Overnight Success

In this episode we speak to the three co-founders of apparel brand, 7mesh.

Getting into the cycling apparel business could now be one of the lowest barrier-to-entry segments in the industry. Anyone with an Instagram account and some design ability can source directly from factories in Italy or China and create a clothing ‘brand’ these days.

That’s not to say some don’t break through and create legitimate and worthy businesses this way – I know a few first-hand who have. This low barrier to entry has enabled some wonderful brands to get started and flourish. But because of this it is now a crowded market, and it’s tough to discern who’s doing great work and innovating, and who’s just pumping out disposable fashion.

From the moment I first discovered 7mesh I knew this was going to be something different.

For those who don’t know, 7mesh is an apparel brand based in Squamish, Canada which makes top quality apparel made for the demands of mountain biking, gravel and road.

The three founders, Tyler Jordan (you’ll hear him often being referred to as TJ), Ian Martin and Calum Davidson aren’t three people who randomly got together to do a passion project. They were three early staff members and integral to the success of outdoor clothing juggernaut, Arcteryx.

Tyler was the CEO, Ian was Design Director, and Calum was Director of Supply Chain – and all were (and still are) nuts for cycling. They were also great friends in their days at Arcteryx and were having fun, pushing boundaries, and getting shit done.

But as the saying goes, all good things come to an end and as the three oversaw tremendous growth in the business they all gave everything up to go off on their own and create something from scratch.

To tell the story of 7mesh, we need to get to know Tyler, Calum and Ian in their early days at Arcteryx ...

In recent years Rapha has been one of the most innovative, aspirational and disruptive businesses in cycling and Simon Mottram is the mastermind behind the brand. He took the company from a single idea, with the premise of how he felt about road cycling and how he wanted it portrayed. From a single jersey that wasn’t even ready in time for the company launch during in 2004, he build Rapha into the darling child of cycling brands that inspired an entirely new market of ‘micro apparel brands’ and showed many others of the cycling industry the power of storytelling and looking at the sport differently.

This is Simon’s remarkable story of how he built Rapha.

There’s an undeniable truth that an overnight success takes about 10 years, not a single night. Almost no one comes up with a winning business idea all at once. And if you’re not Peter and Tom Marchment or those around them who created the aftermarket wheel brand Hunt, you might be mistaken that they came out of nowhere.

Tom and Peter are brothers who grew up riding in a small fishing village on the Isle of Man and like most of us at the beginning, cycling was a way to get around and a source of freedom. That progressed to mountain biking and then cross-country racing then road racing and time trialling - as you do in the UK.

At University Peter got some background in materials sciences while Tom took a degree in ergonomics, which is human psychology and physiology applied to design, which he admits that he really didn’t like. Their paths diverged after university when Tom started working in a bike shop where he got some cycling industry experience, while Peter went to work at a bank.

Peter and Tom have been slowly putting the building blocks of their steadfast aftermarket wheelset business together for nearly a decade now, all starting with an online store called The InnerTube Shop back in 2013.

Here’s Peter and Tom Marchment who started InnerTube Shop telling about how it all began.

You could argue that Bonnie Tu is the most powerful woman in cycling, although she wouldn’t think of describing herself that way. She’s best known for being the face of the Liv brand she created back in 2008, but more than that she’s chairperson of the largest bike brand in the world: the Giant Bicycle Group. What does that mean? Quite simply, she runs the entire company.

Giant Bicycles is a US$2.1 billion-per-annum publicly traded company that produces millions of bikes per year, while also serving as manufacturer for some of the largest and most reputable bike brands.

Giant was founded in 1972. That’s 48 years ago, and Bonnie was one of the founding shareholders. As you’ll hear, she has been very influential in many of the company’s foundations and its pathway up until now.

This is the growth story of Bonnie Tu and not necessarily the story of Giant Bicycles or Liv. But they’re so intertwined that it’s hard not to tell one without the other.

It’s been said that Kona is 'The Smallest Biggest Bike Company in the World'. They’re best known as the quintessential North Shore bike brand, yet their global head office is just down over the border in Ferndale, Washington.

The quirky company stood out with outrageous bike model names such as the Stinky Dee-Lux, Sex One, Sex Too, and, Jackshit, which placed them well and truly as the "alternative" bicycle company.

The business was founded by Dan Gerhard, Jacob Heilbron in Vancouver, BC along with mtb hall of famer Joe Murray as their designer.

With a rich history of iconic bikes and factory race teams, it was all overshadowed by the recent events of their former owners, Kent Outdoors, who were responsible for running Kona into the ground (my words, not theirs) before the original founders bought the company back last month.

Only a few weeks after Dan and Jake bought the company back, I spoke to Jake about Kona’s founding story that dates back to 36yrs ago in 1988, the sale of the business to a private equity-backed company, and what happened that led them to buying Kona back.

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