going there for mechanical engineering

and Will is down at CU Denver.

And he's at school for architecture.

He was in college when I had met him

and we had like started this.

So Will had this knack for design and drawing

and good aesthetics.

Hayden had this ability to engineer things,

to figure out cool ways to solve problems.

And I was kind of on this marketing side.

I was growing in my social media space on Instagram.

I had a big following in the foreigner community

and in that off-road space.

So we kind of like pooled together

and we were like, hey,

we should make this a legitimate business.

We've gotten a lot of interest in these racks.

People want us to build something.

We want something nicer than what we currently have,

which wasn't awesome at the time.

So Will drew up a new design for the roof rack

that we were going to have water jet out of aluminum.

And at the time it was like,

oh my gosh, what is the water jet?

Like how does this cut aluminum that's quarter inch?

How do you get all these fine details in it?

Pretty well doesn't it?

It does a very good job.

And it was cool.

We got to start to learn about like the manufacturing side,

how these things are built.

Got to start to talk to professionals

in the manufacturing space.

And we kind of put together an initial order

through the forums and through Instagram.

I shared on Instagram like,

hey, we're interested in making a updated version

of the rack that's on my truck.

Would anyone be interested?

We posted on the forums

and we basically created a buy-in and sold.

We were going to make,

I think we made six racks on our first batch

and we sold four of the six

and two of them got to go on our trucks.

And it kind of covered the cost of the two

for that first batch.

Nice.

And within a week we had those spots filled up

and we had people who were excited to try it out.

And we kind of like prefaced

this might not be perfect.

We might have to like ship you guys some updated parts.

It might take us a while to figure out

how to package all this to get all the hardware.

There might be some trial and error.

So like bear with us while we work through these kinks.

Oh yeah, of course.

And we got all those orders going.

We ordered the product from the Waterjet company

to have that cut.

We ordered the extrusion crossbars, got those in.

We figured out what hardware we needed

and ran the ACE hardware

and started pulling hardware out of the bins.

Nice.

And then we kind of got like hung up on the mounting feet.

The first roof rack we ever made,

we cut up Unistra from electrical Unistra at Home Depot

and just took the C channel piece

and drilled holes in the bottom and holes in the top.

The bottom holes went into our roof track.

The top holes went into the extrusion.

And we were like, we got to make this better.

So we hit up Hayden and we were like,

Hayden, we want to pay you to make us our mounting feet.

And we landed on some nice BC aluminum C channel

that he was going to cut down on his bandsaw

and then drill the holes after making 3D printed jigs,

which he had taught us about all this.

He's like, I can 3D print jigs.

I can put it on my drill press.

And this guy in his apartment had a mini like workbench

in his laundry room, basically on a drill press,

a bandsaw and all this stuff to help us make this feet.

So we 1099ed him as a contractor

and started paying him to manufacture our mounting feet.

And pretty much from there, it just started to snowball.

We made our LLC, we made our website within about six months.

We moved out of installing roof racks at Hayden's apartment,

driving them to UPS and shipping them and packaging them,

packaging them late at night after school, into a shop.

And we've just been growing since then,

always trying to make improvements, make adjustments,

doing more fitments and improving the product,

the brand, our representation

and everything along the way.

Now, so when you first started making that,

like just kind of homemade rack, when was that?

Like what year was that?

So the first homemade rack was 2016.

Okay.

Yeah.

So almost 10 years ago, not too long ago.

Nice.

Yeah.

And then.

So we're a young bunch.

Yeah, no, that's awesome.

Do you still have that rack on your car

or is it often you have a new one on there now?

Yeah.

So my personal foreigner has gone through

many iterations of roof racks.

We've redesigned and updated and fixed small things

and thankfully been fortunate enough to pass on

a lot of those fixes to our customers,

even from the very beginning,

upgrading them to new product as we've improved,

which is really cool.

But we do have the original roof rack.

It's hung up on a wall at our shop.

That's what I was wondering.

It's so cool.

And it's funny.

There's parts from the original roof rack

that have like been left at my parents house,

like in the garage.

And I actually got a text from my dad like three weeks ago.

He was working on a trailer.

Did you whitewater rafting?

And he needed to make a thing to pick up

and like sling oars underneath where he puts his bow.

And he sent me a picture

and it was the angle iron from the original side plate

of one of our racks.

And he was like,

purposing one of the original roof racks.

And I was like, oh, it's cool to see a second life

for that piece of angle iron.

Yeah, yeah, that's really cool.

So when did you,

so you were paying Will, right?

To do some stuff, 1099?

We're paying Hayden.

Oh, Hayden, sorry.

Yep.

And then Will and I were the original,

we're the ones that kind of started everything.

Okay.

So you were paying Hayden to do all this stuff.

When did you bring him on as like,

because you were 1099ing him?

When did you bring him on as like an official,

I guess, partner of the business?

Yeah, so I want to say it was within the first year.

It might have been like right around

like our one year anniversary

after officially starting in June of 2017.

He had just gone completely above and beyond.

He got so engulfed in the idea

of what we had originally set out to do.

And honestly, it just become an incredible asset to the team

and part of the ownership team.

So early on, we just sat down,

we talked about the future,

if it was something that he wanted to continue to do with us.

At the time, he was pursuing a career in aerospace.

He had been doing internships with NASA.

And that's some pretty cool opportunities on the horizon.

So like Will and I were kind of like at this point of,

we don't want to lose this amazing asset,

but we also don't want to like take him away

from what he's been working so hard for.

So we kind of put the idea on the table of like,

hey, do you want to try this?

We'd love to have you as a part of the team

for the foreseeable future.

Like you've put a ton of your time and energy into this.

So through that conversation, he was like,

yeah, I'm loving what we're doing.

I think there's so much to this.

I think there's a lot of potential to continue to grow this.

So we gifted him some ownership

and brought him in as part of the ownership team

and grew from there.

So that was even before we had our first official employee.

I want to say our first employee, which really cool.

Our first two employees,

one of those first two still works for us today

has been with us the entire time, which is incredible.

Another one is a really good friend of ours.

He chased after some other adventures

and now lives out in Hawaii, which is really cool.

But that was pretty shortly after Hayden came on

as part of the ownership team and we were cranking away.

And to be honest, for a long time,

it was college buddies that wanted to come work for us

and enjoyed what we were doing

and shared a lot of the same interests as us.

Yeah, so I want to ask two questions,

oh actually three, but I'll start off with the first one.

So what was that first year like whenever you,

I guess you get to your one year anniversary

and then did you continue school

or were you like, this is what we're gonna do now

and not gonna do school anymore?

And then the third question is skipping everything

in between from that first year to now,

like looking back, what is that like?

Yeah, so the first year was honestly,

it was cool because we were in this situation where

at the time I had a job that I was working,

I want to say I was working like 30 hours a week.

I worked at a Toyota dealership and I was,

I might've been a little less, maybe like 25 hours a week,

I was working at a dealership detailing cars,

which I enjoyed.

I was at a Toyota dealership.

I love Toyota's, I love cars.

I think detailing's a really like therapeutic process.

So I enjoyed what I was doing there.

I was a full-time student.

I was studying journalism and communications.

So I have full class schedule on top of that.

And then we were doing the rack business,

like at night, pretty heavy on the weekends.

And the nice thing was we didn't have

like this massive influx in orders.

We could kind of like turn the faucet on and dial it back.

We launched with pretty long lead times,

like we would take an order and we would run it in batches.

We would do like a five to six rack batch every like eight weeks.

So we would kind of like collect the parts,

start to assemble everything, get it all ready.

And the first few shipments was the hardest part

because you know, like it's easy to be,

oh, we can make this kick-ass product

and get everything together and ship it out to people.

And then you're like, oh, how do I package my hardware?

So I put it in a Ziploc.

Oh, there's really cool products you can buy

that you can like vacuum CLDs and segment things off

and get label makers and label everything.

But it all costs a ton of money, which we didn't have.

So like I kind of, I feel bad for our initial customers

and kind of like what they receive.

But I also like to a point,

like some of those people who are our initial adopters

still come to us this day.

And like, so like I still can't believe

I was one of the first rack from you guys.

Like what a cool experience because they got a gearbox

that we ordered from U-Line for our roof rack to fit in.

It was the side plates.

The crossbars were shrink wrapped together

and nicely divided by pieces of paper we cut up

and ripping apart 30 racks from our roommates

and using it as packaging material

and hardware's going into sorted out Ziploc bags

that are Ziploc branded.

We come to realize Ziplocs were really expensive

for plastic bags.

But it was like a fun experience of like trying to figure out

like how to package these and all that stuff.

Oh yeah.

So it was cool that first year

it was a lot of like trial and error.

It was also like very personal.

Like it was easy to have in-depth conversations

with our customers.

We didn't have a whole lot of them.

So like it was easy to hop on the phone

and be like, Hey, this is what we're waiting on.

This is when your order is expected to go out.

We could be like super proactive

and yeah, it almost felt like a school project, oddly enough.

It didn't seem like overly serious

but we were just like really motivated and excited about it.

I got to spend a lot of my time on the social media side.

So it gave me opportunities to like,

good excuse to take the truck out, go take photos,

build content.

I loved making videos and taking photos and editing.

Yeah, cause it seemed like what you were saying earlier

is that something that you really enjoyed.

So this helped you express that outlet

and something that, you know, brought some passion

and it's like now you get to incorporate a brand

that you're building in a business

into something that you were already enjoying.

So that's like even better.

Yeah, and that's kind of like,

I think one of the things that gave us early success

is each of us owners kind of had like a niche

and got to do what we love within the business.

Like I got to be really heavy on the marketing side.

I'm also a very like handsy person.

Like I love getting down and dirty and building things

and using angle grinders and running a drill

and installing things and troubleshooting

and trying to figure out designs.

And Hayden could flex his mechanical engineering skills

and talk about why something wouldn't work,

help troubleshoot problems.

Got to learn way more about CNC cutting

and water jets and lasers

and different ways of manufacturing our product.

We got to learn about supply chain and hardware

and extrusion and it's funny.

We talk about like when we came into this business

our hobby was off-roading and going camping

and overlanding and like we loved that.

And this was a way for us to kind of like

how do we monetize that a little bit?

But we found that we have this like

pretty deep passion for American manufacturing

in the process and that kind of like comes in

down the road as we could start to build some finances.

The business started out of our very empty college pockets.

And I had kind of like mentioned to you this earlier

of it was like almost crowdfunded.

Like the first products we sold, we sold an idea

and we had early buy-in and we were very honest

and open with those people that bought in.

Like this is the process that's going to happen

once these orders are placed, but it kick started it.

From the initial orders we were able to start to build

the next set of product and deliver it

to the next customers and so on and so forth

until we could start to build up our cash reserves

and invest in ourselves and buy machinery.

Our first machine was a CNC

router that's normally used

for basically machining wood and we bought it

to speed up R&D time.

It was really expensive and costly

to test a new fitment or a new product

when we had to design it in the computer,

send it off to a third party to then cut it

and give it to us whether we go pick it up

or they ship it or whatever and then hold it up

to a truck and oh, that doesn't work.

Okay, there's a $190 piece of metal

that is now worthless.

So we were like, how do we like do it

out of like really cheap wood?

So we bought our first machine and we used it to prototype

and then we found out we could machine aluminum

on a CNC router, which is really neat,

incredibly inefficient, very loud,

but for a year in our first shop space in Fort Collins

we were machining aluminum

and starting to manufacture our own products.

It would take us about 10, 11 hours to cut one,

five by 10 sheet of aluminum, but we were cutting aluminum

and we were deburring it and cleaning it

and processing it, taking it to our powder coder

and shipping product that we cut and manufactured

in our shop to consumers and it was awesome.

Like it fired us up.

Yeah, I mean, that's cause like you're totally

in the whole process from beginning,

from conception to design to we're actually

making this happen, physically making this happen

and getting to ship it out to the customers.

And I'm sure like the customers that knew that

was like, this is really cool because they actually made it.

It didn't send it off somewhere else

for somebody else to do it.

They did it themselves.

So how, y'all did that for about a year you said?

Yeah, so we were doing that for about a year

in our first shop space.

So we were kind of like my college house Hayden's

department for the first, I want to say it was like eight months.

And then we had a year in, it was actually two years

in that first shop space, but like the first few months

in that shop space, it was kind of just a space

for us to put everything, package racks.

We were able to bring customers in and do installs,

show them some of the product.

But then we got that CNC machine in,

we were doing our feet manufacturing there.

So we had our bandsaw cutting down our stock

and we were digging and drilling our holes,

packaging everything, and then doing R&D there.

So we had an awesome neighbor with a laser scanner.

And we would basically commission his time

to come in and help us laser scan vehicles.

And that's when we started to branch out

of just that third gen four runner space.

Yeah.

Then we did the Tacoma.

We did the newer four runners.

We did the next generation of four runner behind that.

So we had the third, fourth and fifth gen four runner.

We had the second and third gen Tacoma.

And we really just like dove into the Toyota space.

Like that's what we were passionate about at the time

and what kind of made sense for us

with the community that was around us.

That's who a lot of our friends were at the time.

Yeah.

Which we leaned on like,

Hey, bring your truck over after class today.

Yeah.

That's what I was wondering because like obviously

you have to have vehicles that you can scan

and then start to branch off into those other generations.

But how did you, you being more into like the marketing

and stuff, how did you market to new customers for them

to know about you and what you can provide,

especially seeing all of these other generation

four runners out there.

Was it like a lot of word of mouth

or just doing a lot of that and social media?

Yeah.

So social media was a massive part of this.

I had already had a decent following.

I think at the time of us starting the business,

I was like, it's not insane by any means,

but I had about 10,000 followers on my personal Instagram

following my forerunner.

Like the persona of that Instagram was my forerunner.

It wasn't much of like me showing my face on there that much.

Yeah.

We also had a pretty cool thing going about

two years leading up to us starting the business.

It's called BroCo Adventure Media.

You can still go find it on YouTube.

It's me and my friends going out

and doing these like two week trips in the summer.

And then we'd have like weekend trips

and we would just shoot like short films on it, basically.

Like there weren't anything to break home about on the quality,

but it was just like fun, genuine adventure in our vehicles.

And we had created a decent following in that space also.

It wasn't huge by any means,

but the people that did watch it got very much so sucked in.

They really enjoyed the content.

They were always asking for more videos.

So we were kind of able to bridge those folks' excitement

into what we were doing there, into what we were doing at Sherpa.

I was able to plug into my following on Instagram

and get them immediately excited about what we were doing at Sherpa.

It's actually really cool.

We haven't like deleted anything.

So if you're bored one day

and you just want to scroll all the way down

to the bottom of our Instagram feed

or go to the beginnings of our Facebook,

like you can find a lot of that original content

and you can see the original space where a lot of this started.

So there's a lot of cool history back there,

but also the forums.

Like forums used to be so much bigger than they are now.

And it's crazy to think that it's only really been like eight,

nine years since the beginning.

But like forums were huge.

There's a website called t4r.org

that like I spent so much of my free time on in high school,

learning about forerunner mods,

talking to these legends in the community

that had the coolest build threads.

And if you wanted to do something to your forerunner,

that's the place you went to learn about it.

You weren't really going to YouTube.

You weren't going to a Facebook page.

Like you were going to the forum

and you were looking up the write-up that so-and-so had

because they're the best at write-ups.

So we've leveraged that a lot.

Yeah, there's a lot of people that I end up talking to

on the podcast that have had a Subaru for a long time

or had Subarus previously.

And they talk a lot about the forums

and learning a lot of stuff through the forums,

you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

And so it's really cool to hear like the stories

of how a lot of people learned a lot from those forums.

Yeah, and it's cool.

Like social media is so short.

Like the content we put out on Instagram,

it really only has like a one, two, three-day lifespan

unless someone wants to go back and scroll

and find something.

But like it's in one year and it's out.

So like the stuff like forums, YouTube's kind of a similar way

where like you can make something

and it has a long-lasting effect.

Like it's so much easier to be like,

hey, I'm going to spend some time on this forum post

because I know people are going to be reading it

this year, next year, the following year.

People are going to be coming back

and looking at this maybe 10 years in the future.

Like I can go find write-ups on a forerunner build

from 12 years ago and it's still relevant information

if it's on the same platform.

So like that longevity aspect of it is so cool to me.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're definitely very useful.

I don't think I've kind of looked into forums here

and there, but I didn't really start like getting

into cars until I bought my Subaru

because I've owned cars before

but I never really did much with them.

And so like the only thing that I did before

was like change out radio and door speakers,

but that's so easy.

You don't really need a forum to do that.

You know, if you kind of have a little idea

of what it is you're doing.

But so when I bought my Subaru, there was Instagram

and I just started asking people through Instagram.

So that's kind of how I learned

and YouTube is already a big thing.

So I learned a lot of stuff from that.

So I never really got into using forums.

So I kind of didn't get to experience that.

I mean, I guess I still could,

but it's like it's cool to hear the stories about it though.

Yeah, I definitely reminisce a little bit,

but they're still around.

It's just a much smaller crowd.

The traffic is so much lower than it used to be.

But yeah, I mean, it gave us our legs early on.

It was a place for us to allow the folks

who had been purchasing to kind of have a voice

other than direct word of mouth

and conversating in person.

We weren't really heavy on like going to events early on,

but we were good about like getting into wheeling days

with the local community.

We were in like local Facebook pages

where people would be like,

oh, I'm gonna go hit this trail this weekend.

And we'd be able to kind of dive in.

And it was always fun to kind of

decently early on roll up and be like,

oh, yo, you guys are Rocky Mountain Racks,

which was our name at the time,

or you guys were the Sherpa guys.

And it was like, oh, wow, people are like,

people are noticing, it's so sweet.

And then like the most surreal thing

is when you're driving down the highway

and you see your product drive by going the other way

and you're like, hey, that's not a rack, that's cool.

That's been like one of the coolest things

is we've gotten bigger and gotten more product out

is like seeing your product on your drive to work

or you go on a trip on the other end of the country

and you see one out in Florida

and you're like, hey, we built that.

Nice, yeah.

So seeing, like talking about being able to see

your product out on the road,

what makes your racks different from others?

And then like what kind of design elements

have you put into your racks

that makes them recognizable

and maybe different and stand out more?

Yeah, so from the beginning,

one of the big things was strength.

Like the first rack we built,

we realized that like you can't just bolt metal together

and get something that's gonna hold up

to a 200 plus pound rooftop tent,

especially the way we drive.

We're kind of, we're a little faster

and we like to like do some decent off-roading.

Our early like brand was kind of like this

hardcore off-roader that also camp.

Like it was almost like anti-overland

but we overlanded, we just didn't want to admit it

because we liked rock crawling

and there was like, there was this tension early on

of like, you're either an overlander

or you're a rock crawler

and through like the growth of our business

and a lot of like people kind of combining the two,

this like rock lander idea kind of came about

and we kind of fell into that spot.

So our push with our product was

how do we make a rack that's easy to use?

It can ship to your door and you can install yourself

and it's gonna be really strong.

So we looked at different material properties.

We figured out what makes sense as far as shape.

We figured out the best way to mount things.

We wanted to make install easier.

So things like our rubber roof seals

at the time when we came out with that,

like that was a roof rack innovation.

Nobody was doing rubber roof seals.

That's so cool.

And it's funny, yeah, it's funny

because we took the idea and the thought process

from OEMs, like when you take your factory roof rack off

it's not globs full of silicone.

Nope.

In the hardware store it has a seal made of rubber

around your hardware.

And we kind of looked at like the idea of also a bushing.

Like we're putting weight on these roof racks.

Bushings are usually made of rubber.

It absorbs impact.

It protects the opposing ends of whatever's between it.

So we had this idea of, okay, how do we protect the vehicle?

How do we seal the roof?

And how do we kind of like absorb some of this shock?

So we came up with our rubber roof seal

for all of our racks that mount to factory mounting points.

So our new Subaru product has these rubber roof seals built in.

Very nice.

And we're using those.

And we've been doing it since the very beginning.

So they're very well tested.

We don't have leaking,

but it makes for a nice clean easy install.

So those are the kind of things

that we really pushed hard for.

Also like wind noise.

Wind noise is always a conversation

when it comes to roof racks.

So we spend a lot of time making sure

you can get rid of any wind noise

if it is present on a media install.

We have a lot of adjustability built into our product.

You can move it forward, you can move it backwards,

you can adjust our wind fairings.

We found that no two vehicles are exactly the same.

Even if it's the same model, the same paint,

the same rack going on it,

there's minor adjustments that you can kind of make

to dial it in, especially to work with your setup

depending on what you're mounting on it.

So we've kind of built that adjustment in.

We have information on our website

and our customer service team is awesome

at helping anyone figure out those like small things

once you kind of get your rack set up

and you can dial it in.

But then aesthetically, like we love clean and simple.

And I think a lot of people like clean and simple.

We don't want a rack to take away

from the aesthetic of your vehicle.

We only want it to add to it

and feel like it belongs there.

So we take a lot of aesthetic cues

from the vehicles that we put the racks on.

So you'll notice like no two tails on our roof racks

are the same because they always follow

the design cues of the vehicle they're going on.

So we usually like pull shapes from spoilers,

from rear windows, our fairings

always match the slope of the front windshield.

So everything flows and looks seamless

or lying across the bottom edge of the roof rack

follows the contour of the roof perfectly.

We have a nice sleek gap all the way across.

So it's not like, yeah, it's not like it's

just slapped on there.

Like it looks like it's a part of the vehicle,

which I think goes a really long way for a lot of folks.

And it's a big thing for us.

When there's thought put into it too,

like you said, you're not just slapping something together.

That obviously means that you all have worked together

to think of ways to, like you said,

integrate it and make it look like it's part of the vehicle.

But that also shows that you care

about what your customers are getting

and you want them to be happy

with what they're purchasing from you.

So that's a big deal.

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

And like we love it when people take the rack out of the box.

They, you know, like we always hear these stories of like,

oh, me and my kid put the rack together.

It was so much fun.

It was like adult Legos.

We've done a really good job trying to make very clear

and easy to follow instructions.

So like some people get very stressed out

about like installing something on their vehicle.

Like, oh gosh, I don't have that tool

or I don't know what happens if this bolt strips out

or like whatever.

We've tried to make it like as painless as possible

as far as doing a decently big task,

especially on a Subaru.

As a lot of Subaru owners know

that I've looked into the roof rack space

to remove the factory roof rack

you have to pull your headliner down.

And that's really intimidating for a lot of folks.

But in the grand scheme of things

and like our perceptions are a little skewed.

We've been doing this for a long time.

We're all kind of mechanical.

But we can bring people into our shop

and explain it to them.

They can watch our YouTube videos on installs

and like gain that confidence of like,

okay, this isn't that scary.

I just got to take my time, follow the instructions.

Nothing's gonna happen if I just in methodical and flow

and I don't rush it.

So it's really not a bad install process at all.

And I think it's fun to turn it into like a task

that isn't like, oh, I got to go do this thing.

Like you can sit down and enjoy it, take your time.

Yeah, and you talked about,

somebody saying that they and their son did it together.

Me and my son put on the roof rack that I have.

We changed out my front axles on my Subaru

that I found out I didn't need to change out

because they weren't what was making the noise

but it was a good experience.

A few weekends ago, my son changed out

all the spark plugs on his Outback 3.6R,

which everybody was saying is a tough job

but he did it and did a really good job.

Yeah.

And so we've had a chance

to do a lot of different things together and it's fun.

So I can see how, yeah,

because I mean it is intimidating,

especially when you have to pull things apart

because then you're like,

what if it doesn't go back together right?

And but with something like a roof rack,

you're not doing anything mechanical to your car

to where you're like pulling parts of the engine out

or something like, oh my gosh,

it's not gonna run after this.

But being able to follow instructions

and then it's always nice when you can do something yourself

because there's self satisfaction out of that,

you know, knowing that you did it

and then looking at it afterwards

and then going like, okay, that really wasn't too bad.

It took a while, but that was fun.

And now look what I have.

I have this beautiful roof rack or whatever it may be.

And it's, I think it gives people a lot of confidence

and empowerment too with exploring other things

that they can do with their car.

So I think something like that,

like we know that installing roof rack

isn't really that difficult.

It's really kind of simple,

but I think, but it is a big job

and there's a lot involved.

So I think when somebody is able to do that,

even if it's not super mechanical,

then like I was saying is that it can give them

the confidence to do other things.

To be like, oh, that was actually fun.

It wasn't too bad.

And what else can I do?

Yeah, I mean, that exact progression is like,

I feel like how so many people get sucked in

to like the wrenching bug of like,

like you mentioned, like the first thing you did

was like a stereo and speakers.

And it's like, all right,

I can wire the red wire to the red wire.

I can put the white wire to the white wire.

I can take some screws out.

I can pull a door panel off.

I can put it back.

Like I didn't lose any cliffs.

And then it starts to progress.

So like, oh, I got,

I got to pull my wheel off and change my brake pads.

That wasn't that bad.

It was scary in there.

I didn't know what all this stuff did,

but I figured it out.

And then like you start to realize like to a point,

there's only so many ways things go together on cars.

There's only so many types of fasteners,

types of clips.

And then you start to like,

build a comfort with all those things.

And it's like, in not very long,

if you're motivated with it and learning more,

it's like, oh, I'm changing my valve cover gaskets.

I'm doing a timing belt and water pump.

I'm looking at like,

oh, what does it look like to do your own head gasket

versus paying a shop $2,000?

Yeah.

Snowballs quickly if you have the willingness

to invest in tools and YouTube.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, we saved 300 bucks in labor doing the spark plugs.

I paid for them and he did the labor,

but he enjoyed it.

It's like spark plugs are cheap.

Yeah, yeah.

So that wasn't too bad.

We were looking at the coil packs too,

but those are a lot more expensive.

So we may do those at some point,

but seeing it's running better now, but.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

You talked about building a brand.

You've also built,

it seems like maybe a little bit of a culture too.

So what were those ideas like

and what have you done to build a brand

beyond just a product that you sell to customers?

Yeah.

I think the big thing, honestly,

some of it kind of comes down to being young

and enjoying the fun of building a business

and not allowing ourselves to get inundated

by just the numbers and like chase every penny.

Like I'm very thankful for my business partners

because they've like,

we're always bouncing ideas off of each other.

And when one of us goes too hard in one direction,

there's always like that pushback of like,

hey, like don't remember,

or don't forget where we came from.

Like don't forget why we're doing this.

And like there's always that piece of like

not allowing each other to go too far

in our respective areas.

We all have unique ways of looking at things,

but it's allowed us to have a lot of fun

and like remind ourselves that like,

we are building all this stuff

because we enjoy the culture around it,

the people around it.

The people have always been like the center

of our business,

whether that's the people who work for us,

our customers, the community surrounding our customers,

even if they've never bought a Sherpa product

or they have never heard of a Sherpa product,

like being good stewards of our environment,

like that always comes first.

So I think we've done a good job

just like sharing this like energy of motivation

to get out and just start doing the things

that we built our brand around.

Get outside, go mountain biking, go camping,

go skiing, whatever, like we've kind of shown

that our product fits into all these different lifestyles

and Sherpa has definitely adopted

this brand more so than just like,

oh, those are guys that make roof racks,

like you saw it a little bit

when you came to our after party,

like there's a lot of stoke around the Sherpa brand

and the name and the people around it.

And we're so incredibly thankful

for the amazing folks we've met,

all the incredibly nice, smart

and fun people to be around

because of our roof racks

and what we kind of like stand for and care about.

It's been really cool.

Yeah, I almost didn't go to the after party

because it was kind of getting late.

I didn't realize, I didn't know where it was at first.

And then when Carrie sent me the invite,

it was some, you know, it was like off at y'all shop

because I thought maybe it was like at Overland Expo.

But then I was like, you know what?

I'm gonna go because I want to see them

and I want to go hang out.

And then I get there and there's just all kinds of vehicles

parked up and down the street.

There's like all these food truck vendors, tons of people.

And then there's you guys, like on this scissor lift,

like way up in the air with a megaphone,

announcing stuff and doing giveaways and stuff.

I'm like, this is one of the coolest things

I've ever seen, like for a brand

and these people that have built,

like obviously people love y'all.

They love your products.

They love like the brand.

They love you as people.

Otherwise there wouldn't be these tons,

there are tons of people out there

and you know, I'm sure people were there for giveaways

obviously, but you could tell that people were there

just to have fun with you guys.

Cause I looked like when I saw you guys up

on the scissor rack or on the scissor lift,

I'm like, this is just fun.

Like that's all I see.

I just see fun.

I see people enjoying themselves.

And I see the owners of this business

that they've created having fun

and like creating this incredible atmosphere

for the people that love them and their product.

And it's just, it was just like so cool.

And like I said, that was like literally

one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Yeah, I have to give a lot of credit

where credit's due on that too.

We have an amazing team at our shop.

Trevor has been a major part of like

helping us plan these awesome parties.

We also have a great connection of other brands

that like help put on those parties.

So it's definitely not all just us, which is amazing.

Like it's so cool to have even competitors in our space

where like they make the same product as us,

at least it goes on the same spot on the vehicle.

We have our differences and stuff, but like we're friends.

We like to go out and do the same things.

We've realized that like some people

are gonna like our product better,

some people are gonna like your product better

and they're gonna be back and forth

and there's gonna be people that are like, oh blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, of course.

Yours is so much better than theirs.

But like at the end of the day,

we enjoy doing the same things

and we're inspiring people to get out

and go enjoy what we love doing,

going out on trails, going camping,

creating memories in our vehicles.

So like it's been fun just building this like culture

in the overland industry, in the off-road industry,

in the outdoor space

and trying to be friends with everybody really.

So that's been really cool.

And I think that's one of the pieces

that like keeps us from getting bored with roof racks.

We've been doing the same thing for a while now

and there's only so many ways to skin the cat,

but it's so exciting to be like,

hey, this year we have time to build roof racks

for an entirely different space.

Like it's been really cool to start to get to know

the Subaru industry, the people involved with it,

meet people like you and hear your stories

and like hear the passion behind Subaru

and hear the excitement of like, oh, here's this brand

that hasn't ever made product for the Subaru space

that some people in the Subaru space might know about

through meeting Toyota people and hearing about our racks

and through product research,

but for the most part,

like a lot of Subaru owners don't know about us

and it's exciting too that we're just getting started.

We just started R&D on this product earlier this summer

and we'll launch it officially tomorrow.

So it's only just the beginning

to learn more about this space.

Yeah, and this episode won't come out until later

when you say tomorrow, but we'll be sharing

because I definitely wanna share the fact

that I recorded with you

tomorrow when you do the Subaru launch

so that I think that'll get built some excitement

to listen to the episode whenever it comes out.

But yeah, the fact that y'all are getting

into the Subaru space is really cool

because it makes sense because so many people,

I mean, there's a lot of racks out there

but there's also a lot of new Subarus

coming into the market.

And there's a lot of Subarus in Colorado.

So you're in a perfect spot for it.

It's a great market for y'all

and I'm super excited to see y'all in the Subaru space.

And again, super happy to have you on.

Yeah, I'm pumped.

We've gotten so much good feedback already

from Subaru folks and just the excitement

about a good high quality product for the Subaru roof.

We've started to play with Subarus a good bit.

We've borrowed some of our friends Subarus

and gone out and done some really fun content and stuff.

Nice.

And we realized they're not big inside.

No, no.

In this space that we enjoy,

people like their gear, right?

They like making camp comfortable.

They like having multiple hobbies.

So it's like, how do you fit all this stuff?

And it's funny, we've been doing this for a long time

and we've gotten complacent about how much

the roof rack actually adds to your ability to bring stuff.

But then we're packing up for a mountain biking trip

in Crested Butte in a Crosstrek

and we're like, where are we gonna put all this stuff?

And this Crosstrek, there was four of us.

We had the Crosstrek and then we had our Tacoma.

And we spilled that Crosstrek to the brim.

We had the whole back full.

We had a cooler in there.

We had camp gear up to the ceiling.

We had the back seat full.

We had two mountain bikes on the roof rack.

We had all our camp chairs and stuff strapped

in the middle and we're like,

we literally could not have done this trip

without the roof rack on this Crosstrek.

So it opened our eyes to how much necessity there is

if you're doing these activities

and the Subaru is your platform.

But it was great.

We got almost 40 miles per gallon

and got to go explore Colorado and do it in a Subaru.

And we went wheeling.

We moved down trees across the roads.

We were three wheeling this thing.

I was very impressed.

Yeah, that's, speaking of that,

like it's good to hear you're very impressed.

Like, cause I think a lot of people

that don't know a whole lot about Subarus

are surprised with how capable they are.

And I mean, even just like a stock Subaru off,

you know, off the showroom floor.

I mean, they can do a lot more than people think.

And I think it's good to see them out

with other brands too to,

I think maybe get a little more respect

and, you know, the recognition that like,

hey, these little cars can do some fun stuff too.

You know, we're not going to be doing any rock crawling,

but I think a lot,

most of the people that are buying Subarus

aren't looking to rock crawl.

They just want, there's a lot of people

that want to get out and get to like trailheads

because they're into hiking or biking or something.

And they may, they may be their car before

or couldn't get up roads that they wanted to get up

and, you know, Subaru can do a lot for people

in the environment and like the life and culture

that they want to be able to do.

It can take them more places and they're fun.

And I like a cross-track.

That's what I own because I like a smaller car.

I love a hatchback and mine is a manual.

So it's a little more special to me.

So it's fun.

The one we borrowed was a manual too, which was fun.

Nice, nice.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I was definitely like, oh, thank you.

I love driving manuals.

Oh, me too.

Yeah, it was a cool experience.

And it was funny, like at the time,

we haven't done it yet,

but we keep talking like after that trip,

like we should add a Subaru to our shop fleet.

Yeah, you should.

It's a fun car.

And it'd be fun to kind of build one out

the way that we would.

And there's a lot more that you can do to them

than I had anticipated.

Like when I used to think like, oh, build a Subaru.

I used to immediately just think like

I'm a WRX car guy, like big turbo,

Cobb, like I just want power.

I want cool rims and I want an exhaust.

Yeah.

Well, I think it would be smart

to add a Subaru to your fleet

because then you will be able to start really,

because if you just try to look at

what other people are doing and let's work with them,

if you have your own,

it'll be, I think it'll be good for you

because then you can really start getting

into knowing the ins and outs of it,

really get to see what you can do with it

and as far as like accessories and building it out.

And then also the capability and yeah, they're fun.

They're all fun.

Yeah, and we've learned a lot through our employees too.

We have a few employees with Subaru's.

One of them lifted Forester.

They did bigger tires.

They've had a rack on it pretty much

since we initially did some R&D.

So they've been like an early product tester for us.

And you guys will get to see that Subaru

and some of our launch content,

which is awesome, it's a Black Forester,

but they love it and it's fun.

Like we go out on camping trips with our team

and they're going down all the same roads we are

with our trucks and it's funny.

It brings up like a few times where like

we're out wheeling with the crew

and like they're not necessarily hard trails,

but their trails were like,

yeah, I'm glad to have big tires.

I'm glad I have four wheel drive.

And I feel like I'm doing cool stuff.

And you get to the top and there's a Subaru just chilling

and you're like, how did they get up here?

Yeah, I hear a lot of people on the podcast

talk about that, they start going up trails

and Jeeps and Toyotas are looking at them

like, what are you doing here?

And then they see them at the top and they're like,

oh wait, how did they do that?

That's where I say like,

they're a lot more capable

than people sometimes have them credit for.

And yeah, I mean, you get the whole,

if you're doing a lift and getting different tires

and doing all these other things

and putting lockers on them

so that it can be more capable

and people are like, why didn't you just buy a Jeep

or why didn't you just buy a Tacoma or something?

And it's like-

People say that about anything though, right?

Yeah, but I think too with the Subaru's

it's sometimes it's just more affordable.

I mean, for me that was like the big thing

is I love FJ Cruisers, I absolutely love them.

But they're way out of my price range.

The gas mileage is not great.

So my compromise to myself was like,

a Crosstrek is a hatchback, which I love hatchbacks.

It's a lot more affordable.

It's good on gas and it can do stuff.

Like I didn't even know what it could do when I bought it

because I didn't have like big plans

and aspirations to do what I've done

but I started discovering it over time

and I've done a lot of fun stuff with it.

But yeah, I mean, they're very capable

and I love hearing those stories when they're like,

yeah they were looking at us like, how did you get up here?

Mm-hmm, we did perform.

Yeah, so I was looking on your website

and obviously you have a bunch of different vehicles

in there which is really cool

and it's cool to see Subaru in there now too.

But you also have like in your website

you have like boring stuff.

So who came up with that?

Cause that's super funny.

Yeah, honestly, it's funny.

That kind of came from just, we were doing like,

I think it was actually during our rebrand

from Rocky Mountain Racks to Sherpa

and in that same timeframe, we switched website hosts.

So we were like kind of went back to the drawing board

and started like rebuilding our website.

We were taking customer feedback on like,

oh, I don't like this navigation.

It's hard for me to find this page.

And we built out all the fun stuff on the website.

Like we got all the product pages built out.

We built our homepage.

Like everyone takes so much pride in their homepage.

And then we're like, oh crap, we gotta do like the,

gotta do contact us, gotta do the about us,

gotta do blogs, gotta do like,

where are you gonna find our warranty?

Where are you gonna find our return policy?

Like all that stuff.

And I don't remember who said it,

but someone was like,

why don't we just make a tab called boring stuff

or whatever.

So we were like, oh, that's honestly not a bad idea.

Like we've kind of always enjoyed

like not taking ourselves too seriously.

So yeah, that's kind of where it came from.

It was just like, let's just put this tab on there

and put all that stuff in there.

Yeah. And then, you know,

in the bottom left hand corner, it says fun stuff.

But that just, that kind of brings out

the personality of the people behind Sherpa.

You know, you're exploring their site

because I came across that

and when you see something like that,

it's like, okay, these guys are funny, you know,

and they're obviously having a good time.

And I think that just that alone right there

kind of just tells a little story about Sherpa.

Oh, these guys are fun, boring stuff.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, I like to be completely honest,

like it's always our first priority

to take care of our customers

and like provide the best service

and the best products we can, but in all reality,

every single one of us would rather be out camping,

out in the mountains, out riding our mountain bikes,

out wheeling, out doing something

other than sitting at a desk at a computer

or packing boxes or whatever.

But like, we do love that a massive part of our day

is building something that someone gets to go use

to experience the stuff that we love.

So like, it's cool that during our week,

leading up to our weekends

or our vacations or whatever,

like we're fueling that same experience

that we thrive for for somebody else.

Yeah, and how do you go about,

because you know, you said

you're doing the same thing over and over again,

what do you do to help keep the monotony

from setting in and being to where you can be like,

okay, let's just, we're having fun obviously.

You know, like you said, you're bringing joy

to other people, you're getting to help people

who are buying your products,

but what other things do you do

to like keep all of that excitement alive

that you had in the beginning?

Yeah, honestly, there's been ebbs and flows, right?

Like for a while there,

I was getting burnt out going camping

and going on trips

because everything turned into a work trip.

I always had a camera strapped around my neck.

I always was like paying attention to opportunities

of like, oh, I should shoot this.

Oh, I can turn this into this piece of content.

Oh, I think this will work really well for this,

versus like just looking at a view

and taking it in and being like, oh my God,

look where we are.

This is so cool.

So there was like ebbs and flows of that

and like having to remind myself

and give opportunities for our team

to just like go out to go out

and like enjoy it for yourself

and not make it about work.

But as far as like the whole team goes,

something that we started doing a while ago now,

probably five years ago,

is we used to do five days a week,

Monday through Friday, nine to five.

And it's like, it's a decent schedule.

You go to sleep in a little bit,

start at nine, you leave at five,

but you have a two-day weekend.

And like we came to realize

like everyone that worked for us wanted to go camp.

Like we wanted to go further away on our weekends

and like have more time.

So we were like, all right,

well let's just start earlier and work later

and work Monday through Thursday.

So we switched to a four-day schedule.

So we've been doing Monday through Thursday.

So four days on, three days off for like five years,

which is huge for people's like ability to like

step away, recharge, enjoy the things

that we love doing outside of work

or just spend a week in the home, work on your yard,

whatever.

So that's been really beneficial.

Actually just recently,

we put together a plan to do a night shift

just for manufacturing.

So now we have a second shift that runs

Thursday through Sunday, three to 11,

which surprisingly, a lot of people

are really excited about those hours

and we're excited to have a staff that can come in

and run our laser, run our press break,

run our machines and put more output out.

But yeah, the four-day weeks have been awesome.

And then we also do company like outings.

We used to do it every month.

Sadly, we got to the point where it's just too busy.

Like we don't have the ability to do it every month anymore.

So we do a quarterly,

we used to call them just monthly wheeling trips.

When we first started this,

like everyone that worked with us was in the off road.

We all had trucks.

We like to just go run trails.

So once a quarter paid day, we would close the shop up.

We would use it as an opportunity

to go like shoot content,

but we would just go out and run a trail, hang out,

do lunch together, take photos

and just like enjoy being outside.

But that's turned into like,

now we have a lot more folks with a lot of different interests.

We have a wider range of just different identities

and stuff at Sherpa.

So we'll do wheeling days where people can ride

if they don't have a truck.

We'll go do park days and play kick ball,

play spike ball, we'll grill.

We'll do like, we've talked about the idea

of doing like a Sherpa lock-in

where like everyone comes in at night

and just like brings sleeping bags

and we bring movies and board games

and we just like camp out in the shop for a night.

But we're always trying to find new ways

to get the team together to connect, not around work

and enjoy the stuff that we all like to do.

Learn from others, like learn to play pickle ball,

learn to play spike ball.

It's so fun.

Pickle ball is so fun.

Yeah, there's a little few guys on our team

that are just obsessed with pickle ball.

It's a fun sport.

I've picked it up recently, me and my son have

and I want to start playing more.

Yeah, but no, that's good to incorporate

like the four day work week

because that's really, really huge

because so many people work, you know, typical,

they say nine to five job,

but most jobs start at like eight,

you know, your corporate jobs or whatever, eight to five.

And then yeah, and then depending on whether or not

you actually enjoy your job,

you're just looking forward to the weekend.

You're looking forward to the end of the work day.

So to be able to have a dedicated three day weekend

and also, I mean, from everything you've said,

it sounds like people that work there enjoy working there

and they're probably not like, oh my God,

I got to go to work today, you know?

And I'm sure maybe sometimes it's like that just.

Oh yeah.

But I think it seems like overall the culture

that you've built,

the owners that people are working for,

it's like a really good environment.

And then also the team building stuff,

that's a lot of fun, you know, that helps people.

Knowing that you have something like that coming up.

You mentioned like manufacturing and doing a night shift.

So y'all do all the manufacturing in-house?

Yeah, so it kind of goes back to like where we started.

We originally had like outsourced to local shops.

At the beginning, like we're patriotic,

like we want to build things in America,

like we think it's really exciting to have your hand

in your process versus like, hey, here's the design.

Like you guys make it, we'll pay you a good bit less

than what you probably should get paid to make this.

You'll ship it to us and we'll make a ton of money

selling it to our customer.

Like it's way more fun to invest in building an operation,

learning how each step of the process works

and having full control over that process.

So yeah, we started with that CNC router,

machining aluminum.

We then moved to a bigger facility.

That first one was around like 1800 square feet.

Our next shop in Loveland was about just under 5,000.

And we bought that to bring in a water jet,

which was our first like machine designed to cut metal.

And we were incredibly excited about it.

We signed our purchase agreement

and committed to the loan for it

and basically got information to take delivery

and then COVID hits.

And it's like, oh, yeah.

This is about to either go one of two ways.

Either like, this was a great run.

We had a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, I think Hayden and Will at this point

had graduated, they were full-time Sherpa.

And I was in my last semester at CSU as a senior.

So still pursuing my degree, COVID hits, stay at home,

we're not even allowed to go to our shop

to make roof racks.

And it's like, what are we gonna do?

And it's hilarious.

We're having business meetings

while playing Call of Duty and like hanging out,

talking and when we have some like,

when we're wanting to look at stuff,

we're pulling up spreadsheets and fucking numbers.

And it's like, well, if this goes south,

this was really fun guys.

Like we'll dig ourselves out of this debt together.

We'll sell this machine, whatever we need to do,

but we'll figure it out.

And then that first stimulus check hits

and our website just starts popping off.

Oh man.

We're getting orders through the roof.

Nice.

We're already playing like crisis mode of like,

oh my God, we're getting all these orders,

but we're not allowed to go make anything right now.

Like we can't go to our shop.

Oh my God.

Our new shop's not done.

Our water jet's not here.

Our shop that does the cutting,

they're not working right now.

So we're sending out emails for like,

hey, thank you so much for your order.

Like we're doing everything we can

to expedite the process of getting this made,

but we're running into a lot of delays.

Like people aren't working.

People are stuck at home.

People aren't doing this stuff,

but people are stuck at home shopping

because they just got a $1,200 check.

How long did that go on?

The COVID boom, honestly,

this year is the first year

that like it's really settled down,

which is crazy.

Like the overland industry as a whole

boomed because of COVID.

So many people were starting to work from home.

They were looking at like preparedness,

world's ending,

like I got to make my vehicle support

living out in the woods

and even like, you know,

foraging for my food and hunting and whatever.

So like people were getting into that whole mentality

and a lot of people got into building vehicles,

putting tents on them,

putting fuel and water on them.

And like our products were a major part

for a lot of folks.

But it was really cool because

we stay at home or to live

and we get to go into our new space.

Our water jet comes in.

We start manufacturing as many racks as we can

off of our machine.

And within three months,

we're like, this machine's not big enough.

This shop's not big enough.

So we start making progress

with a guy that we met

who ended up becoming a good investor of ours

and becomes the fourth owner of Sherpa.

And honestly, a really, really beneficial

just person to talk to,

like great insight, great advice.

So he gets involved and he's like,

all right, you guys got to build for the future.

Like you guys are looking at tomorrow.

Like you got to look at two years from now,

three years from now, five years from now,

10 years from now.

So then all of us were like, all right,

we got to go to the next thing.

So during COVID, real estate got pretty cheap

and we found a shop in Berthold,

which is the shop we're at now.

Okay.

We're current that shop that we were currently in

5,000 square foot, this building 27,000 square feet.

Wow.

Yeah, that's big.

That's a pretty good improvement.

And we're like, okay, this water jet's too slow.

What's the next thing?

We go to Fabtech,

we learn about all these different machines

and we're like, all right, we need a fiber laser.

We need something that can cut.

And I think this machine,

compared to the water jet we had,

I want to say it was like,

I'm probably gonna butcher this number.

Hayden's probably gonna laugh at me

when he hears this episode.

But it's like 13 times faster than the water jet.

Wow.

So the speed and quality at which this new machine

could cut our racks was a massive jump.

So it's like, okay, we can now move into a space.

We can purchase this machine

that can hopefully support us for the next five years

versus this like constant buy for the next year

that have to deal with moving.

Moving is incredibly expensive.

It's really time consuming.

But always put us back on our ability

to deliver on customers' orders.

So we make this jump.

We figure out financing to get into this building.

We figure out financing to get into this laser.

And we extended like every last piece of us

to make it happen.

And we like, we have,

I think at the time we were a team of like seven people.

And we're at this current shop.

It's overflowing.

There's stuff stacked to the ceiling.

Like we're using every ounce of space

at that place that we could.

And we had a lot of awesome growth in that space.

But then we get to this new shop and we're like,

oh my God, this is so much space.

Sighting that we get to like build on all this space.

But in the back of our minds, we're like,

holy crap, we have to do a lot of work to fill this up

and to make it make sense.

Or we're going to be having this conversation

in a year of like, all right,

how do we sublease this back area?

How do we get some extra income in?

Whatever.

But it totally worked.

Like we got the machine up and running.

We put new processes in place.

We hired more people.

We continued to create new roof racks,

new vehicle fitments and we spooled up

and we continued to create innovation in our space

and inspire people to get out

and want to put racks on their trucks

and go do the things that we were showing people

we were doing.

And yeah, that's kind of where we've gotten to today.

We've done a lot with growing our abilities

on the manufacturing side.

We've gotten into automation.

So like our laser now,

you can load a pallet of material onto it

and load a schedule into it

and it'll run the whole pallet of material

without us doing anything.

So we can load a whole pallet, hit go,

come back the next day

and all that material is cut

and ready to be processed by our team.

Now is that the same machine?

Okay.

That's the same machine that we got

when we had moved into that building.

And it's cool.

It's like, it's a modular machine.

So you can add things to it.

You can upgrade it.

The cutting itself stays the same,

but our ability to do automation

on the material handling side can upgrade,

which will allow more efficiency, more output.

We got into like press breaks and bending

through all of this.

We did that early on too.

So we've learned a lot about the manufacturing side

and we've become decent experts in that space now too,

which is really neat

because we used to go talk to folks

when we first started and you'd be like,

oh, what does a different alloy of aluminum mean?

Like, what are the different properties?

Like, what does it affect when you're bending it?

Why does it matter to us?

Like, why is it 30% more expensive?

Why, like all these questions

that we used to ask ourselves now is like,

oh, well, duh, it's because of this business.

Well, it's been really cool to learn all that.

Yeah.

And obviously you've learned a lot through the process

because I mean, you have to, it's your business.

You're wanting to find out ways to make,

maybe make it stronger, do different materials

and like I said, you know,

getting different machines to help you out

with the process and the automation.

But so I was just thinking like you have,

let's say a certain generation of a forerunner,

you've made a rack for it, you've designed a rack,

you're like, it looks really good.

We've got a nice gap.

We follow the contour of the vehicle

and you've got a nice rack that somebody has.

But are those racks that you've already designed,

are y'all, do y'all look at those and go,

hey, there's something different we can do here.

And then do y'all go back and redesign

or you just have a design for a particular vehicle

and you're designing new racks for new vehicles

or is there just constantly always innovation and thoughts?

Oh yeah, there's everything from just efficiencies

that will update to either decreased costs, increased quality.

A lot of that stuff happens behind the scene

without like a consumer even seeing it.

But we've also gone back to the drawing board on products

and launched version two of something.

And if there's big enough changes

and the change came from maybe a premature failure

on a part or something like that,

we'll reach back out to every single customer

that has purchased the previous version

and offer them the upgrade or figure out a solution

to make sure that they won't run into that issue

or have the peace of mind to know how to handle it

if they do have an issue arise.

But yeah, a lot of it comes down to like efficiencies,

our ability to provide higher quality,

our ability to provide the same product

at a cheaper cost or in just a more timely fashion.

For a long time, our business ran on a lead time

and that was pretty common in our industry,

especially during COVID,

like it was not easy to get raw material.

But now we're to a point where the vast majority of the time

our product is in stock on the shelf ready to ship.

And I blame Amazon for a lot of that.

Like making that a reality for so many companies.

I want it tomorrow.

And so like, yeah, it also like makes us put our money

where our mouth is.

Like if we want to support an industry and a space

like we have to invest in it, you know,

like carrying inventory on your shelf

to ship something the next day is incredibly expensive.

We try and carry one to two months of product on the shelf

at any given time.

And we sell a decent amount of racks every month.

And it's a lot of money that we tie up in material

and boxes and everything to put on the shelf

so that someone can get the satisfaction

of going to our website and being like,

you know what, I'm gonna buy a refract today

and it's gonna show up at my house this week.

So I can install it this weekend.

And it's been really exciting to get to that point

because for so long it was like,

oh dude, I have this trip coming up.

I'm going to this thing in a week

and I'd really love to get a roof rack on my truck.

And the only way to ever like fulfill that need for somebody

is to take a rack that's getting built

for someone that already bought it over here.

And we were never those types of people.

So we always had to be like,

hey dude, I know you want this rack for this trip

but you should have planned ahead and ordered it sooner.

We're sorry that we can't get that to you right now.

Unless we had for some reason,

a cancellation or whatever.

So it's been really fun through our ability

to increase the output of our manufacturing,

increase the efficiency of how fast we can push

an order through from here's an order.

Here's our ability to shove it through the laser,

get it cut, get it processed,

get it powder coated, get it packaged and shipped out.

We've been able to like shorten the timeframe

that it takes for a long time.

It used to be about six weeks from the time

if we didn't have anything in inventory,

it was basically a six week process while we outsourced

to okay, this order came in.

I'm going to purchase this cut file

from this company who cuts it for us.

And then that comes in, I unpackage it, I sort it.

Now it goes to this person who powder coats it for us,

assuming that we had bent those parts

if we needed to bend them.

We had press breaks in-house for a long time,

which was one of the early machines too

that we had, which was nice.

But yeah, like you add all those steps

and different people on different hands

and you're trusting them to stay organized

and stay on track.

And we just got so fed up with working with other people

that didn't have the same standards as us

that it was like, all right, we're buying that machine.

All right, we're going to buy these.

We're going to learn how to do that process

because we can't rely on this person.

So do y'all do powder coating there too?

Yeah.

Oh, nice, nice.

Yeah, so pretty much everything, yeah.

The only things we don't do,

which we probably never will

because it's incredibly hard to get into

is we don't extrude our aluminum for our crossbars.

It takes a lot of capital and a lot of space

to extrude aluminum.

Like if you extrude aluminum, that's all you do pretty

much.

Okay.

We don't make our hardware obviously.

Yeah.

But we work with a supplier

who basically custom specs hardware for us.

So we do take pride in like,

we have worked really hard to find a hardware

that works really well for our product

and for our consumers to get good longevity

out of the hardware.

It's kind of a hot topic in a lot of rack companies

where like hardware just doesn't hold up.

So we've gotten a lot of pride in that.

We do our own rubber molds.

So our rubber that you see in a lot of our racks,

like we mold that in-house.

We tap all of our own crossbars.

When we used to order crossbars that were cut and tapped

we used to always have quality issues with tapping.

So we were like, oh, well,

you don't do a good job with that process.

So we're going to take that on and do the tapping.

And we do that with a robot arm now,

which is really neat.

We used to hand tap everything with a drill.

But now we have a robot in the corner of our shop

that kind of gets babysat,

but it sits and taps crossbars all day long,

which is pretty neat.

That's cool.

Yeah, but everything else in-house.

And we also source as much of it as we can as close to home.

So like our metal suppliers are down in Denver.

Our box suppliers are a family owned shop

up in Fort Collins that we've been working with

since the very beginning that we love.

They make our packaging, our boxes and all that stuff.

Our extrusion comes from the USA.

Our hardware is sourced from a local vendor near us

that we absolutely love working with

and they help us out big time.

So yeah, we try and keep it as close to home

and keep like the same culture and stuff

that we love with our business and our employees

with all the rest of that process.

That's really good.

So you mentioned earlier that it was like

about a six week lead time

with all those other steps that you had to do.

So what have you knocked it down to now?

Like let's say somebody orders a rack

and you've got the raw material, I guess or whatever.

And then you want to go through all the steps

of getting it ready to ship and go.

How long does that take now?

Yeah.

So in a perfect world, obviously like we're striving for

you can order it and it ships out

same or next business day.

So like if it's a weekend, it ships out on Monday.

We're trying to constantly keep stuff in stock.

Obviously we have ads and flows and things happen.

So like just to like paint the picture

if we didn't have any outstanding orders

and there wasn't anything in front of it

and there wasn't stuff like getting pushed through

to build MOs for inventory.

If you ordered and everyone was ready to rip

we could send that file to the laser.

It could cut that sheet and the mounts in the downside

would be like you'd have inefficiencies

with like cutting one product obviously

but your side plate cut would be like 15 minutes

and then your mounting feet cut

would be like another 15 minutes

and we could pull those parts out.

Then we'd sand them process them in about another

I don't know, 20 to 30 minutes

run it through the press break, get it bent

send it over to powder coat, they could powder it

which that is kind of a fixed time

which is a bummer like it has to bake

a certain amount of time.

So it'd probably be in powder coat

about an hour, hour and a half

and then it would go to our shipping team

they could package all the hardware

they could package your feed up

put everything in a box, band it up

and you'd be ready like you could go from

an order at 8 a.m.

and the rack will be ready to go out the door at noon.

That's cool.

I mean obviously you said in the perfect world

that's how it would work

but that's a lot faster than six weeks.

So that's really cool.

I mean that timeframe used to be

what it would take for us to take some side plates

package them up, put them on a pallet

put them in a truck and drive it down

to our powder coder

and then they would sit on it for two weeks

before they brought it back to us

or if we were lucky maybe it would be a week

but the other thing that we hated about that

is like you add a lot of logistics to it

you add travel for the parts

so you end up damaging parts

and you get more waste with all those extra steps.

So now it's a one piece flow

from the back of our facility

up to the front of our facility

and our team takes so much care and pride

throughout that whole process

that we have so much less waste.

We know that that product that you're gonna get

when you open that box has been well cared for

there aren't gonna be dings and scratches

and imperfections that get missed or whatever

because we've just had our hands

in the process the whole time.

Yeah and see those are the things that make quality

really good and important to customers

and knowing that everything is handled

and cared for in-house

rather than shipped around all over the place

and risking damage and lead times and stuff

I think that's really important for customers

and important for y'all

cause it gives y'all a lot of pride

knowing that you're able to control the entire process.

Yeah and it's super fun too with like

we get a lot of crazy stories of people

like how they've managed to break a roof rack, right?

Like we'll get sent a picture of a car upside down

in a ditch on a snowy day

and they're like, oh my God, like this is the craziest story

like a deer jumped out in front of me

I spun out the car rolled four times

and there's a picture of our roof rack

like still on the truck with all the stuff mounted

and even us to this day, we're like

how did that stay on there?

But it's fun like we're able to in situations like that

get people set back up with new product

get them ready for a new vehicle

or like the small random things

like, oh, I was running down this trail

and I misjudged my distance between my roof rack

and this tree and I laid my rack into this tree

and it pushed my awning over a little bit

and I bent the bracket.

Okay, we have brackets sitting on the shelf

we'll get you a new bracket today

it'll get sent out

you'll be able to put on your truck

before your next trip this weekend.

So being able to have that stuff readily available

and know that we're not like relying on someone else

to keep that stock

so we can take care of consumers that are in a pinch

or need something shipped out same day

or God forbid we have to help someone out

with a piece that got miss shipped

or hardware that's missing

like it's easy for us to just grab it

and ship it out as quickly as possible

and make sure that you don't have downtime

because of a mistake we made

or something that potentially happened

maybe you dropped the bolt

while you're assembling your roof rack

and you're like, oh, I'm so close

I just need this one bolt

we can overnight it to you, you know?

That's nice.

Do y'all send out any extra hardware

just in case for stuff like that?

Yeah, so every hardware package

does have a few extra of the primary things.

We've all had that one washer

pick the floor and run away and disappear

so we definitely throw in some extra hardware for folks

and then we also have pretty much every component

other than a few specific things available

to purchase on our website.

So like if you're a DIYer

like we've had a lot of folks

just like piece things together by crossbars

and like build things and tinker

or if you just want some extra stuff

like if you know that you're gonna try

and build a mount for an accessory

that we don't support

or if you have some crazy idea

to build some random thing on our roof rack

we have all that hardware available

so you can get your T nuts

your washers, your bolts

and you know everything will work together

and it ties in with the ecosystem.

That's good.

So what sort of accessories do you offer

and then how do you go about determining

like what accessories are needed?

Do you have yourselves going like

oh man I could really use an accessory for this

which I'm pretty sure that's part of the process

but do you have customers like say

hey I wanna do this

do you have this and you're like no

but I think there's a big need for that

and a desire for that so let's make that.

Yeah 100% we do both.

I think one of the coolest things about our company

is like pretty much everyone that works there

is out doing stuff with our product

and we'll like come back from a trip

and be like oh I had a great idea this weekend

I was trying to do this thing

and I wanted to mount my kayak paddle on my rack

and I couldn't figure it out

but I ended up doing this

so maybe we can make a product for it

and we'll like explore ideas with that

but the biggest thing is just listening to our customers

so we're always taking information

we have conversations with our customer service team

on a regular basis like what are people asking us for

what are we saying no to that we don't have

that we'd love to start saying yes to

like oh yeah we do have a mount for that

or if we don't have the capacity

to make something at the time

like how can we solve their problem

by recommending them to somebody else

that might make a mount for that.

Great example we don't make a bike rack

we don't make ski rack yet

we'd love to at some point

but we know what bike racks and ski racks

that we use and we enjoy using

that work well with our system

so we have no problem being like

hey we don't make this right now

but we absolutely love using so and so's bike rack

we love using so and so ski rack

sometimes we have connections with those companies

and we sell third party accessory too

so sometimes we can help people out

with just getting the accessories

that they're looking for

even if it's not something that we build

but yeah it's all customer feedback and experience.

Yeah and like recommending somebody else's accessory

is not bad business because it's like

they're wanting to mount something to your rack

so let's help them out with that.

So what are some of the biggest accessories

that you do sell that people are buying?

Yeah I mean it definitely comes down

to the space that we've been in for so long.

One of the craziest things

that I think will be big in the Subaru market

is storage boxes.

So we work with a company called Rome Adventure Co

and they make watertight storage boxes

that became very popular on roof racks.

I think early on a lot of that was like

meant for like truck beds and stuff

and like that's kind of where their design came from

but people were strapping them to roof racks

with just ratchet straps.

We found a way to make a pretty trick mount

that integrates into the box design that they have

and it bolts directly up to our roof rack.

It allows you to still latch and unlatch the case

and in vehicles like a Subaru

where you don't have that much inside storage

it now gives you this nice bit of surface area

on your roof that's watertight

that you can put camp gear in

you can put sleeping bags, pillows

you can put muddy gear

that you don't want inside your car.

Fly Fishermen love them for like using it

for waders, for their boots, for fishing nets

like that kind of stuff.

So we sell a ton of Rome Adventure Co cases

and mounts for those. Very nice.

Obviously like awnings, that's a huge one

and then recovery gear.

So like max tracks, we make mounts for max tracks

which are the traction boards that kind of replace

like they don't really replace a winch

but like they give you that extra satisfaction

of like if I get stuck in the mud

I can at least try using max tracks

to give me some traction to get out of this.

Shovels, axes, lighting's the big one.

Scene lighting for camping,

we have like scene light kits

that integrate into our rack system.

We have, we work with Baja Designs

which is one of the best off-road lighting manufacturers.

So forward-facing, very bright spotlights,

rear lights in the off-road space,

chase lights are very popular.

So when you're bombing down like a dusty road

and you're in a group,

it's really hard to see the person in front of you

when they're engulfed in dust

and they're only lights facing backwards

or dim tail lights.

So we're facing bright lights, sometimes strobe lights.

Those are pretty common.

I definitely foresee like the Subaru space

having interest in that of like,

there's that piece of like

it's fun to take a Subaru

and rally a dirt road a little bit.

Oh yeah.

But if you're doing it with your friends

it's probably really smart to get some rear-facing

bright lights so you can see the person in front of you

and you don't end up smashing into them at the time.

Yeah, definitely.

But then yeah, bike racks, ski racks, kayak racks,

like all that kind of stuff is super popular.

And the nice thing is with our racks

it's easy to mount literally anything.

Really early on a customer once told us it was in a review

but they were like,

this rack is an endless pegboard of opportunities.

And it's like, oh, that's such an awesome way to put it.

Like you have all this ability to adjust the crossbars

to mount on the full surface of the crossbar

to clamp things to bolt into, to ratchet strap over.

Like you can do just about anything with it

so long as you can put a hole in something

and bolt it to it, strap over the top of it,

bring it down to the side

and bolt it into the side of the extrusion,

clamp around something.

There's just a lot of options.

Yeah, definitely.

So going back to Subaru's and the launch,

what models are you gonna offer racks for with the launch?

Yeah, so we hit the latest few generations

for the Outback, the Crosstrek and the Forester.

Okay, nice.

We're definitely not going to just stop there.

As we push this launch out,

we obviously have some other projects that we're working on

and that'll take up some bandwidth and time,

but we're really excited to get these initial fitments out,

get some good feedback from the folks using them.

And again, we're always listening

to what our customers want.

So if we get a lot of requests for older generations,

for different models, we're gonna pay attention to it.

So we're excited to expand.

Good, yeah, cause there's still a lot

of old Subaru's out there that could probably use a rack.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

And I think there's also some opportunity

for us to do some more like universal style stuff.

Some people might not want to do full replacement racks

and take the stock system off.

There's definitely some folks that like,

I just want to clamp something on

that gives me some more mounting opportunities,

maybe increase the strength of the current system

without having to like drop my headliner

and pull this thing off.

So we might explore some opportunities in that realm.

But yeah, time will tell at the end of the day,

like what Sherpa strives for is solving storage issues,

whether that's on the outside of the vehicle,

on the inside of the vehicle,

we might expand to that at some point.

But in the long run, like,

that's what we're here to do and here to solve.

And we're gonna go find the problems

that people are having.

And where people are the loudest about their problems

is where we're gonna spend our attention.

Nice, yeah.

I think you've answered pretty much all of my questions

because I have more questions that I didn't directly ask

because you answered them with a lot of conversation,

which is great because I love just having a conversation

in general and just seeing where it goes.

But is there anything else that you wanna add

before we get into this last little segment?

Honestly, I feel like we've covered a good bit,

which is really fun.

It's fun to kind of sit here and relive

like where we started and where we're at now.

If you asked me nine years ago,

do you guys think you'll be making Subaru racks

and be in the facility that you're at

and have the equipment that you do?

And nine years, I'd be like, oh, no way.

We got a lot to figure out

before we can get to that point.

So yeah, we're thankful to be in a position

to be building Subaru racks

and stepping into this new market space.

And we're really excited to meet a lot of new folks

and start to connect and get DMs

from excited people on Instagram

and start to connect to events and stuff like that.

So we're just really excited.

Yeah, that'll be a lot of fun.

So speaking of events,

I know you were at Overland Expo.

What other events do you all like to participate in?

And do you see expanding out into different and new events?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I think one of the big things

that we're like currently going through right now

is the shift from just like the off-road space

and getting more into just outdoor lifestyle as a whole.

So we've been doing a lot more content and product design

and ideation around just like outdoor lifestyle.

So mountain biking, hunting, skiing, fishing,

kayaking, paddle boarding,

like all these things that so many people do

and really a rack plays a big role

into allowing yourself to do it easily.

100%.

So we're exploring a lot more events in that space.

Great example, like this last weekend,

we were at 14er Fest out here in point of vista, Colorado,

which was super fun.

We get to meet a lot of new folks

that we haven't really gotten to connect with.

The Overland space, we've done a great job

connecting with a ton of folks.

And we're gonna keep going to those events,

but we're looking at a lot more events

than that like outdoor realm.

Go to bike races, go to skiing events.

We'd love to find a solid Subaru event.

Definitely would be interested

in picking your brain on events in the Subaru world

that are worth going to and attending.

Obviously we're really motivated

in the off-road racing thing.

So we go to King of the Hammers

and connect with a lot of folks out there

and we'll continue to go to our desert races

and rock races and ultra four

and connect with that community too.

Okay, yeah, because there's,

Subifest has events all over the country.

There's Subifest, California, Subifest, Texas,

Subifest, Florida.

They just had Subifest Midwest.

There's Boxerfest and Overland Expo.

They used to have one in Colorado

and I don't remember like why they stopped doing it,

but they also have Winterfest events.

And I think there's a few Winterfest events

in the Colorado area.

So that might be a good space to be into as well.

Yeah, that'd be super cool to check those out.

That and we're gonna keep trying to host stuff.

We love hosting events too.

So our after party at Overland Expo,

like that's gonna continue to happen.

In September, we do Sherpa Summit.

Anyone is welcome to come.

It's on private land.

So the only thing that we ask is

we have to pay the landowner

for people to come camp there.

So we bill for the night's camping,

but it's just an opportunity for us

to get together with our customers.

Like the point of the event isn't to sell anything.

It's not to tell you about our racks.

It's just to allow customers

and create an opportunity for them to come camp with us

to create memories.

We have groups going mountain biking.

We have groups going wheeling.

We have like a hardcore wheeling group.

We have like a dirt road group

that just goes and cruises some mountain passes.

We have people hiking,

people fly fishing and paddle boarding.

We have a Enduro like dirt bike group

that goes and rides motorcycles.

And then we just hang around the campfire.

We tell stories.

We had a kickball tournament

and we played kickball this year.

So stuff like that just fires us up and we love it.

What was the turnout like at that event?

This year, I want to say we were right around,

probably just shy of 300 folks.

Wow, that's really cool.

Yeah, it was pretty good.

That's awesome.

Well, we have some content and stuff

on our social media from this year.

And I think we're going to try and put out

a little bit of a longer form video here at some point

when we have some bandwidth.

We've been busy making a lot of Subaru content.

Yeah, that's good.

I'm really excited for all that to go out.

But yeah, Sherpa Summit's a really fun time.

Yeah, it looked fun.

We definitely have some Subaru folks come join us

more so than just Chris.

Chris came this year,

but we would love to have a lot more folks

and build that side of it too.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Well, all right, we'll get into this last little segment

and then we can wrap this up.

But this last segment is getting to know you

a little bit better as one of the founders,

but who is Alex as in describe yourself?

Yeah, I'm just like, I love experiences.

Like I love getting into and doing new things.

So I love being outside.

I love the outdoors.

I love wheeling, like I'm a big gearhead too.

So like working on trucks, I love it.

I wish I had more time to do it recently,

but like tinkering and just trying new things

and playing, I'm big on like,

if I don't have the time and bandwidth

to like get outside and go have experiences,

it's fun to like sit at a computer

and like play a game or do a simulator

or something like I'm big into flight right now.

Like I love flight simulators,

like learning helicopters and planes and all that stuff.

I've been obsessed with it since I was a kid.

That's cool.

Love people, obviously.

Like it's fun to get together with a good group of folks

and have good conversation and hang out

and just create good memories.

And I love digital content.

So my big thing with Sherpa has always been

like the marketing and media side.

It's been weird.

We've grown an awesome team of very talented individuals.

So I've taken a big step back

from being the guy behind the camera.

And I kind of had this like moment of like burnout

on creating videos and creating photos and all this stuff.

And I like sold all my personal equipment

and then I ended up buying like a much cheaper

point and shoot camera that was like easier to bring.

It didn't require as much like editing and stuff.

And then I got like fired right back up with that.

And then like having a ton of fun shooting on it.

That's cool.

For the camera folks out there, it's a Fuji

and I use like film simulations and stuff on it.

So it's kind of like shooting fake film.

Oh, nice.

But it's a really fun way to like be like

the way that you capture it in the camera

is how it's kind of gonna be.

Like you're not shooting raw.

You're not going back and editing stuff.

It's like you gotta get your lighting right.

Or if you don't like the photo now has like a unique charm

of like it's messed up, but I love it.

Like I love that it's too dark.

I love that it's kind of blown out.

Like I love that my shutter speed was wrong

and it has some blur to it.

So that's been super fun.

But yeah, like that's pretty much it.

So what is a favorite memory from your childhood?

Favorite memory from my childhood.

Honestly, it probably goes to like what started my love

for off-roading and like the outdoors.

And it's the spring break trips my mom and dad

used to take us on.

We pretty much every spring break used to kind of pack up

in one of our vehicles, sometimes two of them

and we would go out to Moab, Utah.

And the main one I can remember was

my brother had his forerunner

which turned into the one that I ended up purchasing.

Nice.

Bone stock, third gen forerunner.

He had just bought it.

I think he was like 16 at the time.

And my dad's Jeep Wrangler.

And we loaded up all our camp gear

and drove out to Utah.

And the first night we got out there,

we ended up in like pouring rain

and we're trying to get to this camp spot

above this slot canyon

that we were gonna hike the next day.

And we got stuck in the mud

and we're trying to like dig the trucks out

and I just remember like feeling like,

oh, I shouldn't be like upset about this.

Like this shouldn't be fun that we're stuck

in having to deal with this.

But I was like, this is just so much fun.

Like we're in the middle of nowhere.

We don't have cell service.

The cars are stuck and we're like solving a problem.

And I just like, I loved it.

I was like, I want to do more of this.

I want to like experience more things like this.

And it made the next day, like after we got to camp

and set up in the rain and everything's wet

and you wake up and you're like,

oh, it's a new day, the sun's out.

And then we got to go explore this beautiful slot canyon.

And my dad was always big into like hiking,

mountaineering, canyoneering,

which like I was not so much into like the hiking side

of things and I was definitely more of like the gear head

and like, oh, put me on the dirt bike and the ATV

and like, I just love things with motors.

So that's where I like fell in love

with like the off-roading and camping aspect.

So yeah, that's definitely a memory

that's like very ingrained in my childhood

that just inspired me to do what we're doing today.

Yeah, and I mean, getting stuck in the mud and the rain

and all that, those situations sometimes create

the best and biggest memories, you know?

So.

Yeah, and I think I'm also weird in that

I really enjoy type two fun activities.

For those that don't know what type two fun is,

or at least my explanation of type two fun,

it absolutely like sucks in the moment.

But as soon as you're done, you're like,

oh my God, that was awesome.

Like I wanna go back and do that again.

Like I love enduro dirt bike riding.

Like I have a two stroke and I love riding in the mountains

and doing single track and the harder the trail,

the more times I fall, the more I struggle,

like the more fun I have.

And I think it's like this weird thing

where it's like the adverse situations

where you're like, oh, it's so difficult.

Like I'm getting beat up.

Like I wanna be done, but then you get back

and you're like, dude, that was awesome.

Like I just love those experiences.

And maybe that's why I like being an entrepreneur,

like you've been in it.

Your problem solving, you're like, guys, it's so hard.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm so stressed out.

And then you get to the end of a project

and you're like, wow, that was so much fun.

Oh yeah.

Let's do it again.

And you learn a lot through the process too.

Yeah.

So we obviously know what you do for a living,

but would you say this is a dream job for you?

I kind of like hinted at it a little bit.

It's not at all what I thought I would be doing.

That's for sure.

I enjoy every second of it, especially for the people

aspect.

I am far from an aspiring businessman.

Like I struggle to sit and look at spreadsheets

and enjoy collecting data and looking at trends

and stuff like that.

When I was in high school,

my dream was to be a helicopter pilot.

Like I thought my plan was to go get a college degree,

go join the Coast Guard, National Guard,

the Army or something and go after becoming

a helicopter pilot.

Like I really wanted to do that.

I still really want to do that.

Oh, I'm sure you can.

And then I was like, all right,

well, if I'm gonna go get a degree,

let's explore something in that that I enjoy.

So at the time, I loved making videos.

I loved doing photography.

So I was like, all right,

I'm gonna try and find a degree

that maybe film school or something like that.

And I really liked CSU.

So I ended up in their journalism

and media communications program to go through that.

And that's where I kind of started to learn marketing.

And I started to take a few business classes

as the business started to grow.

And then I was like, all right,

this business thing's taken off.

So I'm gonna put joining the military off

on the back burner.

I'll have that as a fallback plan.

And here we are a little over 10 years later

from starting college.

And I still would love to go get my pilot's license

at some point.

I don't know if that's gonna be just a private route,

do it for myself.

If I can get to the point where I can afford

to start doing that.

Or maybe it'll be at a point

where we have a lot of amazing people at Sherpa

that it can continue to grow

and continue to provide the same quality

and care that we do for our customers now

that I can kind of take a step back

and maybe go pursue a career in that

or do it on the side.

So I'd love to still go do it.

It's definitely a massive goal of mine

to go learn to either fly planes or fly helicopters.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

I mean, just Sherpa can buy your own helicopter

and y'all just show up at Advancing Style.

We'll just slide it in the marketing budget.

Here comes the Sherpa helicopter

down to the Overland Expo again.

I always joke.

I'm like, when can we start making refracts

for helicopters and planes?

So we can buy one.

Yeah, do it.

I wish it worked like that.

Yeah, what is something

that makes you want to get out of bed every day?

The people.

Yeah.

Always the people.

That are exciting projects.

Always having something that you're looking forward to.

It's really easy to just fall into a slump

of making every day mundane

and doing the same things every day,

whether that's like the same tasks.

But for me, it's things like tomorrow.

I'm so excited to launch the Subaru product

and all the content that we've built around that tomorrow,

seeing all the hard work of our team

that we've put in over the last few months,

out shooting the content,

all the work that's been put into designing

and engineering the product,

all the work that's been put into building the inventory

and packaging and creating clarity

and our install instructions.

Seeing all that come together,

these big milestones in our business

where it's like we get to sit back

and see the fruits of our laborer

and see how the community reacts to it.

Yeah, that's gonna be super cool.

Those are really exciting for me too.

And I think it falls back on the people thing.

I just get excited about the excitement

of everyone that's had their hands into it

and that satisfaction piece of like, we did a good job.

Yeah, no, that'll be good.

It'll be fun to see all that come together.

Is there anything that makes you wanna stay in bed?

Oh yeah, beds are comfy.

I love sleeping.

And to be honest, I am not a morning person.

I just stay up late and I love to like,

just continue to do things.

It's really hard for me to like shut off.

And with that, it's hard for me to start.

So yeah, pretty much we start early,

especially in the like winter.

Like I leave my house, it's dark.

I leave work, it's dark.

And like that is definitely a bummer.

So yeah, I would argue like I have to remind myself

of the things that I'm like, all right,

this is why I gotta get out of bed today

and this is what I gotta go do.

Something that definitely helps is the dog.

And my awesome girlfriend, like having that,

like when you wake up to be like,

oh, I get to say hi to her, dog's wagging her tail,

Sage is ready to see me and go outside

and have breakfast and a warm cup of coffee.

Yeah, yeah, those are always good things.

Oh yeah.

What is something that really scares you?

Failure, easy.

Yeah.

That's definitely something that like,

it's always in the back of your mind.

And there's like, there's moments in business and in life

where you have your ups and downs

and like you have those moments of like,

oh, I don't know if I'm gonna make rent this month

or we've had moments in business where it's like,

I don't know if we're gonna make payroll this month.

And like, as we've gotten bigger and grown

and taken on a lot more responsibility

with more employees, like that stress level builds.

And we're obviously more cautious as we've gotten bigger

and we've taken less risks.

When it was just the three of us, it's like,

well, if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

Like we'll go try and figure out something else.

Yeah, people to take care of.

Yeah, and now when there's 37 other people

that rely on us to do our jobs well,

rely on everyone around them to do their jobs well.

Yeah, there's a lot more stress involved

in that failure aspect.

Like it's not letting myself down anymore.

It's us letting down everybody else around us.

So like that piece weighs heavy

and is definitely scary about business.

Yeah.

But yeah, not really scared of like spiders

or anything like that.

Yeah, that's good.

Maybe snakes a little bit.

Yeah, that's a pretty good size team too.

I was going to ask you about that at some point,

I forgot, but it's good that you said that.

Nice.

Yeah, it's cool.

It's motivating and it's scary.

Yeah, so I mean, you've kind of hinted

on this throughout the entire episode,

but I guess what is something that really excites you?

Progress, yeah, just doing the next thing.

Like I think it's so fun to, I'm a very nostalgic person.

So like being able to like build things

and like document things to allow myself to like look back

at where I've been or where a team's been.

Yeah, that's really exciting for me.

And like so many things I think I take value

in knowing the emotions or like I'm not sure

emotions or like effect it'll have

like looking back on it in five years or two years or whatever.

I still find myself like, this might sound really weird,

but I love going to like our Instagram page

or my personal Instagram page

or someone close to me's page

and just like scrolling back a bunch

and like reliving memories and moments

and like reminding myself of like,

oh, that's when we built that thing

or that's when we went on that trip.

Like what an amazing time.

And like I can't believe we did that

or same thing with the racing stuff.

Like, oh my God, remember that race?

Like we thought the truck wasn't even gonna run

the night before the race

and we pulled an all nighter and put a new motor in

and it's like, oh my God, I can't believe we did that.

Like those moments have more impact

than you have in the moment sometimes.

Yeah, no, that's not weird at all.

I do that sometimes

where I'll be scrolling back every once in a while

and be like, that was a lot of fun.

Cause like I've, I live in Houston.

I record the podcast out of my closet,

you know, like 90% of the time.

And when I've had an opportunity to go out to events

every once in a while,

like somebody might send me a text

or send me, you know, like,

oh, this happened a year ago or whatever.

And I'll go back and like find it

on my own page or their page.

And I'll be like, and that was fun.

That was a lot of fun.

I'm glad I got to go out there and do that.

I love the Facebook memories

that pop up on your feed and you're like,

oh my God, that was nine years ago.

What the heck?

That feels like two.

Do you ever like walk around the shop

and look up at the rack,

the first one you all built and go,

man, this is, it went from that to where we are now.

All the time.

Yeah.

And like, there's a piece of me that I'm like,

I cannot believe we built that.

That is horrible.

How did we think that was good?

Hey, you know, everybody's got to start somewhere.

Yeah.

It's cool.

Like it solidifies like a place in time.

And like it shows, like I was,

how old was that when we built that first rack?

I think I was 17 or 18 years old.

Like, I was just a kid.

Yeah.

And it was like, hey dad,

how's this angle grinder work?

That's cool though.

A lot of memories.

So it's cool to see like where we've come.

Yeah.

It's neat.

What would be your best bit of advice

to give to someone about anything?

I actually don't know who told me this,

or if I read it somewhere or what,

but the hardest part of literally doing anything,

especially something that's big, is just starting.

Like it's so easy to sit and give yourself excuses

as to why you can't do something,

or I can't start today, I don't have enough time,

or I don't have enough money to start today.

But like, literally if you can take the first step

into anything, even if that's sitting down

and writing down a plan in a notebook,

or sitting down and doing research on a topic,

and like clocking that as the first step,

that has been the hardest part

about almost every project that I've gotten into.

At least the hardest part to like force yourself to do.

But it's also been the thing

that always like starts the catalyst of like,

if you can just get the first step done,

and be like, all right, I'm in it.

Yeah.

You can accomplish so much.

I've done it with our business, with fabrication,

like when we built our race car,

we had no idea what we were doing.

We had never bent to, we had not really welded stuff.

We had like played with things,

but it was like, you know what, screw it.

Let's buy a car at an auction,

let's gut the interior,

and let's build a roll cage in this thing

and start figuring it out.

I'll watch YouTube videos.

And like it was really intimidating,

but you bend a tube, you realize you messed it up,

you learned why you messed it up,

you bend another one, and oh, hey, that lined up.

And then you figure out how to cope it,

and then you weld it,

and that same thing can be applied

to just about anything in life.

Like it's those baby steps

and allowing yourself to fail and learn from it.

But once you get started, you can finish it.

Yeah, and if you just look at something

that you already know how to do that you learned,

you didn't know how to do it before you started it.

So you kind of have to look back.

And I have to remind myself of that too.

It's like, there's something that I didn't know how to do

that I wanted to learn how to do.

And now it's like, I'm really good at it,

but I'm only good at it because I actually started it.

So that's like, I think that's so true with,

especially if somebody is wanting to explore

something new and different and maybe even a little scary

is you have to just start it.

And then next thing you know,

you're going to be like six months into it and be like,

man, I remember when I kept thinking about wanting to do this

and I was just like putting it off, putting it off.

And now I'm like, man,

I wish I would have started sooner.

You know?

Yeah.

So, but yeah, that's huge.

Yeah, I think another thing

that holds so many people back,

especially if it's like a thing that is like visible

or like public is that like scared aspect of like,

oh, the people that are good at this

are going to make fun of me or like,

tell me I'm doing it wrong.

But like there's an aspect to like being honest

with yourself of like, I don't have any idea

what I'm doing and like tell people,

I don't have any idea what I'm doing.

And like being open to learn and ask questions

and willing to learn like anytime anyone ever has

like that attitude of like, I don't know what I'm doing,

like help me, people do so much to just jump in

and help you just bring you under your wing

versus being like, I don't need your help.

I think I know what I'm doing.

I watched a YouTube video.

Yeah, cause if you are open and honest about it,

you, I think a lot of people are surprised

at how many people will be like, oh yeah,

I came across that too.

This is what I did.

And they're like, oh, really?

Cool.

Well, can you help me out with that?

And then next thing you know, you're doing it

and you're like figuring it out

and now it's not so scary anymore.

And yeah, it's great advice.

Yep.

Well, this has been a quite an episode.

I've enjoyed it and thank you so much for taking the time

and it was great to meet you guys in person

and go to the after party

and see what Sherpa's all about, you know,

the fun part of Sherpa.

So I've enjoyed having you on

and thank you so much for sharing your story.

And I'm excited that y'all are getting into the Subaru space.

That's really huge for me and for all the listeners.

And I know it's gonna be huge for you guys too.

Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time

and going out of your way.

It was awesome to get introduced to you at Expo

and take the time to sit and chat briefly at the show.

And also just take time out of your day to learn about us

and share our story to your audience.

I definitely feel and we at Sherpa feel incredibly blessed

that you're willing to do that for us.

It's been really cool to see how inviting

the Subaru world is and how awesome and friendly

you've been to get to know.

And I definitely know for a fact

this won't be the last time that we chat

and we'll continue to stay connected

and hopefully we get to meet a lot more folks like you

as we continue to learn the Subaru space

and get you guys some badass product

that you can put on your vehicles

and go make some memories with.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah, and there's plenty of people out there,

especially in your side of the country.

I mean, there's people out here too,

but it'd be nice to see the

Subaru's running Sherpa Racks all over the place.

Yeah, we'd love to.

Yeah, cool.

Well, thanks again, man.

I hope you have a good night and we'll keep in touch.

Right on, thank you.

You're welcome.

Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in

to another episode of the Subaru New Podcast

and thank you so much, Alex,

for taking the time to record with me.

It was a really great conversation.

I really enjoy talking to you.

I really think that the team over at Sherpa

is just having a lot of fun,

of course, putting in a lot of hard work,

but you're all doing something

that brings you joy and passion

and that's a really, really big deal.

So, man, I'm really glad to see you in the Subaru Space too

and excited to see where it goes from there.

Be sure to give them a follow on Instagram.

It's sherpaec and it's also sherpaec.com

for their website.

So, go check it out, get some Black Friday deals

and give them a follow.

So, hope you all have a wonderful week.

Thanksgiving's coming up,

so it's a great time to be thankful for many, many things,

but I will see you next Monday for another Subi scoop

and some more episodes to come to close out this year

and then get 2026 started.

Can't believe we're almost there,

but it's gonna be the end of five years

of doing this podcast.

So, anyway, have a great week.

Talk to you later.

Much Subi love.

Raph.

The Subi New Podcast is hosted

by Raphael in a closet in Houston,

produced by Raphael in a room next to the closet in Houston

and edited by Raphael on a computer in the room

next to the closet in Houston

with music by Luke Ruiz in another room in Houston.

You can find the Subi New Podcast

wherever you listen to podcasts,

including Apple Podcast, Spotify, and many more.

To support the podcast,

please head over to patreon.com

slash Subi New Podcast.

Once you join, you will have access

to the Discord channel and Discord chats

with other patrons.

If you'd like to get in contact with the show,

you can find them on Instagram at SubiNewPodcast,

online at SubiNewPodcast.com or by email

SubiNewPodcast at gmail.com.

That's all for this week.

I'll see you in the next one.

Bye.

I'll see you in the next one.

Subaru Brat

Toyota 4Runner

Toyota Tacoma

Lucid Air

Toyota FJ Cruiser

Subaru Crosstrek

Jeep Wrangler

About this episode

Original notes