Ribble Cycles - Jamie Burrow, Head of Product

06/08/21 • 31 min

This week we sit down with former Pro Tour rider and current Ribble Cycles Head of Product, Jamie Burrow. Jamie walks us through the range of Ribble Gravel Bikes across three frame materials and highlight the companies' unique custom bike builder.

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Automated transcription (please excuse any errors)

[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.

[00:00:08]This week on the podcast, we have Jamie Burrow. He's a former pro tour rider on the road and current head of product for the UK brand Ribble cycles.

[00:00:19]As you'll learn from Jamie, Ribble offers a full suite of gravel bikes across a range of materials.

[00:00:25]And also offers a direct to consumer model via their website with a unique bike configurator tool that allows you to customize every element of your gravel bike. So if you're looking for those wide bars or 650 wheels, Or a little different saddle or set up, you can go through and individually customize every part and piece of the bike.

[00:00:46]Making it uniquely yours. Including a custom paint job, which I just learned about during the podcast. Which i think is a fabulous opportunity for anybody looking to ride something unique.

[00:00:56]Before we jump in, I just wanted to send a huge thank you to those of you who have elected to become members of the podcast. Via buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride your monthly support to my efforts at the podcast are hugely appreciated

[00:01:11]And I wouldn't keep doing what I'm doing without your support. With all that said let's dive right in to my interview with Jamie. Jamie. Welcome to the show. I appreciate you joining us all the way from the UK. You're welcome. I know we could easily do an hour on your backstory as a cyclist back in the pro tour, but [00:01:30] for the purpose of this conversation, why don't you just tell us what led you to your current role at Ribble?

[00:01:35]Jamie Burrow: [00:01:35] I suppose it's just taking a different path to most people who, you know, X, Y, Z, as you go down the kind of sports director, team management role. I come from a cycling family and grew up around bikes, really. Dad told me to build bikes when I was probably about five years old, I think.

[00:01:50] And the early days my dad was a designer himself by trade. And it just passionate the bikes as a kid. I started designing my own bikes as a teenager, honestly, back in the days when everything was made by steel I was designing my race bikes that sort of 15, 16, and had a local frame builder would build them for me.

[00:02:08]And then you go into the whole race career thing. And even as it has it sides where obviously all your equipment is given to you, you don't have choice on things. Sometimes on the best equipment, sometimes it's not the best and, seeing the sides of things and then get out, it would be so much better if you could have this or who could have done this way.

[00:02:26] So suddenly finding yourself, coming out the other side of a career where you're effectively right in the kit for seven, eight hours a day in all conditions, you know what you want, what's good. And, what's missing. So then suddenly be, behind the steering wheel of, being out of an input in those things.

[00:02:42] That's a pretty cool.

[00:02:44] Craig Dalton: [00:02:44] Yeah. It's gotta be pretty amazing to take your vision for what a bicycle should be and deliver it to the world.

[00:02:50]Jamie Burrow: [00:02:50] That's right. Yeah. Honestly, my main background was obviously road riding and obviously there's so many different forms, disciplines of of cycling, but It does [00:03:00] help when, when you've ridden bikes in every situation at higher level to know what they need, for OEM performance wise, aerodynamics everything map, you just, if are those kinds of get to know things, is it that you get to know on the road?

[00:03:15]Craig Dalton: [00:03:15] Can you, I was really tickled to learn about Ribble as such a storied UK brand that I hadn't really heard of. I suppose I'd seen it in some races. But it really didn't connect the dots until after I got introduced to it. Can you tell the listener a little bit about Ribble's history as a brand?

[00:03:33]Jamie Burrow: [00:03:33] Yeah, so it's actually a very old brand.

[00:03:36] It was originated in 1897. So it's a pretty old comes from the Northwest of England. The Ribble name comes from the river in the river valley. It was a family business for generations. Changed hands a few times. As we went into the 20th ...

Ribble Gravel Range

Ribble Instagram

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Join The Ridership

Automated transcription (please excuse any errors)

[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton.

[00:00:08]This week on the podcast, we have Jamie Burrow. He's a former pro tour rider on the road and current head of product for the UK brand Ribble cycles.

[00:00:19]As you'll learn from Jamie, Ribble offers a full suite of gravel bikes across a range of materials.

[00:00:46]Making it uniquely yours. Including a custom paint job, which I just learned about during the podcast. Which i think is a fabulous opportunity for anybody looking to ride something unique.

[00:02:42] That's a pretty cool.

[00:02:44] Craig Dalton: [00:02:44] Yeah. It's gotta be pretty amazing to take your vision for what a bicycle should be and deliver it to the world.

[00:03:33]Jamie Burrow: [00:03:33] Yeah, so it's actually a very old brand.

Previous Episode

Andrew Onermaa: Ozark Gravel Cyclist community

This week we sit down with Andrew Onermaa, founder of Ozark Gravel Cyclist. Andrew is a passionate gravel cyclist and bikepacker who has channeled energy and love into creating a hub for Arkansas gravel cyclists.

Ozark Gravel Cyclists Web / Instagram

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Automated Transcription, excuse the typos.

[00:00:00]Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] Andrew, welcome to the show.

[00:00:02] Andrew Onermaa: [00:00:02] Hey, thanks for having me, Craig,

[00:00:03] Craig Dalton: [00:00:03] super excited to learn more about your project. It was our gravel cycling, but the more I've talked to you on offline, the more I want to hear about your personal journey to the bike and all the things you've been doing.

[00:00:15] So why don't we start off by just a little bit of your background. As an athlete and what led you to gravel cycling?

[00:00:21]Andrew Onermaa: [00:00:21] That's a great question. So the journey of the bicycle has definitely evolved a lot in the last decade. So I realized, or did riding bikes in college as a means of transportation. My vehicle died on me.

[00:00:36] Okay. I can't buy another car. What are we going to do? So what's the cheapest bike you can possibly find. It's going to be a bike that has. One gear and has nothing extra on it. So got a six gear bike, cause I was starting to hear about it. I was cool. This is in 2011, 2012, and I started really getting addicted to just the motion of moving through the landscape and interacting with vehicles and people and pedestrians.

[00:01:09] And I started delivering sandwiches for Jimmy John's in the middle of the night, I'd be doing a graveyard shift of 10:00 PM til three or four in the morning and just doing it all by bike. And I didn't have navigation on my phone, so I'd be printing up stuff in the shop, turn by turn navigation and using [00:01:30] that to deliver sandwiches.

[00:01:32] And I ended up just spending a lot of years traveling. Out west always had a fixed gear bike. It'd be my fun way to explore, but I'd still be pursuing other things. Climbing backpacking, mountaineering skiing, really just fully embracing the outdoors. But the bike was always, there is more of just a really fun way to explore in a way to shake things up.

[00:01:54] And it. Like within the last two, three years, I finally got my hands on a road bike with multiple gears brakes, and it opened up a whole new world of cycling to me that I'd never seen. I can suddenly do much, much bigger Hills. I was living in salt lake at the time I was doing these canyon passes, seeing the landscape from essentially mountaintops.

[00:02:18] And I was just blown away by how much you could see in an afternoon, they didn't even have to be a full day. And so that just fully consumed me. I was doing a lot of where I would bag multiple peaks in a day via foot. And I was like, man, I can apply this to the bike instead. Let's like, how many high points can I hit?

[00:02:40] And so that really opened my eyes to how much distance you can travel on the bike. And then. I started looking over and what about these dirt roads that I'm seeing? I'm getting tired of all these cars living by like ruining the vibe per se. Like I'm out in nature and [00:03:00] all of a sudden you have 20 cars blow by and one person has to roll down their window and yell something or whatever.

[00:03:06] And so I started dabbling into some dirt, but I wasn't confident with the skinny tires. So I went west. On the other side of the salt lake or it's flat. And that was my introduction to gravel. It was just this big open space with these random gravel roads, no information, no signage. And I would just try and I go for awhile for as long as I felt comfortable.

[00:03:31] Yeah. And then I would turn around and come back and just cross my fingers for whatever reason I was thinking now that I'm on gravel. My bike's gonna explode. Everything's gonna go wrong. And I kept having rise where it's whoa, that was actually really peaceful and enjoyable. And I was by myself the whole time.

[00:03:49] And that's, I started honing in on that aspect of this is something different. This is combining a lot of years of playing outdoors and this love of the bicycle. And so that's the quick summary of bikes. Over the last, almost decade until I moved back to Arkansas and got a proper gravel bike, my first gravel bike, and it's been a little over a year having a bike that's designed for this style of riding and it's just been phenomenal.

[00:04:22] And just the more I've done it, the more I've just, I don't know, absorbed as much as possible as far as learning. [00:04:30] And...

Next Episode

Kali Protectives - Brad Waldron, founder

This week we sit down with Brad Waldron, founder of Kali Protectives to take a deep dive into helmet tech and the new Grit gravel helmet.

Kali Protectives Web / Instagram

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The Ridership

Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:

Kali Protectives

Craig Dalton: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to The Gravel Ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton this week on the podcast. We've got Brad Waldron from Kali. Protectives talking to us about helmets.

[00:00:15]Before we jump in just to reminder, The Gravel Ride podcast is sponsored by listeners like you and a select group of sponsors from the industry and outside the industry. We appreciate any contributions to the show's www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride. And when we do bring a sponsor on board, please make sure to check out their products because without their support, we couldn't continue doing what we're doing.

[00:00:40]

[00:00:40]With that said let's dive right into my interview with Kali. Protectives. Brad. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:46] Brad Waldron: [00:00:46] Thanks for having me

[00:00:47] Craig Dalton: [00:00:47] I'm super stoked to talk helmets. It's interesting. It's one of those categories that. I haven't covered on the podcast thus far. So I figured going to an expert and talking about it will give the listener a lot of value about helmet technology for gravel, riding

[00:01:02]Brad Waldron: [00:01:02] looking forward to it.

[00:01:04] Craig Dalton: [00:01:04] Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your background and how Kali was started?

[00:01:09]Brad Waldron: [00:01:09] Sure. I was super lucky in a previous life career. I worked for an aerospace company working on military aircraft. So I was a carbon fiber R and D engineer. Mostly on the process side, not on the material side.

[00:01:22]I was fortunate enough to work on the B2 bomber F eighteens joint strike fighter, and then a few airplanes that had never made it, but just stuff you've made it and broke it to see what we could do. And this will give you the idea of my age, but I was at Northrop Grumman in between the first Gulf war and the second Gulf war.

[00:01:41] And they didn't want to put a lot of money in production at that time, but they want to put a lot of money into R and D. So I was just in the perfect place at the perfect time where you could almost do anything you wanted. If it made sense. I, one time my boss walked in and said, DARPA's going to be here next week.

[00:01:57] Think of something. Go back to my desk and I, without five different projects and the next week sit down in front of these generals and you. Present these ideas in here I'm, in my late twenties, early thirties, somewhere in there. And they're like rubber stamping, all of them and oh shit.

[00:02:12] Now I got, I do, so I got to build a $12 million milling machine and then just things like that. So that's where my real just try it. Mentality came from, when you hear are, you can't do that. And get into some of the things that people told me we couldn't do at Kali. It's let's just try, and that's been like theme sentence.

[00:02:30] So I worked that and through some changes in life, I went to work or another aerospace company and didn't love it, so I was down in the Southern California area, working there. And then I moved back up to Northern California where I was born and raised. And I was in R and D at this satellite company and it just wasn't everything I wanted.

[00:02:49] And lo and behold, there's this ad for the big red S in the paper. And so I put on my suit and went to my interview. Nobody's wearing a suit, got called back for a second interview and go, what do I wear when I knew I wore the suit? Yeah. So I guess it worked, they offered me a job as the Pumps and locks, designer, something like that.

[00:03:09]And I was so happy to take my 25% pay cut to be in the bike industry. And there was, and then on my first day they said, Hey, you know that job, we offered you the helmet guy quit. And would you rather that job on the helmets over locks? Hell yeah. But the ironic thing was they, at that time, specialized was still assembling the helmets at, on a site and.

[00:03:32] We tested our helmets and they said, there's the test lab. There's 10,000 helmets sitting over there that can't be shipped. So you say they're tested and Don, w oh, and by the way that the helmet technician quit at the same time. And so I walked into this test lab with this equipment I never seen in my life and go, okay, what did we do here?

[00:03:50] And fortunately somebody who's become a good friend and ...