107 - 25 Years of Stan's (NoTubes): President Mike Bush on Innovation & Sustainability - Mountain Cog

Episode Transcript
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Josh "Magellan" Anderson (00:21):
dude, you totally just made your it
was not as good as like when Ido it.

Mike Bush - Stan's Preside (00:29):
It's kind of like an awful the mic.
The mic's not picking it up,it's not.

Yeah so what a wonderful like time
that we live in right now yeahwe have been through, like so
many different revolutionarytimes from technology you know,
know, the internet.
Now we've got the AI revolution.
Oh my God, yeah, and I was kindof thinking back to like those,
those, uh Sasquatch videos.

Dane "The Suspension Guru" H (00:51):
Oh my God, those Sasquatch videos
are so funny.

Oh my God.
Um, where are you going withthis?
But, uh, of the last hundredyears, I was trying to figure
out, like, what is the lasthundred years?
I was trying to figure out,like, what is the what's like
the best invention that we have,you know, been able to
integrate into our lives?

Dane "The Suspension G (01:11):
Mountain bike.

Well, mountain bike, that's.
That's a good one for amountain bike podcast.
I like it but no, I think it'sthe dry erase board.

Dane "The Suspension Guru" (01:20):
What I use, that so.

It has to be the most remarkable.

Dane "The Suspension Gur (01:28):
Joke's still bad, but your delivery
was pretty damn good, I got tosay that's pretty good, I was.
I was pulled in.
I was definitely pulled in.

So right on.
Well, uh, let's see, it isWednesday night, which I think
we all were trying to figure outwhat day it was.
All three of us at one pointtoday today, asked what day it
was here on the MCP, and we arehere.
If you didn't know, and, mike,you correct me if I got my facts
wrong here, but in 2022, Ibelieve Stan and Cindy sold

(01:57):
Stans.

Yeah , that's correct.
Deal closed May 31st 2022.
Wow 2022.

And I think you are still CEO and
president of Stans.
Do I have that right?

Yeah , I go by president, but it
really doesn't matter.

So Stans, no tubes.
Yeah, how are you doing today,sir?
Yeah.

Good , good, yeah, back from Eurobike
and ready to chat it up hereyeah, it's uh a long flight.

You know I I'm sure you're a little
fuzzy, but man, I I'm enviousbecause I'd love to go see all
that stuff.
I really want to go.
I miss interbike.
You know, I miss seeing all thenew stuff because everybody
puts it out online right away,yeah, but uh, you still don't.
You don't get to go see thoselittle nuggets of new stuff.
You know that, doesn't theydon't get to go see those little
nuggets of new stuff.

You know that, doesn't they don't
make it out onto whoever'sreview yeah, it's different to
like hold it in your hand, yeah,than it is to like see it in a
video and some of the crazy,some of the outfits I remember
interbike, the outfits of peopleyou know reading their shirts,
you know what their shirts said.

Yeah I remember for a little time at
interbike, uh, the um, all thepro dirt jumpers and stuff would
would rent rascals and drivearound with rascals uh around
the trade show instead ofactually walking.
You know that's funny.

So but so how was eurobike this year?

Mike Bush - Stan's President (03:18):
it was, it was still a good show
for us, so a number of brandselected not to attend, and quite
a few distributors chose not toattend as well, including our
German distributor.

Oh , wow.

So we were boothless this year for
the first time and I think I'vebeen to 18 or 19 Euro bikes.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, different experience.
But a lot of meetings, a lot ofgood interaction, just less
brands to visit on the floor 18or 19 Euro bikes.

Jeez Mike, what's your background?
What's your history?
How'd you get into the bikeindustry?

Yeah , I guess go back to the early
days.
I don't have the story of beingthe grom sweeping the floor.
I shouldn't even tell you thisI've never worked bicycle retail
.
Oh wow, oh my gosh.

You might be the first person we've
talked to in the industry thatdidn't work in retail I know
Well, except for the trailbuilders.

Yeah , fair enough.
Yeah, so I got an engineeringdegree from Penn State and moved
to New York State right afterand I'd been riding all along
and met Stan and Cindy prettymuch as soon as I moved there
they had just started no Tubesat the time went by no Tubes
then and started helping themout, kind of on the side side
projects for me, but supportedthem.

(04:35):
There was only the two of themreally in the beginning and then
I worked real jobs in subwaycar manufacturing and then in
aircraft manufacturing withSchweitzer and Sikorsky.
So I played with helicopters andthings of that nature prior to
getting fully involved in bikes.
But I would take vacation fromthose jobs and go to Interbike

(04:57):
and help them out and go toPedro's Fest and nights and
weekends in my kitchen doingdesign work for Stan and so on.
And then at some point theysaid we need you full time.
And I told the guys atSchweitzer and one of the people
that was in charge there, oneof the Schweitzer family, said I

(05:17):
like bikes, you should go do itand if it doesn't work you can
come back.
Oh, that's cool, that's supercool.
So he's where I'm at right now.

Yeah .

Right.
So I work for Raytheon, right,and I'm like, okay, I want to
stop doing this and go do stuffwith bikes.

Yes , as long as you're
independently wealthy, it'llwork out.
Yeah.

Best way to make money.
I was young and dumb, Mike.
Were you a mechanical engineer?

No industrial manufacturing.
Okay, right on.
So I've done a bit of designwork and some extra mechanical
courses.

Okay , so he said the word, so
industrial engineer.

Go ahead.

Okay , because we talked to Faction
and they were talking aboutindustrial designer Different.
So what's the difference?
The engineer figures out how tomake it work.

Yeah , industrial engineering,
manufacturing engineering isreally the processes and methods
to make things okay.
That's uh that's where it camefrom so you're figuring out
people lean more towards, likeoperations, research and
ergonomics studies and things ofthat nature, and I I was more
into the actual manufacturingand um design work and design
for manufacturing.

So that's cool, do you?
Did you do anything likedesigning the machines, that
like do some of themanufacturing?

I uh yeah, we worked on machine
automation.
We did.
Uh, you know, if there was aparticular widget we needed
quickly or my extra backgroundcame in and we didn't want to
run to design engineering theywere too busy.
I could just draw it up andhave somebody make the prototype
, and if it worked, we neverbothered design engineering with
it and we just made it.

Yeah , yeah, I, we had some machines
when I was in manufacturing thatwere amazing.
Like you know.
They take a piece of metal andbend it like three different
ways, automatically, you know,and then cut it off and then
just drop it in a bin and thenanother one would shoot right
out and just to see that stuffis pretty cool so we need to go
to taiwan yeah, yeah I need totake you through some fact, yeah
just watching how it's made onwhatever channel it's on

(07:12):
discovery channel.
Yeah, whatever it was, it wasjust great just seeing those
machines and like seeing howthey work.
You know, watching a springbeing made is pretty cool, so so
, mike, you've been with noTubessince the very beginning.

Yeah , I missed about six months of
them figuring it out early on,but I've been around ever since.
So about four years of what Icall consulting for lack of a
better term and then end of Idon't know.
First of June was 20 years onthe payroll.

Wow , that's amazing.
I remember when Stans camearound.
I remember everything.
Right at the beginning, prettymuch day one, yeah, and seeing
them pop on the radar at thebike shop.

This is our 25th year.

Wow , isn't that crazy.

Have we been running tubeless for 25
years?

Dane "The Suspension (07:58):
Hopefully Hard to believe.
Huh, it is hard to believe,right.

It's true.
It seems like it wasn't thatlong ago that we were putting
tubes and dealing with that crap.

Well , in stands, I feel like really
the two companies that Iattribute to tubeless are Mavic,
because they have the UST andstands.
Those were, that's it.
They are the two that basicallythat's why we have tubeless,
those two companies.
So, and Mavic standard kind offell away because it kind of it
was really precise Stance waslike we'll make anything work.

(08:28):
You know, basically, you knowyou didn't have to buy a special
rim and a special tire All of asudden.

Josh "Magellan" Anderso (08:34):
Gorilla tape and Stance and you're good
.

No , it wasn't.
Don't say gorilla tape.

Yeah, I was going to say oh, is that
bad?
Yeah, oh yeah, it's bad, okay,okay, wait, no, no, Mike, why
not say Gorilla Tape?

It's a bad word in bikes right now.
The principle's okay, right.
So our very first version ofconversion was two different
types of tape.
It was a 3M strapping tape andelectrical tape over top.
And we started to figure outwhich designs that worked better
with and which ones didn't, andthen came up with a rubber rim
strip system to make that easierfor folks and then again looked

(09:03):
at that and said why does thisone work better than that one?
We had special contours to theshape, the profile of the rubber
strips and eventually designedrims that didn't need it.
So that moved us completelyfrom converting standard tube
type into what we basically knowtoday as tubeless ready, kind
of bypassed the UST pieces.
It was so limited on tires andrims at the time.

(09:24):
But Gorilla Tape applied into arim that's intended to have
something thin, like our yellowtape you're probably familiar
with now.
One is thicker and ourtolerances are much tighter than
that difference in thickness.
So it can affect how you mountand inflate tires.
But fundamentally Gorilla Tapeis porous, so it is not airtight

(09:45):
like the tapes we use fortubeless radio, I would call it.
Then, as the moisture from thesealant gets in through that
non-airtight membrane on theoutside of Gorilla Tape.

it saturates the adhesive and
becomes an absolute nightmare toremove or deal with.
I don't think it actually getsloose.
It gets like.
It's like bubble, it's nasty,yeah.
So we always say if you usegorilla, you will use gorilla
for the rest of your life, therest of that, rest of that rims
life, you know, because cleaningit off is just horrible it's

(10:16):
impossible.

Yeah, yeah, all right.
So we won't mention gorillatape again on this episode no,
yeah, like it's.

It's crazy, but one of the things
that they did that was reallyrevolutionary.
Like he said, they changed therims, they raised the bead seat
is that, did I say thatcorrectly?
Uh up to keep the tire from notbeing able to basically push
off when it was aired up, and sothat was one of the biggest
things that changed tubeless,and now all the wheels are built

(10:43):
, all the rims, whether theirstands or not, are built that
way.
So it's pretty cool.

I won't take the next hour and a
half and explain to you howthose dimensions all worked, but
that's that's the basics, rightthere.
The bc is, in fact, larger thanwhat was the defined standard
at the time.
Yeah, and that's what madetires fit, and we've we've gone
to great lengths to prove thatpoint.
As cRTO and ISO standards wererevised, I pulled back the
curtain on all the.
We did a lot of CT scans oftires mounted and inflated on

(11:11):
different rims and justdemonstrated what we call bead
float how much that bead wouldlift off of the rim.

And that's why tires burped and so
forth.

I had an early one blow off.
Yeah, I remember that happenedactually rather frequently to
folks.

Yeah , yeah, we would air them up on
the other side of this littledoor in the corral, in the in
the shop corral.
You'd put the the wheel on theother side and you would air it
up so it wouldn't blow off andyou had to 40, I think was the
max psi so and it took a, ittook a I don't know.
Remember that was a coupleyears of it being like that and
then they came out with their uh, bead seat height difference

(11:50):
and then we were still doingthat because we're gun shy for
another year or so before werealized none of them had a
problem you don't need to do itanymore and then, yeah, now it's
like you air them up in yourhand, you know so which back
then higher beads have improvedgreatly construction's better,
quality control's better, yeah,you're less likely to damage a
bead on install, etc.

So much safer than uh when things
started out.
Yeah, it's crazy.

So , and all they were doing was
sealant, really at the beginning, sealant and tape.

So so, so, mike, one of the things we
were interested in talking aboutwe got we had a lot of things
to cover, but um, uh, you know,dane being a suspension tech and
having a suspension specificcompany along with his bike shop
and me being a corporatestrategist, uh, dealing with
mergers, acquisitions, all thatkind of stuff on our radar

(12:44):
screen, and we haven't heard alot about it.
It was kind of just like a subnote and so I'd love to hear,
like, how that came about andand what you guys's plans are,
if you could tell us a littlebit about the, the marriage
between stands and wpl yeah, Iguess go back a little ways.

Mike Bush - Stan's Presiden (12:54):
You know sealant obviously I said
how he's got started and hasbecome, you know, pretty
important part of a lot of theservice areas of shops, whether
they're using a competitor ornot.
A lot of times the term standsis used generically to uh yeah
it's a good and a bad thing.
Right, it's.
It gets used all over the place, but not necessarily, um, to

(13:16):
our benefit in some cases.
But uh, you know, my my pieceof it is that service is
critical across the board.
We're seeing more mobileservice-only type operations or
service-only workshops.
Bikes become more complicatedI'll have to explain this to you
guys.
Between diagnostics of motorsand hydraulic systems,

(13:38):
suspension, et cetera, et cetera, I see the local shop and the
train mechanic as beinghypercritical for cycling here
forward and whether it's awell-skilled home mechanic or
the professional, we're going tocontinue to lean into service.
So we've had this on the productroadmap for a long time.
We're quite good at all thesealant ever made for Stens.

(14:01):
It's been made in our ownfacility.
We blend it, we bottle it, weQC it, et cetera, ship it around
the world.
So we ship a lot of New Yorkwater around the world.
I like to joke, but yeah, it'smade in our own facility and
we've done quite well at movingliquids, which is not an easy
thing to do logistically.
So we knew liquids was a spacewe wanted to be involved with

(14:29):
and we don't have chemists onboard and so on.
Sealant was developed in-house.
We've not used outsiders forthat, but you know that's kind
of our expertise stops.
So you always have the optionand you're going to be familiar
with this, josh is build it orbuy it right.
And for us we wantdifferentiated products.
You know I can get super nerdyon sealant and rims and all
kinds of other things and how wecan differentiate and even if
it's nuanced stuff it makes adifference.
So in looking for a buy-itoption, effectively we knew WPL

(14:55):
was on the market, it had beenout there and we said you know
it wasn't the right time for usinitially and it came back
around again and we got to meetthe founders, isaac and
Alejandro, and what they haddone with the brand and where
they'd set it up.
Products were well received bythe market, et cetera.
They just had a hard timegetting distribution, which is

(15:15):
not unusual.

Yep, but you guys had those
distribution channels right.

Yeah , we're sold in over 60
countries.
That's something we built over25 years.
So we're sold in over 60countries.
That's something we've builtover 25 years.
So we had those channels.
We're well-established in theservice component and everything
just kind of aligned.
The timing was good.
They were ready to move on tosome other projects.
That said, alejandro is stillworking with us and, yeah, just

(15:42):
kind of all came together.
So that was make sure I get thedates right December of 23.

Okay.

Yeah , December 23.
And they had a good bit ofinventory and so on.
We're all coming out of COVIDand so on and so forth and so we
wanted to maintain the WPL name.
We didn't want to really losethat because it was
well-established, smaller butwell-established.
So we had to work throughinventory work, through bottling
work, through supply chainchanges, kind of streamlining

(16:10):
that a little bit.
So that took a good portion of24, but we started talking about
stands with these new productsat Eurobike last year.
So didn't make a big splash ora big deal out of it necessarily
, but it was kind of thetransition point, Started moving
into that.
So here we are now, a year later.
All the products are in.
We've ironed out most of thesupply chain challenges.

(16:32):
It's getting out into the worldthrough our channels.
We're about to put some new POPdisplays out into the world and
, you know, stake our claim inthe retail space etc.
But that, in a nutshell, is howit came to be part of the Stans
family and now you knowpodcasts like this and other
things.
We need to start pushing thatword a bit more, that it's

(16:53):
available and it's us and westand behind it.
But it's still basically afully Canadian supply chain.
And Alejandro, the father inthe equation there, is a very
skilled chemist and continues towork with us on maintaining
quality of what they were doingbut also developing some new
products.

And so WPL is Whistler Performance
Lubricants.
Is that right?

Yes , they changed the name to
Whistler Performance Labs at onepoint, but all the same, people
know it as WPL.
Its largest market was, ofcourse, canada.

Dane "The Suspension Guru" Hi (17:27):
I used quite a bit of it.
I've still got some in the shop, so it always made me salad
hungry.
Want to know a salad.
It's vegetable-based, I guess,or bio-based is a better way to
say it Bio-based product, but ithad a distinct smell that
smelled like you know, uhcooking oil yeah, so and uh, and

(17:47):
the big thing was, it's muchbetter for the earth.
It's not a synthetic oil, it'snot a you know it's.
If you drop it on the ground,nobody's panicking.

So yeah, so that's part of the
differentiated.

Dane "The Suspension Guru (17:58):
Sorry no go ahead.

Mike Bush - Stan's Presi (17:59):
That's part of the differentiated
product for us.
So stan sealant has always beenbiodegradable.
Again, if we don, sometimeswe're not good about telling our
own story.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Yeah, it's biodegradable, andit was only last year that we
actually did the OECD 301Bbiodegradability test to get the
stamp of approval and be ableto talk about it more.

(18:20):
But biodegradable sealantbecause we use natural latex and
so on and the additives are arenatural as well, and then the
bio-based factor of wpl productscoming into the line so that's
a usda certified bio preferredprogram has to go through
third-party evaluation.
I think the lowest percentagewe have is 97 bio bio-based

(18:44):
across the product range.
Oh wow.

Hey , do you have any tricks for
getting stands out of yourclothes?

I don't Believe me.
It's ruined a lot of stuff inmy life.

Oh yeah, it's tenacious.

The best thing to do is cold water
quickly.
Yeah, cold water quickly,that's really the best thing.
Cold water quickly, yeah.

So, staying on WPLpl, I'm just
looking at your website rightnow and I'm seeing six products
that are at least on yourwebsite right now under the
bicycle care bio-based bicyclecare.
I don't know if there's more,but maybe could you take us
through the the products thatyou guys have um in this line
true, and our product managerwould know the SKU count better
than I would.

I think we're at 13 SKUs right now
, but there's a couple ofvariants in there.
So we do a wet chain lube, adry chain lube and then the fork
boost in kind of the lubricantcategory although we can talk
more about fork boost and itslubricant properties and then we
do a bio-based bike wash, agrease in two different sizes

(19:49):
and suspension oil in fivedifferent weights.
So that's kind of the basis ofit right now.
There will be a new productcoming, like I said in September
.
Timeframe for a drivetraincleaner.

Oh , okay, On your dry lube.
What's the elevator pitch onthe dry lube?

Mike Bush - Stan's Pres (20:07):
Because we do a lot of dry lube in the
desert.

We like dry lube.

Yeah , so the solvent, basically that
flashes off is ethanol, sothat's bio-based, of course, but
if you dig into the sciencebehind it, alejandro could
explain this a million timesbetter than I can.
Basically, it's going to runclean because of these esters

(20:32):
that he works with.
He comes from a food sciencebackground, so that's how we got
here.
That's interesting.
It's something.
Yeah, I think if you haven'ttried it, we have to get it to
you.
So there's no Teflons and so on, and uh, it's just crazy.
It's in film.
That runs clean.
It's unbelievably clean,actually.

So it's appealing to me because I
like.
I don't one, I don't likecleaning my bike just because
we're in the desert and you'relazy and I'm lazy and we don't
need to.
We don't get the mud.
You know like, uh, you knowwhen you?
I just looked at one of theworld cup races and I don't know
the hot, hot shot downhellerkid who like weighs nothing, I
saw.
Jackson Goldstone yeah, I sawhis bike and it's just covered

(21:10):
and you know you have to clean,that you have to take a hose to
that.
We're so lucky.

The bike that's like six size size
is too big for him.

Yep , yeah, and the kid weighs like
80 pounds and just dances overeverything.
Yeah, he's riding in thoseconditions and europe, that gets
that.
Pacific northwest, they getthat.
You know, I went through apuddle, uh, at whistler, that
was about it, so like it was sodry up there.
Um, so we're, we're just lucky.
But the dry lubes are justgreat because they they tend to
just not attract anything, justflake off dirt and then keep

(21:42):
your drive train running andmaybe you have to put it on more
often, and that's pretty normal, you know.

Mike Bush - Stan's Presid (21:47):
Right , Right.
We've.
We've even had experiencesusing it in some wet conditions
here in the East coast.
We get a a real mixed bag and,uh, even with some exposure to
water it holds up really well oh, that's good to hear too.

So , and then the suspension oil
I've used.
It's been great.
Uh, I gotta tell you it doesn'tsmell as bad as some of them.
So and that's no joke, you know, like when you're working all
day and covering yourself prettymuch in it.
I haven't tried the grease or,or the bike wash or anything
nope, so make sure you get achance to try these out.

But the wet lube is a popular
product.
The fork boost has been themost popular product through the
years.
Suspension oil is, I think,something that people will
become more familiar with overtime and there's maybe some
skepticism around the suspensionoils.
But if you look at the oceanfreight industry and shipping
industries in general, they haveto use bio-based oils and

(22:39):
lubricants.
So these products are done by avendor for us in Canada that
produces a lot of material forthose industries and for
automotive industries.
It's top quality stuff andwe're doing some third-party
testing now to kind of showwhere it stacks up.

Oh , that we can see.
I'd like to see that.

Tell us a little bit about the fork
boost.

He said that's been your most most
popular product yeah, it wasthe most popular product coming
out of wpl's ownership.
We just, you know, rebrandedand updated the bottles to the
ocean plastic and things likethat.
But uh, it's, it's not andprobably very important for
someone that works on a lot ofsuspension, this does not
replace regular service.

Yeah he was gonna say that, anyways,
your basic service, do the fullservice.

You know when you're supposed to by
the hours.
Uh, it does not do that.
It can.
It helps clean the uh, thestanchions a bit and uh can
remove and pull some of the gritand grime and get stuck just
behind that.
First you know the top portionof the seal so you can get
especially you guys probably getthe dust and light dirt found

(23:44):
inside there.
So you just apply fork boost ina ring around the stanchion
very lightly above the seal,cycle the suspension a few times
and wipe it all off again.
And when you cycle it a fewtimes you'll see it just
captures some dust and dirt andpulls it up out of there.
So it's not left between thetwo lips of the seal to kind of
wear away the stanchion coatings.
Um, it's just something you'duse every few rides as needed.

(24:07):
No, no need to.
You know, apply it heavy.
You don't want to leave it onthere.
It's just a wipe the stanchion,apply it, cycle, wipe it.

Yeah , one of the things that people
don't know and if you get into,like the nerd out of the ceiling
surface the Kashima code orwhatever, whatever brand there
that if you look at that at amicroscope there's a lot of pits
and valleys to it, and so oneof the things that kind of
degrades suspension performanceis, if it's too clean, like you

(24:38):
need some lubricant in thoselittle holes you know to fill in
the gaps, yeah.
And so that's been an issuewhere you know, when a fork
feels so good cause it's beenserviced, it's also because we
don't go and like scrub it.
Yeah, like I don't use alcoholor anything to take that off, we
just it's almost, it's almostcleaned with oil.

(24:59):
So but, uh, that fork boostprobably helps keep that going
longer past, when the the wiperswill weep a little bit and
they'll kind of self do that uhover time, but eventually that
goes away.

So and then, uh, you were about to
tell us all about the grittysecret details of what you're
releasing in the fall.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, so I keep trying to get
companies to do this and thatnone of them bite man.

Well and honestly, if you do want to
talk about new release stuffthat you know, all you have to
do is put a date on when youwant us to talk about it.
So if, if it is something thatyou want to get out there and
have on the program, we wouldlove that, and we can keep a
secret until you tell us.

Yeah , it's not the world's biggest
secret.
You can use it when you like,but we do have a drivetrain
cleaner coming out.

Oh cool.

Yeah , it will be available for
everyone around.
Should be around the 1st ofSeptember.
Might be a little bit earlierto the North American market,
but it'll be in around that time.
So it's not this next majorrelease or anything.
But if you're going topotentially move away from
Teflon-based lubricants or someother wet or dry lubricants, you

(26:10):
want to have a clean chain andclean drivetrain.
So we feel we should provideyou with a really quality
cleaner to do that that is alsosafe to, like you say, have on
your hands all day and do thosetypes of things.

One of the things that I'm getting
from this podcast already is Ihad no idea how thoughtful Stans
is about the environment, and Imean hearing that they're using
ocean plastics.
You know they're makingbiodegradable.
I didn't even know the sealantwas, you know.
Usually, you know, I tellpeople, hey, when you change a
flat, just dump that stuff outon the trail.

(26:44):
You know you get sideways looks, you know.
But knowing that if you're doingthat you're not ruining the
environment, you know whenyou're putting a tube in to get
home, you know, because you cuta sidewall or something.
Uh, so that I that's newinformation for me.
I really like to hear that.

We try and do what we can where we
can.
We're not perfect.
I still have a gas guzzling SUVand I ride a dirt bike
sometimes, but our New Yorkfacility is solar powered.
We put more back in the gridthan we use.
That's hard to do at New YorkState.
I think there's 230 panels onthe roof, something like that.
We use ocean plastic where wecan.
We do the biodegradable whichyou know.

(27:21):
That's something that some ofthe other competing products in
the market.
They might do things well, theymight not, but if they're using
a synthetic latex, whichthere's been this kind of steady
drumbeat of synthetic doesn'thave ammonia in it.
Yada, yada, yada, okay, great.

But it's a petroleum product.

at the end of the day, they're
mostly petroleum-dried products,and that's what you would be
dumping out on the trail.
That's just not my style.

So is ammonia something that's
just a byproduct of the latexyou use, or do you have to add
ammonia in?

No .
So the normal way when naturallatex is harvested from the tree
is that they add a smallpercentage of ammonia as a
preservative, prevents bacteriagrowth and so on, and it also
prevents some prematurecoagulation, et cetera.
So that's super common.
There are natural latex isstarting to become more and more

(28:13):
available that don't useammonia.
They use other things for that,creating that stability and
preventing bacterial growth.
They're just harder to come by,more expensive, etc.
So when we receive the blendthat we use it's less than 1%
ammonia.
That still can be a prettypungent smell.
We dilute it further.
So we bring in this blend.
That's done for us specifically.

(28:34):
And then I mentioned New Yorkwater and there's other
additives to make it last longerand do certain things.
The smell may be from the newyork water but by the time we
have it in the bottle it's lessthan one tenth of one percent.
Okay, so there's really nothingin there that causes any sort
of harm or damage.
You do get a little bit of ascent, and we could add another

(28:56):
chemical or something to maskthe scent, but why?

Yeah , you're trying to reduce the
amount of chemicals anyway.
Can I bring up an old subjectthat's maybe a soft spot or a
sore spot for you.
Like yeah, this is old, though,and but he's been in it.

Why are we bringing up old stuff?

Just because I like this is the
first time I've actually beenable to ask about it, but in the
shop we used to get the blisterproblem.
Do you remember that, theblisters?
And so basically what wouldhappen is a customer would come
in with a tire and it's got thisbig looks like a pimple or
blister on the tire and whatwould happen?
There's a particular brand oftire that we've already kind of

(29:36):
beaten up, maxis Maybe.
Brand of tire that we'vealready kind of beaten up, maxis
maybe.
Um, and it was at the time theone of the only sealant
companies on the market so thisis how long ago this was, and uh
, and they would point fingersat each other and like, as a
shop, we never know, you know.
And basically one would say, ohno, it's not our product, it's
their product reacting with ours.

(29:57):
And then the other one's likeno, it's not our product, it's's
their product reacting withours.
And then the other one's likeno, it's not our product, it's
their product, that's defective.

So what's the truth, mike?
Yeah, what was going on?

I'm not a tire manufacturer.
I've spent time around them andwe had a lot of discussions
back in those days about whatwas going on with different
things and, yeah, we werecertainly being blamed for a lot
of it.
But, uh, thick skin over here.
So we did our own, our ownstudies internally and prepared
some reports and went to Taiwanand that was some folks and said

(30:26):
it was largely their usmarketing and this isn't
specific to Maxis.
I use their tires all the time.
We support each other with rimsand tires and so forth, but, um
, their tires all the time.
We support each other with rimsand tires and so forth.
But we presented our reportsand the sales and marketing team
was in the room and theybrought in the engineers.
The engineers looked at us andsaid yeah, we know.

(30:49):
Apparently, in the tiremanufacturing world we're going
back 20 years.
Yeah, this is old stuff, thisis not a current issue.
It's not something we see,hardly at all.
There was some difficulty inhaving the nylon and the rubber
sticking together within thecasing.
So you have the nylon casingand the tread cap and it's all
molded together, et cetera.
If those two would separatejust naturally from sharp edge

(31:10):
impacts, what have you?
And that casing came away fromthe tread rubber.
A little bit air was going toget in there and then seal it
off and seal that air pocketclosed, so you would have this
bubble form that looked like soyour product was doing what it
was supposed to do.

It was sealing the tire Largely.

Yeah , it was trying to fill that
hole in the casing where theyhad separated and delaminated.
There are similar issues withcasing shifting in certain
brands and things like thatwhere it's hard to make those
things stick together.
100 every single time, yeah andum, yeah, basically we proved
the point by we were runningdrum tests quite common on rims
and tires and had never even hadthe tires in the same room with

(31:54):
sealant and we're creating thesame bubbles, oh wow, and saying
, well, clearly it can't besealing right.
So that's, that's how weovercame that.
And I said manufacturer oftires has gotten better, from
beads to the construction to.
I mean, look how many optionswe have now yeah, yeah, it's all
the types.

It's definitely not something we
ever see.
I haven't seen one in so solong.
So, um, but I'll tell you therewas some companies that didn't
have that problem.
So ones that don't have theseparation as much, yeah, yeah
and like those companies arestill going and I very rarely
see problems with them, and thecompany I saw problems with
still has problems from time totime.

(32:32):
So not not throwing anybodyunder the bus, but uh, but yeah,
I, I, I would definitely pointmore at the tire than I would
the sealant, that's for sure solet's fast forward 20 years, two
decades, to today.

Yeah , sorry and that's okay hey, old
people.

Old people need to reminisce okay.

So I'm just saying I hear you, I hear
you um, what's the differencebetween your original and race
day sealant?

So it's really pretty simple.
The liquid base of them isidentical, okay, so everybody
knows they're known as sealingcrystals.
It's particulate.
Pretty much every sealant usessome kind of particulate to help
plug the holes.
So in our case we have thisstandard formula, the original
formula of particulate.

(33:18):
Consider that one dose perbottle, and then in the race day
we use two doses, basically,and then we add an additional
extra large particulate in therefor the much bigger holes.
So we're really pretty similar.
Race day is much harder for usto produce, even though it
sounds simple.
But yeah, that's really it, youjust don't put.

(33:39):
Race day is much harder for usto produce, even though it
sounds simple Um, but um, yeah,that's, that's really it.
You just don't put race daythrough a valve stem, don't
don't try to uh and you'll befine.
And don't put it through the Rinjector system either.
It won't work.
It'll plug it up instantly, butum, yeah.

So if it seals better, why wouldn't I
just run it every day?

just some.

Some people do yeah, but those two
reasons you know like yeah, justjust it's just easier to put
the other stuff in, so okay likerace.

What I'll often do, and some of us
in the office do, is when we setup new tires, we'll set them up
with race and then we'llcontinue to top them off through
the next several months whileyou kill the tire with just
original, that's, some of largeparticulate is still left inside
and you're just refreshing theliquid.
By and large Interesting.

Yeah , I like that idea.
That was verbatim what theytold me.
So we were carrying race day,but basically the idea is the
bigger particles will plug moreso that you don't lose your race
, and so you're less likely tohave a flat.

Uh for a race it's a little more
maintenance intensively, so youhave to open the tire bead.
Not everybody wants to do thatall the time it can.
Uh, you know the famousstandable can form a little bit
quicker because that's largelydriven by the particulate.
So you'd want to clean thoseout what, what, what.

What makes those?

it's the latex drying over time and
the particulate being picked up,so it kind of snowballs a
little bit and it creates thecoral-shaped animal.

At one point we had a contest for
who could bring in the biggestone, and a guy won because he
had it in fat tires or in a fatbike and they were huge.
It was bigger than a regulartire, you know?

Yeah , you see it doesn't form as
much now.
I think there's somedifferences in the mold releases
that get used and so on.
There's a little bit ofspeculation there because nobody
will tell you what they use.
And, yeah, we've done someslight adjustments through the
years I guess 20-plus years nowso you shouldn't see those form
quite as readily.

I always thought somebody told me
once that it was CO2, freezingit into a ball when you use CO2.
That's an interesting theory,because I never had Stanimals in
any of mine and I never use CO2.

And so it supported my confirmation
bias.

But then just recently I had a
Stanimal in one of mine.
But yeah, those things areawesome.
I still have a couple sittingon the shelf at the shop always.
I think I do too.

All right, we were taking a look at
your Exocor valves.
Neither of us have used them.

No .

Maybe talk us through those and what's
the value proposition of anExocor valve?

Yeah , we introduced Exocor last year
.
Really, we were thinking aboutthis for a long, long time, and
the Presta valve that we allknow was invented about 125
years ago.
And at the time they did notconsider using sealant.
Believe it or not, it was not afactor when that was invented.

(36:36):
So obviously you can replacevalve core.
We've shown people how to cleanvalve cores et cetera.
It's not a big deal to changeone out.
But we wanted to kind of take afresh look at it and we said
well, the first thing we want todeal with being stands is
sealant.
What would make a valve workbetter with sealant?
And then the second piece was,of course, increased airflow.

It isn't going to hurt anybody.

It just makes inflation easier.
And the Santa Cruz Reserve dida great job with airflow and
really have nothing bad to sayabout that design.
But I don't think, I don'tbelieve they were thinking
sealant first when they did it.
I've never actually talked tothem about it, but they were
kind of the first one of what II termed the super valve
category.
Yeah, so that's, that was kindof the benchmark when we were

(37:25):
working on exocor, based ontheir design.
You know, you can't injectsealant through the valve very
well, it's just a very longpoppet style valve and then the
o-ring at the bottom can stillcollect sealant.
A bit natural latex like thatloves to stick to rubber, so
that can be a bit of an issue.
So, taking our fresh approach,we were saying, well, can we get

(37:46):
the same airflow that they did?
And that's, that's a tall order?
We got close, but trying todeal with sealant through
exposure to a small Presta valvecore, you've got a lot of
little narrow passages andseveral different materials in
there.
So we said, can we take thatthing out?
What's a cleaner way?
Well, it's a long brass pin,effectively.

(38:10):
And yeah, we wanted it to beserviceable without tools and
you could still take off thewhole housing and do straight
through the valve for injectingsealant.
And we also wanted to make surethat it worked with every press
, the pump and gauge and so on.
That was out there.
We didn't want to create a newstandard that forced you into a
different pump or, you know,change all your tool.

(38:32):
You know who wants to changeall their floor pumps?
We've all got several of them,I'm guessing.
So that was how we came aboutit.
We did lots and lots ofiterations and a lot of airflow
testing.
So we were measuring standardliters per minute.
So what pressure does it taketo achieve 100 standard liters
per minute airflow?
And, like I said, we got veryclose to where reserve is at and

(38:56):
I think we addressed thesealantant quite well.
So if you have an exocore inyour hand and you want to clean
it, you just unthread thehousing itself and pull the pin
out, wipe it off and put it backin.
You're done okay that's the bigdifference.

So it's not like you just move the
presta core up, high oranything like that it's.
And then when you're um, whenyou're when that pin is in there
, is it dropping farther down tocreate a bigger passage like is
the cone?

uh , yeah, kind of when it's fully
opened the bottom there's likethree little wings on the bottom
.
Yeah, we'll sit on the top ofthe valve stem, so you've got
three large passages for the airto move through, okay.
And then at the top, there arelike three windows at the top of
the housing, while they areinto the housing itself, okay.

(39:44):
It's a pretty handy littlesystem.
You only have to open it a halfto two turns to get max airflow
and, like I said, we're justshy of where reserve is at for
maximum airflow.

I feel like you guys are in a
prime place to kind of change astandard, not that?
And right now every bikemechanic in the whole world just
groaned yeah you know, I didtoo.
Yeah, even a bike, yeah,because I'm envisioning a
schrader valve hole but a valvethat has a presto top so that
you can inject it into a biggervalve.

(40:18):
You know, and nobody's come upwith that.
And a company like stands isunique because they're not just
making the valve, they're alsomaking the rims, so they could
easily do that.
And then they also have I don'tknow if you knew this uh, they
have uh Schrader valve coursewhich is great, which we've used
for those people that have,kind of like, drilled out their

(40:39):
rims and then realized theywanted to go tubeless, and so I
feel like that would besomething that would work too
for high flow.

I think that's always the first
reaction.
Why don't we all just useSchrader?

Yeah , why don't we?

So it does require a larger hole
which, when rims were narrow,was a problem.
So now that they're all wider,you've got space for it in the
airflow testing we've.
We've done schrader valves donot move more air than a press
the valve.
Okay, it is the same amount ofairflow, like within a tenth of

(41:14):
uh the standard, the pressurethat we're measuring for
standard liters.
So it doesn't offer anything.
That way it's easier to fill upat the uh, the gas station or
or what have you, but it doesn'treally address what we were
going for, which was better withsealant and better airflow,
okay.

So sure about comes up short on
both and your exo cores can beused on any rim at this point,
that's yes, yeah, any, yes, anyPresto-sized hole will
accommodate an exocore.

We have the full exocore valve
which uses our Universal Plusvalve stem, which is an alloy
valve stem.
They're insert compatible andso on.
So we've got the passages onthe back.
We have a different shapestopper.
We call it an elongatedelliptical stopper.
It just fits a wider variety ofrim shapes better.
And then you'll see, if you lookclosely at a universal plus

(42:02):
valve stem, that there's aninterrupted thread and that
thread is where the O-ring linesup when you put an exocore
housing on it, so you know whereto stop.
It kind of tells you don't backit off any further, you don't
need to.
But that's all it is.
It's there as a kind of afail-safe to not take your
ExoCore all the way off.
But otherwise it's a standardaluminum valve stem.
And if you start with UniversalPlus and you decide, hey, maybe

(42:26):
this ExoCore thing's for me,you can buy the housing
separately and upgrade it.
We should have some OEMs nextyear coming with Universal Plus
valves installed on the bikesand then the shops will have an
upgrade option for their usersif they want a higher flow valve
.
It's a little bit easier tolive with.
They'll be able to upgrade themright there on the spot.

Texas car now we're a norco dealer
and one of the nicest thingswhen we started selling norcos
was to see stands rims coming onthe bikes is, and even their
lower cost bikes, you know,relative to other bikes that we
sell in the shop, has reallykind of made that bike have a
way better pedigree.
You know, Norcos are prettyawesome bikes but then to have

(43:06):
stands rims coming on a, youknow, a $2,000 aluminum full
suspension was pretty awesome.
So that's what I liked.
How much business do you guys?
How much is your rim businessversus your sealant business?
Like you know, like if you hadto get rid of one.
Percentage-wise yeah, yeah.

Yeah , I mean sealant and all the
related accessories tape, valves, et cetera is a larger portion
of the business at this point.
That wasn't the case.
You know, 10 years ago, thispoint, that wasn't the case.
You know, 10 years ago we did alot of complete wheels at oe
and aftermarket, which you know.
Obviously, 600 wheel set or 900wheel set, you've got to sell a
lot of sealant to come close.
So, uh, yeah, it's shifted abit over time.

(43:50):
Tubeless adoption grew, moreoptions became available in
rooms, the ov bikes came withbetter rims and wheels.
So the upgrades are differentthan they were a decade ago, but
yeah, it's shifted.
Uh, which is part of us seeingservice as being so critical to
the success of the shops and andto our own success uh, do you
guys make your rims in-house?

is that a new york product or is
that uh partnered with somebody?

yeah , our very early rims, if you go
back to 2002 to 2005 or so,were US made, not by us, but
they were extruded and made,they enrolled in California and
then shipped to the East Coastand we QC'd them and they went
out for anodize and they cameback for decals.

(44:36):
It was a lot of shipping.
Yeah, and anybody that's beenaround a long time knows that
Stan had to weigh every singlerim himself.
Oh, really.
They would have Stan'shandwritten weight in silver
Sharpie right on the rim.
Wow, people love that, but atthe same time it was a problem.
Right on the rim, wow, peoplelove that, but at the same time

(44:59):
it was a problem.
So, uh, yeah, we uh, at somepoint there I can't recall the
exact year moved to uh, uh, oh,under sun ring lay.
Okay, it was uh.
So they had had a factory inindiana and then, when they were
acquired by hayes, moved, movedthat all to China and I
probably have some of thosedetails wrong.
It's been too long, but we werehaving the rims produced by them

(45:26):
in China for a long time andthen we moved production later
on to Taiwan and today we canproduce most of our models in
the sleeved and pinned can beproduced in taiwan or vietnam
and all welded product is intaiwan.
Wow, so we have.
We have three tiers.
You mentioned narco.
They've been a great partner ofours for years.
We have what most people rightnow is our premium alloy option
is the mark 4 and the ex3.

(45:47):
Right now, then we have kind ofwe call the mid-tier
performance option is the s2,that's a sleeved rim product,
and then we have the d series,which was a pinned product.
So three different price points, but the biggest thing for us
was that tubeless had to workperfectly on all of them.
So we maintain the sametolerance, just largely in the

(46:07):
same dimensions, to make surethat everybody has a very good
tubeless experience, regardlessof the price point yeah, that
was the always the thing back inthe day.

Again now, like you said, there's a,
there's been kind of a levelingof the field, almost uh, but
back in the day, stands set thestandard like they were the
standard.

So , uh, I sat in a meeting in high
wall at one time from someonewe used to do business with for
another reason and they said hey, you guys are doing a great job
with rims, appreciate thebusiness, but uh, we're gonna
just have to make something lookexactly like yours.
Now that was about the timethat it all started to turn yeah
, and that's yeah.

That's a big issue, you know they
actually told you that, oh yeah,yeah, I mean I'll give them
credit right to my face.

they said we just going to start
making rims that look like yours, yeah.

I think their way of doing
business is different than ours.

That was not a Taiwanese company.

No .

It's a European company.

Oh , really oh wow.
Oh wow, oh interesting.
Yeah, because I see a lot ofAsian manufacturers who are are
like that's a great idea.
I'm just going to make the samething.
They're like like I don't thinkit's a something that they're
doing offensive in their cultureversus where we see it as
offensive.
You know, like you're, you'retaking my idea and and making

(47:24):
reverse engineering is illegal.

It is legal sorry yeah yeah legal?

Dane "The Suspension (47:29):
certainly is legal and I think you know
we've had a lot of great sorry.
I was just going to say.
I think they see it as kind oflike a flattering, you know,
like a imitation.

Maybe I don't know yeah.

We've had a number of long-term
partners that do respect IP verywell and we're quite happy with
that.
But I think there are someother less scrupulous or you
know, really good reverseengineering groups out there.
Yeah for sure.

So I want to talk about a product you
guys have had for a while and Iam remiss in the fact that I
have not tried this yet.
And as I was researching it,I'm like Jesus, why don't?
Why have I not used that?
And that's your dart system.
Oh yeah, and the thing that I'mstill using the old bacon
strips and the thing that kindof was that I was surprised to

(48:18):
learn was that it's it'sdesigned and capable to plug a
much bigger hole.
So I don't know, maybe, justmaybe there's some other folks
in the world that are remisslike me.
I know the product's been outfor like five years, but, like,
tell me, tell us a little bitmore about the dart.

Yeah , we released the original dart
in october 2019, so we were justtrying to get caught up on
production very well receivedwhen they came out.
When when all the covid madnesshit, and then then we scrambled
for a while, but like everybody, so so that project came about.
I was actually working on asimilar but different product on

(48:54):
the side and thought, man, howdo we get this to work in a plug
type system?
And kind of had this randomemail phone call I remember
taking the call from frominterbike uh, with a, an
inventor out of australia.
He's been a great guy to workwith and he said said hey, I've
got this idea.
And I'm like, are you serious,because I'm working on the same

(49:14):
thing?
Usually wouldn't discuss thosedetails but he said, yeah, I've
already filed for some patents.
I said, okay, then how do youwant to do this?
You want to work together, andhe's a chemist as well, and we
was heading down the same path.

(49:36):
And, yeah, we spent about Idon't know 18 months refining
what he had into practice anddeveloping a tool to install it
and basically what it is is afabric that is saturated,
impregnated with a chemical,just a salt, basically that when
in contact with our sealant.
It's optimized for our sealant.
It reacts instantly and createsa permanent plug.

(49:57):
So if you were, if you were totake it I think we have this on
some of our instagram youtubelike take a bare dart and just
swish it around and seal it,you'll just see it like ball up
instantly.
So the idea is, if you getthese larger punctures where
sealant doesn't work on its own,you install the dart in the
hole.
It has a little barbed kind offitting on it.
When you extract it, the fabricwill be sticking up through,

(50:19):
but there'll be some exposed onthe inside.
Roll the wheel around.
Sealant makes contact.
Instant seal permanent plug.
Does it kind?

of glue itself to it.

Mike Bush - Stan's (50:29):
Effectively ?
Yeah, it'll stick to the tirecasing and it forms a little
ball of sealant right on thematerial itself.

My most troublesome and most
tire-ruining flat that I get isa pinch at the bead, though
number one because you know thesealant wants to centrifugally
force it out to the tread, youknow.
So it doesn't get to the beadvery often and you have to kind

(50:58):
of shake it around andnotoriously the tire is kind of
moving around the bead and kindof moving back and forth, kind
of breaking any kind of sealthat you got open over and over
again.
Is this something that may helpthere?
Have you seen any?

Mike Bush - Stan's Presi (51:18):
Really ?
Yeah, you most definitely canuse darts right at the beat.
That was a big thing for us intesting.
We were at very rockyconditions here and pinch flats
do still happen.
Most of us don't use inserts,but it will work right at the
tire beat anywhere in the casing.
You can stack two or three sideby side.
Yeah, really, whatever you canimagine you can do with.
Or three side by side.
Uh, yeah, really, whatever youcan imagine you can do with them
it's uh, it's pretty incredible.

And then, uh casing or uh insert.
You said is it something thatyou have to put in and where an
insert would stop it, or will it?
No, no no problem there at all.
Man, I'm getting some of these.
I know we have them at the shop.
I you know what I've sold themat the shop mostly is to road
bikes, because we heard that ata higher pressure they work

(51:57):
better.
They don't work out like theworms or the bacon strips.

Right , they have that little.
It's a plastic piece.
We assemble all these in NewYork, so they're welded together
.
Plastic welded together and itretains the fabric between the
two pieces.
Yeah, they're welded together.
Plastic welded together and itretains the fabric between the
two pieces.
So the one caveat I'll say iswhere people do find a failure
or have an issue is they try toinstall them in holes that are

(52:22):
too small.
So if it's a one, two, threemillimeter hole, you should
really let sealant do its thing.
Yeah, maybe some people areanxious.
I got to try this dart, do iton an old tire at home.
Use a little knife, make a cutPractice.
If to try this dart, do it onan old tire at home.
Use a little knife, make a cutpractice if you want to.
but yeah, a little bit more yeahbut you try to put them into a
really small hole, you can havea hard time what's the diameter

(52:43):
that you're kind of thinking isoptimum?
Uh, I think the smallest you'dreally want to put in is about
four millimeter okay, all right,that's a good rule of thumb.

So yeah, uh, if it helps with the
beads, I've got like six tiresat home that I can revive, so
yeah they become permanent seal.

So if you put them in and mount
the tire again, put the dart inbut let the sealant make contact
sit for a minute or two, you're, you're good.
Um, you know, during testing wehad people here.
I ran a tire for four monthsmaybe that had 20 or 30 darts in
it.
Wow, it's not going to causeany problems.

Did you shoot it with a shotgun or
something?

You keep putting them in over and
over and over to test it.

Yeah , we have reps that will come by
with a sealant or a product orwhatever and they'll just
puncture it with an awl or asharpened screwdriver or
whatever.
Like it's pretty funny when,when they first started I
remember slime did that a longtime ago, you know so when it
first hit the bike market so youguys are in the land of pokey
things out there.
Yeah, oh god, yeah, everythingout here wants to poke you or

(53:44):
bite you?

yeah, inject you with poison yeah,
mike's probably for the 500thtime you've answered this
question.
Big, big Flats, new York Like.

Jesus .

So you're based in Big Flats, New
York.

Yeah , we definitely planned that one
.
We've avoided it for 20-someyears of doing the April Fool's
thing with it.
It's on the bottle, people seeit, they laugh, they think we
made it up, but no, it's acouple miles.
People see it, they laugh, theythink it's.
Yeah, I think we made it up,but no, it's a couple of miles
from where Stan and Cindy grewup.
It's just where we've been.

That's hilarious.

Mike Bush - Stan's P (54:22):
Originally , our first address, though, as
Stan's, was Horseheads, new York, so we did move down the road
to Big Flats.

That is pretty awesome, though Never
petitioned a town to change thename or anything.
Oh, they should have a standsday or something like I don't
know if they do that, butseriously, like I, I imagine
well, how big is your operation?
How many employees, uh, do youhave?

uh , yeah, I think we're like 36
right now.
Yeah, that's size they'rethey're about.
So we have the facility in inbig flats, new york, which is,
uh, it's actually threebuildings on a single parcel,
two, uh, warehouses.
Yeah, that's sizeable.
Sitting tonight I'm not in it,but, um, the office here is
largely our sales, you know,distributor sales.

(55:17):
Um, engineering is here, so allr&d work and most of the
marketing team is based here.
But state college is aphenomenal riding location.
You guys have never heard of itor been out this way.
Uh, rocky, technical stuff.
If you like rock crawling,we've got it.
If you like super long descents, you're gonna come up a little
short.
We've got some gnarly descents,nice.

(55:37):
And then we've got hundreds andhundreds of miles of gravel
around here.
So transylvania epic takesplace here.
The wilderness 101 uh, thumbbrick gravel races, unpaved
gravels not too far down theroad.
So it's it's a good spot forriding and testing and so on.
And the office we're in now thelocal progressive skills park

(55:58):
is in the backyard, basically.
So we've got that going for usand I'm also vice chair of uh
board of rothrock trail alliance.
We're building currentlybuilding 53 miles, a new trail
here, so we'll have 250 miles orsomething when we're done in
the local forest wow that's uhit's pretty good, so it's fun.

Dane "The Suspe (56:18):
Environmentally conscious yeah, been in the
business forever and you knowadvocate for trails like I.

I am definitely going to start
buying more stands productthere'll be a grand opening next
week for the first eight milesof that project and we'll open
another 11 before winter.
That's awesome congratulations.

That's awesome.
Well, mike, thanks for spendingsome time with us.
It's been great to get to knowyou and hear more about stands.
I've been using the product for20 years.

I have not tried another one
because I have had no need toyeah, yeah, the, uh, the, and
I'm anxious to try the wpl alittle bit more.
Definitely tried the fork boostand the oils, but I haven't
tried any of the other stuff.
And then, man, I'm getting somedarts.
We've got them in the shop.
If I remember correctly, theycome as a two-pack and then you

(57:05):
can buy refills.
Does that sound right?

Yeah , so the refill used to be a
five-pack.
We just changed that to a six,six.
And then the standard, or theoriginal dart tool was just
recently updated from a carbonrod model to a stainless steel
rod model, a little bit moredurable, especially when you're
trying to deal with small holes.
Yeah, um, and if anybody everhas an issue with the carbon one
, we'll swap you out for a steelone, no problem, nice.
And then, um, in that same vein, we uh, last year I should know

(57:32):
this we launched a project withDaySaver tools out of
Switzerland with what we callthe Incredible Dart, so it's a
stashable version for yourhandlebar.
So that's a pretty cool machine.

Oh, they showed us that at Sonoma.

Yeah , I think so.
Yeah, that looks really cool,more machined, and is it in your
bar ends?

Yeah , it fits in your handlebar.
If you're running grips withouta bar end plug, yeah, that'd be
awesome.
Do this little cam mechanismand run it in there.

But yeah, cool, that's what we're
doing over here, for sure, righton.
Well, mike, do you have anyfinal thoughts for our listeners
?

No , I should really have something
very profound, but it's 11.05my time the day after coming
home from Europe.

That's okay, man.

You did really well.
By the way, that's pretty muchhow I feel every day, by the way
.
Thank you so much, sir heythanks.

Very good, Thank you guys Appreciate
it.
Thank you.

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107 - 25 Years of Stan's (NoTubes): President Mike Bush on Innovation & Sustainability

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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;}107 - 25 Years of Stan's (NoTubes): President Mike Bush on Innovation & Sustainability