Latest / Spokes & Strategy: Marketing the Bicycle / EP 26: Building Premium Bike Tools in the USA with Jason Quade

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EP 26: Building Premium Bike Tools in the USA with Jason Quade · Spokes & Strategy: Marketing the Bicycle

• Jason Quade: We've had batches of four ways in the past where somebody just arbitrarily changed the torque spec of which we bolt those things together. And then warranty rates, ramp up and it's like why on earth was this done? and well it sounded for crying out loud, right? Th this is ridiculous. if I show you a specific way to do something, it's because somebody that came before you screwed it up. So let's follow the process. Brandon Morphew: Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, Marketing the Bicycle with Brandon Morphew and Chris Melman of Miso Partners. Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, where the business of bikes meets the joy of riding. I'm your host, Brandon Morfew. Today I'm joined by Jason Quaid, founder and owner of Abbey Tools based in Bend, Oregon. Abbey Bike Tools. Jason's path has taken him from bike shops to welding, back into bicycles and race support, and eventually into making tools. When we were chatting ahead of this podcast, he described his job as an owner, welder, designer, and floor sweeper, which gives us a pretty good place to start. He also wrote something I want to spend more time with today. When brands are the makers, you're on the right track. So we're going to talk about what that means in practice, the realities of domestic manufacturing. what a more efficient repair department could look like, and why advertising has recently surprised him. Jason, welcome to the show. Jason Quade: Thanks. Brandon Morphew: before we talk tools and running a company, what role do bicycles play in your life today? And where do you find joy in them? Jason Quade: Yeah, I mean I still enjoy riding. I think like a lot of lifers in the bike industry, you don't always get out as often as you want, especially if you're in that business owner or maybe senior management level where it's you know, work is pretty consuming. you know, I just sent a kid off to college so I do have a little bit more free time these days. but yeah, get it try to get out once a week. I mean, Ben's definitely a seasonal place, so there's you know, there comes a point when snow starts flying and we kinda hang up the bike for the winter and then start curling season, yeah, fun. But it's kinda nice to have those wintertime activities. It's it change a pace. Brandon Morphew: curling man in the winter. Yeah. I would like to. Jason Quade: yeah. Lots of fun. Give it shot. Brandon Morphew: I love the idea and I've never actually been close enough to it to even try, but I'm gonna I'm gonna take a note and put down a find a local curling center. very nice. Jason Quade: It's a sport that's really easy to like have some fun at and then you get just good enough that it starts to get frustrating and then you get good again. So it's kind of interesting to see it evolve as a sport. Brandon Morphew: do you feel like working in bicycles and with bicycles in this industry keeps you connected to riding or do you sometimes you think you need the distance? Jason Quade: Definitely sometimes. I mean it's always a good stress relief. I think, you know, exercises like that for a lot of people. you know, it's motivating to be in the sport kind of at the more of the pointier, more evolution oriented side and it's you know, we're just getting on new stuff, right? And it's one of the things that if it if I wasn't developing tools, I would probably you know, still be riding like an old twenty nine inch wheeled steel heart tail with a two by drivetrain on it. but being the tool guide's like, hey, we need to develop tools for modern equipment. And so and there's a little bit of motivation to like turn through bikes with a somewhat regular basis and, you know, run SRAM, run Shimano, like get our hands on Campanello stuff and just kind of evaluate tool needs across the board. Brandon Morphew: business. Are there any of those moments that you have in the last few years. I does that continue to ha to be a part of the spark for the business? Jason Quade: Yeah, I mean w we always take tool requests seriously. Sometimes they're when somebody's asking us to do something custom or semi custom. Sometimes those are very easy things to do, like a unique bearing drift that isn't in our catalog. You know, we can knock those out on the lathe pretty quick. sometimes it's something that we can modify an existing tool into what they're looking for. Just a couple of weeks ago we had somebody ask for, you know, a stubby campanolo lockering socket. And it's like the knock on effect of that was kinda was really a notable amount of work. and it's like, man, this isn't something that we really want to bring to market. We don't we're happy with what we've got for reasons that didn't align with the application that this customer was looking for, which i is the nature of tooling. And so we didn't really wanna make it a running change and it's like, man, this is like an extra four hours worth of work, with some pretty skilled people and you're I know that you want to know how much it's gonna cost, but you're gonna be shocked, right? It's like this turns into a thousand dollar tool, pretty quickly and it's like I'd I'll s I'll give you ten for that, the same price as making one, but yeah, that's all of this R and D time falls on to a single customer and we definitely have that issue sometimes when or that challenge when we go look at custom cutting tools, right? And it's like, yeah, we need this in mill ground for this very specific application and it's gonna save cycle time in the machine or whatever and it's worth getting those things done that are, you know, specials that are very similar to existing tooling, you know, or that they are specials or customs and Yeah, we paid two and a half, three times what we could get an off the shelf one for. Brandon Morphew: Is there a point that you know like this is a product that you're gonna manufacture like in your line or clearly you make decisions about like we need this tool because we need you know something that works with this Sharam XX whatever or this Shimano Jason Quade: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: 105? But is there is there a point like in this process, like especially with these requests where you say There's more to this than just this one off opportunity or this, you know, ten pieces. I this could be something we put into the lineup. Jason Quade: For sure, and sometimes those are the those are the times when we can kind of subsidize the R D cost of this and not pass a hundred percent of it off to the original customer, because there is kind of like line of sight for this being a product. Like one of the ones that was kind of interesting was the lever setter, our tool for you know, setting brake levers on. Road and mountain bikes to you know you take this the top cap off of the stem, thread the lever setter in there, and you put a hanger alignment tool on that, and you kind of project out and make sure that it that the shift levers are at the same rotation on a flat bar or the same height on a drop bar. that was a tool that I prototyped by hand. I sent it to one of our ambassadors and I completely forgot about it. and then as you're phone often does it's like reminding you of old photos and it popped up the leverage setter and I was like, huh. And I reached out to Alan or the ambassador that we sent it to, and I was like, hey, what do you what do you think of that thing? And he's like, that's that thing's Mega. He's like, you should make those. I'm like, all right, thanks for letting that and it was years, like probably three or four went by before you know the those two like making and shipping the original prototype and then putting those things into production. and those things sell fairly well. you know, for a while it's been one of our, you know, best selling tools by SKUCA or by quantity. So yeah, it's you know, sometimes things just ebb and flow like that. this time last year we brought out a tool at the request of Campaniolo. For the crank lock ring tool that holds the chain ring spider on the new 13 speed, I believe. you know, and so yeah, sometimes it's OE stuff where a brand comes to us and is requesting tooling to support product. We've done that kind of stuff with SRAM. We're usually pretty quick with Shimano, but they keep things fairly locked down a lot of the time. So yeah, it just you never know where they're gonna come from. Sometimes they're purely internal. the double L was something that was like that. We didn't really have a whole lot of requests for like measuring lateral chainware. and then once we brought that thing to market, it was it was really cool to see like the conversation build around this and how we can quantify this. And we always knew that one by drivetrain, you know, is kind of designed to be cross chain chained and depending on rider build type, you know, you get thin riders that maybe put out a lot of watts per kilo, but don't put out a whole lot of peak power. you know, they can wear out a chain laterally really fast. but then with a traditional method, like it's not showing stretch as we would have, you know, normally known it. So yeah, it just everything ebbs and flows. A lot of times we look for things that are you know, can be unique and innovative as opposed to, you know product that's like, this is kind just an Abbey version of the same thing. but yeah, sometimes we just bring a level of precision to a tool that sets it apart. Our hag and our decade are very good examples of that where people, you know, get those things in their hand and then they understand why they're twice as much as some of the other options. and you just see like the eyes get big when they're, you know, spinning the decade tool and just winding that in and the thread quality there but One of the challenges of the business too, right? That stuff does not transcend in photos on websites or in Instagram posts. So it's always kind of a game or a goal to like transcend that stuff and get tools in people's hands and let play with and see first hand how the that stuff feels. Brandon Morphew: one is sort of this idea of growth and opportunities. And so some of them come naturally and they come either from the brand or from the field. and I'm sure there's some where you have like a sit down and you're like these this is the direction we want to go as a as a business and you know, grow into this area. Do you have a process or is there maybe like back of the napkin kind of these are the things that you look at when you're when you're and feel free to zoom out like it can be just like, you know, the business opportunity or zoom way in and get real specific with the things that you do look at. Jason Quade: Yeah, mean sometimes it's super simple and it's we could just go straight to the machines and start making things or and then sometimes, you know, something like the Turing stand is by far the most complicated part we've ever done or tool I should say, just because there's linear drive components in there, there's lead screws, there's a ton of parts, wheel compatibility is pretty broad. You know, and so that stuff gets spent a lot of time in CAD, you know, and you're just re revising and changing and then we get it to where we think we're pretty happy with it, and then we kind of, you know, just have to go clean up all the revisions and the steps along the noise along the design process and you know, and then we start building and do all the CAM stuff and making prototypes and like, all right, this is gonna work. yeah, and then it's And sometimes it's something that like we gotta work a little bit of stuff out, you know, on the whiteboard or that, but it's not super there's not a big lift there, not a s a big challenge. So it really just kinda depends on the tool. you know, that Campaniello lockering tool was pretty straightforward. They sent us a print of what the part was gonna be like and then we got some cranks to, you know, kind of judge fit. with the lock ring itself and then we're like, Kate, we're happy with this, send it to them for validation. the factory techs here at Campanillo in North America were happy and, you know, worked with the Italians back home to give us the green light. Brandon Morphew: do you think about the like how big the market is, the TAM total addressable market? Do you think about that when you're sort of in this opportunity evaluation? what are some of the factors that you're looking at as you're thinking about growth? Jason Quade: We kind of bounce back and forth between like doing tools from you know, and even tools for major players like Rock Shock and Fox, the number of shops that service suspension isn't you know, isn't a hundred percent. and I don't I wouldn't even feel comfortable taking guess as to how many do, but like, you know, when we've done some of these suspension specialty tools in the past, like they don't sell super well. And so we get we kinda try to ping pong a little bit with ourselves of doing things that are very professional oriented or specialists within the trade of bicycle mechanics. and then doing things that are, you know, have more of a consumer face or option. Right? It's things like pedal wrenches are things that a lot of recreational cyclists work. You don't have to be a professional to justify that tool expense. Chainware tools are another example. you know, things like inflation products and chain lube, like those are things that while we still want to do them on a level that's befitting of the brand that we've built over the last, you know, nearly fifteen years, like getting into some of those categories is the you know, probably a good business decision. Brandon Morphew: you mentioned this sort of the brand as the maker and how important that it that philosophy is for you. And I think a lot of manufacturers, you know, they sort of go back and forth. They do some in house manufacturing, they do, you know, work with suppliers for you know, fulfillment on some things and there's some combination, you know, to a certain spec. I think it's pretty common practice to have you know. Some makes of both and some folks more than others. some do all outsourcing and I think, you know, depending on the brand, you know, there's different levels of quality that you see come out of those processes. But I'm I am I'm curious, what do you believe is in that makes, you know, the brand better and the people behind it better. with and the product better w when you have that sort of approach to your products. Jason Quade: Yeah, I think the big thing is just the feedback loop, right? The I'm sitting in the only office that is in the Abbey building. you know, our machinist and machine portion of the shop is twenty feet out the door. all the things get assembled, you know, twenty feet in the other direction. and then our you know our finished inventory is fifteen feet past that. So it's a pretty compact floor plan. I mean we're like six thousand square feet. It's not a tiny shop And I just think the challenges from, you know, design and manufacturing and like you get the design for manufacturing, how tolerance stack things work up, solving those problems, I think that if you have people that are engaged that it can just benefit in finished quality, right? And how well parts work. from a business standpoint means that we carry way less inventory, right? Because we're not we're not waiting six to ten weeks for that stuff to be in transit across, you know, the Pacific Ocean, wherever in Asia you would assume it would come from. I so that's big. you know, it makes cash flow way easier. The IP control I think is quite a bit better, right? We haven't I think that that's something that, you know, the Swiss Watch World is kind of finding out with, hey, we've out started outsourcing these parts to contract manufacturers that aren't in our scope of labor. and we taught them how to make these things. We encouraged it. The Rolex and Omega clones are almost indistinguishable to people that aren't like journeyman, you know, authorized dealers or service centers. and I think that that's probably part of, you know, the X lab shift as well in the bike industry, where you know, I'm making some assumptions here, but I'm kind of feel like it's pretty likely that factory found out what their real capacity threshold was during COVID and you know a lot of the purchase orders getting canceled, raw materials that are, you know, have a shelf life to them. And they're like, well, if we turn them into finished bikes, then you know, these things will last infinitely. Like, let's take a swing and make this happen. You know, and it's that was a segment of the industry in manufacturing that was encouraged and kind of funded by, you know, European and American brands that hey, we want to encourage this evolution of manufacturing If that stuff would have happened under, you know, the roof of brand whatever, you know, it's like that kinda you hang on to that tribal knowledge and you don't see the counterfeit product, because those molds are in Italy or they're in, you know, California or Utah or wherever that manufacturing is taking place, like you keep that stuff, right? The I think one of the fun facts about Lego is that for years when they would finally retire the molds for making the building blocks, that they would either cast them into the concrete of a building expansion or they would send a Lego employee in the truck and would babysit those molds until they saw them go into the crucible. Right? Because they didn't want somebody trying to rebuild them and control, you know, kind of take off of that IP and whatever unique molding features that they'd figured out for mass manufacturing those things as consistently as they do. So I kinda wish generally that people would think more about where this stuff comes from and the people that and how it gets made. was my favorite television show is a kit. I think a lot of people that are mechanics and enjoy this side of things definitely, you know, would have similar thoughts. Brandon Morphew: where do we go from here? So I I'm a big proponent of sort of like newer manufacturing processes where three D printing, you know, is you know, you're seeing metals be printed. One of the And I've mentioned this before on the podcast. One of the most interesting i insights that I've heard recently is that if you go to a regional airport, the parts that are put onto the airplanes in a regional for replacement are manufactured at on site. They're manufactured at the regional airport. They don't have the supply chain, they don't have the time, on demand is needed in order to get those parts. they're printing replacement parts for airplanes at airports because that's the supply chain now, because they just can't keep you know this in stock. that's our lives depend on those parts. So that 3D printing is not a you know out there someday kind of thing. And so and if you think about all the tools we have, whether it's AI, you know, being able to develop, you know, CAD drawings. for someone who is not a engineer, not someone who is, you know, well versed in this, and then the ability to take that and have someone man manufacture parts for you domestically. You know, this to me like the world is changing fast. And so I'm knowing that this China issue is happening, I think it was Xi Jinping who's the prime minister or leader or president ha they announced their five year plan and going after not just manufacturing, going after all industries and domin you know, AI, this is part of what they're doing. You know, they have a goal. It's my understanding, and I could be misquoting this here, that they're go they're looking to capture business, whether that's you know, aerospace or bicycles or AI, with Chinese businesses. So going after that business using price and other tools with high quality like and they're looking to dominate these industries. That's a stated, you know, destination for them in their five year plan. So I think we're seeing that as part of the X lab. But I'm just curious, like someone who's in this, someone who's, you know, dealing with knockoffs, dealing with competitors, you know, understands some of this complexity. How do you see this shaking out? Like what or what would you like to see? as a response to some of these things. Jason Quade: I don't think that like the barriers to entry are lower, right? The internet's made the world a f a much smaller place than it was twenty five years ago. and it's only gonna continue to be easier to service customers on an international scale. and so the need For a third, you know, why can't the Asian contract manufacturer kind of be more of the brand? those people are still really good at making stuff, right? They've been doing it for decades. there's a lot of talented and skilled people in mainland China, Taiwan, you know, the rest of the Asian continent that are really good at making stuff. and do they does the brand provide enough value to that equation to the end customer to warrant their existence. Right? That that's kind of kind of the question, right? It's one of the things that we ask as a business and I think all businesses, like how does this benefit the customer? What value does this add to the customer? and if you can't answer that question like maybe we shouldn't be doing this. Like maybe it is a necessary evil and it's kind of like, well, we've got to ship these things back and forth. tried to find local vendor to do this coding or whatever. we just we can't do it, so we wind up sending decade tools all the way to South Carolina to get that P V D coding done. Right. It's tried people in the Northwest, hasn't worked out. And so they go all the way across the country and come back. But yeah, I mean the other thing that's kinda rad is that like it allows you to serve niches within the industry, right? What we do is very specific. There's probably not room for another professionally oriented tool brand to exist in the in the space, right? There's a lot of commodity level competition and then there's some entry level stuff and i it's a pretty mature market, right? I mean when we started, I don't think anybody really like thought of premium level tools, right? Snap on had taken a swing at with the Rinch Force line, when that launched back mid to late nineties. That you might remember better than I, but Brandon Morphew: Do. Yep. Jason Quade: you know, and that wasn't worth the effort at the end of the day. And so yeah, they backed out of the market and a lot of times people call us the snap on of bike tools, which is kind of flattering but probably isn't completely accurate. it's nice to see that evolution and that growth. Like I said, China's got a lot of really talented manufacturing capability there and maybe the brands are the ones that are gonna get squeezed. I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. I think customers are probably gonna wind up in a better spot. the big thing is just product support, right? It's it hasn't been from what I've seen, hasn't been a priority. post sales support, warranty, tech support, those kinds of things is where prevent brands have earned a lot of keep in the past of, you know, as well as like steering the market and making those decisions. I don't I think it's unlikely that we'll see companies like X Lab and their peers be the innovators in the industry. they're probably gonna perpetually follow, which is maybe a sign that the rest of us need to kinda keep pushing forward. 'cause you're always gonna have somebody coming trying to take that, you know, take those last four French fries out of the bag. Brandon Morphew: Yeah. They're the best fries, aren't they? So Jason Quade: They're still hot. Brandon Morphew: if they're still hot, yeah, exactly. So when you think about your business and how Abbey Bike Tools operates, are there some things that you're open to changing, like in light of kind of where the market's going? And then are there areas where you're not willing to compromise? Jason Quade: I mean we've definitely had, you know, conversations like it's a ten hour drive to go to Sea Otter, so there's a lot of windshield time to spitball random things and we've talked about like, hey, should we do a sub brand, right, that's more price oriented, that maybe is con you know, outsourced manufacturing, take some key elements, but maybe not like all the precision or detail that goes into our existing tools. You know, we've d brands have tried that in the bike industry. I'm not aware of one that's like made a good crack at it, that's still around, that wasn't like a three to five year run and like, no, maybe we'll phase this out. This didn't work, it eroded too much of the premium brand. so yeah, I maybe that day'll come. If our business felt i got to struggles or felt struggles that seemed like a possible solution, I might try doing job shop work like contract manufacturing for other people's before we tried to go downstream in the in the bike space. but yeah, I mean you never know how that's where that stuff's gonna take you and land. I mean, the bike industry's pretty good about coming up with new product that needs new tooling, so long as that keeps happening, I think we'll you know, we can keep doing what we're doing and feel good about it, right? Brandon Morphew: Yeah, we've got thirty-two inch wheels and apparently thirty point five inch wheels coming at us fast. So good times. Jason Quade: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: So the head nod. Jason Quade: I have ridden a thirty two inch bike. I definitely I will own one at some point. I there's enough merit to it. and Bend isn't the most like tightest technical place to ride mountain bikes, so honestly feel like they're probably better suited and will have more of a dent and gravel than mountain Brandon Morphew: Mm-hmm. Yep. Jason Quade: bike, but whatever. it's not a wheel size that's gonna work for everybody, that's for sure. Brandon Morphew: so you walk into a shop. So it's you know customer or not a customer, and you've sort of your self described efficiency nerd. What tells you whether a shop service area is working well, flowing well, or whether there's sort of like salmon fighting upstream. You've got a situation where good mechanics are floundering in this bad workflow. Jason Quade: the efficiency and the workflow is kind of king, right? What's the throughput look like? Yeah, there's a lot of different layout theories of shops. I know just here in Bend we have seven or eight bike shops at this point, maybe more. some of them have very open floor plans and the mechanics wind up needing to be customer service, you know, salespeople as well. that's kind of a challenge and definitely, you know, limits the throughput that you're gonna get out of that technician. you know, and then we have other shops that are very closed off and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain kind of program. and those people can crank through stuff. you know, so it you kinda need to make that decision first. what do we want out of the vibe of the shop? But you do the best with what you have, but how are we getting two bikes and getting them back to where they're being stored? Right? The last shop that I worked at, everything had to be up a long flight of stairs. so it kinda sucked to like check in a bike, you know, especially busy on a weekend and then we're trying to find time to schlep it upstairs, we'd sit there for the rest of the weekend and then when it's time in the queue, you know, like Hey, here we go. We're, you know, we're doing this. we didn't do the check-in well enough, or we missed something. you know, and now this thing's gotta go back upstairs because we're waiting on parts, we're waiting for authorization on additional stuff. you know, which maybe that's the first thing to focus on is just good service writing. if we can have those customer those conversations with the customer when they're there in the shop. it makes the workflow of doing the repair a lot more efficient because there's just less unknowns. sometimes that stuff is absolutely unavoidable. It's always a balancing act between like, well, do we do we spend ten or fifteen minutes looking at the bike while the customer's there? only you know, 'cause that's work that's kinda hard to charge for. And then but like if it saves us twenty five or thirty minutes on the back end of flipping a bike up and down the stairs, waiting on phone calls, sending emails, whatever the workflow is like for a given shop, then like maybe that's time well spent. But yeah, the other big thing I think is just like tool redundancy. which I know comes across kind of ironic as a guy that sells tools. but if you're hunting for stuff, whether it's an Abbey tool or a basic screwdriver, you know, like that's time that's not well spent. I can't remember if it was Trek maybe made a push to like do the cabinets and everything in drawers and stuff. It's a great look. right, it's not super efficient. I think Adam Savage from the Mythbusters kind of did a whole spiel about like how he doesn't like toolboxes and he has his like cart and there's kind of some cool in depth YouTube videos on that and he's like, Nope, this is this is my toolbox. Right? This and everything that I want that I most people would put in a box is here and it's so much easier. It's on wheels. It was kind of like a sandwich board looking setup. with some trays and stuff built in there. It's similar to how a lot of shops work out of pegboards. you know, and that stuff works great for him. Everybody's got a different situation, I think, allowing mechanics to have that freedom and how they want their specific workstation a l set up and organized. You know, high frequency used tools in the middle work out from there. it seemed like when I did team stuff the last couple of years when I was just working for a single team I would show up to camp with the full toolbox and then every would put everything into a box. and then as I'm building bikes, I would take a tool out of that box and then I would put it back in my like travel toolbox. And then at the end of the camp, whatever was still in the cardboard box on the floor didn't travel. Right? It's like this Brandon Morphew: You don't need it. Jason Quade: stuff is not needed. It's not gonna be it's only gonna be in the way, it's only more weight to lug around. That's a very narrow use case and it kinda makes sense for doing that. Less so for a give you know, a general repair bike shop that's gotta be able to service everything. But y kind of the mentality of it I think is worthwhile to like let's chase that efficiency. What have I not used in the last two months? Maybe let's take this off the peckboard and put that in the toolbox and try something else in its place. Or go shop for a new tool, right? What can fill this up? this space and occupy this space on the pegboard that can earn its key more than this thing. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, I like that. I think you know, we're creatures of habit, right? So it's so easy to just sort of like Go with the flow, like what you've got. And the reality is, to your point, is if you're not measuring, you know, the times that it's taking as you were talking about going up and down the stairs. there was a shop that had two floors, and between the two floors was a crawl space and just enough room for bikes to roll in and out of there and they had these I beams and I remember ringing my bell so hard on that I beam, knocking myself out. And I know I wasn't the only one. And it was it was painful and up walking up and down stairs around corners, just a my back all tweaked, I can't imagine with e bikes. Fantastic. there's Jason Quade: Yeah, I mean the moment you say, Well, we've always done it this way, just turn the turn the open sign off and go. Right, just give up. 'Cause that's that's what that phrase means is that we're we're giving up. Brandon Morphew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a good point. there's a mindset, right, that is about curiosity and growth and understanding like how can we do this better and that is hard, I think, to foster. I think it's challenging to get everyone to sort of see their day like that. You know, a lot of people are taking a paycheck. You know, they're coming in, they're doing a job, they got a lot of other shit going on in their life and this is a just a just a job in a lot of ways. Not just a job so much, it's hard to instill it. Is there anything that you do in your business with your with your team to help foster that curiosity, the s sort of thoughtfulness, the reflection about what's going on. You know, this is the way we always do it, you know, to kind of avoid that mindset. Jason Quade: Yeah. it's one of the more challenging things that I've had to solve for as a business owner because it's having that mindset of continuous improvement, let's keep hunting, you know, let's try to find efficiency wherever we can. and then like nailing down a process of like, nope, this is the way that this gets done and that balance between excuse me, trying to shut things off and, you know, foster that innovation. And so, thankfully here turnovers relatively low, but the last time that we had to onboard somebody, you know, it was like, hey, if I if I show you a specific way that something needs to be done or it's actually documented, which has always been a goal to have more kind of standard work group instructions for stuff, the finished product is dependent on the process to be reliable. We've had batches of four ways in the past where somebody just arbitrarily changed the torque spec of which we bolt those things together. And then warranty rates, you know, ramp up and it's like why on the earth why on earth was this done? and it's I'm like for crying out loud, right? Th this is ridiculous. So it's like yeah, if I show you a specific way to do something, it's because somebody that came before you screwed it up. So let's follow the process. If you come up with a better way of after doing this three or four times, come talk to me and we'll, you know, let's just have a conversation about how you think it could be better. 'Cause some of these tools and processes have been evolved over, you know, they said almost fifteen years. we've tried a lot of different things and I'm always open to changing them, but like Let's just have the conversation about it because I've been here since the beginning. I've probably forgotten some of the ways that we've screwed stuff up in the past. but like let's try not to relearn those mistakes and I'm you know, I'd way rather have a productive conversation of like, hey, we tried that in the past, here's where that didn't work. Do you have an evolution of that maybe could prevent this issue from popping up? you know. that we experienced last time. And maybe that's the end of the conversation or like, yeah, I didn't really think of that. you know, I think it's just kind of a rapport that owners or managers have with staff and what their capacity is and you know it is kind of nice being more on the manufacturing side and not having the we bring people in from you know all walks of life currently everybody here either still rides bikes or a they've been a big part of their life in the past. and so they kinda get it, right? But they're not like dying the world bike industry people. so I think maybe sometimes they bring that fresh perspective with them. Brandon Morphew: I really like this idea of continuous improvement and sort of processes that help us to improve and recognizing where those bottlenecks are, often I'm the bottleneck. I've realized this many, times. the machine that changed the world? Jason Quade: Book that's kind of common and it it's it uses the auto industry as a an example, but they you know in the in the forward they're very clear that like this can work for everything, like but it's was kind of the story of the failed Muni plant that I want to say it was General Motors and Honda operated in the Bay Area. I think now it's a Tesla factory, but just how you get this. Japanese Kaizan One Piece Flow, like anybody can stop the line program versus the big three where like the production line never stops, this is throughput, we'll deal with defects later, and just how those things clashed and they failed horribly at the Muni plant. it would be interesting to see a sequel to that book and how twenty five, thirty years on, How that Japanese manufacturing method has really dominated all domestic manufacturers at this point. Brandon Morphew: So it's the goal process of ongoing improvement is the name of the book and Jason Quade: Okay. Brandon Morphew: yeah it's I think it's a similar story. anyway, a Jason Quade: Yeah. Brandon Morphew: fantastic book. I'll read the one you mentioned and I highly recommend the one I mentioned if you haven't read it yet. I want to s switch gears because you because you mentioned that you started advertising in a meaningful way this year and that it's worked better than you expected. And so I'm wondering what made you decide that now was the right time and if there's, you know, anything you want to share about what what's been working. Jason Quade: in the first couple of years of running the business of hey, we're figuring this out, we were coming out with so many new tools that we were seeing, you know, pretty good sales growth just organically. and so it was like, well, why advertise? if we're seeing this growth and then like figuring out what our pinch points are. early on we just had a couple of manual machines and then because I'm a welder by trade, we did all that stuff in-house and like so we were having a lot of parts machined and then doing fabrication value add stuff under our roof. and so some of that stuff was kind of a challenge of like or though there was a fear of it of like, man, if advertising works really well, like this is gonna be a problem to scale up. And I we were making enough money, like there wasn't this I just never really had this goal of like I wanna take over the world, or like, you know, I wanna be everything to everybody, or like I'm my job isn't done until every person every cyclist has a crombie tool. It's like You know, I want the people that want them to enjoy them, but like if we're gonna try to target people that aren't our customer, it's like if they're not gonna enjoy that tool, it's like that's fine. you know, they can buy something else. so we kind of set this goal of like thirty unique products, being the threshold just to you know, get more potential return on the ad dollars that we've spent. Right, I guess I listened to a podcast about the business history of Home Depot, on my way up to Whistler a couple of weeks ago for the World Cup and their strategy was similar of like let's not open a store in a market, let's do four. And then all of the advertising that we're spending is gonna cover, you know, potential higher returns. So that was kind of the original intent of why it didn't happen. Thirty products came and went. We're still seeing, you know, year over year growth that was you know, ten plus percent most years. and then things started to level out. even post COVID, like we hung on to top line revenue pretty well. I think we were maybe only down five or six percent. and then this year was the year that things definitely started to seem to contract a bit. some of that was product related. You know, it's always a deal where you can always put a story to the numbers. Right, we launched some new product that, you know, wasn't a slam dunk earlier this year. Yeah, as the season went on and like let's give this a shot, like we're not trying to start a cash bonfire, but worked with a local agency, Q Creative here in the Northwest to do kind of a website overhaul in twenty five and then you know, morphed that into just doing Meta and Google ad stuff this year. Nothing super complicated, but yeah, seeing the imagery that's resonated well with people. Some of the little stop motion things of tools getting loaded into the tool bag have been have worked well. yeah, definitely glad that we have an agency 'cause that's not something that I would enjoy doing and really didn't want to learn. so it's like this seems like a reasonable sum of money for somebody's expertise. let's do that. But yeah, I d maybe one of the downsides is that ever since we've started advertising, the number of people that have reached out to cold called us to sell us ad management services is kind of obnoxious. Brandon Morphew: you're a sales signal, as they say. well Exactly. Jason Quade: Yeah, there's a qualified lead. Brandon Morphew: you do you have a target audience? Do you know like who you're going after? Do you have someone that is like the quintessential avi tools buyer? And then How do you measure your success? Like what are the metrics you're using to sort of say like this is working or this is not working? Jason Quade: I'm not sure what kind of categories they're slicing up that's working for us. you know, I think generally speaking we kind of view our customers as either professionals or people that are kind of very mature in their life as a cyclist. you know, we're regardless of what that looks like and what disciplines they participate in, it's like cycling is definitely a part of their life. Maybe it's their entire life, professionally and recreational hobbies. you know, maybe there's somebody that's only an avid you know, an occasional cyclist, but they appreciate nice things in their life. and so they want to they want to just bring more you know, quality things into their life in that way. Right. They maybe they're a technician at a s a high end car dealer or something and they're just like, I work on nice German cars all day long. I'm getting into bikes, like I I'm gonna fix those things too. Like let me just who makes nice bike tools? and they come across us and there you go. Right. So but yeah and as far as jump judging success, we're giving it a little bit of a leash to like kinda have the full data set. I think we're gonna run that stuff through the end of holiday season, and then kinda take a bigger look. We started running ads in about June, I think. started prepping for that in, you know, March, and just developing assets and stuff. And then just kinda look at the holistic picture of here's what we spent all in agency plus actual ad spend. Here's what we kind of attribute sales growth. We'll pull out some new tool sales from that number. and then like here's kind of what we can attribute to ad spend or yeah, to advertising, and then make a decision of like, hey, is this a perpetual thing for us? Is this an occasional thing? Do we do this at select times a year? you know, I guess one of the things that's kind of challenging with ads, at least the ones that we're doing is turning them on and off kind of, you know, doesn't work super well. Like I guess the platforms like to see that consistency and if you want to, you know, quadruple your spend, it's it throws things out of whack for some reason. we're just gonna do this for this six week window of the year. it it'll probably be perpetual. One of the things that I'm most curious to see is like where's the ceiling of it? At what point do we start seeing our ROAS fall off? you know, and it's like, we're reaching everybody that we can and there you go. that's what's left. Brandon Morphew: you had mentioned there's a valve core tool that you were making with cutoffs or off cuts that would have otherwise been scraped. I love that this sort of like recognizing the opportunity. did was there a problem there that needed to be solved as far as the tool or was it sort of a product of opportunity? Jason Quade: It was more the latter, right? It was a friend of mine runs a machine shop that's a mile away. We've bought a couple of C Mills from him. and we get together every once in a while and just chew the fat and he had these like five gallon buckets, a half inch off cuts and he's like, Can you make anything out of these things? And some of are up to like fourteen inches long. So they're kind of decent in length, but they weren't long enough to make his parts out of and so I took a bucket back and it sat on the shop floor for probably a year and a half and then we're just kind of like spitballing things of like what could we make? you know, what makes sense? given everything that's going on in the world, our kind of objectives for new tools this year were like things that were very price friendly, you know, good values, not high ticket items, like we don't need another truing stand in our catalog at, you know, sixteen, seventeen hundred bucks, whatever it is. it's kind of that ultimate upcycling things. the second batch of those that we made we kinda ran as a weekend job. so we run four tens in the shop and then I'm usually here on Fridays doing boss things. For a while, and every once in a while when we get backed up, like we'll just run a job on the weekend. And so Kyle, our machinist will set it up on a Thursday afternoon, and then I'll just kind of come in throughout the weekend and check on it twice a day, load more material, put some more water in the coolant tank, you know, inspect some parts. It takes a lot of like process stability, kind of engineering, if you will, to make sure that. everything will flow like that so that all the automation will work when nobody's here. those are a little bit more challenging because the bars don't always load. and so it's like trying to figure out how clean do they need to be. The you know, they come with oil on them, so we gotta clean the oil off so they don't stick to each other and then like modifying the bar feeders so that the parts like, you know, are elevated off i it's just kind of weird little things that you don't You don't know until you try to do a thousand of them, with nobody in the shop. Brandon Morphew: that's what's next for Abby Tools? Jason Quade: you know, we kind of alluded to it earlier. There might have been some s some pit shot stuff, but yeah, looking at doing a pump. which it has been fun, right? Bike tires look a lot different than they did the last time we had a major pump launch. so yeah, definitely some things that I think could be improved. it just maybe make people's lives a little bit easier and then have kind of the first wholly built US made pump to my knowledge. So that'll be kinda cool. Brandon Morphew: So you talked about a little bit at the beginning, you talked about getting out, you know, once a week and getting on the bike and still you know, still finding some joy there. what do you need to protect so that stays a part of your life? Jason Quade: Yeah, I mean I think just like the stability in the business, right? Like I'm not a super stressed person, th but there are things that, you know, get friction that you think about, you know, from time to time. There's been there's been times in the past where people, you know, put bugs in your ear of like, Hey, are you interested in selling Abby? And it's like, you know, you'd like, I thought I was gonna go to bed and then two hours later I'm still thinking about, you know, all of the things that are pointless to think about, right? But yeah, I mean just that process stability both from you know a lot of times we focus on it within the machines, but then just the people and the reliability of them. I think you know, treating people fairly and whatnot makes them a lot more pleasant to be around and makes them more productive. and they their drama hopefully doesn't spill over as well. Sometimes that stuff's hard to control. People, you know, like I said, people have lives outside of work and they get divorced and get married and have kids and do all of these things that, you know, that can impact what they're like at work and what they're like to work with. yeah, I'd say that's maybe the biggest thing is to in sometimes when that stuff we've had employees in the past that have struggled with mental health that's been kind of a challenge where it's like, man, you are a rock star when you're here, and it's you know, it's like to think that everybody that's come through here has taught me something as an employer. and sometimes it's, you know, that compassion of like, hey, what are the to some local support stuff that might help you out, right? And maybe they know it, but it's and maybe it falls on deaf ears, but it's like I it feels like you did something. but yeah, that stuff's always can be a challenge. and it's definitely some other small business owner friends, you know, it's like, yeah, people are the reason that I s that I sold out and I'm now retired 'cause dealing with them was too much. And it I don't know. We've had a pretty good run of it, knock on wood, but you know, so I'm always kinda curious and to look back and like, well, was that how much of that could you have prevented and how much of it was just the nature of being an employer? Brandon Morphew: Being good to people, I mean, I think that's super valuable just as a general way of operating in the world and then, you know, I think it's a good way of operating your business. I really appreciated, you know, you sharing your business, the things that are going on. I am I have been a fan of Abbey Tools for a long time. I think if people are interested, the website is abbeybike tools.com. Is that correct? Jason Quade: Yep. Brandon Morphew: We'll make sure that there's a link in the show notes as well. is there anything that you would like to share with folks outside of sending them to the website? Jason Quade: we'd definitely give first crack it new product. you know, early access to the email list. So sometimes it's a couple of days, sometimes it's a month, you know, head start on that stuff. So that's usually if you're interested in those things, Stay in touch there. You sign up without buying stuff or you can buy an impressive Alcor tool. So and wind up on the email list that way. But yeah, it's and then sometimes volume keeps us from even making social media posts like when Turing stands come and you know, back into stock. We only make a batch of those a year. and so it's like, Hey, the email g list gets first crack and they absorb all and so it's like, Well, yeah. Brandon Morphew: Probably have. I like Jason Quade: We sold all, that was the goal. So yeah. Brandon Morphew: Well, Jason, thank you so much for spending time with us. I really appreciate it. I'm grateful to you for sharing and for your time. and thank you everyone for listening to Spokes and Strategy. please, you know, share the episode with someone who you think would enjoy the conversation, whether they run a shop or are building a product, making something, or you know, if they have a relationship and a love of the bike and just an interest in the business around it. I'm Brandon Morphew. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time.