When he was just 18, Ben Taylor started the Beachman Life account on Instagram, and at the time it was a brand in search of a product. Fast forward to 2025 and that product is now an eBike (and soon to be motorcycle) like you’ve never seen before. On this episode Ben shares the Beachman story, from those very first bikes to the immanent launch of their electric motorcycle.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ben, thanks for joining us on what is not a
holiday but a Monday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yes, yeah, just had a nice long weekend, so happy to
chat.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Beachman is a manufacturer of both e-bikes and
motorcycles, and it may justthat I'm not completely up to
speed.
Is the motorcycle part?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
new, pretty new.
There's a few reasons for that,but yeah, to start off, we
began just making an e-bike.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And when did the motorcycle part happen?
Because I was deep into someReddits and I think at some
point you had mentioned that thework to be licensed to produce
motorcycles is significantlydifferent than the work to be
licensed to produce e-bikes, andso it sounds like that works
complete.
But what was that journey like?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's been an interesting journey for sure.
One of the reasons that we wentwith an e-bike in the beginning
is because this company reallydid start as just two guys in a
garage, and so when we wereinitially working on it, the
very first two bikes that weproduced were motorcycles.
So Steve took a 1979 KawasakiKZ200 and a 1982 Honda CB200 and
(01:08):
converted them into electriccafe racers, and so those bikes
were motorcycles, you know, theyretained the van and the
ownership and everything oftheir original gas existence.
But then, when we went in tostart trying to produce them in
numbers, we decided well, if weput some pedals on these things,
they're e-bikes.
And the entire purpose of ourbrand was to create an
(01:30):
entry-level bike, reviving thekind of moped 50cc Honda Cub
awesome existence that was inthe 1970s and 80s and that whole
category kind of died off.
But we saw the opportunity torevive it using the e-bike
platform.
And the other reason, of course, was the barrier to entry as a
(01:53):
manufacturer to make an e-bikewith little to no regulation,
versus Canada's automotiveregulations, which include
motorcycles and happen to be, asfar as we know, the strictest
in the world, even more thanEurope.
And so now, opening upmotorcycles as a new category.
It's a process that's taken usthree years.
(02:14):
We've spent over $250,000 onthis process and we're just
trying to certify a moped, justa little city bike, so you can
imagine it's even more intenseif you're doing something that
goes on the highway.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Just so people who maybe haven't seen the product
have a picture in their mind,the Beachman bike is a highly
differentiated, I think, e-bikecompared to what anybody who's
listening to this might imagineit looking like.
And you mentioned a cafe racer.
So maybe just describe theproduct for people so they can
(02:49):
kind of get it in their mind,and then we're going to go back,
like to the early days, to thebeginning.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Beachmans are definitely unique.
There's really nothing outthere like them and it is
absolutely a cafe racer, as youjust mentioned.
So what that means is, you know, the easiest thing is, if you
look up cafe racer style andthere are these really cool
vintage bikes that they came toexist in the 1950s and 60s
(03:19):
post-war United Kingdom,specifically in London, where
all these soldiers came backfrom the World War II and they
had this huge surplus of thosereally cool classic green
military motorcycles thateveryone knows from World War II
and basically they just kind ofgave them all to the soldiers.
(03:40):
And so there were all theseyoung guys.
They were hot off the war, theyhad all these cool motorbikes
and of course they would startracing them around the soldiers.
And so there were all theseyoung guys.
They were hot off the war, youknow, they had all these cool
motorbikes and they of coursethey would.
They would start racing themaround the city.
And what a cafe racer is isbasically this culture that
developed in London, where guyswould, they'd race between the
various cafes in London and kindof a circle they do the entire
(04:00):
city, circumnavigated, and atevery cafe you would stop and
grab a napkin with the monogramof the bar on it to prove that
you had visited all thedifferent cafes, and the guy who
came back first won a bunch ofrespect and maybe they would
race for pink slips.
And so when everyone has theexact same motorcycle, the way
(04:20):
that you make it go faster is by, obviously, tuning up the
engine, but when the engines areall identical, the easiest way
is by stripping parts off andmaking the bike lighter.
So cafe racers have this reallycool, stripped down, very simple
aesthetic that doesn't reallyexist elsewhere in the
motorcycle world and usuallyit's a thing that you do to your
(04:41):
motorcycle.
You buy an old, vintage bikeand then you spend like a year,
you know, converting it intoyour dream cafe racer.
And that's what Steve did foryears before we met.
He built these Honda caferacers and our idea was let's
just make a bike that that comesstock looking like this and
this really cool simple look andit instantly gives that vintage
impression and, uh, it'sdefinitely a head turner.
(05:05):
The most common feedback we getfrom our customers is as soon
as they buy the bike and they'reriding around town every day
people are stopping them at redlights and asking them like whoa
, what is that?
What year is that?
Is that actually electric?
Because, yeah, it's a bit ofcognitive dissonance almost
seeing such a beautiful vintagebike with a completely electric
drivetrain.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
You mentioned you know, steve doing this before
you guys met.
How did you guys meet?
What was the context for foryou guys first connecting?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Steve and I met in 2019.
However, beachman life and itwas, you know, cool like
Porsches and surfing and ridingmotorcycles, like 1960s, steve
McQueen kind of stuff, and Ialways knew it would be a brand
one day.
It was kind of just a brandwithout a product and I had an
idea to do a bike and I actuallyinitially had done like some
(06:13):
watches and other kind of littleprojects where I designed some
products under the brand name,but I wasn't really happy with
anything that I brought to thefinish line.
But the bike was always theNorth star.
And so I moved from Vancouver,where I had the idea, to Toronto
and a mutual friend of ours, aguy named Tom he.
He was a barista at the end ofmy street and he basically just
(06:36):
texted me one day and said hey,dude, your neighbor builds
motorcycles in his garage.
His wife's always coming in andgetting coffee.
Here's his email.
Send him a message and, uh, see, if you know, maybe there's
something to this beachman ideathat you keep telling everyone
about.
And so I sent steve an email.
I actually found the email theother day.
(06:56):
It was pretty cool to see allthese years later where I'm like
hey, steve, you don't know me.
I'm your neighbor but I've gotthis, this weird idea for a
little moped cafe racer.
You want to grab a coffee?
So we met at that coffee shopand I had a whole slide deck
prepared and presented to him myvision for Beachman, and I
(07:18):
think we didn't even get throughthe whole deck.
Maybe five minutes in Stevejust goes like all right, I'll
build one.
That sounds cool to me.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, the sense, that sort of slide too.
He was like okay, dude, like I,yeah, exactly I also.
I also need to point out thedelightful full circleness that
you guys built a cafe racer andyou got connected by a barista.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yes, like I don't think anyone's pointed that out
before.
Yeah, that's very true, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There's something quite magical about that.
And then you had your firstmeeting in a cafe.
So, thinking about thisInstagram page, I've seen it,
there's actually.
That's how I reached out to youoriginally.
That's sort of like a nostalgia, analog, fantastic, sort of old
kind of vintage.
Like you say cars, people,boats, life, vacation, vibe how
(08:10):
old were you?
If you don't want me askinglike when you started that and
when you were thinking aboutokay, this is maybe the mood
board for the product that I'mgoing to build, were you an
industrial designer, like, whatwas your background to have?
You start to imagine at thatage, like one day I'm going to
go build a thing, what was sortof how old were you and what
(08:32):
kind of harder soft skills didyou have that would lead you to
building something?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I was relatively young.
I was 18 when I started and soI'm 28 now.
So I'm 10 years into working onBeachman.
And you know it's that classicthing of like people seeing you
know an overnight success andthey don't realize it's you're a
decade in.
You know, it took me a decadeto be an overnight success to a
(09:01):
vocational school calledVancouver Film School.
So it was similar like going toelectrician school, for
instance.
It was a year.
It was a lot of intense work.
It was like 40 to 60 hours aweek of school and kind of
simulating the film industry.
And I went through that program, came out of it with a really
(09:22):
good education in film but alsoa certainty that I was not going
to work in the film industry.
It just was not the lifestylethat for me.
So a lot of my friends went on.
They had great careers in film.
Uh, still see all of them andall these years later it's it's
those, you know, peers of minefrom film school that that do
all the beachman commercials.
You know I'll bring them in andshoot everything with my old
(09:44):
buddies.
So yeah, yeah, but yeah, I was.
I was in film school when I hadthe idea and a lot of it, I will
say, came from my my mom anddad.
They have a real penchant formid-century, modern, you know,
furniture and architecture and,um, they, they moved into this,
uh, this new place in 2013.
It was a 1960s mid-centuryhouse near Toronto on Lake
(10:09):
Simcoe and they decorated thewhole place mid-century, and so
that was kind of like my homeexperience was just being
immersed and I was actually atthat house when I made the
Instagram account and theyreally kind of got me up to my
ears in mid-century and goinglike, okay, what else is out
there?
And started kind of going outon the internet and seeing you
(10:30):
know what else design-wiseexisted in this bygone era, and
I just fell in love with the oldbikes and old Porsches and
stuff like that.
And basically a few monthsafter that I was back in
Vancouver and I don't know how Igot introduced to it, but I
found Alibaba and I found awatch factory that would make a
(10:56):
watch for me, you know, and so Istarted ordering samples and
the initial watch was actually awood watch and it was inspired
by this old wooden Nixon that mydad gave me for my 17th
birthday.
He gave me these two watchesthat were his back in the 70s.
He bought them originally Onewas a Nixon and one was a Fossil
(11:18):
.
They weren't super luxurious oranything, they're just some
cool watches.
But they were both kind ofrectangular and had wood
paneling on them which I hadnever seen anything like that,
and it really spoke to me.
It was the first time I eversaw a watch that I liked and I
remember that set me down thispath of like okay, what else is
out there that I've never seen?
Because I was born too late forthis era of design and I ended
(11:40):
up getting this idea of like I'mgoing to try to bring this back
.
I'll make some cool woodwatches found this factory that
was willing to work with me andstarted, you know, prototyping
and basically from the age oflike 18 to 20, I spent every
spare dollar I had sending itand wire transfers to some
factory in China, like getting Ithink there was like five
(12:01):
generations of prototypes.
I must have spent like 10, 20000 on it and, um, I got them to
a place where I really washappy with them and they started
breaking because they were madeof wood and yeah, like there
was like it was at thiscrossroads where it was like,
(12:23):
okay, I can make someconcessions, I can do a
wood-steel hybrid thing, or Ican just shelf this very
expensive project that I'mworking on with very little
return and focus on my careerand keep the Beachman page going
.
So I kind of opted to do that,because the watches were
(12:43):
beautiful and I had a few storesin the city that were
interested in.
I probably could have made somedecent money selling them, but
I wanted to protect the brandand I never wanted that
Instagram post of someone beinglike look at this watch, it
broke you know, it's theBeachman name is Sully, et
cetera.
So, um, yeah, I just kind ofkept the idea alive in my head
(13:03):
and I got a moped when I livedin Vancouver and that was what
kind of opened my eyes to thebike thing and started the idea
off watch experiment.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I imagine you're actually building up some muscle
memory around working withsuppliers in China understanding
prototyping.
There's maybe not a completestraight line from a watch that
(13:33):
didn't hit the market to a bikethat you've been selling for a
few years now, but there's gotto be some foundational pieces
in there.
Was there one or two lessonsthat you took from your watch
experience that felt like sortof very key to starting up the
bikes?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean Alibaba, just as aconcept, is unbelievable, right
, like people usually associateit with, like AliExpress or like
Timu, you know, like the cheapgoods and stuff, but really what
it is is it's just like arepository or like a Facebook
for all the factories in China.
And the things that I learnedthe most was that a oh my God,
(14:11):
the amount of expertise that Ihave access to just through my
computer was unbelievable.
You know, like that process ofbuilding a watch was iterative
and it was collaborative,because I'm talking to someone
who works every day at thiswatch factory.
They know exactly what they'redoing and they would make
suggestions and they helped mework through this process.
And so I learned to definitelylike trust the expertise of the
(14:34):
people that I was working within China.
And then the other thing Ilearned was that anything's
possible.
You know like if you can dreamsomething up and find the right
people with the right skills,it's not an intimidating process
to get something made.
And so Steve had, I think, donesimilar stuff as well, not so
(14:54):
much custom things, but he'dordered things, just order parts
and build the bikes fromscratch in Toronto.
But the other issue we ran intothis is one you learn quickly
(15:15):
is getting a sample made is easy, but meeting the minimum order
quantities for an actual massproduction run of a new good is
not so simple.
And so when we started settingout to make the bike, so we met
in 2019.
In 2020, steve finished thefirst prototype and it was
beautiful.
I still ride it every day.
(15:35):
We call that bike zero and it'spretty much remained the same.
It has a few upgrades sincethen.
But we had the bike in hand.
We knew the platform, we knewthe dna, and so we went to try
to buy parts uh, overseas, bringthem in and build them.
But you know, when we're onlyhave enough money for like 30
bikes because we didn't haveinvestors.
(15:57):
It was all financed on steve'smortgage, his line of credit, so
proper entrepreneur leap offaith.
But we essentially came torealize that there's no way
anyone is going to sell us 30brake rotors or 30 front forks.
(16:17):
It's just the quantities weretoo small.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Well, and multiplied by every single part on the bike
.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
If you find somebody to sell you 30 of half the parts
, you still have to find someoneto sell you 30 units of all the
other parts, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So it was too much for us to have that as our
initial undertaking.
So eventually we found afactory that agreed to build the
whole bike for us and we bought30.
And we bought 30 without eveneven making a prototype, which
scared the heck out of me.
But steve, you know, being thebrilliant engineer that he is,
he could just look at the just alist of parts on the paper and
(16:55):
see into the matrix and be likethis is a good bike, you know.
And uh, I trusted him and thebikes came and they were great,
and so the first two or threeproduction runs they were fully
built over there to our design.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And how are you?
How are you selling them atthat point?
So you've got 30, do you have30 orders and you know that,
like you're set for your 30, ordo you have no?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So let's go back of it then.
So basically I'm like okay,let's get a prototype.
And then Steve starts talkingto me and he is like one of the
formative moments in our, ourrelationship as business
partners, is he calls me and hegoes.
So I'm just thinking about thisprototype thing.
What if we get like, let's say,we get five and they're not
(17:41):
that great, we could still sellthem on Marketplace and make our
money back because we're payingthe factory price.
Yeah, I guess.
So, yeah, that makes sense.
Five, we could do that.
And then he calls me back like aweek later and he's like all
right, so we're just gettingready to do this order.
We're talking about thatmarketplace thing.
(18:02):
You think if we get 15 andthey're not great, we can still
flip them and you know, at leastrecoup our costs.
And I'm like, oh man, 15 that'sa lot.
But like I guess, like there'ssix million people here.
Like you know, e-bikes werestarting to become popular.
I guess you know we couldprobably do that.
And then I'm like cool, 15,let's do it.
I guess he calls me back thenext day.
(18:24):
He's like so they said that uh30 fit in a shipping crate.
And listen, we see we it's halfas much money on shipping if we
double the order.
And I'm like oh my god, but youknow we hadn't even seen it yet
, so I wasn't collecting orders.
But we get 30.
They come.
We have the shipping cratedelivered to a storage mart in
(18:44):
Etobicoke.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Right, because I was going to be my next question,
like do you have somewhere toput 30 bikes that you've yet to
sell?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, storage mart, man Just got a big storage unit
and we unloaded it by hand.
It didn't have a forklift oranything, so that was an
escapade getting that shippingcrate unloaded, because it was
packed to the ceiling with likefive millimeters of spare room.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And the bikes, I think are like 200 pounds or
something.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, In the shipping crate like well over 300 pounds
, because they came in thesesteel crates.
But yeah, so we unload them, wecrack open one of the bikes,
turn it on, ride around theparking lot and it was great.
It was exactly what we werehoping and that was kind of an
aha moment.
We all got some burgers andthen I took a bunch of photos of
(19:31):
the bikes and I put them up onFacebook Marketplace and I woke
up.
I think that was like a Mondayevening.
Monday evening I put them up.
So the weekend prior we we tookthree of the bikes out and we
did a photo shoot down by theHumber River and then I put them
up on Monday.
I wake up on Tuesday morning tolike two or three hundred
(19:54):
people messaging me onmarketplace if they can buy the
bike and I was like whoa.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
So you're not even selling them on your own website
yet, like you don't have the,this is legit.
Here's the pictures from myphoto shoot, and that alone has
got you almost 10xing the numberof bikes that you have sitting
in your store.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, yeah, to say we had a website would be giving
way too much credit.
We just had a single Facebookpost to giving way too much
credit.
You know, we just had, fairenough, a single facebook post
and I posted on my instagramstory and yeah, like, because we
didn't know, you know.
and then when I put it up and Igot all that interest.
It's not like we sold all thosebikes overnight.
I mean, you know how facebookis like so many of those like hi
(20:36):
is this available?
Kind of messages, but yeah,just to see that much interest
was awesome, and so we basicallywhat we did is I made a little
website, I made an instagram andwe started doing these saturday
test ride days, where I wouldgo to cherry beach on saturday
and it would be a time you'dhave you come and meet us at 2
pm and get like somewherebetween like three and 20 people
(20:59):
depends on like how nice theweekend was and some days,
though, you know, 20, 25 peoplewill be out there and we just
have everyone sign a littlewaiver and then they'd ride the
bike up and down, um, that roadthat goes down to the cabana
pool bar, you know, and they'd,uh, rip around in the sun and if
they enjoyed it, they woulde-transfer us, and then that
(21:23):
night Steve would build theirbike to their spec in his garage
and then the next day I woulddeliver it on Sunday to your
house on the back of my car, andthat was the business.
It was a weekend warrior thingand we still had full-time jobs
for the first.
We had full-time jobs for thefirst year of operating the
business, so it was just afterwork and on weekends.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I have to reflect on the auspicious date that you
mentioned of 2020.
This is not amazing timing forsupply chains and getting people
out in person.
Like how did the pandemicaffect the business?
What was going on there?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, so thankfully, the real thick of it during 2020
was when Steve was stillfinishing the prototype and
doing all his sourcing withfactories overseas in China,
trying to find someone who willmake the bike for us, and also
he did about two years of once.
We found the factory going backand forth like an iterative
design process, but there was alimit to what they would allow
(22:24):
him to do before.
They were like you got to ordersome bikes.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So the ones we got in the beginning were close to
what we wanted, but they werestill a shade away, because we
took like an existing platformbased on this 125 CC old Honda
style platform and changed partby part by part with off the
shelf parts and kind of moved ittoward that vision.
(22:51):
Because that's what a caferacer is right you just use
existing parts and swap thingsout on your bike to get that
look.
So throughout 2020, we're doingthat.
Steve places the order in thefall of 2020.
And the first 30 show up in thespring of 2021.
So 2021 was like you know,things were opening up again and
also at that point in time,lockdown was still enforced on
(23:13):
like restaurants and stuff.
So really the only thing peoplecould do was like go out, and
2021 and 2022 are the biggestyears in history for bicycle
sales.
So in 21, what happened was we,we sold those first 30 bikes
and after I had sold like 10 ofthem, my dad sat me down and he
was like you have a business,you need to keep this going.
(23:36):
Order a hundred bikes right now.
And it was like are you serious?
He's like, yes, you need to dothis.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And so and did that validate something?
Like in the pit of your stomach, were you?
Were you going, like I have abusiness here?
And then your dad sat you downand you were like yes, confirmed
, or, or, or, or.
Was that a wake up call?
Like where were you, uh, sortof mentally and emotionally,
when he was sitting you downlike did you still think it was
maybe, yeah, just a bit of aflyer and we'll sell these 30
(24:04):
bikes?
Like how are you?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I was starting to really drink the kool-aid during
those saturday test rides, youknow, when people would ride
them and they had nothing butpositive feedback and back then
the bike was really cheapbecause we had no overhead, you
know.
So we were.
We priced it really low becauseI specifically wanted regular,
real, everyday people to buythem and who would actually be
(24:27):
riding them all the time,instead of like a bunch of rich
guys that just put them in theirgarage, you know, and it was
definitely the right move,because we learned so much about
the bikes in the beginning andso I was already feeling good.
But he impressed upon us likebusinesses grow, so you get like
I was gonna were going to orderanother 30 bikes and he's like
you need to triple that.
And so I was like, okay, youknow, let's work that out.
(24:51):
So we ordered a hundred morebikes and again on Steve's line
of credit.
But we saw the sales.
We knew that was the rightthing to do.
And then we went out and we didan indiegogo campaign on top of
that to pre-sell more bikes.
So I drove with a beachman onthe back of my car to vancouver
and this was the prototype ofthe 64, the current bike that we
(25:12):
sell.
Up until then we were callingit like the founder's edition
and it was kind of similar, butit didn't have a lot of the
custom parts that we wanted,only the stock parts.
And so I took the steve 3d,printed a bunch of stuff and got
things metal bent and cut atlocal metal shops.
He makes this prototype.
I put on the back of my car, Idrive to vancouver and I shoot a
(25:35):
commercial with my buddies fromfilm school and we put that up
on the internet and we do anIndiegogo campaign and we raised
.
In 30 days we raised likealmost $400,000.
And that was when it was likeokay, it's a business, it's time
to quit our jobs.
So we both quit our jobs Ithink I left my job in October
(25:58):
of 2021.
And we got a retail store.
We had 100 bikes coming in andwe had 100 more pre-orders for
the next generation of bike andwe get to work on the design and
we take out a lease on awarehouse to store all these 200
bikes.
We got this coffee shop whereit's like motorcycles and coffee
.
You know, going back to thatwhole meeting in the cafe thing
(26:20):
and then, as soon as all thathappens, that that boat got
stuck in the Suez canal.
Dude, that ruined my life.
Remember that.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Probably not as well as you remember it, that's for
sure.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And so like you have a.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
You have a bunch of bikes on a boat that is stuck
behind the boat.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
That stuck essentially no, basically what
happened is that event had abutterfly effect on
international shipping,Compounded with 2022, there was
that second wave of the Deltastrain of COVID and it became
really, really hard to getthings shipped anywhere in the
world.
And so we went through thisexperience where the bikes were
(27:06):
built.
You had 105 bikes in a in ashipping crate these were the
ones for indiegogo, and it's thewinter of 2021.
Into 2022, they're finishedproduction.
They're in a shipping crate inthe docks in Shanghai and
they're going to come to us.
And the shipping guys go okay,your bike's going to ship out on
(27:28):
March 22nd.
And then on March 17th, theymessage us and say hey, walmart
bumped your shipping crate offthe boat and it's not going to
ship out until April 3rd.
And then on April 1st, theymessage us and go hey,
unfortunately Ikea paid extraand your shipping crate, it's
(27:50):
going to have to go out on April20th.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
These are the days where people were doubling.
They're just like I need to getproduct and so I'm just going
to sort of pay whatever forshipping and you guys don't have
that.
Yeah Right, about that timeactually, I was in Huntington
Beach and I was down there witha buddy and we were surfing and
I looked out on the horizon andI counted something like 78
boats.
(28:13):
Like it was just like theycouldn't.
Even if they got here.
There was such a backlog, theyjust couldn't get unloaded fast
enough.
The entire horizon was boatstrying to get unloaded.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Exactly because of that delta strain, all of the
ports had lockdowns, so therewas no dock workers.
The ship crews could operatebecause they were all in a COVID
bubble, living on a boat, in aCOVID bubble, living on a boat,
and so the boats were movingacross the ocean, but the
harbors in China and in LA andin Vancouver were just
completely shut down.
(28:46):
So, and then this was also thattime, remember Canadian tire
bought their own fleet of shipsjust so that they could
guarantee that they were goingto get stuff across the air.
It was a really difficult timeand us being the smallest fish
in the pond, we just got bumpedand bumped and we were bumped
two weeks at a time for eightmonths.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Eight months of no inventory of any kind.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
And eight months of reaching out to those people on
the Indiegogo campaign wholikely had empathy for a period
of time, like, oh, I get it,you're not just making excuses.
I see this in the news, butsome point, maybe around month
six, especially if they'reCanadian and the weather's
changing and now it's.
I've missed the whole summer.
That's eight months of tryingto keep that group of people
happy who are going to be yourbig tranche of word of mouth,
(29:38):
folks who are driving your bikesaround right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
And so not only is that happening, but that's eight
months of we just quit our jobsand are paying ourselves salary
out of this money fromIndiegogo.
We have the rent on the retailstore and the rent on our
warehouse and basically in thoseeight months we spent all the
money, like there.
The thing was that sounds likea really naive thing to do, but
(30:02):
it's not like.
We knew in March that it wasgoing to be eight months.
It was eight months of beingdelayed, like three to 12 days
at a time.
Over and over and over dozensof times this happened.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
In a world, frankly, ben, where we became so
accustomed and reliant toessentially kind of just-in-time
delivery that major retailersgot rid of their warehousing
because they would just havestuff come off a boat and go on
the store on the shelf.
So as a new business, you'restarting up into a world that's
(30:36):
got the infrastructure that youdon't have to make plans for
eight months delays.
That's just extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Exactly, and it was a system that was incapable of
predicting these delays.
Because of that and so if wehad known it was going to be
eight months we thought maybeit'll be two or three and we'll
weather the storm we would havejust went back and just got
full-time jobs and just waitedit out, got rid of the coffee
shop, all that, but there was noability to not do it.
(31:04):
So essentially, you know, wewaited and we waited, and also
in that period of time, britishColumbia outlawed our bike as an
e-bike.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
And why is that?
Like design, weight, speed,what?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
was that the actual technical reason is that in
British Columbia, e-bikes can'thave throttles, they have to be
pedal assist.
Although that's kind of just ascapegoat for outlawing the big
motorbike and Vespa scooterlooking e-bikes, it's really
what they use it to enforceagainst, and I think it makes
(31:40):
sense.
I mean, the two places thatoutlawed our e-bike were Quebec
and British Columbia, and it wasfor the same reason, which is
they have fantastic bicycleinfrastructure and a bike of our
size interrupting that reallydeveloped and crowded bike
infrastructure was reallydisruptive for cyclists, and so
they wanted it to be a moped,they wanted to go on the road,
and that was what set us downthat path of okay, we have to do
(32:03):
certification now.
What we didn't know is it wasgoing to take us three years,
and so there was this kind ofbittersweet thing that happened
where there were 28 customersfrom our Indiegogo in British
Columbia and I had to email themand say guys, I legally can't
send you your bikes.
Are you willing to wait for usto certify it?
It'll go faster, it'll be areal motorbike.
(32:25):
In BC, mopeds only require adriver's license too, so it was
a pretty low barrier of entryand everyone agreed.
I think one person asked for arefund and everyone else was
fine and basically those peoplesaved our company because we
came to the end of this year.
The bikes arrive in likeNovember, so I'm delivering them
to people's houses like,literally, neil, like in
(32:47):
snowstorms.
Here's your motorbike.
Enjoy it next year, deliveringthem to people's houses like,
literally, neil, like insnowstorms.
Yeah, yeah, here's yourmotorbike.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Enjoy it next year.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
But the ones in BC.
Basically, what happened isthere was 28 bikes that we
couldn't send and so we got tosell them twice because it was
28 more inventory and thatliterally saved the company from
going bankrupt.
And so we got those out toOntario customers and we did
everything we could to get thebike certified for British
Columbia and, believe it or not,so this was 2022 that that
(33:18):
happened this month it was April, I think 11th of 2025, we
finally submitted ourapplication to Transport Canada.
It took us three years to getit done.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And those 20 something customers.
They're still patiently waiting.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
They're still waiting .
I mean, it's been so many years.
They've made the money back.
It's no longer about the money,but essentially now what we're
doing is and the funny thing wasto show our dedication to these
customers we could have sold amoped slash motorcycle version
of our bike in the United Statesfor like two and a half years
now.
That's how much easier it is toget certified in the States.
(33:58):
It's kind of a joke incomparison and we didn't on
purpose, because we knew howheartbreaking it would be for
these people to see us justsending bikes.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
For these guys to see somebody else posting down in
Arizona that they're on theirnew yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
So we wanted to hold true to those people and to this
day still everyone's waitingand I mean I can't express my
gratitude to them enough.
They're all literally a part ofthe reason my company still
exists.
But oh my god, I can't wait,neil, to this summer to get
those bikes out to BC.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We're definitely going to fly out and do a ride
with everyone there and justkind of, you know the number of
different parts of your brainthat needed to be fired up over
the course of time that you'vejust described to me you're
talking about.
You're talking aboutmanufacturing.
You're talking about design.
You're talking about import.
You're talking about you knowyou're talking about
manufacturing.
You're talking about design.
(34:52):
You're talking about import.
You're talking about logistics,um, you know.
You're talking about like, oh,now also, we're going to, like,
run a cafe.
So you're actually running twobusinesses.
You know you've quit your job,so there's a, there's a finance
component to it.
Like, did you anticipate thatit would be as multidimensional
as it is?
And and what of those maybewere the biggest surprises to
you?
Where you're like oh geez,there's a whole other skill set
here.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
I had no idea, man.
Oh my God, If I could go backin time and describe to my
18-year-old self the things I'mgoing to be putting myself
through, I don't know if I woulddo it, man, but no, I
definitely would.
That's what you need is thatkind of crazy will to just keep
going.
But it's funny the other day Iwas reflecting on that this year
(35:38):
has been crazy with the tariffsand everything.
And I came home from work and Iwas just sitting there alone in
my apartment just worryingabout tariffs from Donaldald
trump and the you know traderegulations and everything, and
I was just like, oh my god, I inthis moment envy my normal
friends that just go home fromwork and that's it.
(36:00):
The work day is over and theyjust watch severance or
something you know, and thelevel of connection that you
have like your business is yourlife.
You know there's no dividingline at all.
Like I'm about to leave on atwo week vacation and I know
that the second week I'm goingto be in Greece on my laptop
taking meetings and um.
(36:20):
But yeah, I think the stuff thatsurprised me the most was
definitely like the regulatoryand financial groundwork I've
done Like I went to film school.
You know I have no businesseducation of any kind.
But in 2023, we finally raisedequity.
You know, up until then all ofit was on Steve's line of credit
and profits.
And, um, we saw the writing onthe wall that we had to expand
(36:44):
pretty massively to make anactual factory here when we were
going to switch over tobuilding the bikes here.
We're going to need to hire newstaff, we're going to need a
facility of our own, we're goingto sign a huge lease.
So I went out and I raised amillion dollars and I did it
privately with and how did youdo that?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
raise like friends and family, institutional
investing like yeah, so it's allangels.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So, um, it's, you know it's kind of a weird, like
it doesn't follow any.
You know, the normal like seed,pre-seed maybe, like any of
that.
Basically we were, we werealready three years in and our
seed whatever was just our ownmoney initially, really just
steve's money.
I, you know, I was whateverlike 21 or something, when we
(37:27):
started and had nothing to bringto the table financially.
At least, I brought a lot ofeight-dollar power.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I was going to say, yeah, I think you might be
underselling yourself a littlebit there, but fair enough.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
But anyway.
So essentially that raise was.
I sent an email out to ourcustomer base saying we're
raising money and a bunch ofpeople emailed me back and we
got the money.
So the vast majority of myinvestors are customers or they
were fans of Beachman, followedit on Instagram and they're all,
pretty much with the exceptionof one guy, they're all former
(38:03):
entrepreneurs who successfullybuilt a business and exited, and
so for us that's the ultimatevote of confidence as someone
who's done the thing already andthey recognize themselves a bit
in what they see us doing andthey know that it's a real
business that we're building.
And they came in with theirpersonal money.
And, yeah, it was a decentlyquick process, I think from the
(38:26):
first email to closing the raiseit was like six months and
initially we were raising 2million and then we kind of sat
down and realized we couldprobably do it on one and just
scrape by, give up less equity,make sure that we stay hungry
and efficient.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
I was going to say give up less equity, have fewer
people to kind of answer to.
Exactly, exactly, whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
But for me, learning all the financial compliance
stuff and sophisticating ouroperation to be able to produce
the financial documents andfinancial due diligence that's
required for investors.
And then the other thing thatwas a really big challenge on my
side was international business, so incorporating a US entity
and creating cross-bordertransaction policies and doing
(39:14):
tax policy in all the differentvarious US states and
territories, and there's just somuch that comes from it that,
my God, it would be useful if Ihad an've.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
You know your NBA would have been a bunch of
hypotheticals.
You're, you've gotten.
You know you've gotten a PhD inrunning your business.
You just did it by being in theoperating room Like it's a and
you've kept the patient alive.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
If I want to continue the analogy.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
So international sales that's one of the things I
was thinking of is, you know Iwas looking at the at the
product and I was.
I was thinking about.
You know I was looking at theproduct and I was thinking about
.
You know, years ago I was inBali and you know everybody's
driving dirt bikes there andthere's lots of places in the
world where this mode oftransport is maybe a little bit
more commonplace Outside of theUS.
Where else do you sell?
(40:02):
Are you thinking about selling?
Is it just kind of like toomuch to contemplate right now,
because you've got lots of ironsin the fire, like what does the
international stuff look like,including the US?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
First of all you nailed it.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
The next international market we're
bringing online is actually Bali.
I like to try to nail it atleast once in each episode, so I
appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
That's it, you got it , man.
So there's a really coolbusiness out there called mala
madre motorcycles which, uh,your listeners can look up, and
it's run by this guy, dirk.
He's a really cool dude and, um, they make gas cafe racers that
you can buy or you can rent asa tourist there, and it's a very
successful business.
They have three locationsacross the island and and he saw
(40:47):
this Instagram ad that we ranand reached out to me and he's
going to open up, you know,distributorship for all of
Indonesia for us, starting offin Bali and then moving
throughout the country.
And aside from him, we arecurrently active as of like
three weeks ago.
Costa Rica has come online, soone of the investors that came
on during that raise theconditions of his investment was
(41:09):
he gets distribution rights,for Costa Rica has come online,
so one of the investors thatcame on during that raise the
conditions of his investment washe gets distribution rights for
Costa Rica, and so he's a guywho had a successful business
here in Ontario and basicallyretired to live down there, and
this is kind of his next thingis just running Beachman Costa
and he's loving it.
And then, obviously, the UnitedStates is huge.
Last year it was 15% of thesales.
(41:29):
We anticipate it's going to be60 or more this year.
And once we sort out the U?
S this year, next summer, thenext big step and really the
final big step for the businessum, at least in terms of our
plans, before we might go tosell it is to open up Europe.
So in 2026, we're going tostart in France and it's a
(41:53):
similar situation to Costa Rica.
One of our investors, who'salso a board member, this guy,
matthew.
He came on and is going to betaking over our European
operations, so basing theoperations out of the Brittany
area of France and doingdistribution from there for the
entire European Union.
So we've already got all thepatents and trademarks and
(42:15):
everything ready to go.
But the last step is doing thehomologation process, which is
that motorcycle safety andtransport standards
certification for the EuropeanUnion.
So once we have our Canadianapproval, we go for that in
Europe and then, as soon as wehave it, we start sending bikes
to France.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
It's amazing.
I was also thinking when youmentioned that you had early
customers, entrepreneurs beingthose investors.
One thing that came to mind wasthat I imagine that opens up
some really interesting kind ofadvisor opportunities.
I hadn't imagined that alsomaybe opened up some licensing
opportunities, but it must be awonderful feeling that it is
(42:56):
this community that ispassionate about the brand and
passionate about the productthat is helping to fuel that
growth.
I think so often you get it'ssort of like extractive capital
a little bit right.
It's like someone investsbecause they just kind of want
to squeeze two pennies out forevery penny they put in, versus
someone who is really passionateabout what the vision is and
(43:18):
wanting to partner to help bringthat vision to life.
That must feel nice to havethat as part of the accelerant
of the business.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah, no, it's amazing, neil, like throughout
this story, the kind of missingno, it's amazing, neil,
throughout this story, themissing business partner
honestly is our customers.
We grew this thing completelyby word of mouth.
It was Facebook, marketplaceand Instagram, and we didn't run
ads.
Even to this day, we sell abeach one every day and I think
(43:47):
we sold five bikes today.
My ad budget right now is $100a month and it's just word of
mouth, it's reputation and it'sour, it's our customers being
our biggest advocates, and so,you know, I am like infinitely
grateful to the people who'vewho've come to you know, love
the bikes and and make them apart of their lives, because
(44:10):
without that really tight knitcommunity and you know, like,
for instance, we we don't, um,we don't have a Facebook page,
but we have a subreddit and it'ssuper active and it's full of,
like awesome fans that arehelping each other customize the
bikes, and for a communitythat's kind of split up,
especially in the US where youknow, we have, like, one guy in
Kentucky, two guys in Ohio, likethat kind of thing, as we're
(44:33):
growing there, it's cool thateveryone's able to connect
online and give each other, youknow, tips and tell stories and
stuff like that and continue togrow it.
But yeah, it's, it's, it'sreally an amazing group of
people and I think it's becausewe have such a strong emotive
brand.
When you look at the motorcyclespace, but especially the e-bike
space I mean talking about thee-bike space in particular I
(44:56):
don't think there are any brands.
There's logos and there'sproducts, but there's really no
lifestyle brand of any sort,aside from Beachman that I've
come across and that aspect,which is what I've been working
on for 10 years.
I think it's paid a lot ofdividends to us because it does
work for us when we're not inthe room and you know, we have
(45:17):
everything from spotifyplaylists like we like a
thousand hours of beachmanspotify playlists that the
thousands of followers and waysthat we've incorporated the
brand outside of just the bikesthemselves into the lives of our
community that I think itreally allows it to flourish on
its own.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
I always try to figure out what is a right point
to wrap up on.
I think you just nailed theclose.
That's a phenomenal point toend off on.
Is that customers in thecommunity?
This has been a fascinatingconversation.
I really appreciate all you'veshared.
Honestly, I feel like thiscould be, you know, part one of
(45:57):
a three-part segment, so at somepoint I may be calling you back
for part two to figure out howthe European and Indonesian and
US expansion is gone.
But this has been just afantastic conversation.
I appreciate you taking thetime.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, yeah, my pleasure, man.
And um, uh yeah, if we talkagain, I think we got to get
Steve in here, cause you know,for all of my side of the
business, there's an entireother world of all this
engineering and problem solving.
That he's done, and and we havea new bike coming out this year
, which is Steve's finally hadthe resources from the success
of the brand to design his ownbike from scratch from the
(46:29):
ground up, and it is beautifuland, uh, we're so excited for
that thing to release thissummer.
So it would be great to um, gethis side of things and and it's
a whole other world of problemsolving and innovation going on
there.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So, I feel like we've got a part two teed up for the
fall, so let people know wherethey can find this instagram.
You've talked about the website.
Where can people go find thebikes?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
On Instagram.
We are just at Beachman, whichshout out to my friend Jordan,
who somehow got me the actualhandle of my brand, and you can
also find us on YouTube underBeachman.
We also have a YouTube channelcalled Beachman Garage, which is
like long form, like 30 minutevideos of all the not only the
(47:14):
process of like building thebikes, but we also do an entire
other arm of our business, whichis converting cars and
motorcycles from gas to electric, on old, vintage cars and
trucks and stuff like that andand um.
So we also have a YouTubechannel tracking that called
Beachman garage, and our websiteis uh beachmanca if you're
(47:35):
Canadian, uh beachmanbikescomfor the U S.
So amazing.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Thanks again, Ben.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Awesome.
Thanks, Neil.
I'm really glad we did this.
Man have a great week.
Ben, thanks for joining us on what is not a
holiday but a Monday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yes, yeah, just had a nice long weekend, so happy to
chat.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Beachman is a manufacturer of both e-bikes and
motorcycles, and it may justthat I'm not completely up to
speed.
Is the motorcycle part?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
new, pretty new.
There's a few reasons for that,but yeah, to start off, we
began just making an e-bike.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And when did the motorcycle part happen?
Because I was deep into someReddits and I think at some
point you had mentioned that thework to be licensed to produce
motorcycles is significantlydifferent than the work to be
licensed to produce e-bikes, andso it sounds like that works
complete.
But what was that journey like?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's been an interesting journey for sure.
One of the reasons that we wentwith an e-bike in the beginning
is because this company reallydid start as just two guys in a
garage, and so when we wereinitially working on it, the
very first two bikes that weproduced were motorcycles.
So Steve took a 1979 KawasakiKZ200 and a 1982 Honda CB200 and
(01:08):
converted them into electriccafe racers, and so those bikes
were motorcycles, you know, theyretained the van and the
ownership and everything oftheir original gas existence.
But then, when we went in tostart trying to produce them in
numbers, we decided well, if weput some pedals on these things,
they're e-bikes.
And the entire purpose of ourbrand was to create an
(01:30):
entry-level bike, reviving thekind of moped 50cc Honda Cub
awesome existence that was inthe 1970s and 80s and that whole
category kind of died off.
But we saw the opportunity torevive it using the e-bike
platform.
And the other reason, of course, was the barrier to entry as a
(01:53):
manufacturer to make an e-bikewith little to no regulation,
versus Canada's automotiveregulations, which include
motorcycles and happen to be, asfar as we know, the strictest
in the world, even more thanEurope.
And so now, opening upmotorcycles as a new category.
It's a process that's taken usthree years.
(02:14):
We've spent over $250,000 onthis process and we're just
trying to certify a moped, justa little city bike, so you can
imagine it's even more intenseif you're doing something that
goes on the highway.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Just so people who maybe haven't seen the product
have a picture in their mind,the Beachman bike is a highly
differentiated, I think, e-bikecompared to what anybody who's
listening to this might imagineit looking like.
And you mentioned a cafe racer.
So maybe just describe theproduct for people so they can
(02:49):
kind of get it in their mind,and then we're going to go back,
like to the early days, to thebeginning.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Beachmans are definitely unique.
There's really nothing outthere like them and it is
absolutely a cafe racer, as youjust mentioned.
So what that means is, you know, the easiest thing is, if you
look up cafe racer style andthere are these really cool
vintage bikes that they came toexist in the 1950s and 60s
(03:19):
post-war United Kingdom,specifically in London, where
all these soldiers came backfrom the World War II and they
had this huge surplus of thosereally cool classic green
military motorcycles thateveryone knows from World War II
and basically they just kind ofgave them all to the soldiers.
(03:40):
And so there were all theseyoung guys.
They were hot off the war, theyhad all these cool motorbikes
and of course they would startracing them around the soldiers.
And so there were all theseyoung guys.
They were hot off the war, youknow, they had all these cool
motorbikes and they of coursethey would.
They would start racing themaround the city.
And what a cafe racer is isbasically this culture that
developed in London, where guyswould, they'd race between the
various cafes in London and kindof a circle they do the entire
(04:00):
city, circumnavigated, and atevery cafe you would stop and
grab a napkin with the monogramof the bar on it to prove that
you had visited all thedifferent cafes, and the guy who
came back first won a bunch ofrespect and maybe they would
race for pink slips.
And so when everyone has theexact same motorcycle, the way
(04:20):
that you make it go faster is by, obviously, tuning up the
engine, but when the engines areall identical, the easiest way
is by stripping parts off andmaking the bike lighter.
So cafe racers have this reallycool, stripped down, very simple
aesthetic that doesn't reallyexist elsewhere in the
motorcycle world and usuallyit's a thing that you do to your
(04:41):
motorcycle.
You buy an old, vintage bikeand then you spend like a year,
you know, converting it intoyour dream cafe racer.
And that's what Steve did foryears before we met.
He built these Honda caferacers and our idea was let's
just make a bike that that comesstock looking like this and
this really cool simple look andit instantly gives that vintage
impression and, uh, it'sdefinitely a head turner.
(05:05):
The most common feedback we getfrom our customers is as soon
as they buy the bike and they'reriding around town every day
people are stopping them at redlights and asking them like whoa
, what is that?
What year is that?
Is that actually electric?
Because, yeah, it's a bit ofcognitive dissonance almost
seeing such a beautiful vintagebike with a completely electric
drivetrain.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
You mentioned you know, steve doing this before
you guys met.
How did you guys meet?
What was the context for foryou guys first connecting?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Steve and I met in 2019.
However, beachman life and itwas, you know, cool like
Porsches and surfing and ridingmotorcycles, like 1960s, steve
McQueen kind of stuff, and Ialways knew it would be a brand
one day.
It was kind of just a brandwithout a product and I had an
idea to do a bike and I actuallyinitially had done like some
(06:13):
watches and other kind of littleprojects where I designed some
products under the brand name,but I wasn't really happy with
anything that I brought to thefinish line.
But the bike was always theNorth star.
And so I moved from Vancouver,where I had the idea, to Toronto
and a mutual friend of ours, aguy named Tom he.
He was a barista at the end ofmy street and he basically just
(06:36):
texted me one day and said hey,dude, your neighbor builds
motorcycles in his garage.
His wife's always coming in andgetting coffee.
Here's his email.
Send him a message and, uh, see, if you know, maybe there's
something to this beachman ideathat you keep telling everyone
about.
And so I sent steve an email.
I actually found the email theother day.
(06:56):
It was pretty cool to see allthese years later where I'm like
hey, steve, you don't know me.
I'm your neighbor but I've gotthis, this weird idea for a
little moped cafe racer.
You want to grab a coffee?
So we met at that coffee shopand I had a whole slide deck
prepared and presented to him myvision for Beachman, and I
(07:18):
think we didn't even get throughthe whole deck.
Maybe five minutes in Stevejust goes like all right, I'll
build one.
That sounds cool to me.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah, the sense, that sort of slide too.
He was like okay, dude, like I,yeah, exactly I also.
I also need to point out thedelightful full circleness that
you guys built a cafe racer andyou got connected by a barista.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yes, like I don't think anyone's pointed that out
before.
Yeah, that's very true, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There's something quite magical about that.
And then you had your firstmeeting in a cafe.
So, thinking about thisInstagram page, I've seen it,
there's actually.
That's how I reached out to youoriginally.
That's sort of like a nostalgia, analog, fantastic, sort of old
kind of vintage.
Like you say cars, people,boats, life, vacation, vibe how
(08:10):
old were you?
If you don't want me askinglike when you started that and
when you were thinking aboutokay, this is maybe the mood
board for the product that I'mgoing to build, were you an
industrial designer, like, whatwas your background to have?
You start to imagine at thatage, like one day I'm going to
go build a thing, what was sortof how old were you and what
(08:32):
kind of harder soft skills didyou have that would lead you to
building something?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I was relatively young.
I was 18 when I started and soI'm 28 now.
So I'm 10 years into working onBeachman.
And you know it's that classicthing of like people seeing you
know an overnight success andthey don't realize it's you're a
decade in.
You know, it took me a decadeto be an overnight success to a
(09:01):
vocational school calledVancouver Film School.
So it was similar like going toelectrician school, for
instance.
It was a year.
It was a lot of intense work.
It was like 40 to 60 hours aweek of school and kind of
simulating the film industry.
And I went through that program, came out of it with a really
(09:22):
good education in film but alsoa certainty that I was not going
to work in the film industry.
It just was not the lifestylethat for me.
So a lot of my friends went on.
They had great careers in film.
Uh, still see all of them andall these years later it's it's
those, you know, peers of minefrom film school that that do
all the beachman commercials.
You know I'll bring them in andshoot everything with my old
(09:44):
buddies.
So yeah, yeah, but yeah, I was.
I was in film school when I hadthe idea and a lot of it, I will
say, came from my my mom anddad.
They have a real penchant formid-century, modern, you know,
furniture and architecture and,um, they, they moved into this,
uh, this new place in 2013.
It was a 1960s mid-centuryhouse near Toronto on Lake
(10:09):
Simcoe and they decorated thewhole place mid-century, and so
that was kind of like my homeexperience was just being
immersed and I was actually atthat house when I made the
Instagram account and theyreally kind of got me up to my
ears in mid-century and goinglike, okay, what else is out
there?
And started kind of going outon the internet and seeing you
(10:30):
know what else design-wiseexisted in this bygone era, and
I just fell in love with the oldbikes and old Porsches and
stuff like that.
And basically a few monthsafter that I was back in
Vancouver and I don't know how Igot introduced to it, but I
found Alibaba and I found awatch factory that would make a
(10:56):
watch for me, you know, and so Istarted ordering samples and
the initial watch was actually awood watch and it was inspired
by this old wooden Nixon that mydad gave me for my 17th
birthday.
He gave me these two watchesthat were his back in the 70s.
He bought them originally Onewas a Nixon and one was a Fossil
(11:18):
.
They weren't super luxurious oranything, they're just some
cool watches.
But they were both kind ofrectangular and had wood
paneling on them which I hadnever seen anything like that,
and it really spoke to me.
It was the first time I eversaw a watch that I liked and I
remember that set me down thispath of like okay, what else is
out there that I've never seen?
Because I was born too late forthis era of design and I ended
(11:40):
up getting this idea of like I'mgoing to try to bring this back
.
I'll make some cool woodwatches found this factory that
was willing to work with me andstarted, you know, prototyping
and basically from the age oflike 18 to 20, I spent every
spare dollar I had sending itand wire transfers to some
factory in China, like getting Ithink there was like five
(12:01):
generations of prototypes.
I must have spent like 10, 20000 on it and, um, I got them to
a place where I really washappy with them and they started
breaking because they were madeof wood and yeah, like there
was like it was at thiscrossroads where it was like,
(12:23):
okay, I can make someconcessions, I can do a
wood-steel hybrid thing, or Ican just shelf this very
expensive project that I'mworking on with very little
return and focus on my careerand keep the Beachman page going
.
So I kind of opted to do that,because the watches were
(12:43):
beautiful and I had a few storesin the city that were
interested in.
I probably could have made somedecent money selling them, but
I wanted to protect the brandand I never wanted that
Instagram post of someone beinglike look at this watch, it
broke you know, it's theBeachman name is Sully, et
cetera.
So, um, yeah, I just kind ofkept the idea alive in my head
(13:03):
and I got a moped when I livedin Vancouver and that was what
kind of opened my eyes to thebike thing and started the idea
off watch experiment.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I imagine you're actually building up some muscle
memory around working withsuppliers in China understanding
prototyping.
There's maybe not a completestraight line from a watch that
(13:33):
didn't hit the market to a bikethat you've been selling for a
few years now, but there's gotto be some foundational pieces
in there.
Was there one or two lessonsthat you took from your watch
experience that felt like sortof very key to starting up the
bikes?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean Alibaba, just as aconcept, is unbelievable, right
, like people usually associateit with, like AliExpress or like
Timu, you know, like the cheapgoods and stuff, but really what
it is is it's just like arepository or like a Facebook
for all the factories in China.
And the things that I learnedthe most was that a oh my God,
(14:11):
the amount of expertise that Ihave access to just through my
computer was unbelievable.
You know, like that process ofbuilding a watch was iterative
and it was collaborative,because I'm talking to someone
who works every day at thiswatch factory.
They know exactly what they'redoing and they would make
suggestions and they helped mework through this process.
And so I learned to definitelylike trust the expertise of the
(14:34):
people that I was working within China.
And then the other thing Ilearned was that anything's
possible.
You know like if you can dreamsomething up and find the right
people with the right skills,it's not an intimidating process
to get something made.
And so Steve had, I think, donesimilar stuff as well, not so
(14:54):
much custom things, but he'dordered things, just order parts
and build the bikes fromscratch in Toronto.
But the other issue we ran intothis is one you learn quickly
(15:15):
is getting a sample made is easy, but meeting the minimum order
quantities for an actual massproduction run of a new good is
not so simple.
And so when we started settingout to make the bike, so we met
in 2019.
In 2020, steve finished thefirst prototype and it was
beautiful.
I still ride it every day.
(15:35):
We call that bike zero and it'spretty much remained the same.
It has a few upgrades sincethen.
But we had the bike in hand.
We knew the platform, we knewthe dna, and so we went to try
to buy parts uh, overseas, bringthem in and build them.
But you know, when we're onlyhave enough money for like 30
bikes because we didn't haveinvestors.
(15:57):
It was all financed on steve'smortgage, his line of credit, so
proper entrepreneur leap offaith.
But we essentially came torealize that there's no way
anyone is going to sell us 30brake rotors or 30 front forks.
(16:17):
It's just the quantities weretoo small.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Well, and multiplied by every single part on the bike
.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
If you find somebody to sell you 30 of half the parts
, you still have to find someoneto sell you 30 units of all the
other parts, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So it was too much for us to have that as our
initial undertaking.
So eventually we found afactory that agreed to build the
whole bike for us and we bought30.
And we bought 30 without eveneven making a prototype, which
scared the heck out of me.
But steve, you know, being thebrilliant engineer that he is,
he could just look at the just alist of parts on the paper and
(16:55):
see into the matrix and be likethis is a good bike, you know.
And uh, I trusted him and thebikes came and they were great,
and so the first two or threeproduction runs they were fully
built over there to our design.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And how are you?
How are you selling them atthat point?
So you've got 30, do you have30 orders and you know that,
like you're set for your 30, ordo you have no?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
So let's go back of it then.
So basically I'm like okay,let's get a prototype.
And then Steve starts talkingto me and he is like one of the
formative moments in our, ourrelationship as business
partners, is he calls me and hegoes.
So I'm just thinking about thisprototype thing.
What if we get like, let's say,we get five and they're not
(17:41):
that great, we could still sellthem on Marketplace and make our
money back because we're payingthe factory price.
Yeah, I guess.
So, yeah, that makes sense.
Five, we could do that.
And then he calls me back like aweek later and he's like all
right, so we're just gettingready to do this order.
We're talking about thatmarketplace thing.
(18:02):
You think if we get 15 andthey're not great, we can still
flip them and you know, at leastrecoup our costs.
And I'm like, oh man, 15 that'sa lot.
But like I guess, like there'ssix million people here.
Like you know, e-bikes werestarting to become popular.
I guess you know we couldprobably do that.
And then I'm like cool, 15,let's do it.
I guess he calls me back thenext day.
(18:24):
He's like so they said that uh30 fit in a shipping crate.
And listen, we see we it's halfas much money on shipping if we
double the order.
And I'm like oh my god, but youknow we hadn't even seen it yet
, so I wasn't collecting orders.
But we get 30.
They come.
We have the shipping cratedelivered to a storage mart in
(18:44):
Etobicoke.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Right, because I was going to be my next question,
like do you have somewhere toput 30 bikes that you've yet to
sell?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, storage mart, man Just got a big storage unit
and we unloaded it by hand.
It didn't have a forklift oranything, so that was an
escapade getting that shippingcrate unloaded, because it was
packed to the ceiling with likefive millimeters of spare room.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And the bikes, I think are like 200 pounds or
something.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, In the shipping crate like well over 300 pounds
, because they came in thesesteel crates.
But yeah, so we unload them, wecrack open one of the bikes,
turn it on, ride around theparking lot and it was great.
It was exactly what we werehoping and that was kind of an
aha moment.
We all got some burgers andthen I took a bunch of photos of
(19:31):
the bikes and I put them up onFacebook Marketplace and I woke
up.
I think that was like a Mondayevening.
Monday evening I put them up.
So the weekend prior we we tookthree of the bikes out and we
did a photo shoot down by theHumber River and then I put them
up on Monday.
I wake up on Tuesday morning tolike two or three hundred
(19:54):
people messaging me onmarketplace if they can buy the
bike and I was like whoa.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
So you're not even selling them on your own website
yet, like you don't have the,this is legit.
Here's the pictures from myphoto shoot, and that alone has
got you almost 10xing the numberof bikes that you have sitting
in your store.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, yeah, to say we had a website would be giving
way too much credit.
We just had a single Facebookpost to giving way too much
credit.
You know, we just had, fairenough, a single facebook post
and I posted on my instagramstory and yeah, like, because we
didn't know, you know.
and then when I put it up and Igot all that interest.
It's not like we sold all thosebikes overnight.
I mean, you know how facebookis like so many of those like hi
(20:36):
is this available?
Kind of messages, but yeah,just to see that much interest
was awesome, and so we basicallywhat we did is I made a little
website, I made an instagram andwe started doing these saturday
test ride days, where I wouldgo to cherry beach on saturday
and it would be a time you'dhave you come and meet us at 2
pm and get like somewherebetween like three and 20 people
(20:59):
depends on like how nice theweekend was and some days,
though, you know, 20, 25 peoplewill be out there and we just
have everyone sign a littlewaiver and then they'd ride the
bike up and down, um, that roadthat goes down to the cabana
pool bar, you know, and they'd,uh, rip around in the sun and if
they enjoyed it, they woulde-transfer us, and then that
(21:23):
night Steve would build theirbike to their spec in his garage
and then the next day I woulddeliver it on Sunday to your
house on the back of my car, andthat was the business.
It was a weekend warrior thingand we still had full-time jobs
for the first.
We had full-time jobs for thefirst year of operating the
business, so it was just afterwork and on weekends.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I have to reflect on the auspicious date that you
mentioned of 2020.
This is not amazing timing forsupply chains and getting people
out in person.
Like how did the pandemicaffect the business?
What was going on there?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, so thankfully, the real thick of it during 2020
was when Steve was stillfinishing the prototype and
doing all his sourcing withfactories overseas in China,
trying to find someone who willmake the bike for us, and also
he did about two years of once.
We found the factory going backand forth like an iterative
design process, but there was alimit to what they would allow
(22:24):
him to do before.
They were like you got to ordersome bikes.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So the ones we got in the beginning were close to
what we wanted, but they werestill a shade away, because we
took like an existing platformbased on this 125 CC old Honda
style platform and changed partby part by part with off the
shelf parts and kind of moved ittoward that vision.
(22:51):
Because that's what a caferacer is right you just use
existing parts and swap thingsout on your bike to get that
look.
So throughout 2020, we're doingthat.
Steve places the order in thefall of 2020.
And the first 30 show up in thespring of 2021.
So 2021 was like you know,things were opening up again and
also at that point in time,lockdown was still enforced on
(23:13):
like restaurants and stuff.
So really the only thing peoplecould do was like go out, and
2021 and 2022 are the biggestyears in history for bicycle
sales.
So in 21, what happened was we,we sold those first 30 bikes
and after I had sold like 10 ofthem, my dad sat me down and he
was like you have a business,you need to keep this going.
(23:36):
Order a hundred bikes right now.
And it was like are you serious?
He's like, yes, you need to dothis.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And so and did that validate something?
Like in the pit of your stomach, were you?
Were you going, like I have abusiness here?
And then your dad sat you downand you were like yes, confirmed
, or, or, or, or.
Was that a wake up call?
Like where were you, uh, sortof mentally and emotionally,
when he was sitting you downlike did you still think it was
maybe, yeah, just a bit of aflyer and we'll sell these 30
(24:04):
bikes?
Like how are you?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I was starting to really drink the kool-aid during
those saturday test rides, youknow, when people would ride
them and they had nothing butpositive feedback and back then
the bike was really cheapbecause we had no overhead, you
know.
So we were.
We priced it really low becauseI specifically wanted regular,
real, everyday people to buythem and who would actually be
(24:27):
riding them all the time,instead of like a bunch of rich
guys that just put them in theirgarage, you know, and it was
definitely the right move,because we learned so much about
the bikes in the beginning andso I was already feeling good.
But he impressed upon us likebusinesses grow, so you get like
I was gonna were going to orderanother 30 bikes and he's like
you need to triple that.
And so I was like, okay, youknow, let's work that out.
(24:51):
So we ordered a hundred morebikes and again on Steve's line
of credit.
But we saw the sales.
We knew that was the rightthing to do.
And then we went out and we didan indiegogo campaign on top of
that to pre-sell more bikes.
So I drove with a beachman onthe back of my car to vancouver
and this was the prototype ofthe 64, the current bike that we
(25:12):
sell.
Up until then we were callingit like the founder's edition
and it was kind of similar, butit didn't have a lot of the
custom parts that we wanted,only the stock parts.
And so I took the steve 3d,printed a bunch of stuff and got
things metal bent and cut atlocal metal shops.
He makes this prototype.
I put on the back of my car, Idrive to vancouver and I shoot a
(25:35):
commercial with my buddies fromfilm school and we put that up
on the internet and we do anIndiegogo campaign and we raised
.
In 30 days we raised likealmost $400,000.
And that was when it was likeokay, it's a business, it's time
to quit our jobs.
So we both quit our jobs Ithink I left my job in October
(25:58):
of 2021.
And we got a retail store.
We had 100 bikes coming in andwe had 100 more pre-orders for
the next generation of bike andwe get to work on the design and
we take out a lease on awarehouse to store all these 200
bikes.
We got this coffee shop whereit's like motorcycles and coffee
.
You know, going back to thatwhole meeting in the cafe thing
(26:20):
and then, as soon as all thathappens, that that boat got
stuck in the Suez canal.
Dude, that ruined my life.
Remember that.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Probably not as well as you remember it, that's for
sure.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And so like you have a.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
You have a bunch of bikes on a boat that is stuck
behind the boat.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
That stuck essentially no, basically what
happened is that event had abutterfly effect on
international shipping,Compounded with 2022, there was
that second wave of the Deltastrain of COVID and it became
really, really hard to getthings shipped anywhere in the
world.
And so we went through thisexperience where the bikes were
(27:06):
built.
You had 105 bikes in a in ashipping crate these were the
ones for indiegogo, and it's thewinter of 2021.
Into 2022, they're finishedproduction.
They're in a shipping crate inthe docks in Shanghai and
they're going to come to us.
And the shipping guys go okay,your bike's going to ship out on
(27:28):
March 22nd.
And then on March 17th, theymessage us and say hey, walmart
bumped your shipping crate offthe boat and it's not going to
ship out until April 3rd.
And then on April 1st, theymessage us and go hey,
unfortunately Ikea paid extraand your shipping crate, it's
(27:50):
going to have to go out on April20th.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
These are the days where people were doubling.
They're just like I need to getproduct and so I'm just going
to sort of pay whatever forshipping and you guys don't have
that.
Yeah Right, about that timeactually, I was in Huntington
Beach and I was down there witha buddy and we were surfing and
I looked out on the horizon andI counted something like 78
boats.
(28:13):
Like it was just like theycouldn't.
Even if they got here.
There was such a backlog, theyjust couldn't get unloaded fast
enough.
The entire horizon was boatstrying to get unloaded.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Exactly because of that delta strain, all of the
ports had lockdowns, so therewas no dock workers.
The ship crews could operatebecause they were all in a COVID
bubble, living on a boat, in aCOVID bubble, living on a boat,
and so the boats were movingacross the ocean, but the
harbors in China and in LA andin Vancouver were just
completely shut down.
(28:46):
So, and then this was also thattime, remember Canadian tire
bought their own fleet of shipsjust so that they could
guarantee that they were goingto get stuff across the air.
It was a really difficult timeand us being the smallest fish
in the pond, we just got bumpedand bumped and we were bumped
two weeks at a time for eightmonths.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Eight months of no inventory of any kind.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
And eight months of reaching out to those people on
the Indiegogo campaign wholikely had empathy for a period
of time, like, oh, I get it,you're not just making excuses.
I see this in the news, butsome point, maybe around month
six, especially if they'reCanadian and the weather's
changing and now it's.
I've missed the whole summer.
That's eight months of tryingto keep that group of people
happy who are going to be yourbig tranche of word of mouth,
(29:38):
folks who are driving your bikesaround right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
And so not only is that happening, but that's eight
months of we just quit our jobsand are paying ourselves salary
out of this money fromIndiegogo.
We have the rent on the retailstore and the rent on our
warehouse and basically in thoseeight months we spent all the
money, like there.
The thing was that sounds likea really naive thing to do, but
(30:02):
it's not like.
We knew in March that it wasgoing to be eight months.
It was eight months of beingdelayed, like three to 12 days
at a time.
Over and over and over dozensof times this happened.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
In a world, frankly, ben, where we became so
accustomed and reliant toessentially kind of just-in-time
delivery that major retailersgot rid of their warehousing
because they would just havestuff come off a boat and go on
the store on the shelf.
So as a new business, you'restarting up into a world that's
(30:36):
got the infrastructure that youdon't have to make plans for
eight months delays.
That's just extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Exactly, and it was a system that was incapable of
predicting these delays.
Because of that and so if wehad known it was going to be
eight months we thought maybeit'll be two or three and we'll
weather the storm we would havejust went back and just got
full-time jobs and just waitedit out, got rid of the coffee
shop, all that, but there was noability to not do it.
(31:04):
So essentially, you know, wewaited and we waited, and also
in that period of time, britishColumbia outlawed our bike as an
e-bike.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
And why is that?
Like design, weight, speed,what?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
was that the actual technical reason is that in
British Columbia, e-bikes can'thave throttles, they have to be
pedal assist.
Although that's kind of just ascapegoat for outlawing the big
motorbike and Vespa scooterlooking e-bikes, it's really
what they use it to enforceagainst, and I think it makes
(31:40):
sense.
I mean, the two places thatoutlawed our e-bike were Quebec
and British Columbia, and it wasfor the same reason, which is
they have fantastic bicycleinfrastructure and a bike of our
size interrupting that reallydeveloped and crowded bike
infrastructure was reallydisruptive for cyclists, and so
they wanted it to be a moped,they wanted to go on the road,
and that was what set us downthat path of okay, we have to do
(32:03):
certification now.
What we didn't know is it wasgoing to take us three years,
and so there was this kind ofbittersweet thing that happened
where there were 28 customersfrom our Indiegogo in British
Columbia and I had to email themand say guys, I legally can't
send you your bikes.
Are you willing to wait for usto certify it?
It'll go faster, it'll be areal motorbike.
(32:25):
In BC, mopeds only require adriver's license too, so it was
a pretty low barrier of entryand everyone agreed.
I think one person asked for arefund and everyone else was
fine and basically those peoplesaved our company because we
came to the end of this year.
The bikes arrive in likeNovember, so I'm delivering them
to people's houses like,literally, neil, like in
(32:47):
snowstorms.
Here's your motorbike.
Enjoy it next year, deliveringthem to people's houses like,
literally, neil, like insnowstorms.
Yeah, yeah, here's yourmotorbike.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Enjoy it next year.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
But the ones in BC.
Basically, what happened isthere was 28 bikes that we
couldn't send and so we got tosell them twice because it was
28 more inventory and thatliterally saved the company from
going bankrupt.
And so we got those out toOntario customers and we did
everything we could to get thebike certified for British
Columbia and, believe it or not,so this was 2022 that that
(33:18):
happened this month it was April, I think 11th of 2025, we
finally submitted ourapplication to Transport Canada.
It took us three years to getit done.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And those 20 something customers.
They're still patiently waiting.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
They're still waiting .
I mean, it's been so many years.
They've made the money back.
It's no longer about the money,but essentially now what we're
doing is and the funny thing wasto show our dedication to these
customers we could have sold amoped slash motorcycle version
of our bike in the United Statesfor like two and a half years
now.
That's how much easier it is toget certified in the States.
(33:58):
It's kind of a joke incomparison and we didn't on
purpose, because we knew howheartbreaking it would be for
these people to see us justsending bikes.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
For these guys to see somebody else posting down in
Arizona that they're on theirnew yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
So we wanted to hold true to those people and to this
day still everyone's waitingand I mean I can't express my
gratitude to them enough.
They're all literally a part ofthe reason my company still
exists.
But oh my god, I can't wait,neil, to this summer to get
those bikes out to BC.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We're definitely going to fly out and do a ride
with everyone there and justkind of, you know the number of
different parts of your brainthat needed to be fired up over
the course of time that you'vejust described to me you're
talking about.
You're talking aboutmanufacturing.
You're talking about design.
You're talking about import.
You're talking about you knowyou're talking about
manufacturing.
You're talking about design.
(34:52):
You're talking about import.
You're talking about logistics,um, you know.
You're talking about like, oh,now also, we're going to, like,
run a cafe.
So you're actually running twobusinesses.
You know you've quit your job,so there's a, there's a finance
component to it.
Like, did you anticipate thatit would be as multidimensional
as it is?
And and what of those maybewere the biggest surprises to
you?
Where you're like oh geez,there's a whole other skill set
here.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
I had no idea, man.
Oh my God, If I could go backin time and describe to my
18-year-old self the things I'mgoing to be putting myself
through, I don't know if I woulddo it, man, but no, I
definitely would.
That's what you need is thatkind of crazy will to just keep
going.
But it's funny the other day Iwas reflecting on that this year
(35:38):
has been crazy with the tariffsand everything.
And I came home from work and Iwas just sitting there alone in
my apartment just worryingabout tariffs from Donaldald
trump and the you know traderegulations and everything, and
I was just like, oh my god, I inthis moment envy my normal
friends that just go home fromwork and that's it.
(36:00):
The work day is over and theyjust watch severance or
something you know, and thelevel of connection that you
have like your business is yourlife.
You know there's no dividingline at all.
Like I'm about to leave on atwo week vacation and I know
that the second week I'm goingto be in Greece on my laptop
taking meetings and um.
(36:20):
But yeah, I think the stuff thatsurprised me the most was
definitely like the regulatoryand financial groundwork I've
done Like I went to film school.
You know I have no businesseducation of any kind.
But in 2023, we finally raisedequity.
You know, up until then all ofit was on Steve's line of credit
and profits.
And, um, we saw the writing onthe wall that we had to expand
(36:44):
pretty massively to make anactual factory here when we were
going to switch over tobuilding the bikes here.
We're going to need to hire newstaff, we're going to need a
facility of our own, we're goingto sign a huge lease.
So I went out and I raised amillion dollars and I did it
privately with and how did youdo that?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
raise like friends and family, institutional
investing like yeah, so it's allangels.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So, um, it's, you know it's kind of a weird, like
it doesn't follow any.
You know, the normal like seed,pre-seed maybe, like any of
that.
Basically we were, we werealready three years in and our
seed whatever was just our ownmoney initially, really just
steve's money.
I, you know, I was whateverlike 21 or something, when we
(37:27):
started and had nothing to bringto the table financially.
At least, I brought a lot ofeight-dollar power.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
I was going to say, yeah, I think you might be
underselling yourself a littlebit there, but fair enough.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
But anyway.
So essentially that raise was.
I sent an email out to ourcustomer base saying we're
raising money and a bunch ofpeople emailed me back and we
got the money.
So the vast majority of myinvestors are customers or they
were fans of Beachman, followedit on Instagram and they're all,
pretty much with the exceptionof one guy, they're all former
(38:03):
entrepreneurs who successfullybuilt a business and exited, and
so for us that's the ultimatevote of confidence as someone
who's done the thing already andthey recognize themselves a bit
in what they see us doing andthey know that it's a real
business that we're building.
And they came in with theirpersonal money.
And, yeah, it was a decentlyquick process, I think from the
(38:26):
first email to closing the raiseit was like six months and
initially we were raising 2million and then we kind of sat
down and realized we couldprobably do it on one and just
scrape by, give up less equity,make sure that we stay hungry
and efficient.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
I was going to say give up less equity, have fewer
people to kind of answer to.
Exactly, exactly, whatever.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
But for me, learning all the financial compliance
stuff and sophisticating ouroperation to be able to produce
the financial documents andfinancial due diligence that's
required for investors.
And then the other thing thatwas a really big challenge on my
side was international business, so incorporating a US entity
and creating cross-bordertransaction policies and doing
(39:14):
tax policy in all the differentvarious US states and
territories, and there's just somuch that comes from it that,
my God, it would be useful if Ihad an've.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
You know your NBA would have been a bunch of
hypotheticals.
You're, you've gotten.
You know you've gotten a PhD inrunning your business.
You just did it by being in theoperating room Like it's a and
you've kept the patient alive.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
If I want to continue the analogy.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
So international sales that's one of the things I
was thinking of is, you know Iwas looking at the at the
product and I was.
I was thinking about.
You know I was looking at theproduct and I was thinking about
.
You know, years ago I was inBali and you know everybody's
driving dirt bikes there andthere's lots of places in the
world where this mode oftransport is maybe a little bit
more commonplace Outside of theUS.
Where else do you sell?
(40:02):
Are you thinking about selling?
Is it just kind of like toomuch to contemplate right now,
because you've got lots of ironsin the fire, like what does the
international stuff look like,including the US?
Speaker 2 (40:16):
First of all you nailed it.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
The next international market we're
bringing online is actually Bali.
I like to try to nail it atleast once in each episode, so I
appreciate you saying that.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
That's it, you got it , man.
So there's a really coolbusiness out there called mala
madre motorcycles which, uh,your listeners can look up, and
it's run by this guy, dirk.
He's a really cool dude and, um, they make gas cafe racers that
you can buy or you can rent asa tourist there, and it's a very
successful business.
They have three locationsacross the island and and he saw
(40:47):
this Instagram ad that we ranand reached out to me and he's
going to open up, you know,distributorship for all of
Indonesia for us, starting offin Bali and then moving
throughout the country.
And aside from him, we arecurrently active as of like
three weeks ago.
Costa Rica has come online, soone of the investors that came
on during that raise theconditions of his investment was
(41:09):
he gets distribution rights,for Costa Rica has come online,
so one of the investors thatcame on during that raise the
conditions of his investment washe gets distribution rights for
Costa Rica, and so he's a guywho had a successful business
here in Ontario and basicallyretired to live down there, and
this is kind of his next thingis just running Beachman Costa
and he's loving it.
And then, obviously, the UnitedStates is huge.
Last year it was 15% of thesales.
(41:29):
We anticipate it's going to be60 or more this year.
And once we sort out the U?
S this year, next summer, thenext big step and really the
final big step for the businessum, at least in terms of our
plans, before we might go tosell it is to open up Europe.
So in 2026, we're going tostart in France and it's a
(41:53):
similar situation to Costa Rica.
One of our investors, who'salso a board member, this guy,
matthew.
He came on and is going to betaking over our European
operations, so basing theoperations out of the Brittany
area of France and doingdistribution from there for the
entire European Union.
So we've already got all thepatents and trademarks and
(42:15):
everything ready to go.
But the last step is doing thehomologation process, which is
that motorcycle safety andtransport standards
certification for the EuropeanUnion.
So once we have our Canadianapproval, we go for that in
Europe and then, as soon as wehave it, we start sending bikes
to France.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
It's amazing.
I was also thinking when youmentioned that you had early
customers, entrepreneurs beingthose investors.
One thing that came to mind wasthat I imagine that opens up
some really interesting kind ofadvisor opportunities.
I hadn't imagined that alsomaybe opened up some licensing
opportunities, but it must be awonderful feeling that it is
(42:56):
this community that ispassionate about the brand and
passionate about the productthat is helping to fuel that
growth.
I think so often you get it'ssort of like extractive capital
a little bit right.
It's like someone investsbecause they just kind of want
to squeeze two pennies out forevery penny they put in, versus
someone who is really passionateabout what the vision is and
(43:18):
wanting to partner to help bringthat vision to life.
That must feel nice to havethat as part of the accelerant
of the business.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah, no, it's amazing, neil, like throughout
this story, the kind of missingno, it's amazing, neil,
throughout this story, themissing business partner
honestly is our customers.
We grew this thing completelyby word of mouth.
It was Facebook, marketplaceand Instagram, and we didn't run
ads.
Even to this day, we sell abeach one every day and I think
(43:47):
we sold five bikes today.
My ad budget right now is $100a month and it's just word of
mouth, it's reputation and it'sour, it's our customers being
our biggest advocates, and so,you know, I am like infinitely
grateful to the people who'vewho've come to you know, love
the bikes and and make them apart of their lives, because
(44:10):
without that really tight knitcommunity and you know, like,
for instance, we we don't, um,we don't have a Facebook page,
but we have a subreddit and it'ssuper active and it's full of,
like awesome fans that arehelping each other customize the
bikes, and for a communitythat's kind of split up,
especially in the US where youknow, we have, like, one guy in
Kentucky, two guys in Ohio, likethat kind of thing, as we're
(44:33):
growing there, it's cool thateveryone's able to connect
online and give each other, youknow, tips and tell stories and
stuff like that and continue togrow it.
But yeah, it's, it's, it'sreally an amazing group of
people and I think it's becausewe have such a strong emotive
brand.
When you look at the motorcyclespace, but especially the e-bike
space I mean talking about thee-bike space in particular I
(44:56):
don't think there are any brands.
There's logos and there'sproducts, but there's really no
lifestyle brand of any sort,aside from Beachman that I've
come across and that aspect,which is what I've been working
on for 10 years.
I think it's paid a lot ofdividends to us because it does
work for us when we're not inthe room and you know, we have
(45:17):
everything from spotifyplaylists like we like a
thousand hours of beachmanspotify playlists that the
thousands of followers and waysthat we've incorporated the
brand outside of just the bikesthemselves into the lives of our
community that I think itreally allows it to flourish on
its own.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
I always try to figure out what is a right point
to wrap up on.
I think you just nailed theclose.
That's a phenomenal point toend off on.
Is that customers in thecommunity?
This has been a fascinatingconversation.
I really appreciate all you'veshared.
Honestly, I feel like thiscould be, you know, part one of
(45:57):
a three-part segment, so at somepoint I may be calling you back
for part two to figure out howthe European and Indonesian and
US expansion is gone.
But this has been just afantastic conversation.
I appreciate you taking thetime.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, yeah, my pleasure, man.
And um, uh yeah, if we talkagain, I think we got to get
Steve in here, cause you know,for all of my side of the
business, there's an entireother world of all this
engineering and problem solving.
That he's done, and and we havea new bike coming out this year
, which is Steve's finally hadthe resources from the success
of the brand to design his ownbike from scratch from the
(46:29):
ground up, and it is beautifuland, uh, we're so excited for
that thing to release thissummer.
So it would be great to um, gethis side of things and and it's
a whole other world of problemsolving and innovation going on
there.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So, I feel like we've got a part two teed up for the
fall, so let people know wherethey can find this instagram.
You've talked about the website.
Where can people go find thebikes?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
On Instagram.
We are just at Beachman, whichshout out to my friend Jordan,
who somehow got me the actualhandle of my brand, and you can
also find us on YouTube underBeachman.
We also have a YouTube channelcalled Beachman Garage, which is
like long form, like 30 minutevideos of all the not only the
(47:14):
process of like building thebikes, but we also do an entire
other arm of our business, whichis converting cars and
motorcycles from gas to electric, on old, vintage cars and
trucks and stuff like that andand um.
So we also have a YouTubechannel tracking that called
Beachman garage, and our websiteis uh beachmanca if you're
(47:35):
Canadian, uh beachmanbikescomfor the U S.
So amazing.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Thanks again, Ben.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Awesome.
Thanks, Neil.
I'm really glad we did this.
Man have a great week.
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com