102 - Inside Park Tool: The World's Largest Bicycle Tool Company with Truman Purdy - Mountain Cog

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Josh "Magellan" Anderson (00:22):
Sounds good.
Hello, thanks for having mehere today.
My name is josh uh and I am anaddict.
I've been addicted for I don'tknow, it's probably been 20
years.
Um, I've, I I'm aware, I knowthat, like um, you know, the

(00:43):
first step is kind of acceptanceand I realized that I'm an
addict.
Um, just let it out, man.
I know this is hard.
Um, it's got worse than COVID.
Um, I just, I just saw thestuff that I wanted and on the
park tool website and I justkept ordering, and ordering, and

(01:07):
ordering.
And I'm a home mechanic, I haveseveral hundred park tools.
You have a whole bike shopright, which is more than, which
is probably 180 more than any,but um, since we started this
podcast, we've been stoked um totalk to park tool and just sent

(01:32):
a cold email and you guysresponded.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Hig (01:33):
Yeah , it's awesome.

So, uh , yeah, so it's a Friday night.
Dan and I just got done ridinga new social trail that was cut
this week or open this week.
Uh, out by us, us, um, and sowe're sweaty and a little sore.
It was fun.
We rode for a couple hours.
Yeah, um, lacy kicked my ass asnormal, she kicks everybody's
ass.
She's fast, lacy's my wife, um,but we're here with uh truman

(01:55):
purdy from the one and only parktools.
How are you this evening, sir?

Truman Purdy (Park Tools) (02:00):
I am doing well and uh yeah, I've got
a similar problem.
It's been going on for a longtime.

I'd imagine you get a better price
than I do, though yeah.

Yeah, maybe on those tools.

What did you do before park Truman?

Truman Purdy (Park Tools (02:15):
Before park I was working in bike
shops Were you.
I worked in about four or fivedifferent bike shops and in
between there did I was aautomotive, I did some
automotive.
That's where I went for school,to school for automotive right
on I worked on tractors andtrucks and concrete stuff and uh
, uh, got back into bikes andalways been into tools, so yeah,

(02:39):
always been into tools.
That's always the that's been.
My history has always beentinkering, taking stuff apart,
working with tools, and so, yeah, now I have.

Now I just work with tools all the
time so, truman, are you aroadie or do you have fun when
you ride your bike?

I like to have fun when I ride my
bike, that's so mean roadieshave fun too they might, I don't
know.

It feels like they're suffering
they do like.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgi (03:04):
Uh , I feel like in, you know,
roadies are like formula one.

Josh "Magellan" Anderso (03:08):
They're formula one fun I thought
downhill was formula.
No, that's baha truck.
Okay, yeah, downhill's morelike baha.

Go as fast as you can and see how,
how smooth you can keep yourhead over over the terrain.
Formula one is, like all aboutgrip and fast and yeah, so truan
, what do you ride?

what bikes do you have at the moment?

so I have uh.
Right now I have a couplehardtails for my mountain bikes.
I got a uh, basically the twoidentical bikes.
I just have different parts oneach one to try, try different
things, right?
So I have a surly karate monkeyoh, that's a good bike.

I've had that bike, you know kind of
built out nice.

I mean for a karate monkey it's
built out better than a lot ofthem right but then I have a all
city.
Um, oh boy, what is this thing?

Dane "Suspension Guru" (03:57):
electric queen oh really, oh nice.
Yeah, it's a fun little funlittle bike oh cool, oh yeah, I
yeah, I always liked their paintjobs too.

I had to have it.
That was the reason why Ibought it.
It was a splatter job, yeah.

Yeah .

And at the beginning of COVID I sold
my full suspension bike becausethe prices were.
I mean it was crazy you couldnot sell your nice bike because
people were giving you more thanyou paid for.

Go ahead and tell your story, dan
Well nice bike, because peoplewere giving you more than you're
, way more than you paid for.
Go ahead and tell your story,dan Well, yeah, I mean I, I sold
all my bikes in my garage.
We were selling 26 inch bikesout of our garages that were
lying around forever, you knowand getting good money for him
and getting good money for him,and I started calling all my
friends hey, you know that bikethat you never ride, that's
gathering dust.
Can you give it to me?
Yeah Well yeah, I actually didsay that I would say like, look,

(04:44):
if you're not going to doanything, give it to me and I'll
sell it.
But I encourage them to sell ittoo.
But yeah, we were out of bikesand so we would call in all of
our friends, bring your bikes inso we can sell them for you.
And we'd sell them onconsignment.

Truman Purdy (Park Tools (04:56):
That's a great idea.
Yeah, the bike shop helped alocal bike shop get opened up
and that was a huge part oftheir business during covid was
these, you know, just uh,consignment bikes and used bikes
, just people bringing them inand selling them and dude, what
a crazy time to start a shopduring covid, when like you

(05:17):
can't or like nothing'savailable, you're like is it
really?
this hard?
Yeah, it was almost theopposite oh, really it was like
2019.
I started helping them getgoing and it was we were looking
at locations and I they weretalking about okay, what
accounts do I need to open up?
It was people that had not comefrom the bike industry at all.

(05:37):
One from one was a nurse, youknow kind of a nurse manager and
then one that came frommanaging a golf course and they
went out to, I think, ashevilleand they went to the hub and
they fell in love and they saidwe want to do this as our
retirement gig.
And they came back and were like, hey, can you help us get this
open?
It's one of my best friend'sparents and so I was like, yeah,

(06:01):
this sounds awesome.
So we looked around and it wasa fun process doing that and
then kind of renovating.
And then I'm sitting there like, okay, here's about bikes,
selling bikes.
You know telling them all ofthe bad, you know maybe all of
the difficult things about bikeshops.
You know like there's going tobe customers that come in and

(06:22):
they look around and you'regoing to help them for an hour
or something and they're goingto go buy it on Amazon or
something.
Or there's going to be peoplewho come in and they come in
three different times and thenthey go and buy it from some
other bike shop.
Or you know getting them readyfor those those ups and downs.
You know, the next day somebodyis going to come in and buy

(06:42):
three $2,000 bikes and it's justgoing to be really sweet that
day.
And then COVID hit and so theywere kind of freaking out.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higg (06:52):
Did they have inventory before
COVID hit?

They did, oh.
So that's a great time to getin.

That is a great time then yeah, I
mean, at least you get thatlittle boost.
They had inventory and theythrew down a lot of money on
getting inventory as much asthey could and they put in all
these mad you know, because allthe they got in with Giant
because there was another Trekstore in our small little town
and so they couldn't get in Trekand in the Midwest Trek is

(07:18):
really the big name thateverybody knows and goes after.
So they picked up Giant andthen they did Surly and All City
and now they have Santa Cruzand a couple other brands.
But yeah so then they startedselling bikes during COVID and,
man, they were like Truman, whatwere you talking about?

Yeah , this is golden People just
walk in and they just point at abike and say I want that.
And they walk out.

They give us money and they walk out
the door or they they say I wantthat, oh, it's not the right
size, oh, I'll wait six months,but I'll pay you today.

Yeah .

And then giant just kept on filling.
You know, they just kept ongiving them bikes.
They sold so many bikes.
That's awesome, that's the wereyou warning them that like this

(08:13):
is not normal, don't consider,please, please, don't get used
to this.
I told him I was like this isnot normal, this will.
There's a bubble and it's gonnapop.
Don't get stuck with the mostinventory, that's gonna be not
worth a bunch yeah, buy a newbuilding they actually kind of
did so.
It's a really cool setup.
They bought what used to be.
You know, when I was five yearsold, my dad would bring me

(08:37):
there to buy parts.
It was an old parts store andthen it got turned into a place.
It got turned into like apotting studio and then it got
turned into a place.
It got turned into like apotting studio and then it got
turned into a restore Um and andit's way it's off the beaten
path.
And so when we were looking atit and we were like I'm like
this is gonna you have to makethis a destination and Steph

(08:59):
looked at me and she's like thisis going to be a destination, I
was like, all right, let's dothis.

Nice .

And uh, and so they.
So it's a brewery, it's a microbrewery with a bar like a big
long bar and a bike shop.

Oh , that's cool.

And so Ellis, their other son, is
brewing beer and I'm behind, youknow, maybe behind the counter
fixing bikes, and then my friendDerek's fixing bikes behind the
counter and people are justsitting in the middle, in the
middle of all of it, watching uskind of do our thing, which is,
yeah, it's kind of weird tohave people watching you fix
bikes and asking you questionsas you're doing stuff, like in a

(09:35):
bigger way than normal.
Normally there's just a couplepeople there, yeah, um, but this
, you know, there's can be 30people sitting there and uh, so
it was interesting.
But it is a really coolenvironment.
They actually have, um, theyhave a big music fest there
called Kinney stock.
That's the local uh river whichruns right in front of it.

Right.

And so they have these some big
bands.
They have thousands of peoplethere and they, you know, they
sell a ton of beer and have abunch of music going on and it's
it's a really cool space.

I want to go there.
What's the name of the shop?

It's called the garage.

That's cool.

You got a shirt.

He's got a shirt.
He's got the shirt on.
He's repping the shirt.

Dane "Suspension Guru" H (10:19):
That's that I mean that's been the
dream of most bike shop ownersis to have that combination of
like a brewery or what I wantStrip club.
Oh yeah.

I already did that.
It didn't work.
The girls kept getting greaseon them.
It just didn't work out.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Hi (10:37):
There was problems with the saddle.
No, I wanted a brewery on oneside of the bike shop, a
cafe-like coffee shop on theother side, and then in the back
I wanted a big window, and inthe back of the shop I wanted a
frame builder to be buildingframes back there and that's
been my dream.

You can see the sparks and stuff
from the welder.

Yeah , so the guys in there are
making bikes in the back room.
You can go on your group ridein the morning and have coffee,
or you can come in after yourride and and have a have a beer
tacos and beer.
Yeah, um, I I still want to dothat.
I don't know if I'll ever getto, because you gotta that's.
That's more than threebusinesses to run right guru
bikes 2.0 yeah, maybe somewhereon the east side of tucson maybe
yeah I just uh, yeah, that's aninsight, that's joke.

It was a big undertaking for them.
It took a lot of energy to getthem to where they're at, and it
took a lot of risk and a lot ofvision and a lot of investment,
but now it seems to be allpaying off for them.

That's good.
Good diversity too, Good job toSteph and Matt.

Truman Purdy (Park Tool (11:39):
They've been doing a really good job
with that, oh that's awesome.
And so the brewery partactually came from not being
able to get a liquor license, sothey pretty much had to become
a micro brewery to get to get amicro brewery license which was
easier than getting a liquorlicense easier than getting a
liquor wow, but it's a microbrewery you in wisconsin you can

(12:03):
sell other people's beer.
Yeah, you can have like what doyou call them?

like , um, uh, like visitor taps or
something like that.
That's, that's not the rightword.
Brian vance at catalina brewingis going to be upset with me,
but it's, uh, it's you.
You bring over other taps.

You know guests, there we go, guest
taps, yeah so yeah yeah, and and, but they have to be a small.
They have to also be small.
So I think something like lessthan 30 000 barrels a year, or
something like that right uh, inwisconsin is the rule and um,
but yeah, the his, his beer isreally good.
He's a chemist and he actuallyjust quit his job as a chemist

(12:42):
working for really a really bigcompany and now he's just
starting to brew beer all thetime.
He got a new set of brewingequipment and they are having a
hard time keeping up with howmuch beer they're selling.
That's awesome that's crazy.

Turns out, chemists make good brew
masters.
Well, I mean it basically ischemistry right, yeah?

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgin (12:59):
I bet you they're great bakers
too, probably, yeah, so a lot ofchemistry going on well, I
didn't expect us to do a 10minute um advertisement for the
garage, but it sounds like itwas worth it, but you're, but
you're if you're in ellsworth,wisconsin if you're in ellsworth
, wisconsin, yeah you got to goby this is uh river falls oh,
river falls, river fallswisconsin go check out the

(13:19):
garage we get a lot of snowsnowbirds here, so I bet, uh,
some of some of the people intucson have probably been there
or lived there.

Yeah, yeah well, we're gonna, my wife
and I, at some point I don'tknow if it'll be this year, next
year, some year we're gonna, oh, minnesota or get the van we're
gonna get the van and just goand, uh, we'll definitely stop
by the garage.

Yeah, yeah, adventures well, we we've
got a lot of good trails in ourarea.
We have uh.
So the map over here, that'sone of the original maps of our
uh trail system that me and mybuddies and a lot of people in
our community have been workingon for a long time.
That's an old map.
We have almost 10 10 miles oftrails there, which isn't a ton,
but it's a lot of good milesand we keep it really well

(14:02):
maintained.
That's good and so that's intown and it's one of the more
aggressive trails in the TwinCities area, so there's a lot of
jumps and gaps and woodfeatures and there's a big jump
line which you don't get a lotof in the Twin Cities area.

Yeah.

Yeah , so 10 miles of that kind of
stuff.

That's a lot.

That's awesome, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's really good, and now
we have.
So there was a group, a localgroup, which stemmed from the
NICA group, uh, and they've uh,it's called Wiki is their group
and they've opened two trailsystems and both are more than
10 miles now, but they're atstate parks, so they have access
to more miles of, uh, or more,more acres of trail, um, and

(14:45):
those are really really cooltrails too.
The terrain is fantastic andthe trails that were really well
built, because we've beenbuilding ours by hand for
forever and they went in therefive years ago and just started
going to town with machines.

Yeah.

And they put in a ton, of ton of
miles really fast and they wereit's really cool does park tool
have trail building tools?
We don't no we have not forayedinto that.
I feel like that's a good placeto go.

I do, I really do, because it's
becoming popular you know, Ikeep seeing these little compact
ones that, like you know, havecouplers and stuff so you can
put them together so yeah, thatone's really cool, I feel like
some blue ones, need to happen,so yeah maybe

I'll start spray painting all of my.
I'll get some color match andviolate their patent.
I know that's a big deal, thecolor's a big deal for you guys,
but I'll spray paint on my aslong as it's not a bicycle tool
you're good to go it can be asblue as you ever wanted, as long
as it's not a bicycle tool.

But yeah, that's.
It's an interesting topic.
The uh, the trademark the blue,the blue color trademark.

Yeah.

And uh, so Eric the boss man, he,
you know, in the early twothousands, decided to trademark
that blue color and it's, it's abig deal.
It is a big deal and it'sunfortunate that sometimes we
look pretty mean when we have toenforce it.
Right, but in but, in order tohave it and prevent big

(16:26):
companies from using blue astheir color or having a lot of
companies from outside the UScome in with blue tools that
just look exactly like ours.
And now we can protectourselves and say, hey, you
can't have that.
We were sending a cease anddesist.
Just make it purple, whateverlike, but not a blue shade of

(16:50):
purple, because we have, like,there's a whole.
If you're within some shade ofblue, there's, um, some rules
about that, but it's kind oflike, um, you know, having brown
trucks for a shipping companyor you know having a green
tractors or, oh yeah, greentrack, all that stuff, yeah, I
mean you're not going to get anycomplaints from me, man, I'm a

(17:12):
corporate strategist and that'syour brand identity and you got
to protect that.

And, like my like, I look at my, my,
my, uh, extensive collection ofpark tools and I'm proud of the
fact that I got this wall ofblue out there right, and I have
a couple spots that are notblue because you know I bought
some off-brand or something andI'm like I gotta, I gotta fix
that I gotta fix that hole rightthere where it's not blue, it's
.

It messes up the aesthetic so so
the founder, founder of parkcame from like a schwinn store
in, yeah, yeah, and so did,because I remember old Schwinn
tools.
They were red, uh, I don'tremember what.
The ones that I remember werethe ones that you'd get with the
bike, which were like stampedsteel.
My grandpa had them in, uh, inhis, in his basement with his

(17:53):
bikes, and they'd be thesestamped steel, um, multi tools.

They look like just pieces of steel
with like shapes stamped out ofthem, stamped out of them so
they'd fit nuts and and whathave you and so that's kind of
cool I mean at one point, onepoint you guys were actually
making in the early days, makingthe schwinn tools right and
they were red, and then youthose were actually park tools
and then they they switched overto the blue and they dropped
the schwinn name and went allpark.
As I understand it, is thatright.

Yep, that's that's exactly what
happened.
So I'll just tell a little bitof an origin story.
So Art Engstrom and HowardHawkins those were the two
founders of Park Tool.
They started a repair shop inHazel Park, which is basically a
very, very close suburb of StPaul, minnesota, and they
repaired bikes, of course, butthey also did radio repair and

(18:42):
skate sharpening and all kindsof different things, because
they had just gotten back fromthe war, didn't know what they
wanted to do.
You know, we're trying to figureout how to make enough, make
money for their families.
So they're, you know, I thinkart was living in his basement
because they hadn't even builtthe house yet, they just built,
could pay for the foundation anduh, so they started this bike
shop and and it started goingbetter and better and better and

(19:04):
better.
And then they, you know, withSchwinn, and then they got to be
the largest Schwinn dealer inthe United States, and so they
were.
They were huge and you know,the big, big wigs at Schwinn
were coming by and they weretalking strategy and doing all
of these things and Schwinn backin the day was a big deal.
Yeah, they were doing educationbefore anybody.

(19:28):
They were doing all of thesethings to help the dealers do a
better job and createprofessionalism and get more
people in the door.
And you know, art and Howard,there's a couple of different
things they did.
One of these things was that isreally fun, is?
It's one of the I call it likea win, win, win situation.

(19:51):
They had the boy scouts come tothem and they're like hey, we
want to do something for youguys.
So they were like what, if youguys give out flyers sale flyers
for our bikes, you know at thestore and we'll give you 5 cents
per flyer that you give out.
And so they gave out like30,000 flyers a year and just

(20:15):
spread like wildfire.

And this was before the internet and
you had all those.
Yeah yeah, that's a big deal.

Yeah, way before the internet.
This was in the sixties,fifties or sixties and um.
And then, you know, theystarted making their own tools
in the back to make things moreefficient and one of the first
things they made was a repairstand.
Oh, and that changed.
The the Schwinn rep came in andhe was like what is this?

What were they using before?

that like I can't upside down on a
bench.

I can't even imagine that like
it'd be a pain in the ass?

huh , it would be, I mean because I
did that when I was a kid.
You know, working out on thesidewalk with your bike upside
down and scratching upeverything, and you know like,
yeah, I think some people backin the day also did this
suspended from the ceiling likestrings oh yeah like pulley
systems and stuff, yeah, butyeah, it was mostly a bike's
upside down on a repair bench,wow.

So, but yeah, they made this.
It's a really cool stand.
I really appreciate it becauseit's got like, uh, the base of a
uh clawfoot table and then agiant shell casing from tank or
something filled with filledwith concrete or something
filled with, filled withconcrete or something filled
with concrete, with a forwardrear end axle sticking out the

(21:28):
top of it.
Weighed like 2000 pounds with aring on it with holes, and then
another axle coming out of it,and then a cam over center clamp
, which we still basically sella version of it today, and the
what?
The?
But you know, the silver clamps, not our newer black clamp, but

(21:49):
the silver clamps where youthrow the arm back yeah but on
that one the arm was a hockeystick and so minnesota it was.
It was really cool and so theygot in.
So they they were like we, wewant to buy a bunch of these if
you can make more of them.
So I think at that point howardwent to dunwoody, which is a
technical college in our area,and got a degree and they

(22:11):
started building tools.
They started with that repairstand, got into making tools for
schwinn, like the cone wrenchesstarted as red with schwinn.
Um, some of the stamped steellittle uh little wrenches I
don't know if they made themulti little uh little wrenches.
I don't know if they made themulti-tools, but the little
wrenches they got into those andI have a couple around here
somewhere.

(22:31):
But uh, and then they got tothe point where they were still
running this huge Schwinn shopand they were running this tool
company and they, they just hadthis vision of we think that the
tool company is going to takeoff.
Let's go with that, let's sellthe bike business to somebody
else and let's do this full time.
And they started doing that andand kind of, the rest is

(22:53):
history and it's come.
You know, today we're theworld's largest bicycle tool
company.
That's awesome.

Truman , how big are you guys?
How many employees do you have?

We're not, you know it's.
We're the world's largest toolbicycle tool company.

Yeah , there's four of us Massive
yeah.

There's four of us.

Is there really only four of you?

So there's it depends on how you
count Like the market sharesignificantly changes, like,
okay, the, the market sharesignificantly changes.
There's a lot.
There's a lot of small toolcompanies, I would say making
more um, a lot of like moreniche tools, right, which, a lot
of their tools are amazing anduh, but I would say there's four
kind of major um, if you startto consider some of the ones

(23:41):
that aren't sold in the us butare sold in the in europe, like
cyclists and var, there'sprobably five major bicycle tool
companies in the world, right,um, and how many employees do
you have, though?
so we're at about 70.

Oh okay, I thought you said you had
four employees.
Yeah, I was.

I was so confused there I was
like this is not working.

I can't figure this out.
We talked to outbound and Ithink they have six.
I think they added one last, Iheard, but outbound.

I was so confused there I was
like this is not working.
I can't figure this out.
We talked to Outbound and Ithink they have six.
I think they added one last, Iheard.

But Outbound that I can reconcile.

Yeah .

Park Tool 70 feels right, yeah, that
does.

Yeah .

No, we have basically, well, three,
three sales guys, so there'sthree people doing the same
thing, and then three engineers,so we have a lot more than four
, that's for sure.
But the majority of them aremanufacturing and so we're kind

(24:41):
of a unique facility where wehave an office with 15 people
and then that's directlyconnected.
And then that's directlyconnected.
You walk through a door andthen there's a manufacturing
facility with welding, machining, packaging, shipping, storage,
QC, engineering.

So you guys build everything.
You guys build everything there.

We build about 75% of our products
in-house.
We of course I'm not going tosay that we do everything,
because we don't we have vendorsthat do all kinds of stuff for
us, so we have a person who doesa lot of our plating.
We have anodizing people,chrome plating people and nickel

(25:17):
oxide and all kinds ofdifferent platings and stampers
and people that dip for us allkinds of places, and then we
import stuff from Taiwan andChina and we either use those
are just parts for assembly orthey, you know, maybe they come
in as a mostly complete productand we do a final assembly on it

(25:38):
.
But yeah, most of all of it isdone in-house and so it's a.
It's a pretty cool facility towalk through.

There's a lot of stuff going on.
Truman, could you take usthrough the development process
of a tool, from the originalconcept or idea all the way
through final production?
What are the steps that youguys go through?

The earliest step is somebody in the
product team.
There's about 10 people kind ofinvolved with it, but basically
six people that are reallyinvolved with the product, and
I'm on that team, and sosomebody will come to that team
with an idea and you don't justcome with like a loosey-goosey

(26:23):
idea.
You've got to come withsomething that's really solid,
with some legs on it, and thenyou kind of put up a reason that
it's going to.
It's why it is, why is thissomething important that we
should make?
How is it going to stick?
How many do you think are goingto sell?
What are the liabilities?
Like what's going on with thisproduct?
Like what's going on with thisproduct.

(26:48):
And then after that it's, andthen it goes into okay, what's
the manufacturability of it?
But just as like a conceptualtime, you're just sitting there
like just thinking about it.
You haven't even really made aprototype yet, and sometimes the
person who has the idea comeswith a prototype because they
don't believe, because it'seasier to show somebody how
something works rather thanexplain it.
So you bring up maybe a veryloose prototype to a meeting or

(27:11):
you explain it and then it'slike yeah, and then everybody
agrees, or really just the bossman agrees, says yeah, I think
that's a viable, viable onedegrees.
Says yeah, I think that's aviable, viable one.
And uh, and then the engineershop in and drawing, start
getting created, prototypesstart flowing.
We go through a prototypingprocess and then, once we have

(27:34):
some pretty solid prototypes,then we start going into getting
uh, more kind of uh, productionstyle samples and then we
really get into the product andthen we start QCing those
samples and then we start reallyhammering on testing them and
then we start putting in POs andorders and get and that's where

(27:55):
things really kind of ramp up,because at that point you really
you're starting to talk aboutall the little things.
You know, a lot of times lotsof people come to us with ideas
and a lot of those people cometo us with an idea and they're
like they think it's worth it,it is worth something.
I'm not going to say it's notworth something.

(28:16):
That first repair stand to parktool, that was worth something.
And there's a ton of ideas thatcome to us and they're totally
worth something.
And sometimes they come andthey're like I wanted this idea,
I want an nda.
It's like if you want an nda,you're gonna want some kind of
cut and maybe we'll give it toyou, maybe it's, maybe it's not

(28:38):
worth it, you never know, know,um, but that, uh, the idea stem
can stem from somebody kind ofwriting in.
Some people write in andthey're like hey, here's an idea
If you guys want to run with it.

but he's got an idea for you, I wait
which one.
Yeah, you got a lot, oh no.

Which yeah, probably.
But.
I but I had, I was gonna saythe one of my favorite new tools
.
I did an instagram post aboutit and I modified it because it
wasn't quite what I needed as aas a suspension guy.
It's your I don't know what thenames are and I forgive me
because I never memorize thisstuff.
It's the little black cube thatdoes the uh air caps on forks.

(29:20):
Yeah, so I did a post when Igot it.
The guys got it for me at workas a gift and they're like here.

This is you should probably explain
what you do oh yeah.

So I, aside from owning a bike
shop, I also have a suspensioncenter and we do a ton of
suspension for, geographically,the whole area.
We get shops from all over thecountry, but we do them for
shops as well as ourselves, andso we do a lot of volume and uh,
and so I'm I'm constantly oilyin the back working on
suspension, and the amount oftimes that I've had to take a

(29:51):
tool to a fox air cap just tobreak it free, you know, and
even maybe left a wrench markbecause it was so tight for some
reason yeah you know, and uh,they came out with this new tool
.
What's it called?
Uh?

I think it's called the ftc if
that's something yeah fork topcap tool.

Yeah , something, yeah, and so it's
just like that looks it's just acube, but each side of the cube
has a different interface fordifferent forks right and so the
only thing that I did and so Iposted this on my instagram for
the, the suspension shop um, Ihad to drill holes through the
center of all of them because Iuse that tool to break free like

(30:31):
adjusters that have.
You know, I don't want to spinthat adjuster all the way, and
like use when I'm taking thescrew or the, the, the bolt out
of it, I don't want that wormdrive inside to get bound up,
you know.
So I'll put the top cap tool on, I put the tool through the
tool, through the, the, the, thecube, and then I can hold the

(30:53):
top cap and break that, that nutfree, or that.
That.
I don't even know what you callit.
Screw yeah, I mean, it's a hexhead screw, so button head
usually, and so that's cool.
It's so.
I even posted something on myInstagram hey Park.
This is version 2.0.
You're welcome to it so wedon't need an NDA.

You can have that one.
You can have it, yeah, yeah.

But but yeah, it's now one of my
favorite tools Cause, like forinstance, on Fox fit forks, they
have a black adjuster for theirlow speed compression or, and I
have to take that wholeassembly apart and I don't like
that thing binding up.
I don't want to just, you know,unthread that by letting the
worm drive inside bind up, causethat's alloy, you know, and can

(31:39):
damage.
So it's really cool.

So yeah, yeah, I'm stoked to hear
about that because that was atool that we were really excited
about and it was it's verysimple, but it's kind of where I
was going is the nitty-grittyon the tool stuff is it, or
products in general.
it is some of the most difficultstuff to do, you know, figuring

(32:02):
out the correct packaging,figuring out the correct you
know, writing appropriateinstructions, coming up with
taking all the pictures, makinggraphics for the instructions
and the parts diagrams, andthere's so much behind the
scenes.
And then the marketing aspectof all of it, you know getting
it in front of people.
You know getting themdistributed all throughout and

(32:26):
then fostering all therelationships with all of those
people that are selling andgetting the timeline all to work
.
Where you launch a product,everybody has it, everybody can
buy it when they're excitedabout it, and it's, it's just
it's.
That's what I find is the moredifficult part.
You know, having an idea andkind of sussing out a design is

(32:47):
one thing.
All of that is really where themeat and potatoes are the
business, and it's really it'sfun to see, it's fun to be part
of too.

Truman , how many?
Do you know?
How many tools you guys haveyou offer for sale right now?

Roughly any idea?
Roughly, roughly 500 oh, jesus.
So you gotta, you gotta, callsome of those every year, right,
some of them gotta fall off thelifts every year yeah, and
sometimes, you know, sometimesboss man comes in and he's like,
yeah, I think we gotta get ridof this one.
No, what are you thinking?
Not that, anything but that.

(33:22):
And then you look at the salesand you're like, man, this is a
bummer.
And and you guys have probablyhad that happen and you're like,
well, how did they get rid ofthat was so awesome?
Yeah, well, it's probablybecause we were selling 50 of
them a year or something, or doyou not just have a shelf where
you have like 25 lying aroundforever?

so ?

no, no just in time, baby we have a
museum where we try to keep oneof the stuff, which is crazy.
It's been difficult to keep oneyeah, a lot of just one,
somebody came.
Somebody came in with awarranty item it was a ruler and

(34:03):
they came in and the front desklady called me and she's like,
hey, can you come and talk tothis guy?
I don't think this is awarranty and I'm not a warranty
person.
And so I go out there and I'mlike, hey, how's it going?

And I pick up this ruler and it's
from the 60s they're trying towarranty it yeah.
That's awesome.

What goes wrong on a ruler?
Well, interesting question.
So back we did it.
It was painted, so it was analuminum stamped out ruler, and
then all the lines andeverything were painted on and
paint wears off.
Oh yeah, so half the paint hadworn off of one side that he was
using the most.
And so he brings this ruler andI'm like I've never seen this

(34:51):
and so I'm like this was made 20years before I was born.

You're like hey, buddy this thing only
lasts 60 years.
What's wrong with you people?

and so I'm like yeah, here's a new
ruler.
The only stipulation is, I getto keep this one and or we get
to keep this one.
So I, I take that one and I inthere.
We never.
We haven't seen one forprobably 30 years, right?
Um, it was a because we did theruler in red and we did the
ruler in blue, and it was inblue for a very short period of

(35:21):
time, before we went to ourcurrent ruler, which has
markings that are stamped in,and so they are.
They actually have texture, soyou can't wear all the markings
off right and um, so that wasadded to the, the, the wall.
I just I got it like, well, thisis cool and put it on the wall
next to all the other stuff.
But people call up there's a,there's a lot the other stuff.

(35:41):
But people call up there's a.
There's a lot of collectors outthere and people call up and
they ask for some interestingthings.
They want original instructionsto put into the packaging that
they found.
They want X, y or Z, oh.
And a lot of times they call upand they talk, they say a tool,
and I'm like what are youtalking about?

(36:02):
So we have a, we have a historylog.
I can go in there and I'm like,oh, yeah, that tool, okay, cool
, yeah, yeah, we have nothingabout that tool.
I can go and into a deep darkroom with a filing cabinet and I
can find a drawing from wayback in the day.
But it's not be, it's not gonnahelp anybody out, it doesn't

(36:23):
there's no parts for it oranything but right I guess it is
we are we on the parts thing, Ijust gotta say the one thing
just pat ourselves on the back alittle bit.
Um, parts, we are really good atholding on to parts and and so,
like torque wrenches, we have abunch of parts.
Uh, we don't necessarily sellall the parts that we have for

(36:46):
torque wrenches, because thesepeople send these in for
calibration.
Or if you have one that'sbroken, you can send it in for
calibration and we'll fix it,and then, you know, calibrate it
and send it back to you.
Um, because when you startmessing with parts on these, you
start messing with thecalibration.
So we don't feel like we shouldencourage people to fix it on
their own Right.
But we have parts for all ofour torque wrenches that we've

(37:09):
pretty much ever sold.
We have parts for all kinds ofthings you know, like our CN10s,
um, the cutters, the, the, theinvisible spring that's inside
of them yeah.

For our listeners he's showing.
He's giving us a show and tellof some of these parts that he's
got laying around his house.

I I had a quick question.
You brought up collectors.
Do you know a guy named fasteddie?

I've heard of fast eddie.
Have you okay?
So?

one of one of our employees is
friends with him and he's he'sour current.
You know, um, I don't know whatyou call a tool, a file or
whatever.
You tool addict, tool addict,yeah, um, but he's, uh, he
mentioned fast eddie and I guessfast eddie's goal is to have
every discontinued park tool,like he's still working on his

(37:55):
collection of every singlediscontinued one.
So so if you talk to fast eddie, you got to tell him that
willie says hi from guru bikes,so we get a.

I want to see this collection yeah
there's going to be some coolstuff.
I've talked to some interestingpeople.
There's a there's a guy incanada and he collects all the
gear t-shirts, hats, mechanicsshirts so he has all these
different generations of all ofthem, but he has like a stack of
them that's cool he keeps themall.
In a case, I've talked toanother guy.

(38:27):
He's got our wtks.
It's a basically a roadside kit, so it's got a multi-tool in it
, a chain tool, some tire levers, um, some cool little custom
tools that were made just forthose kits, and he's got every
version of them, and that's onewe don't have.
We don't have a couple of thewtks that we had that we we made

(38:48):
through the years, um, but yeah, a lot of yeah it's crazy what
people, what people will collectlike I, I collect pint glasses
so I absolutely have a park tool, pint glass in my collection.

You probably have a couple, so I
absolutely have a Park Tool,pint glass in my collection.
You probably have a couple.
I think I just have one becauseI don't get into like every
version, but I got like an XTRand I've got an Eddie McStiff
which you can't buy from Moab,Like I've got a bunch of them.
So, but yeah, that's mine.
You don't even drink beereither.

I know which is crazy, which is funny.

Diet Pepsi in a pint glass works.

Did you know?

they hold other things other than
beer.

No, I didn't know that.

And they hold a pint of it.

I've learned something new today.
Hey Truman, how do you thinkbike maintenance has changed
over the years?
Bikes are changing.
How does that impact themaintenance and how does that
impact you guys?

It's a great question.
It has changed changed, in myopinion, quite a lot.
I think that bike maintenancehas become a lot more diverse.
There's a lot more things thatbike mechanics need to keep
track of.
Compatibility has escalatedsignificantly.
Um, and and it's it's beenreally interesting.
The suspension has become amuch bigger thing.
The servicing suspension hasbecome a lot more popular.

(40:12):
The the details are a lot moreimportant on these newer group
sets you know very smalladjustments make a big
difference.
You know very small adjustmentsmake a big difference.
Um, it has affected us in someways.
It's hard to keep up with allof the new stuff that comes out,
the innovation, and then it'salso hard to to justify doing

(40:35):
everything for every new thingthat comes out.
And so it's hard to kind of makemake up your mind on what what
you're going to do to support,because you kind of have to put
your eggs in their basket too.
You're also saying like, okay,there's a new part on the market
and it requires a new tool.
Or there's a new now e-bikedrivetrains and stuff and

(40:56):
mid-drives and all these lockrings and bottom bracket tools.
You've got to look at it andyou're like, okay, this company.
You look at the product and youlook at the company and you are
like, okay, how many are theygoing to sell?
How many can we sell, and howmuch of that is a support piece
to the industry?

(41:16):
Cause there's some of there'spart of that in us.
We were like, well, we want to,even if we don't think it's
really going to be worth it ourtime, as, as far as like
money-making goes, it might beworth it for us to make it just
as a support to the industry, sothat people have the tool and
they have access to it, causethat's a big one.

(41:38):
When people come to us theywant.
The biggest reason that theycome to us is that everybody has
access.
Lots of distributors carry ourstuff, lots of online retailers
Almost it's almost across theglobe.
You know we sell in 80different countries.
You can buy our stuff all overthe place, but yeah, new stuff

(42:00):
coming out all the time.
You notice our tools changepart numbers slightly frequently
.

You know, it's interesting when I
truly, when I was thinking aboutthis podcast, I originally was
like, oh, this is good whenstandards change, that's gotta
be a good thing for park, causethey get to make a new tool and
sell a new tool, and then Istarted thinking about.
you got to do molds and toolingand all the shit to make the
tool, and now you're splittingyour sales.
You know 50% and you got theinvestment, and so actually it

(42:29):
may not be a good thing.
It's better to sell a hundredof something you already tooled
up for and I say tooled up likein the manufacturing perspective
, right, versus.
Now you got to create all newstuff and then you don't know,
is that standard actually goingto stick to your point man?
So it's complicated, right, andyou have some loss leading
parts.
You know some tools or you guyscall them servicing the
industry, right that you guysmay not be making money on, but

(42:51):
you do it just as a you know,just as a benefit to the
industry.

What's something like that.

Is there an example of a loss
leading tool for you guys, or a?

I don't know.

Maybe you don't want to talk about it.

I don't know if we truly have any
loss leaders, what I would calla loss leader.

(43:28):
When I think of a loss leader, Ithink of Dyson headphones, like
$1,000 headphones that haveweird circulation in them, that
nobody's going to buy it, butsomebody made them and they're
going to sell them for abazillion dollars yeah, I think
some of the stuff that you know,like facing tools, those are
stuff where the quantities areextremely low and so it's hard
to have inventory and it's hardto forecast ordering and stuff
like that but it's reallyimportant for the people who
need them.
But they're also reallyexpensive.
So when you sell one you make achunk of money on each one.

(43:48):
But you know we also sell.
We sell a traditional, we havea fairly traditional
distribution channel.
So we're selling to adistributor.
Distributor selling to a shop,so we're selling to a
distributor.
Distributor selling to a shop,shop is selling to a consumer

(44:09):
and everybody along the way getsto make some money.
And it's so it makes.
So you know, even though itlooks like it's really expensive
, we probably didn't actuallymake a ton of money and but yeah
, those would probably be thenumber one kind of service to
the industry stuff.

So you guys sell.
You guys sell to bike shops,you guys sell consumer direct
off your website.

So we don't sell it.
We don't sell direct to bikeshops at all.

No, you sell to distributors who
sell to bike shops.

Yeah, so we distribute is sell to
bike shops, and then we do selldirectly from our website.
And that was a I when I shopsand then we do sell directly
from our website.
And that was a I when thatwould happen right when I
started and I thought it was abig deal.
It's coming right out of a bikeshop.
I'm like you're cutting thebike shop out, but I a lot of
bike shops.

Um, you can't carry everything, yeah
carry everything you could getall the park tools at your shop
that I buy online.
Is that true?

yeah , so, uh, yeah, we, we have
access to all of them throughthe distributor.
I was kind of surprised becauseI've opened, uh, so this bike
shop that we have, we opened twoyears ago, yeah, um, but the
shop before that was 10 yearsago, and each time when I was
stocking the shop with tools Iwanted to call park and say, hey
, can we get a bike shop?

(45:21):
you know kit, you shop kit orsomething, and the response was
go through your distributor.
And it was kind of weird.
I didn't quite understand it.
I do like the traditionalsupply chain because that is
something that kind of gives youconsistency.
Also, they can make 100 ofsomething and if they have to

(45:42):
sell that a hundred to a hundreddifferent people it's tough.
It's a lot more work than ifthey sell a hundred of them to
one distributor.
Yeah, and then that distributoris already selling it, and then
the bike shop's selling yeah,um so it makes sense to an
extent.
Um, but yeah, I was kind ofsurprised that we couldn't buy
direct from them and you can,and um, oh man, what was I gonna

(46:06):
say?

hey, do you have any idea?
You probably don't, based onyour distribution model, but I
was.
What I was trying to figure outis like, what percentage of
your parts go to guys like mehome mechanics and what
percentage of your parts go toguys like him the bike shop
owner?
Do you have any idea of thedata?
That, because your distributiona very, very loose idea.

Um, and it's probably going to be
surprising, but I'm going to.
I I kind of remember what I wasgoing to talk about.
Um, one of the difficult parts,you know.
So we also get hit up.
So bike shops want to buy fromus and then also bike shop
employees want to get discountsfrom us.
And it's a difficultconversation because I'm right

(46:48):
there with everybody.
I want to get a discount onstuff too, because I'm in the
industry and a lot of people inthe industry don't make a lot of
money.
Part of being in the industryis it's a passion.
You're not going to make a lotof money in this industry.
Yeah, yeah.
And so the discounts are partof this.

(47:10):
Really the sweet spot.
Bike tools are a little bit ofan interesting thing because the
bike shop is our major customer.
They are the customer they are.
When we started it was, we wereselling only to bike shops, so
having distributors was reallycrucial.
And now the bike shop employeewanting a discount.
It's like, well, there's areason for the discounts from,

(47:31):
like, a bike manufacturer or acomponent manufacturer.
You get a bike shop employeeonto a component or a bike or a
frame or something and theyreally fall in love with it.
they're going to sell that or abike or a frame or something and
they really fall in love withit.
They're going to sell that whenyou are just really loving your
tools.
But you're not selling a bunchof them.
It's really just for you and itbenefits you to have the tools.

(47:54):
So it is a difficultconversation and it was really
took me a long time to kind ofwrap my head around it, but now
I kind of of understand it more.
It is a little bit of adifferent business than most
bicycle component or frame orbike companies, right?

um so.
So the split between homemechanic, bike shop mechanic I
would say it's more than 50 homeusers.

Wow wow, yeah that's crazy, I do
you?
Feel like that's been been abig.
I feel like that's been a bigchange COVID?

didn't COVID do that no.

I , I, I would say YouTube,
youtube.

Yeah, I would say COVID, I would say
it's probably maybe five, sixyears before COVID is kind of
when that kind of startedhappening.

Yeah .

Maybe , maybe when that kind of Amazon
, because when Amazon startedgetting strong, that's when we
started getting a little bitmore data on, because you can
follow stuff a lot easier.

Um , we don't like amazon by the
way don't say that too loud, man.
This is space lasers.

I love you it's all good well.

I'll cut that part out.
Keep going.
Oh, that's okay, but yeah it'sbeen interesting.

And then Amazon has created an
interesting market.
When, what was it?
Probably 2020.
I know it was 2020, just beforeCOVID.
We did a really big, we made ahuge decision and I was not
involved with it.
Um, I don't know a ton about it, but I do know that we had like
120, 130, 140 resellers sellingour stuff on Amazon and they

(49:33):
would be buying it fromdistributors.
But when you have that manypeople selling your goods,
people start competing againsteach other and you're competing
against each other with the sameproduct, and so we basically we
, we cold, and when I say cold,I mean we cold, going from like
120 to 140, somewhere in thereto 10.

Wow .

And uh so.
I mean that protects yourpricing then, basically, well,
it's a it's a pricing protectionstrategy, and the pricing
protection strategy is crucialbecause it makes just a fair
marketplace and so it keeps allof the online retailers happy.
It keeps the distributors happyand the distributors have a hard

(50:19):
time because and cause they getcaught up in the middle of it
all and they, you know, theyhave a do not sell.
They have a do not sell listfrom us that's this long, from
people who are under selling ourstuff for too little, and
that's what happens.
You know, we just shut off theyou, we just shut off your
supply chain.
Um, and if we can't figure outwho's selling it at this point,

(50:39):
we've pretty much figured outright away.
There's software figure outwho's selling it At this point
we've pretty much figured outright away.

There's software, we know Damn there
goes my park dumping parkstrategy business idea.
I don't get that either.

Just kidding.
So the biggest harm that I seethat happens to companies is
that it gives the consumer theidea that that product can be
sold cheaper and that when theysell it at their regular price
they're somehow ripping peopleoff.
And that's the.
That's a big thing, you know.

But let's be honest, man.
I mean, let's just straight uplike park tools are not
expensive.
They're not like crazyexpensive.
They're affordable.
To begin with, I'm a cheap assand I love park tools because
I'm a cheap ass and theirquality and buying quality for
good prices is like that's mywhole life.

Dane "Suspension Guru" (51:25):
Anytime you have anything, there's
going to be somebody who triesto beat the price on it, I know,
I know I hear you and they'regoing to either do it in a
crappy way, which makes makes itlook like your product, but not
work.

But I have.
You know how I like to finddeals on everything.

Yeah , how.

I like to find deals on everything.
Yeah, I've never one time triedto go find a better price at a
for a park tool, not a C of the200 tools in my garage, and then
when I bought off, I bought offyour website directly from park
.
I've I've never been like thisis.
I should try to find a betterdeal on it.
This is too expensive becausethey're reasonably priced for
what I'm getting Truman, what doyou?
Think man.

I have a lot to say on that.
But also, good luck and let meknow what we find now.
What's interesting is, it's thepeople who are dumping, and
they know that people likecompanies like us are watching,
and so they'll dump Sunday at 3am.
They'll go on eBay Sunday at 3am and they'll post stuff for

(52:21):
cheap 3am.
They'll go on ebay sunday at3am and they'll post stuff for
cheap so if you're looking for adeal, sunday at 3am somewhere
in there.
You might see it for maybe 10 to15 to 20 minutes, because they
don't want to risk losing theirsupply chain um why would you
even do it then blip yeahbecause in that time people have
things loaded in their cartsalready and they're waiting for
the prices to fluctuate, and sothey get some like 10 sales,

(52:44):
maybe out of it or something.

I don't.

I don't fully understand it, Um,
but yeah, so what's fun is Pete?
Um, our good friend Pete now.
Pete used to be our customerservice guy for a year and a
half.
He was, uh, he's been a long,longtime mechanic in the Twin
Cities area and he was gettingreally frustrated with people

(53:07):
calling or emailing or readingon forums or something about.
Park tools are so expensive.
You guys are the snap-onoverpriced blah, blah, blah of
the bike industry.

Yeah yeah, do people really think
that?
I mean, if you're comparing itto like garbage that you can buy
from china, it's not going tolast, maybe.

well , I think if you were to buy a
park flathead screwdriver andthen compare it to some flathead
screwdriver, you could makesome argument but the problem is
there.
It is.

That's about it, yeah maybe I'm just a
fan boy.

This screwdriver versus a hardware
store screwdriver, significantlydifferent in price.
But when you compare thisscrewdriver to its competition
which people don't reallyunderstand because they just
think it's a screwdriver whenyou compare it to its
competition, it's prettyreasonable.
So when you look for J atscrewdrivers, you find Japanese

(54:03):
companies, or you find japanesecompanies or you find german
companies or somebody like that.
And and our screwdriver is notjis, it's, it's a.
It's halfway between the jisand the din standard do you know
what that?

means we find, yeah, I've got a set of
jis out there and I've got aset of park out there, yeah
that's a big deal and peopledon't know that.

Yeah and uh, then they can't turn
their limiters on their shimanotrailer.

Yeah and to the people who can't see,
I'm holding up our uh dsd4.
It's a cross-tip screwdriverand it has uh what would be a
lot of people would consider ajis tip and jis versus phillips
versus a.
Those are all cross-tipscrewdriver standards and
Phillips is meant to cam out.

(54:46):
At a certain amount of torqueit's going to push out and it's
going to strip.
The JAS and the DIN standardsboth have more squared up edges
and they can transfer a lot moretorque and so they don't strip
out.
It doesn't cam out of there.
It can actually sit and stickinto a fitting and a lot of
times ours doesn't, usuallybecause of our handles are heavy

(55:08):
and weighted and, have you know, I really like these handles.
I use them for a lot of stuffin the prototyping process too,
but the hollow ends.
So these screwdrivers areamazing, but, yeah, the pricing,
you know and but this compared.
But we also have an inexpensiveset of screwdrivers that are
comparable to like a hardwarestore screwdriver set.

(55:30):
And that's when you know.
So, pete, who I was talkingabout.
He basically made a huge dock.
He was really big in thespreadsheet.
So he made a huge dock andbasically looked at all the
competition and pricing andbasically is like, yeah, we are,
we are basically right in the.
We are either right in themiddle on a product or we're

(55:53):
towards the end and we haveanother product that we sell
it's towards the bottom.
So we're typically we typicallyhave an option in every
category that's either in themiddle or at the bottom of the
price point, and sometimes atthe top of the price point.
It depends on what it is rightbecause being at, you know, the
top of the price point, um stuff, you know, like a headset press

(56:18):
.
We're kind of more towards thetop of the price point on that
one, but it's a lot bigger andheavier duty and there's more uh
, like it's a better product.

It's a better product than what you'd
pay if you.
So it's not apples to apples,you're not.
It's not.
You're not paying the same forthe same product.

It's it's not apples to apples and if
you look at the what people areable to use for a long period
of time, you walk into a bikeshop.
They might have the first youknow a bike shop that's 50 years
old.
They might have the firstheadset press they bought from
us 50 years ago it's still going.

It's still going yeah, and sometimes
better.
Sometimes better than the newstuff, right?

well , because there was, remember,
the old flat ones.
They didn't have the indents.
Uh.
So the one of the some of theoriginal headset presses didn't
have an indent, they were just aflat and so um, so they
wouldn't get weird.
So the new ones have like kindof I don't know what you call it
ridges on the inside so theyfit the cups and they center, uh
.
And then I remember there was acouple headsets that we would

(57:16):
deal with with the new ones,where they wouldn't sit quite
right and the flat ones werebetter.

So yeah, you're looking for the
flat ones?
Yeah, well, they.

You know, it just depends you know
it depends on what you're doing,uh, but yeah, that's you'll,
you'll.
As a mechanic you notice thoselittle differences.
So, like he's talking about,you know what I call just
generically phillipsscrewdrivers.

A lot of people don't know there's
different types of yeah, when hesaid crosshead, I'm like, yeah,
I figured out, I figured outwhat you were talking about and
I was like, oh man, is thatsomething I don't know about?

that's the guys that are like
complaining because they'regoing to, you know, not even ace
hardware harbor freight yeahand buying some screwdriver,
that's three bucks you know twodollars or whatever.
Yeah, or it's interchangeablewith a bunch of different heads
and it won't quite fit, or, likehe's talking about they're.
They're actually designed tocome out at a certain torque, so
you don't you don't rip theheads off, and so.

(58:05):
But the bike industry ones area little different, because
they're looking for precisionand they're looking for turning
and in more of a shallow areaand some of your, some of the
tools that you guys sell.

I have like the home mechanic version,
maybe that's like theinexpensive version because I'm
not going to do it like a, likea heads, like the headset press
I have yeah it's not the bikeshop version, right, it's not
the super high-end one, but Idon't do that many headset
presses no, we used to use aboard and like a hammer and how
many people did it.
Just for the record.
We don't recommend that.

No no, that's, true.
Hey, I gotta be.

The bmx industry is still really
into the hammers and the wood.

Oh , yeah, so brackets, headsets,
yup.
Does park make a vice grip?

We don't.

Okay , that's a good example of like
that's what we want.

So that's why I call it a cross tip
.

Cause .

Truman Purdy (Park Too (58:51):
Phillips is a is a is a type of cross
tip screwdriver.
It's a classification.
Yeah, and you know, vice grips,that's a name of a uh brand
that makes or but do they?

does park make a vice grip style?

uh, wrench, Uh, no, okay, so keep
your eyes peeled maybe, and itmight not be used for what you
think it's it's not, it's.
I'll give you a little bit moreto go on than that it's it's
going to be basically based offof a vice grip mechanism, but
it's for something differentokay, because it's going to help

(59:26):
some people and it's going tohelp shops on certain bikes that
walk in the door, and it'sgoing to be uh, it's going to
take something that can bereally frustrating or really
hurt your thumbs, and it's goingto make it a lot easier.

Oh , that's, I'm already into that.
No, we used to joke that thatour shop doesn't ever have vice
grips.
We don't have vice grips in theshop.

The fuck do you need them for?

Well , you go to a BMX shop, there's
guaranteed to be.

There's going to be vice grips, hammers
, pry bars.

I mean, we have hammers, but we
don't have like claw hammers youknow, I mean we have park
hammers.
It's like my favorite hammer,but but it's funny, cause there
are some tools that we don'tcarry that I've seen in plenty
of bike shops, so yeah, so, Danyou, you had a question about
the new, no, the new stand, thenew stand.

Josh "Magellan" Anderson (01:00:14):
So maybe, maybe and believe it or
not.
Truman, we've already beentalking for an hour and I have
700 more questions, so we're I'mnot going to get.
I'm not going to get all myquestions out, but I want to
make sure we cover your uh wehaven't talked a lot about
product and so I'd like to do alittle bit.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgi (01:00:25):
So there's, um, our shop in
particular.
We were starting to do it.
Uh, uh do a ton of e-bikes, andI've been shopping for e-bike
stands.
Most of the bike shops aroundtown have them already.
I'm kind of picky, Um, so Ihave two questions.
One on the original e-bike parkstand, it's got the black T at

(01:00:45):
the top.
What is that, and does it haveto be there?

Truman Purdy (Park Tools) (01:00:49):
So the product is the PRS 33.2 is
what it's currently called.
Yeah, and it's an electric liftstand, so it's a has a carriage
.
I'm just kind of giving peoplean idea of what I'm talking
about.
It is a carriage that can lift120 pounds up and down and it
goes from about two inches offthe ground all the way to about

(01:01:09):
seven feet off the ground that'sthe range of the clamp.
And so the upright is a nicebig round extruded piece of
aluminum, very, very sturdy, andthat is probably 6'11", maybe
right at really close to sevenfeet.
And the crossbar at the topit's actually blue, uh, the

(01:01:36):
crossbar at the top is it hashooks that come on it and so,
like you're doing a tune-up, youcan hook a front wheel on the
front, you can hook a back wheelon the back, otherwise it's
there as a t-track.
So it has a t-track on thebottom of it and that allows you
to add accessories.
We don't necessarily sell theaccessories, but you might find
a reason to mount an accessory,and I'll give you an example of

(01:01:57):
that.
Okay, so mondraker, I don'tknow who's, but they're, uh, the
mountain bike brand, yep yeah,we talked to him this weekend
actually, yeah, yeah at sedona.
So yeah, really cool lookingbikes really really cool looking
kind of edgy yeah, I would.
I would kind of classify them,but they have.

(01:02:18):
I think it's 90 now.
They have 90 prs 33.2s in theirmanufacturing facility oh, wow
and theirs are set up withmonitors, so they mount their
monitor to that t-track and thenthey mount uh like electrical
uh plugs to the t-track that'son the upright right, and then

(01:02:40):
they mount other stuff on theother t-track on the other side
and that allows, and then theyhave a little computer module on
the bottom and so then theyhave a wireless torque wrench
that goes with that.
You know, basically, um, as theperson who's assembling the
bike goes through it, they cango from the net.
They press next on the screenand it changes the adjustment of

(01:03:03):
the torque wrench and itrecords that they torqued the
item that they were supposed tohave torqued, or if there's
three fasteners that need to betorqued to that value, at that
point you need to click it threetimes on all three of those.
So it's basically a QC processhappening live as it's being
assembled, and so they were ableto use that T-track to put

(01:03:25):
those on there.
I've also seen, yeah, all kindsof different stuff People do
laptops, laptop holders, holdersand articulating arms that are
mounted off of the t-track, andthat's what that's there for.
That crossbar is just stuff tomount to hose reels whatever you
want, can you run it without it?

(01:03:45):
you can run it without it, okayall right.

So that was my first question.
Go for it, okay.
The second one is there's a newum.
We call them e-bike lifts, butthey're lift uh stands, so it
don't have to be an e-bike.
But you know, um, and we saw iton a couple online.
You know reviewers.
It's not out yet and it'sbasically got a hand crank, so

(01:04:08):
it's not electric, but I sawsomebody hook up a drill to it
which makes it a lot faster.

I know so, so what when's that coming?

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higg (01:04:18):
You know, when do we get to see
that?
What's it?
What's it?
Yeah, tell us about it.
Yeah, what's the story?

So this is a unique product.
We don't we really try not tospill the beans before it's
available.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Hig (01:04:28):
Yeah .

And so this is a unique situation,
but we're we're pretty pumpedabout it and, uh, it's been well
, well received.
We showed it at Cabda.
It's called the PRS dash 30.
And it is a basically amechanical lift.
We have a?
Um, we're going to have to come.
Sometimes in bike repair, whichCalvin and I do, a lot of

(01:04:51):
education stuff and sometimes wehave to come up with
terminology and then so in thiscase we have to maybe come up
because we have three differentclassifications of stands.
Now we basically have what mycoworker, Andy, and I kind of
came up with was we have astatic option, or we have many
static options, to be honest.
Static option, which would belike our PRS-3 or our PRS-s2,

(01:05:14):
now the 2.2 and 2.3 and 3.3.
And then we have our electriclift, which is basically almost.
It's not automated but it's a.
You don't do any work, it liftsit for you 100 and you can lift
it way up high, flip, flip itover and then whip it way down
low, which is the way down lowis really cool about the 33

(01:05:37):
because, like with an e-bike,you can take, put the e-bike in
there and and flip the e-bikeover, drive it to the bottom,
lift your motor unit out if youneed to do some kind of service
like that.
So that's really cool where youcan work upside down and it's
right in your face, okay, um, sothat's pretty cool.
But the new one, the prs 30 30,it kind of falls in the middle

(01:05:57):
of those.
It's a a manual lift, I thinkwhat we're going to be calling
it, and it comes with a handcrank and every five cranks gets
you one inch of travel and butthat hand crank is mounted on a
10 millimeter hex so you canjust hook up a 10 millimeter

(01:06:18):
socket with a drill of yourchoice and that thing just rips
down and rips up.
It has a soft stop at the bottom, so you're not going to rip
your hand off.
When you get to the end of thetravel it drives itself off of
the track at the top and soyou're not going to rip your
hand off at the top.
As 120 pound weight capacityand it has two, the clamp can be

(01:06:38):
mounted in two positions.
Um, and I don't know the Ican't recall the exact numbers
on where they start Um, but youknow, basically it has about 26
ish inches of travel, so you canlift it basically 26 inches and
with the drill you can befaster than a 33.

(01:07:01):
And you can lift just as muchand it is fully serviceable.
It can take the whole thingapart in your shop.

You can replace all the Damn you for
introducing me to this.

I'm so excited, so I think some
people are.

I'm looking at it, I'm looking at a
picture of it right now on bikeradar.

So some people are saying this may
be a home version of but theysay it's for shop use as well,
right?
Well, yeah, absolutely, you know.
But I'm excited and and here'sthe weird little feedback I can
give you, which is a little bitour, um, our workshop is, uh,
open kitchen style, we're rightout in front of everybody, and
so I don't like the look of the,of the big one.

(01:07:40):
I, you know the guys arewanting one, they're finally
getting to where they want oneand I don't like how big it is.
It blocks a lot of the look ofthe shop and in the back room of
shops.
Who cares?
That's a unique thing for yourshop exactly, and so I saw this
thing and I'm like.
It looks like our regularstands, does the function that
we want, and I love the factthat the electronics are not

(01:08:04):
integrated like we can one.
You can use it as a regularstand so you don't have to have
this big, bulky thing in there.
If you're never really using itwhich is my fear the guys just
won't use it.
They'll just lift the bikes.
But this way it's got the crankor we can put a little drill on
there.

All right, the obvious question, and
you probably don't have theanswer or you don't want to
answer.

Do you guys have pricing on this
thing.
Yet Pricing or when it'savailable.

Yeah, we've got someing on that thing
.
Yeah, yeah, I know one of the.
I guess I know one crucialprice that I can tell you guys
about.
So this stand is going to beavailable in two variants, okay.
So one is going to be morefocused for shop people and it's
going to be a.
It's going to be just theupright and a clamp.

(01:08:48):
That's what it's going to be.

So it's got the four hole base
that you can bolt down to your.

Yeah, so if you have an existing base
, you can bolt it right ontothat base.
Otherwise you can buy anotherbase and that weighted base.
As you know, it's a lot easierto work on a bike when you have
a large ballast at the bottom ofit.
So if you're working on bikesall day, you're going to be
available with legs.
And the one with legs it's alot lighter, and when I mean

(01:09:15):
legs, there are legs that areabout 90 degrees from each other
, kind of like a portable stand,like a PCS 10.3 or a PRS 25,
something along those lines.
Those legs stick out and it'sgoing to be lighter weight and
it's going to have wheels.

And it's going to be lighter weight
and it's going to have wheelskind of more intended for a home
user, which we see a lot ofHold on one sec.

Truman Purdy (Park Tools (01:09:39):
People just want to be able to lift a
lot.

Okay , you're good, go ahead.
Sorry, we had a littletechnical difficulty.

Yeah, so you were talking about the
legs, yeah.

Yeah, so the one that's going to be
available legs.
It's going to have wheels onthe back of it so you can tilt
it back and wheel it around yourgarage and put it in a corner
or wherever you want.

Nice .

So the one with the wheels on it is
going to retail somewhere inthe very, very, very likely $899
.
Okay, which is in the mix, verymuch in the mix, for stands
like this, for all the bike shoppeople out there.
There's going to be differentpricing for bike shops, sure,

(01:10:23):
which a lot of say thecompetition in this segment
don't have that as much.
So it's going to be the priceis very good.
I will say that for what youget and the serviceability is
really good and what you'resaying is exactly what we heard
from Capita.
People really likeunderstanding how things work,

(01:10:44):
the ability to service it, theability to, you know, not have a
very large thing in your, inyour hair area.
Some people, really some peopleare after that they want this
statement, this professionalismstatement of the stand, but some
people don't.
And then some people don't havethe space.
It's a big stand, so we have avideo about how to cut it down

(01:11:05):
to a shorter height and, um,it's.
It's a different animal too.
The 33 has.
There's other electric lifts inthe world.
There's a lot of them in Europe.
Ours has some unique featuresthat not a lot of them have.
Ours is on the higher end ofthe weight ratings Ours, the

(01:11:29):
biggest one probably is it hastwo.
You have two sides.
It comes as a single-sidedoption but you can get the
second side for it, where a lotof them don't have that second
side.
And when you're looking intoyour and you're looking at your
space and you have to fit two ofthese big ones in there, that's
a lot of space.
But if you can use two standsoff the same upright, that's a

(01:11:51):
big deal.
Um, so that, and then it's verysimple to fix.
And the 33 is it's it's very,very simple as well.
Um, I have kind of become oneof the more I've become kind of
the go-to guy for repairing that.
I have a lot of understandingof how the inner workings were

(01:12:12):
and how to diagnose it and it'sa very simple system.
Um, I guess I would kind ofrelate the electronics to um,
I've got two kids.
It's kind of like a ride on car.

Okay , it's very similar.

The go button is the pedal, the the
other button, the directionalbutton is the pedal.
The other button, thedirectional button is the
shifter Forward, reverse, andthat tells a motor to go one way
or go the other and then thecarriage climbs up a chain or
descends a chain.
It's a very, very simple thing.
It's not something where it'shiding a lot of what's going on,

(01:12:53):
which is what kind of happenswith a lot of them.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgin (01:12:56):
I like the USB ports on it.
I like that because you don'thave a USB strung across in
front of your bench where you'reyanking computers off the table
or anything like that.
So I do like that.
Like you were talking aboutattaching things to the carriage
or the what do you call it?
The, t, the.
T bar T bar, yeah, and having alaptop on there for for doing

(01:13:17):
diagnostics.
Cause that's the the new.
The new frontier for bikesright now is we're going to be
hooking them up to computers alot we already are, you know,
and so I kind of like thatintegration.
But then you got to deal withputting wire, you know wiring it
and putting power to it andstuff.

(01:13:38):
So, yeah, well, truman, like,like we said, we have probably
500 more questions for you.

Yeah, this is like yeah, we could talk
for hours, for hours.
Yeah, let's, let's close withthis.
Like, what are you most excitedabout?
Uh, for parks, future?
Like what are you super excitedabout it's coming out?
Or just in general, like whatare your thoughts?

Like, what are you super excited
about it's coming out?
Or just in general, like whatare your thoughts?
Oh man, that is a great loadedquestion.
Oh man, I am excited.

I mean you can feel free to drop some
secrets here too, if you want.

I wish I could.
I don't necessarily there'ssome exciting stuff coming.
I wish I could.
I don't necessarily there'ssome exciting stuff coming.
We talked about some stuff inthis episode and there's some
new versions of them coming, notrecently, not this recent stuff
that we were talking about, butthere's some other stuff that
we were talking about.
There's an updated version tosomething that's been the same
for decades and it's going to beexciting and what I'm most

(01:14:34):
excited about I'm I'm justreally really excited to see.
I don't know, sorry man.

No, no , no, worries whatsoever.

Dane "Suspension Guru" Higgin (01:14:48):
I guess a better way to put that
is when you do this job likewhat's the best part of your job
, like like what is the bestpart of being Truman at park?

What's the best?

part yeah, what makes you?

go to work every day.
I love, love seeing come.
I love seeing something go froma block of aluminum to a new
idea or from some raw materialto an an idea.
That's one of my favorite partsof the process.
I love that part that that prop, the prototyping part of it,

(01:15:22):
and that's my favorite part ofthe process and that's why I?
Get, I get really, I get the.
You know some people maybe oneperson would call it the fizz.
I get the fizz from that thatmakes me really happy when like
you, you take something and youcreate, um, because at the bike
shop, you like you change the,the fork cap.
Yeah, yeah, that was me.

(01:15:43):
You're always making stuff workfor you, work in your
environment, work on what you'reworking on changing stuff, and
when you're creating it from theground up, you get to just kind
of create exactly what you want, and that's that's what makes
me most excited in in in my role.

Well, that's cool man.
Well, thank you so much, truman.
We really appreciate your time,you know, for our listeners.
You know, park tools websiteout there, uh, just fantastic uh
.
Youtube channel, as a matter offact, that's what's enabled me
to kind of like get the skillsYou've.
You're, you're kind of like myown private little bike mechanic
school that.
I've probably watched every oneof your videos.
I wait for them to come out andI watch them and even if it's

(01:16:23):
like for some road bike thing, Istill watch it.

Um , and you guys are hilarious,
yeah, and you're doing a greatjob man, it's cool to see you
come.

He's been Calvin forever.
But you, but you know, recentlyyou've, you've come on and
you've got, you've got a greatvibe and and a great uh, uh, I
don't know what's it called Likecamera, camera, camera.
Uh, persona, um and and youguys put things really simply
you don't make it too long.
I really liked that when youintroduce a new product, you got
like a two minute video outthere.

(01:16:51):
That just gives me what I needto know.
I'm, I'm in love with you guys.

Um, that's weird, but uh, maybe we
dwell on the videos for a littlebit and what all of those
things that you mentioned.
We put a ton of time into that.
It takes a lot of takes a lotof time to not make a long video
.
Yeah, it's easy.
How long have we been talking?

Yeah , yeah, hour 17.

Hour and 17 minutes yeah.

Truman Purdy (Park Tools (01:17:17):
Calvin and I can talk forever about
any topic.
But what's really difficult istrying to keep it in a short
compact.
You need to know what you needto know and some people really
just want they just want to jumpin and you to show them exactly
how to do it.
But what people don'tunderstand is that there's a lot

(01:17:41):
of different versions of thingsout there.
There's a lot of differentstandards.
So you have to kind of set thisgroundwork and put down all of
these, like how it works, sothat people can see that these
different things, even thoughthey look different, they work
the same.
And then you have to um, gothrough it and use words and use
language that both speak to abeginner and an expert, because

(01:18:07):
experts need to be.
They need little reminders hereand there.
Or I love watching people workon bikes because it's how you
hold your hand, it's just it's,it's or just oh, that's a little
genius, little tip, it's allthe little things.
And so you go through and soit's hard to not be.
You know, either you're goingto be kind of snooty or

(01:18:29):
condescending, or and you reallytry to not be those and you
want to give people exactly whatthey need in the most efficient
way possible, but sometimesefficient takes 10, 15 minutes
and for some people that's waytoo long.
Some people they want to knowway more and they end up in my

(01:18:49):
email box well, I think you gotit like when, you got it like
just right that's what I think,so what you guys are doing it's
working for me, so appreciate it.

Yeah, truman, thanks a lot, brother.
Have a great night, man.

Yeah thanks dane and thanks josh for
having me really good.
Have a good time.
Yeah, thank you.

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102 - Inside Park Tool: The World's Largest Bicycle Tool Company with Truman Purdy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}102 - Inside Park Tool: The World's Largest Bicycle Tool Company with Truman Purdy