Welcome to Part One of Episode 5 of the Stay On Your Bike Podcast!
We’ve got a special treat for you this week as we’re joined by special guest Alan Woods, owner of Alan’s BMX and a close friend of Nigel’s.
In this episode, Nigel and Alan take a trip down memory lane, reminiscing about the early days of BMX and delving into Alan’s remarkable journey from kickstarting his business venture at 13 years old, building BMX tracks and becoming the UK distributor for a number of BMX brands.
We hope you enjoy this episode, we sure did making it!
sick as they say hello sick sick so sick is that working yeah I think it’s working Alan brilliant well look at us at the age we are being able to use technology it’s a miracle well to be fair I’ve got an assistant hi everyone and welcome to episode five of the stay on your bite podcast um this is going to be an incredible podcast for me because growing up as a kid um Alan was a huge hero of mine and a massive part of my childhood with what he did in BMX from his having his bike shop to the Robinson bikes the T bikes and all the race teams that I looked up to that he ran as well as his incredible results himself so um everybody I welcome you to Alan Woods thank you [ __ ] it’s an honor to be uh to be here um on this uh on this podcast I haven’t done many of these of these things and there’s always uh hopefully uh new stuff that we can we can drag up so yeah my name is Alan Woods I’m um from Wigan in um greater Manchester used to be in Lancashire but they’ve moved as inte great Manchester in the northwest of England and I left school at 16 years of age um went to California became the distributor for a number of BM MX brand and ran a shop Alan BMX and 43 years later I’m still doing exactly the same thing unbelievable brilliant well let’s get into it Alan so first of all let’s just start off with you know where you grew up um you know I I know a lot of this but you could tell everyone you know where you grew up how biking came into your life um you know with your Motocross and then BMX and stuff and I think that’ll be a really really good interesting start uh yeah I guess um I suppose for all of us you know um I was watching you know your uh um your your podcast there just recently and very similar I was just you know drawn to bikes you know and for me that was like you know a rally Chopper I I had a m one a mustard m one and and um it’s hard to say I suppose we look back on those times with really Rose tinted spectacles but like man you know you you go back to like somewhere like 1973 for example you know the mark one Choppers out you know David Bo’s in the charts you know mud sweet yeah it was just it was a real really um really magical time you know though those you know and I was like you know 8 n 10 just amazing loved you know riding me bike Marvel Comics like the Hulk and Fantastic 4 loved all that stuff so had a real passion for a lot of things that stuck stuck with me and then I think um yeah M dad had done Speedway um Ro for Bell viw Aces so I think wanted to get me involved in Motorsport and and I think we were looking at getting a cart uh three sisters wasn’t there then the cart in circuit but like uh and then uh we lived in goldor which is in between Wigan and Warrington and then we uh in fact just a second I’ll see if I can get it I’m G on SEC yeah sorry I should line beforeand wow so Ralph venables uh wrote this book uh in 1975 called school boy scrambling yeah and the the paper I’m assuming the Del male or the son not not the guardian uh did a n basically took elements that was in the book and did like a two-page spread in the paper uh like a whether it was a paid promo thing or whatever I don’t know and we saw this in 19 back end of 1975 after the book had come out and we were like this is the [ __ ] that we should be doing and yeah um and it had you know you know in the back it had like all the clubs and and you could on a second yeah had like the the addresses of all the clubs oh wow so and the club secretary oh there’s no there’s no phone number um yeah so anyway we must have written to JC Hopkins at craigmore Hanley Hill winsford chesher yeah and um he or she senters like a northwest school boy motorcycle club membership pack and um yeah so then there was a race and it was uh at um it was in chesher uh near near nwit wasn’t Aon Hall uh but basically well there’s and we’ll have to get a bike so I was 11 so I was in the intermediates intermediates didn’t classify your ability it was just purely what the age group was called 11 to 13 or whatever and um we went to dug hacking motorcycles in Bolton yeah and bought kind of like this bike which is like a cow saki ke or km90 and the class was 100 cc class but this bike you can’t really tell that much from this picture is actually like a trail bike yeah so it came with a headlight and all that yeah and although it had high mug guards it wasn’t a motorcross bike yeah uh so we went to we went to Dougies in Bolton and said oh we want a bike and it needs to be up to 100 cc what have you got and they said oh we’ve got this it’ll be perfect we’re like okay well that’ll do then and it was just like that except it was red uh but they took the lights off it and put number plates on it and um I was like oh oh oh okay and we were running out of time because the race was coming up like it was in like next weekend so we so this is on the Saturday I mean how mad is this you can’t even I’ve never seen uh I’ve never ever seen scrambling on Motocross ever i’ it never been on TV there was no YouTube I’d never been to a race I had no idea what you know all I had I’d bought the book by then so I had the pictures the same as you you know when you got BMX Plus or BMX action or whatever so basically you just had the photographs and you were like it must be like this but i’ never actually seen it and obviously with hindsight you know you’d go to an event and you’d watch and blah blah blah blah blah but no so we bought the bike and went to uh and I got I got all the gear gold Leathers proper leather gold I mean don’t way with like a brown stripe up them and all good stuff like um you know decent boots and a probably a Stadium 9 helmet which everybody had and you know the gloves with the like the with the rubber yeah fingers all that stuff um uh you know took it home this is the Saturday the race is the following Sunday like and what did your do then Alan what what was your dad’s sort of job then well we had the place that we had at hindle we had that place then so we had low Mill Lane then so we was doing kind mots and repairs right okay repairs and mots so we already had that you know that building was already there my dad owned it so you know that was um that and and that allowed us to be able to kind of afford to get the bike yeah so we bought the bike took it back uh and M cousin uh John plant I think he’ he he’d got a bike and and he was on about racing so on the Sunday we had we had a we had a uh a Morris van you remember those little Morris Vans like pickup but it wasn’t a pickup it had a roof on it I mean it was like you wouldn’t be able to fit a Motocross bike in it now but because the bike was only low the handlebars are just fit in so we took it to newly Willows yeah to just a field behind some houses which is you know that’s what no one used to come out and like call the police and like you got an as no but by the same token like these kids nowadays with the sirons and the masks on we didn’t go [ __ ] wheeling up and down the street in you know we just we just rode around and people allowed you do that and it wasn’t an issue yeah I’m going to be get some Sur on Sur on hate now aren’t I um um yeah so the night before I went I got got the bike I was like gears what what ugly I must have known what gears are because I had a chopper three speeed right so it’s like down for first up for second I remembering all this then we got to the field me cousin came out I sat on the back he rode it around and then he said this is what you need to do this is how you started you press this thing down and yeah I think on off switch you press turn it on press this thing down choke and told me how to work it and how the gears worked and then then I rode around the field four times stop spoke to me Dad and said yeah that’s it we not to ride it sick uh and then took it home cleaned it off and then the following Sun Sunday we went to kinderton Hall Farm uh just off Junction 18 of the m6 oh yeah so we went we we turned up the in the the in the Morris Minor like van and other people are packed on the field and that’s it that was the first I didn’t even know I like people were putting the bikes into the paddock I’m like is it not going to get stolen you know you just you you just hadn’t got a and a lot of people were on trail bikes few people had like you know RMS or TMS like I show which were which were um specific uh specific you know motocross bikes but a lot of people were on trail bikes either because you know the availability wasn’t great or you couldn’t you couldn’t afford them or whatever the reason was and of course at that time although it it wasn’t really cheap um it was a lot more affordable than than well than it became yeah um and yeah went out you know three motos uh went to the start you know I was at the back or whatever and then in the third race like it rained yeah and um the bite was just the back wheel was just going round and round and round so you can’t really tell from this picture but like it only really had like it didn’t really have motorcross tires on it so they weren’t road tires but they were like I know what you mean yeah trail tires really you know I mean and of course as soon as the knobs got full of mud it wouldn’t clear and I was just going and changing gear and the thing was just still there just spinning around so anyway I pushed it off somebody helped me push it off the side of the track brought it back to the van and I said listen they said oh what happened did you fall off I’m like no I said man the wrong the tire the tire is out right I I remember like just just things that you remember from a kid and me dad said well I don’t know what the problem is the proper trials tires we didn’t even know what sport we were doing yeah you know what I mean I’m like the proper all right the proper trials ties sick that’s brilliant so um yeah that was quite funny but nowadays that would never happened with it you go even BMX racing you can’t even do a race you’ve got to go on a on a CO you’ve got to go on a coaching thing Haven you for like it’s crazy it’s crazy four months or something which is cool and I love all that and how the sports become more and more professional um but if you said to somebody today that you’d be competing like in Motocross or BMX and you’ve never ever even seen it before it it just is is bizarre so anyway we were you know after that we realized the bike was not the right thing and um yeah I was spoiled wasn’t her so my M went down and my sister went down to Veil on load in Birmingham and bought me a brand new RM 100 and is that what they were then at RM 100s yeah yeah so um and that was the because it was like TMS up to 75 and then 76 the RM 100 came out they had a downpipe and um yeah we raced that oh season with northwest school boys and a couple of other clubs and then in 77 we started to go in further a field then add a new rund B and then some of the pictures that I’ve sent you probably probably from then uh and then that’s how that kind of dovetails into how we got into business because because we had the garage yeah through the either through the either through the wholesalers or because we had a uh you know bricks and morar um motor business we got NGK spark plugs which um for those who’ve never experienced an old herol two stroke you go through a lot of spark plugs with those things right and we also had uh B Ray oil uh at the time a lot of oil was um you know cter base like castl R which you might be familiar with R30 or R40 but by then synthetic oils were coming out which you could run at a much leaner ratio uh than the caster bean oils so for example I be you know MC1 you’re supposed to be able to run that at 100 to1 ratio that’s 100 Parts oil to petrol whereas uh traditionally it was like 32 to one using other stuff so uh I remember going to raceing Cumbria and I got some um fablon or sticky backed plastic for the follow of blue Peter and wrote on like NGK spark plugs and just cut the little the corner the back in off the corners and stuck it on the side of the van and we sold a couple of spark plugs and then from then we ended up being one of the first people to have like um I suppose you call it track side support nowadays really so we grew from having just the Spug plugs and the oil to like gear and then the big thing for us the kind of got us going was uh Fox earthshock uh the same Fox that well it’s kind of not the same Fox as we know today but like you know the the the two Fox Brothers one of them ended up with the clothing side one ended with the suspension side that we know from mountain bikes so um and the reason why these were so popular is we bought these bikes like the r00 for example and they were too hard there were two um uh you know you need to buy softer springs for them okay and then the kids would then grow and then you’d have to change it but because of the air um the airshocks um they had uh they were dual stage so they had like a an upper chamber uh which which would pick up like the small bumps and like the the lower chamber which had a bladder inside it that would like um the big Landings and stuff do you know what I mean so Fork on a mountain bike now then well yeah so they were well ahead of the time the they were 35 wow then so that’s how much a custom BMX bite would have been at the beginning of the 1980s so that was a lot of money um but we sold a lot of them uh and they came from uh a guy called Roland swim Bank in in County Durham he was a really great bloke and and his son I’ve still been in touch with him recent years and and uh so they were the fox importer so they had the first Fox uh they had the shocks and then they had then they had the gear and everything else and then it ended up changing over the years and blah blah blah blah blah um but yeah having the fox and in fact one of the pictures I sent you is our van all painted up in Fox colors with my 1979 c125 on the trailer at the back and that van my dad just painted it like with a brush brush painted it like you know red yellow orange like the team colors and then we wouldn’t have had vinyl graphics we would must have had some guy around to like to paint it on the side but we had a big fox head sticker on on the front of the Bonnet yeah um yeah so uh so yeah I guess and I’m still at school so I was involved in this and um it was under Allen’s you know so I was like 11 so 12 1213 you know so I would you know pay the invoices at the weekend I was 13 it’s like bizarre isn’t it crazy and then uh you know that built up and built up and built did you D push that or is that something oh yeah no I mean I couldn’t have done this without their support I mean they were the they were incredible I think a lot of families would just go you can’t do that or you can’t do this they were totally like whatever let’s do it and then in 1980 uh through um through Roland with FX we were going to California here and we said to Fox you know any chance we SP spend a lot of money spend a lot of money with you Rand any chance of getting a bike sorted like when we go to California anyway he goes oh I’ll have to say I’ll have to see um so he must have spoken to them and I don’t think they were super happy because like who’s this kid like he’s not even I mean I was I think I was good but you know I wasn’t going to be a day Thorp or anything do you know what I mean I think by the end of time we ended up in the school boys I had like 500 trophies or something like that you know what I mean so I’d always finished like top three top four didn’t win outright that much but you know I did yeah yeah he did great and um yeah so Roland hooked us up with Fox so when we got to Cal we flew to Los Angeles we drove up to Northern California near San Jose a place called Campbell where Fox were and I got all kitted out in gear and everything and then they said yeah the races at such and such a place and one was at Hangtown the old Hangtown track where they had the national now and we went to the Hangtown race on the Saturday this is 1980 so Donnie cantalupi who rode for Fox who just signed for Yamaha Factory so they still had his bike so we turn up at the race on the Sunday the fox box fans though just is like I guess it’s like having like one of the big trailers today and uh yeah I’ve got Danny conal Loop’s bike haven’t I because he’s like left to right for the factory uh yeah and it was amazing so I did the race there that Sunday and we did another one the the following week as well so that was all through Roland kind of hooking us up really do you know what I mean and we were on Hondas that year uh and then um we came back and bought a Yamaha uh and and and that’s what I was racing in the old bike Class A few years ago I can’t seem to get away from anything it’s like the T thing it’s like I’m stuck in some like really bad episode of Star Trek the Next Generation you know what I mean it’s like never moves on no but it’s it’s a reason for that it’s because it was like super good fun and and and you know as you get older you I’m the same like I want to I want to keep that experience going and bring it back because there’s been lots of other things in between but it was a really good time in your life so why not you know like you say yeah I’m I’m joking really but yeah it’s great to it’s it’s great to do it’s great to do that and then so that was 1980 and then obviously by then like BMX was starting to get on the radar a bit wasn’t it you know and sorry just to ask did you did you go to California just to race the motor bike or did you go on holiday and that was part of it I think we just raced the motorbike really and we must have gone to Disneyland yeah but I remember going to San Francisco and like not going to San Francisco you know we never went to like the bay or haton aspey or anything like that okay you know we went we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge because I’ve got a photograph of it but we never um I never um you know I don’t remember doing any tour I don’t remember going to like Venice Beach or any of that you know stuff we we really just it was around the racing re really do you know what I mean um and why did you want to go to to those particular races were they just iconic races at the time and you fancied going well just like with BMX n you know California it was everything wasn’t it yeah you know what I mean um that was the place that’s where you know David belly had come out of and Mike Bell and blah blah blah all these you know and then obviously Ron Le sheheen and all these amazing Riders all came from it was just all California so that was like the center of the if you were involved in like action sports as call it now yeah that was the center of the universe now you see these Riders you know BMX on Motocross from Indiana and all these other places I mean obviously they were Riders from other states then you know Jimmy weiner to whatever but it was all California that’s just that’s what the ma that’s where the magazines were so they covered all the Riders and all the races and um LA Coliseum and all that that was just that was just it wasn’t it really um so yeah that was yeah so that was an amazing amazing trip and just before that actually probably 78 I remember someone showing me I think it must have been BMX plus uh magazine to race and that I remember it and it was someone doing like a tabletop just to the flat off a jump um and you know the bike was just completely horizontal and I was just like that looks like fun and but that it was another couple of years really before because the you know as you know you know your history the UK was a little bit behind Mainland Europe when it came to BMX I don’t know why because you know Garrett DUS in in in Holland and you know Belgium and even you know even Spain had races be before we did uh you know in a national championship so it wasn’t really until you know everybody knows all this I’m sure it wasn’t you know until you know David Duffield and the Jarvis’s got involved from a commercial point of view and then built you know bmore Park and then you know try to do a national put did try to successfully um put together a national uh a national series so we were a little bit behind um but yes I was aware of BMX and then there was a guy how did you first hear of BMX obviously you were full on with the Motocross well from that magazine and then also um there was a guy in Peterborough that used to bring in yellow y Zs because uh the rest of the world all of all of the world not the rest of the world the majority of the world the rest of the world that’s that’s America that’s America’s arrogance Fe isn’t it the rest of the world yeah all of the world apart from um uh United States of America Yamahas were white yeah with red and black graphics and the colors were like white red and blue uh however and I don’t know why this is uh in in in America they were um yellow with with black and white as you know yeah um and of course we had white bikes and we wanted yellow ones and the people in America had um yellow ones and they wanted the really cool European white ones um and what’s funny you’ll have seen this a couple of years ago Chris MOA made a couple of fit 29 inch bikes and he did two one was like the Euro yamama colors and one was the American color so that’s how much it’s penetrated uh as all the way down to kind of business really you know 40 odd years later um but anyway this guy in peterb uh also had these BMX bikes which were called Moto ones yeah my friend one yeah so they were like I think they were like red or blue and they came with u matching um vinyl snap pads and VB bars uh and they were okay you know so we because he had them we bought I think we bought like six of him and maybe they were about 150 125 quid I can’t remember but um we sold all about know and then he was also buying [ __ ] bikes from Amo and then rehal them on so I guess he was buying them from Amo and putting 20% on and then selling them to dealers in the motorcycle game um at the time was was did the motor One Bites come from America no they would have um I’m guessing they came from the Far East but I don’t know uh they were like a cheap bite like a Mur which is the other first bike that we saw yeah um so yeah I’m you know they were like you know they were like all birdshit welds and stuff like you know what I mean they weren’t they weren’t Chrome mly and Tig welded or anything like that I guess they were like a what you call like a Kmart bike now really do you know what I mean yeah like a supermarket um replica of a of a BMX bike oh I missed a bit out before that um they had these we went to the motorcycle they used to have like the mo you know remember the bike show in Birmingham you know how big that used to be back in the day well they had a motorcycle one didn’t they at uh Alexandra Palace or somewhere like that in London every year and it was massive I mean I did do the stall there with the people from Fox with Roland in 1981 I think I mean they took a lot of money over that weekend it was like it was but because there was no internet was there just the same as like when it was the bike show in Birmingham it’s like people just used to go and carry you know you take like 500 quid and you’d buy a new frame and this and that was the same then anyway somebody had a stall there and they had a uh a bicycle but there was like a motorbike so it had like a petrol tank oh yeah uh you know and a big thick seat and the high-rise mug guards and all the thing and I’ve researched him a little bit subsequently they were made by a company called Greco GCO so if you Google it you might find it but the ones that we had were uh branded wheel King uh wheel Dash King and that’s what it said on the tank um and we ordered one of those I think we just paid for it up front you used to do that [ __ ] then didn’t you you wouldn’t be worried about getting ripped off well you just pay up front Okay there was no no PayPal protection was there do you know what I mean you didn’t need it um I’m sure people did get ripped I’m sure people did get ripped off in the 70s but yeah we just go yeah here it is here’s the money and then it took ages and ages and ages and ages and ages and it came and it was sick so I rode that opposite the um our property where we had the business in hindley at low mid lane there was some like rough ground opposite the which my dad had bought he was going to build a bungalow on which he never did and it has been when we move someone has buil built a bungal on it now but we just I just used to ride on it used to ride uh actually had a Ty 175 wow speaking of the Ty thing and used to pretend I could do trials but really bad at trial me um but we I used to ride this motor one over there and yeah it was really good and again I I’ve Googled it a few times and they had massive problems with the front axle snapping they were undersized and they used to break there were Hood braks so they were pretty cool uh and um I bought going back to the shock thing for the RM 100 we bought some shocks uh from Wakeling ward in wol I think it was uh and they became um I’d outgrown them I must have put some weight on and they were too soft so I put them on they were the right length so I put them on the motor one so G giring shocks on the on the motor one so I was like fully pimped out with that thing so that so that was pre BMX and that would have been 1976 yeah wow so um yeah so I guess that was like that was the same time I don’t know when the grifter came out but probably 77 maybe um and then as we all know before that everybody had like the tracker bikes like the racers with the big cow on and handlebars and the nobbly tires but I didn’t have one of those um yeah I think I got a grifter in about 78 I imagine all I remember about them was those goddamn grips those plastic like Finn yeah so hard weren they I know I know uh Julie’s just come back so it’s all right yeah so yeah so before before BMX it was that so it was like Motocross the Moto one uh sorry Motocross the the wheel King then the Moto W and then the guy in Peterborough that uh hello the guy the guy in peterb who did the mot by the Yamaha yellow WIS uh he was kind of like putting this margin on for for for the mongooses and I think we I think he sent us like the catalog when we’re like wait a minute he’s buying them from this place called Amo so I just rang Amo and they were like yeah I’ll send you trade prices I’m like 20% cheaper so anyway and where was Amo base then we in Kent yeah I guess you know we I did go there I guess not far from um chattam right you know bmore Park um and I can’t I mean it was so great to see the Jarvis’s the Hall of Fame the other year you know they’ve not changed obviously I have because I was like 16 then and they must have been in the 30s or 40s or something then but I can’t um I can’t um really say how much we owe to those guys so many people you know the higginson with BMX news and everything and I know that was it was business but like but still man um for to BMX to be able to to ramp up like it did from 81 82 83 I mean just yeah I mean just incredible um so that was let me just that have been 1980 going into 1981 so uh by then I don’t know when uh official BMX came out in the beginning of 81 I guess maybe the back end of 1980 so we and I got a um I bought a copy of bimx action magazine uh in 1980 or early 81 with John Cruz on the cover and that was like a lifechanging thing because anyone watching this used to get the azines back then you get the magazine and this is this is great stun but like you know every single picture on every page yeah like you’d they’d be like you’d know there’d be a photograph of like Stu Thompson and Greg Hill coming over a jump and youd know every single sticker that they had on the number plate yeah do you know I mean it was just like you were man if they did like you know PhD and BMX you’d be like yeah you’d be at like Berkeley now teaching it or something wouldn’t you you know what I mean you wouldn’t would you because of the because of the protest but um yeah uh it’s yeah I mean you know the magazines were really important so anyway that’s 19 back into 1980 so and then we had uh uh the motorcycle show the northern motor cycle show a bell viw yeah at the back end of 1980 uh I don’t know what month exactly maybe November December and uh it was um um you know concrete floor and wooden jumps and we went there with the team and I’ve got some photographs of that and what was what was your team just before you go into that how why did you stop doing the Motocross and then move more into the well yeah I’m I’m just to that because yeah I don’t know because Motocross was always that was always the thing it was never though like it was going to be like I was going to be Dave Thorp you know and I was okay and other people who I raced against then like Kurt niichel yeah they didn’t do too bad did they you know Kurt finished second Championship many times and and only through bad luck that he not win it um I don’t know BMX was just so it was exciting wasn’t it and then yeah that magazine that I got the one with John Cruz on the cover uh I wrote to all the companies in it I yeah I typed it up on like me olivetti typewriter and um I remember typing it up and going you know contacting you from the UK from Allens BMX and uh uh blah blah blah blah blah and sign it signing it resident Al BMX and me Dad’s like that is how it works here is it you know what I mean but like if they want to say that I’m president of alens BMX yeah so be it and um I wrote all these letters to these companies to GT Robinson and all the everyone who had an advert in there that did bikes I sent them a letter just you know typed it up got the stamps from the post office posted it off and and this is the back in 1980 uh and then a couple of people replied and one of them was Chuck Robinson and they only had a little advert in there because Chuck never had any money little black and white advert but obviously he used to punch above his weight in terms of the riders that he had you know which at the time was Scott Clark and you know Bobby Woods and uh so he he always had a really you know good eye for uh you know getting good Riders on the team so uh and he said yeah um you know we’d be interested in in this and so this is like Christmas you know back end of 1980 into 1981 um because we’ve already been to California once with the Motocross thing so we kind of knew and also you know talking about California then you know whenever you first went when you first got to LAX and like you you know you came through um you went to baggage claim and you’re like you walked out and it was dead warm and smells different and yeah it was like really was another world because we didn’t have McDonald’s like in the UK did we so like it really and now you know everything’s become homogenized hasn’t it so Manchester looks like bloody New York doesn’t it do you know what I mean everything’s you know everything has become kind of Americanized hasn’t it but we didn’t have yeah it was it was boner so myself Dave Arnold my mom and my dad uh and we didn’t take our bikes they gave us bikes when we when we got there so Chuck picked us up from Chuck already had a Robinson at that point yeah we’ got them in February 1981 okay so I think we got about 12 and you know Dave adwan Craig Burrows Jason Ram the people who were basically became our team yeah you know had bites were they basically just your friends that you rode with is that how that became your team yeah because like Dave I’m still see nearly every day uh you know and Craig Burrows and all that crew were from Ashton and makerfield where we built the three sisters track eventually I remember one Saturday I must have been away with the motorbikes or something and they said oh you missed it these guys came to the shop with these green bikes and they do like painted the bikes green uh and I think Dave’s Mom and Dad wouldn’t let him have like a PUK Murr so he bought a PUK Murray but he just painted it green like everything like whether he painted the tires green but like it was literally yeah just with a brush and it was this like bright like KY Green yeah he turned up and and then obviously I wasn’t there was I uh and then we saw him again the week after and then that became like the team and I guess we sold him a bike at discount and gave him some grips or something I don’t know and that was in February 1981 I don’t know why we did this but me and my dad drove to Heath Road to pick the bikes up you know there occasionally you’ve got something in your mind and it’s like a photographic memory and I remember you know being there in the van with these B frames in these Robinson branded boxes and just thinking no way you know what I mean yeah because just before that we’ done a couple of races like that wabby race and uh I was supposed to be riding for kahara and they said oh we’re going to give give you a bike and blah blah blah blah blah we were on red line at that point we we got Mongo’s Mongoose super gooes and then we bought Red Line Pro Lines uh and then through the same importer U so you were selling all those brands at that time yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um but then obviously then we wanted to do our own thing so that was February so we got the bikes uh and obviously I wrote to Chuck in like November in the meanwhile the bikes had come I don’t know how we even did that I mean how would you even know how would you import them you couldn’t Google Earth rate I just some things are bizarre aren’t they man yeah I mean even now doing Imports we’ve just got these talker frames sh easy I mean we’ve got Amy grips I’ve got talko pads and stems and we’ve got some redline for lifter stems on the way from Don fibs it’s still not easy now no uh so how yeah yeah it was bizarre so in 81 we went out there to California H yeah and you’ve heard this story before but it’s worth telling so we arrived there at the um at LAX Chuck’s got this like big like American Van you know with like the round windows in it and robbing some Racing Products and it’s like well and all the the seats inside that like swivel round and all that you know what I mean I guess kind of like a motor home but not set up as a motor home really yeah um which you used to go to the races with so that was amazing and took us back to his and he was either in kenoga park or Chatsworth uh just sort of northwest of Los Angeles San Fernando Valley and uh yeah we got to his place his house and we were like yeah anyway so when they were going like to the factory and he’s like oh well you know right now I’m just operating out the garage and we open the garage and there’s like three frames on the wall that’s it so and where did he make get the frames made or they were made of Boris Dixons at VDC okay and that was always a bane of like Chuck’s life not having manufacturing yeah and then as you I’m sure you know it ended up he got uh you know rich long to make them at GT and ended up becoming absorbed by GT like a lot of Brands did in the day so it was always troublesome getting frames uh you know he spoke to Roger Washam at CW about getting it done and I don’t really know why he didn’t because so anyway we get there it’s all good and he’s like oh are you guys hungry we were like yeah damn right no idea what kind of food do they eat what s of food do they eat like Californians what you know like they not have a pie know yeah pie chips and gravy babby’s head pay wet um so yeah we went oh do you guys like Mexican Mexican Mexicans have got their own food it was news to us there was no you couldn’t you didn’t couldn’t go in Tesco and get old Al Paso it just didn’t exist no makes it seem so old doesn’t it AG honestly like if you’d have said to some if it was like if you were on like a quiz show and someone and one of the questions was like name three Mexican foods like no one you chips like what you weren’t having a casad de when you was eight and Wigan were you so we went to like Taco Bell yeah and like what what do you guys want we were like well we don’t know really you know you get it and it’ll be all good you know what I mean so anyway um maybe day anyway Chuck was still in the still waiting for his and hours came so it came to the table and there were burritos so any and it comes wrapped in the you know in the Taco Bell paper or whatever yeah we put it out there put it on the plate or the tray and just opened it up like this so open the paper up opened all the tortilla up KN from f we’re just eating like whatever it was like the minced beef and the refried breens or whatever yeah Chuck come back and he was like what are you doing we’re like we’re having the food he’s like no you do this like the just bit into it just like so that’s how much of a culture shock yeah was it it was it was mad and then Chuck geez I mean he was amazing so he was like right let’s get you taken around here so we got uh two bikes uh and we went to I think larada maybe so then in Southern California you know you could race every single night yeah twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday yeah so we did Devon showns and Van eyes and ausa like every track in Southern California uh uh Rancho San Diego which is like a legendary downhill track uh we did all we did all these we did all these races and in between that he’d be like yeah today we’re going to Amy today we’re going to Oakley today we’re going to go to Vans we’re gonna go to BMX action and meet Bob Osborne we’ll drive down to Oceanside and see Bob Harrow and we were just like it was literally like if he’d have died and gone to live BMX was just so we went to meet Bob and Oceanside take you you knew all of these people were at this point because of the magazines and dealing with people yeah ju ju ju you know we had Oakley GPS and we knew who Amy was and all that I think we were all Oakley but at the time Robinson was sponsored by Amy so we we we went there and DJ Scott who is flight who we do flight pads again now and that’s the same thing and same flight have still got all the I mean flight have just done the talker pads and then from the original dyes and and screens and everything from back then they’ve just kept them all do you know what I mean so so yeah CH took us all these places and did you because you were bringing in the Robinsons did you Did you sort of emulate all the parts you rode with what the Robinson team in America rode is that how it worked uh not really no because well I mean our bikes then probably had sigo maxicross cranks uh and we had probably had k lightning pedals or MKS BM 7s and we probably had one or a one piece crank if you couldn’t get an allo thre piece crank this is just before flight cranks yeah by the way uh and we’d have like a pron next M and an Alena or a casim Max seat so yeah I guess they were really um yeah but I mean Chuck didn’t really have a parts sponsor for any parts on the bikes they used to use those matte Houser finned brake blocks um but really you know so di comp wasn’t a so this idea of having like um like OEM component uh co-sponsors only really came about with like diamond back if you remember yeah so if you saw pictures of like Harry ly or Eddie King and they would always have like sigo and Sr and um da compy and all that stuff so it was all the parts that were on the bikes were co-sponsors for the team um so yeah so he he gave us you know loaned us like two bikes why we didn’t think we should take our own and I remember again just little like shots I remember like sitting in the back of the van and we must have been stopped somewhere and I took some uh Louise um westwell as she was then her dad used to take pictures uh and because there hadn’t been any races we we had a lot of pictures from Southport skate park and they were like black and white like large format on this kind of like really weird grainy um stock uh and I was showing these to Chuck and we were doing all these jumps crossups and we didn’t have helmets on and he was a bit like he wasn’t like really too happy about it and then we went to the race like they the first race and we were like doing tricks because then for us BMX and tricks and it was all it was one thing um you know freestyle hadn’t started had really no so it was all one thing you know and there were no freestyle bikes Bob Harrow hadn’t designed the Haro freestyler yet the closest thing was a talko with the twin top tube which is only by accident a freestyle bike yeah and um yeah it was just um yeah it was uh it was bizarre but yeah he didn’t didn’t and I think he had to kind of sit us down because I used to be able to do like FL ground 360s without touching the back wheel like most people do a 360 on the flat you’re really doing a 180 aren’t you yeah and youting the other 18 180 on the back wheel I just used to be able to kind of go and Bunny Hop and then just do a 360 uh and um we were just doing those and he was like listen come here come here like what he’s like listen you’re here to race not [ __ ] about like with these stupid stunts or whatever you’re doing and we were like oh sorry um but to us we didn’t realize there was a difference do you know no so that was quite funny and then what else so yeah that was amazing so i r told this story recently with the talker thing and we were like well we could do with another brand to be able to do you know Robinson’s all well and good but like Robinson’s like you know a Lamborghini or a Ferrari we need like a at least an Audi or something don’t we do you know what I mean so he took us to see Steve Johnson and they were lovely and I met Doris his mom who was running Max and and and uh Doug his brother uh and all that and we got I got a talk a talk flight which we brought back to Partington which ended up being Mike pardon’s bike so we got a jersey and a and pants and a yellow Simpson helmet for Mike um so that was the start of the of the uh of the talker of the talker thing and you know was toer were talker bikes cheaper than the Robinson’s to buy yeah but not much I mean there’s been a bit written about this hasn’t the recently because of the uh you know Rebirth of T but um John Steve’s dad you know and Steve were very keen on making the uh making the bikes affordable so they do a high-end chome Molly bike but they always did like because they did like a talk flight and a Max flight and the talk flight had a one piece crank at the time the frames were made in I mean only Diamondbacks and Karas were made overseas you know everything was made you know in the US mostly in California um so they’ build up bikes and it’ be you know they’d make the frame and the fork and you know the rest of the stuff you know would come in you know arah rims and suzui or Shimano hubs or whatever and then they could build bikes and then everything bicy SKS which was how Co which was kahara but they were a distributor as well so they used to sell talkers complete talkers and power light um and you know maybe red line actually and obviously definitely kuara um and that’s how they make complete bikes out of them and then as time went on um you know Steve was very forward thinking it it beggar belief you know that that they um that they pulled the plug on the thing um but he had uh he went to Japan and basically got like the parts kits all in one go so we bought from a company called Moray in Japan everything apart from a frame fork and a handlebar okay uh uh and then you know the those parts would come from California and then we would get the parts by kits components from from Japan and then a dealer would order a t 280 280X same thing really and we would just I don’t know strap them together or take them together and just and send them out then the dealer would have to assemble them from scratch really and then and it ended up uh in the end Steve we had a bike called a magnum which was basically like a um a Taiwanese version of the 280 but all assembled you know just like how they do bikes nowadays effectively um so yeah that was the thing with with talker the idea was to get and and it could have been anybody really you know the chu H us too it could have been power light could been CW well maybe not CW because they were highend but yeah I don’t know you know why you know I don’t know why I talker really but through that then we had Max yeah talk same people it was the same company really yeah the units were back to back so you walked out the back of toer and then there there was Max so Max was um uh Doris Steve’s mom uh and Doug Steve’s younger brother and um Harold meu mcgruther industry legend that we all know and love um so that yeah that that was Max so we got Max as well as a bonus and that was just because that was part of T and and the max name comes from an advert doesn’t it you know the they’ve been reusing it recently and the talker adver was like to the max so when they wanted to do a a clothing company which really at the time who did pants like Bill Walters JT there wasn’t a lot of competition that was really Forward Thinking for them to do an apparel brand because they did and then they had like Mickey Lundy on racing with those ads with like Mike Miranda when he was still on CW and tmy brackens when he was on power light and stuff and obviously maybe Dave maretti on talker so um if you look back on those ads you know and I know Steve did used to pay a lot of money to the advertising agencies to create that stuff but it really was they really were punch punching above the weight because if you look at like diamond back which was Centurion bicycle company they were a big company with like shareholders and [ __ ] you know what I mean t was literally just the Johnson Family Robinson was just Chuck yeah GT was just Gary Turner and Rich long yeah yeah as the owners right and Roger was CW and bis Dixon and Pattersons yeah but to me to me as a kid you know not knowing all this you know the business side of things that that you were dealing with that they were the cooler Brands over diamond back and stuff to me yeah but I’ve got a lot of respect for um what diamond back and mongoose say because those bikes we don’t have an equivalent today those Brands were um still aspirational but their product was affordable yeah so what would that be like I don’t know a Volkswagen maybe would be best way to put it yeah you know it’s like you know a car for the people probably isn’t that now not not what it was originally designed to be but you know it’s something that was like you know affordable but yet it was still you weren’t buying something that was [ __ ] yeah you know and um Mongoose and diamondb I mean Mongoose super Goose sold for 200 pounds so they were cheaper than higher end bike uh and they were they were good and those are the bikes all the team Road you know ruffle that’s what all Pete Middleton that’s what everybody rode they didn’t work on special bikes yeah um and but yeah but whereas nowadays there’s no equivalent to that you either buy like you know a supermarket type bike or really even if you’re buying like a cheaper fit or something um they’re still not that relatively that cheap I suppose they are now because of postco issues but yeah um if things were like normal which they’re not um you know you you’d have to choose and and again just listen into you know your cup podcast where you’re like the grifter yeah man that’s the [ __ ] and then you see a BMX B you’re like hang on a minute like you know me and and it was a uh it was a little bit like that so we were lucky really to be able to have that and I think you know having that Motocross and if you look at the pictures from should have got better organized shouldn’t I really um pictures of official BMS from back in the from back in the daylight number two with Dave Arnold on the cover and um let me just go and you made a tea oh lovely I’m not gonna have a tea break I’m just gonna go and see if I can find this magazine cover because it really illustrates what I’m talking about and how it enabled us to be able to transition from Motocross and really get a a step ahead in BMX we kind of um we cheated really but I’ll just see if I can find the magazine two sets oh well listen I’ll send you this picture because I can’t find it that’s all right but let’s pres pretend it was here on the screen right and maybe with with them with the um modern technology that that can happen in post production yeah okay so 19 this one of the first races we did was at Southport at the beginning of 1981 this is maybe February 81 this is the cover of official BMX this is my my good friend Dave Arnold on the cover he’s one of the guys that came to the shop with the green bikes uh and then you know he got one of the red line frames so if you look at what he’s wearing he’s got like JT visor JT um Supercross face guard JT pants DG Jersey JT gloves or whatever everything’s trick it could be California but it wasn’t it was Southport where did he get all that from well from o because we had all on the Shelf no way so we already had an account with Sero marketing who were the JT importer so we were like yo BMX pants they’re like yeah we’ve got some no one’s bought in here do you want some so we already had I mean if you look at those pictures you know the first pictures of us I’m weing like you know Fox p pants and whatever Fox gloves or JT gloves so we already had and then no disrespect to them uh you know like the likes of you know ruffle who turned up on with these skateboard helmets and everything was all looked a bit like funky and obviously those guys could ride so there’s no disrespect there but they didn’t have the access to this cool stuff because we just had it already there so we had those Sims some full face helmets or JT mouth guards and all that stuff which was really difficult to get but we already had it so both in terms of the look and feel of how you know Factory we could look um and also you know obviously not so much now but then the skills between well maybe it is still the same today to an extent but the skills being transferable from you know Motocross to Bicycle Motocross were quite direct yeah so obviously I was you know pretty fit we weren’t training or anything then in in 1981 but in terms of you know line selection and you know things like that um you know and jumping and everything it was bicycle Motocross it was the same thing really so uh having done Motocross and then moved to BMX um yeah so I remember the last motocross race that I did I bought a brand new bike in 1981 wi 125 the first year of the water cooled bikes and we did a race at um place called adbaston uh and the season used to start in February like I mean races are cancelled now in April um M across the Vintage stuff because it’s water logged season started in February uh um and I remember doing that race and we got the bike but we then me Dad’s like what are you doing are you doing BMX are you doing Motocross and I’m like well I think I’m going to do BMX and then the race came and I was like yeah I want to race and he’s like we’ve got no bikes left we bought a few bikes to sell I think we used to get them through another Yamaha dealer and then sell them on yeah so I had to borrow them off a customer borrow the bike of a customer and I was in the expert class which is the oldest class he was in the seniors so basically he did he did his race and then I jumped on his bike and then did my race uh and predictably ran out of petrol and uh Craig burrow came with me he was in the team on Robinson and remember him the buy back up to the pdct and I’m like yeah we should have put some Petrol in between the races do you know what I mean and that’s the last you know motocross race that I did and that was February 1981 and then after that he was just like oh BM I kind of regret you know I love Motocross but obviously you know even just Haven told you that story of going over there and meeting Chuck and all that I mean that year 1981 we must have been four or five times after that and and do you think do you think BMX because of you had the access to all that um and it was new do you think it was just a bit more exciting than the Motocross or what do you think well it was it was new yeah like when anything is new it’s just you get that butterflies in your stomach don’t you yeah just don’t really know what’s going to happen it’s like it’s so exciting you know we’ve all I bet experience of been the you know yourself in the early days of downhill perhaps yeah it’s like it isn’t cast in stone yet is it you know the best Riders aren’t it isn’t all regimented it’s all a little bit like just throwing it up in the air yeah and that is so exciting so I I can’t really stress how exciting BMX was at and for us to go to California and to see how organized and how amazing it was there because for us and you know BMX has had to BMX is unfortunately had to live with this thing of being like inferior to other sports for so many years hasn’t it like being this kids bike and like a kids’s sport this is why you know for me it’s so important for us to have like the Hall of Fame and to see you know that connection between you know what we did then and you know kai white and Beth shria yeah and all that stuff like today and to see that lineage and to see it grow through you know my era and then into Dylan Clayton and you know Jamie staff and and onwards throughout the years that that’s amazing and it and I would say it’s only in the last few years that BMX has really got the um the recognition that it deserves because it’s really where everybody learns core skills yeah absolutely you know whether it’s Martin back or even Road you know I remember when Mike paron was over here and he was involved in the British cycling BMX program in the very early days they were like yeah we need to get the road Riders onto onto onto a BMX track because if you can do that that’s where all the skills develop and you wouldn’t think there’d be a relation between you know Road and track and and and and BMX but the but there is and and even with Moto to see um Connor Fields training more cross Riders yeah that’s like that’s mad isn’t it yeah because BMX was always seen to be this like because BMX was let’s not forget it you know when Scott Bry out bless his soul first did those races in southern California it was literally the kids replicating you know Bob Hanah or whoever it was do you know what I mean replicating the motorcycle riders yeah uh and so it’s taken a long time for it to be able to you know 40 50 and more years for it to be able to develop to the point where it’s now as respected as as as what it was so looking back and you know and Tim March would probably agree with me because Tim was a year behind us so he was still doing Motocross when that year that I was like I’m going to do BMX Tim had done some races but he was like now I’m going to stick to Motocross and I think what was probably going through his mind was the same as mine was like yeah it’s a bit of a kids it’s a bit of a it’s you know it’s not at the same level that the Motocross is at it’s less it’s less serious because I know Tim have been to California as well but you know once you well I think once we saw it there in California and how big the industry was and we weren’t thinking of this being like a business opportunity you know we had you know I have no idea I have no idea how we ever used to be able to like do stuff I you know now because you’ve got all the reporting and everything you know you know what you owe suppliers and what you’ve got coming in your budgets and all that budgets like I have no idea for the whole of the 80s I have no idea how we ever afforded to do anything yeah they suppored me parent but they didn’t really have any savings the money just came from the business but like I know we were talking be about this before like the Mirage number plates so we were importing the wizard number plates and we were like they were expensive so we just made our own yeah we made them plate that you’ve got behind you there yeah we sold we sold 10,000 of those [ __ ] 10,000 that’s crazy is it we sold 10,000 of those so all handmade yeah I was just talking to John Lee this morning about them um and you know even the studs we we didn’t have a press for those we used to use a hammer later for that play the newer one we had we had a press but talking about doing some more plates and I was like we’re too hard to do them now you wouldn’t even get the people to be able to like supply all the stuff sorry I’ve knacked it up for you I now it’s all right I get it it fell down the couch before oh that’s okay so yeah that was yeah it’s all a mystery I remember um in 81 Chuck Robinson came over here and there are those photographs that he took uh like the one of me and M D in like redit or whatever and the ones at the track with Gary Ellis and all that um and we went oh we’re going to Southport to the skate park to that place where we took those photographs that you didn’t like um and we just got in the van and we all went we had like a coach type thing yeah and we just I who was running the business who was at the shop yes it didn’t matter did it because it didn’t didn’t matter was so there was never and I suppose there’s a bit of a moral here really it’s um I think first and foremost you’ve got to do what you love and if you do what you love and obviously I imagine that you’ve been thinking a little bit about this over the last few months which everything’s happened with your situation n yeah it’ll work out man yeah you know what I mean you don’t get to you know I know nowadays everybody wants a business plan and they want projections and they want spreadsheets and they want all this stuff yeah um and we did have we did have spreadsheets then would you believe but um what is so important is that you just you you’re doing what you love and if it doesn’t work you’ve still done done what you’ve loved and and this also um talking to Dave Ann about this just recently because Dave’s done loads and loads of creative projects that of um how can I put it that he hasn’t really been financially renumerated for like a lot of going down just to make a great event or to make a with his band The Stags one of the bands that he’s in they’re doing a um doing a gig in you know down south somewhere I don’t know Brighton or Margate or somewhere hip I imagine uh and it’s a it’s an undersea theme and he said he spent 80 hours making a deep sea divers helmet his mom’s like what are you doing with that you got to put it on eBay he’s like how can10 pound an hour I couldn’t even so these are these things that nowadays that this is why companies again no parallel between any connection that you may have had with any any companies in the last few years but this is why you know sometimes companies fail either they get too big or the the the the people they at the center of it they aren’t the people that like really really really love the sport sometimes they are um but the but the reality of it is we we both know this to you can’t buy Passion you cannot buy Passion and this is the same thing that I’ve learned from being ill and being in hospital these people in the NHS you know these um support workers for example they goddamn amazing you couldn’t pay them if you got somebody and I’m going to pay you 150 Grand a year to be able to like you know do whatever they do like fill up the Water by the side of your bed and change your sheets and do all this other really really important stuff and you know really get a lot [ __ ] for it at times as well you know I mean stuff I’ve been in there you couldn’t recruit someone to do that and to have that c no you just couldn’t and and this is the same passion you know that we have you know for bikes yeah and and you know and it shows and and obviously you know we’re hoping that there’ll be you know this ven diagram that intersects there’s this bit in the middle that makes us be able to put food on the table Yeah Yeah like you say it you know comp companies can start off you know great when I first started um running the race team for Cham acts and Cycles it was L it was still a um a family run business even though it was big and those people are fantastic they’d do anything to to help me do what I was doing and but then when when it gets to a certain point and big investors come in and that they haven’t got the passion that we have then that’s when it all goes wrong yeah so it’s yeah it’s a um yeah it’s a tough one so anyone out there thinking of but you know the circumstances the same now you know the the rules of the game have changed even when we moved to the property that we’re at now in Wigan you know I I couldn’t borrow that money now no because you know that was 2007 so that was before like the first kind of crash in 2008 you know they were ringing you up all the time do you want to borrow more money do you want do you want yeah need any more loans for anything do you need a van do you need yeah you know but now unless even if you’ve got the collateral to be able to put in you know they’re just not doing that and that and that is really sad and that brings me on to just really very briefly I’ll touch upon it you know why it’s so important for us to be able to support you know other shops not just BMX shops or just bike shops but or you know cafes or restaurants or wherever you choose to be able to spend your money and I know you know I’m in a um you know I don’t dispute that I’m and and this is the thing is isn’t it you know we are part of the 1% [ __ ] not the 1% of like billionaires unfortunately but we are the 1% in you know here in the west Who Are You Know Rich enough to be able to do you know buy an iPhone or buy a laptop or buy these things because the other 99% of the world can’t afford to be able to do that so I do want to say you know I will acknowledge that I’m in a privileged position because I can afford to go and buy read from the um from the Waba lean B bakery at the Waba Farm Shop up at the end of Winston Ley road yeah as opposed to someone that’s just got to go to little and I’m sure little soos I’m sure it’s great I’m sure it’s great but maybe even better yeah you know but but but for me to be able to support an independent business we we like to do that too you know it’s it’s so uh it’s so important and and in a way that’s really why again you know that’s really why we’re in this situation uh whereby you know the big get bigger and and and the smaller just get shat on that’s the reason why you know there used to be 30 independent bricks and morar BMX shops in this country and now there’s only four yeah so you know I mean and um I’m hoping I’m hoping with everything that’s going on it’ll go back to the small businesses that’s just what I hope I’m not saying it probably won’t but um that would be nice you know if some of these smaller bik Brands can can survive and you know these massive bik brands are not going to kill everybody off you know I mean there’s so many challenges in the industry that I’m sure you’re probably more familiar with than than me just living in kind of a BMX world you know the whole uh the whole um way of doing things you know uh with you know direct Market you know Canyon and YT and things like that it’s just been an absolute Game Changer hasn’t it so trying to keep you know bricks and motor Shops going it’s um yeah it’s difficult and obviously the problems that we’ve got at the moment are you know over Supply postco and with still got another I think you know when we realized I mean for those people that aren’t in the industry uh maybe haven’t seen what’s happened is you know when it was covid everybody bought a bike or bought two bikes yeah and then are the shops had no bikes left to sell the Distributors had no bikes left to sell um the far e Taiwan and China couldn’t make the stuff fast enough uh and then obviously the factories were short because of covid and then this left um a backlog and then the and the way the system works is the the Distributors let’s just say I don’t know GT for example that they’ll then send out an order form to all their dealers how many bikes do you want and then obviously everyone’s like this time next year we’ll all be millionaires so like instead of ordering I don’t know 50 bikes shops ordering like 500 bikes and then you know GT go back to the vendor in Taiwan and say yo we want 500,000 bikes I don’t know what the figures are yeah give or take zeros I don’t know and then the factories go ahead and make that stuff um and then predictably good old uh good old capitalism bites us on the ass again the bike start to deliver and obviously the demand has gone down because obviously you you know we sold nearly two years worth of bikes in a six Monon period yeah so what’s that going to do with going forward you’re not going to keep buying a new bike whe whether it’s a full suspension bike or an ebike or whatever it is you’re not just keep no normal people [ __ ] we forget this they don’t buy a new bike every year no no um and yeah so this has now left us in in this situation and I was talking to the shipping company recently not only did people I mean you couldn’t get cars we had a new car in order we couldn’t get it because the one of the the superconductor chip yeah they couldn’t get it so the the car sat there for like six months while they were waiting for like this bit I was literally like tell us what it is and I’ll I’ll go on Al Babar and try and get it yeah other Chinese internet sites are available um so yeah it was mad but they also you might not know this I didn’t they built ships because the containers yeah so yeah so basically shipping a container it was like, 1500 quid and then it was 15 grand so it went up 10 times and obviously I heard that once you’ve then sold those bikes into the dealers of that and the customer you’ve set the retail price of a bike at like a mountain bike with a rock shocks Fork on it 1 by 12 let’s say 9.99 a grand for that bike you know like a the price of a good entry level mountain bike let’s say you can’t put it up to 1500 quid it’s still got to be so that into everybody’s margins and then even worse the bikes finally came and then obviously the dealers were like yeah I don’t need that now mate yeah canel orders everywhere and going back to the shipping thing they built ships loads and loads and loads of ships because they were like you know you can go online count you and you know track all these ships and they’re everywhere container shipping all over the world and don’t start me on the evils of containerization tell me not to go there if I start talking about containerization just press pause okay not going to do it I’m not going to do it I promise um yeah so he’s like these like shipyards in like India and they’ve got like 50 like half-built ships absolute flipping Madness so I think at the time we thought by 2023 all this Surplus stock would be I mean there was a brand recently that um yeah were heavily I mean every brand I mean even the I mean Santa Cruz that’s a premium mountain bike brand is it probably the premium mountain bike brand you might say arguably just look at the prices of the bikes man even the ebikes yeah um I mean it’s yeah it it’s Bonkers I mean uh somebody told me that who kind of worked at that brand or one of those Brands they had a buddy who was like oh I want to get an ebike like thing can you sort me a price out you know this being in the industry this happens doesn’t it and uh he was like yeah okay I’ll s your price out sent him a price the guy’s like you joking out you I can get one from isert a name of a independent um M bik retailer here and it was like 500 quid less and interest free finance yeah yeah so yeah how we’re going to dig ourselves sorry I’ve gone down a rabbit hole there but I did avoid the containerization thing um but yeah you know in a mess at the moment yeah but going forward you know maybe you know we’re hoping that but if people are making I mean it’s like the talker frames which I’m sure we’ come on to you know Bill didn’t make that many 25 of one 50 of Mo and they’ve all gone yeah and you know they’re in they’re out kaching you know they’re in the marketplace hopefully enough Keen people will have got them obviously people that didn’t won’t be happy but that’s much better but those bikes will then keep the value going forward and the whole thing I’ll tell you now the whole thing wasn’t intentional you know Bill had so many Bill Ryan had so many different models he just them up and you’re like we’re not talking about a couple of thousand quid here are we do you know what I mean yeah it’s like it was a lot of money to be able to make you know the freestylist and the freestylist 29er and then the Pro X and all these different models I mean it was a lot to take on but he’s pulled it off but it’s maybe we need to get back to more of resetting the supply and demand rather than going let’s you know get a 40 foot container full of whatever H and you know then then putting it into the market place and I remember being at a um I remember being at a distributor in uh I won’t say who they are but they’re uh they were in pool Endor it so you might be able to guess who and uh the the director at the time said that the um they their their plan was a 25% year- on-year growth now you know I’m not an economist but that’s some unsustainable [ __ ] right there isn’t it you know what I mean yeah and and and that in conjunction with to yeah so that in conjunction with what happened with covid um but even BMX is you know and BMX is at the bottom of the I imagine BMX is at the bottom of the food you know with ebikes at the top and BMX bikes probably the bottom bottom of the food chain but so many Brands haven’t even done a model year 24 model year yeah uh because of the amount of stock yeah left and and I said that in a negative way but you know you know and some anybody watching this might know you know we had some good deals from a particular uh well-known um BMX brand uh you know prior to Christmas and you know we got some stick over um supporting that to be honest with you um but ultimately you know the bikes were in this country they were going to end up somewhere yeah uh if they didn’t go to us they would have gone to like you know somewhere else where the money wouldn’t go back into BMX yeah and you know we actually used the money from that to be able to buy the ters to be honest with you yeah yeah which you know so and also it put a lot of kids onto BMX on BMX bikes at Christmas that might have got m bikes yes trying to look at it from the bigger you know from the bigger picture um but um is that enough of a rabbit all yeah I know that but it’s all uh it’s all interesting stuff obviously we could talk about all of this for for days um but no it’s it’s it’s yeah it’s all relevant um but let’s go just so we can go back a little bit so obviously you had you started the the race team off with with the Robinson’s and then you introduced talker um you had a race team um I I first heard about obviously I was a I’m a little bit younger than you so I was a bit you know a bit behind I I first got um well first of all what what year did you your dad build a track in three sisters and how did that come about well we had before that and after that really we had the um and again these are just bizarre aren’t they how did we connect with John Lee and his dad Peter at the quarrying Charlie how cuz now you just go in type in BMX don’t you you can go to Google Maps like I can go to Google Maps and say we’re going somewhere and I can type in like vegan and then all the vegan restaurants will pop up won’t you know what I mean and then you can look and then you check the reviews and then yeah you couldn’t type in BMX then and I mean so I don’t even know how we connected so we we basically um I think it was just Word of Mouth wasn’t it like somebody said something and then you like found out somehow I yeah I mean and there must have been a lot of there wasn’t any LinkedIn then was there for business uh yeah I honestly don’t know how we contacted John and his dad we went up there and in the Quarry built the track there but I think we wanted a track more locally you know we never fell out with them everything was always cool and so what year was that then that was 1 okay I think you know that first year you know we if you get those BMX news or the early paper BMX weeklys and every week There’s coverage of like Charlie sup shoot in there isn’t there do you know what I mean um so I’m I’m guessing I don’t even know we must have speak we were speaking to the Wigan Council about doing something here uh throughout 1981 I think the track probably opened in 82 so that was adjacent to the industrial estate there three sisters which is still there now um and it was part of Three Sisters Recreation Area uh where they had the the carting circuit there now which is leased by he was it leased by um a Tre I don’t know if it still is uh and they had other things on there as well didn’t they like you know fishing maybe and other thing they said oh this will be good to have you know the BMX track here so again we didn’t get you know Clark and Kent to come down and build a track we were just like my dad used to be involved in um uh H and they used to do some stuff with like bulldozers I’m not sure what really um but anyway you know he knew knew his way around a bulldozer didn’t he and this guy that used to work for him uh my dad rang him and said oh Jimmy you know are you still on the dozers oh the droughts these call them drts have you ever heard that term DRS no he’s still on the droughts and then he was like oh I’m not no I’m retired now and he’s like oh can you get us a drop for like a week so basically we went down to three sisters uh and and we looked at different areas and I remember being there you know looking at these different places and where the track was built we just marked it out you know with some pieces of wood and some string maybe yeah we went turn left here we didn’t have like a you know a draft of a track you know what I mean like yeah I don’t know how it even came out that good um and then my dad got had this guy used to work for him come down with the Dozer and you know get some dirt uh and we built the track so there was no it wasn’t we had to apply for funding and get match funding and go to British cycling and all this you know SRB areas and it’s so difficult isn’t it to get anything done or made now we had a go at trying to get the track or our track built there maybe 10 or 15 years ago between me and Carl Sanderson and a few others yeah and the amount of uh you know Patty sherrick’s mom was involved and the amount of yeah we just couldn’t get it done I mean in the end they were like I think there was a some land opposite Glo Smith Klein that they owned and they were like yeah we’ll lease it you it’s like 10 grand a year so you need a load of I mean if you’re building a track building a pump track I don’t know what pump tracks cost crazy money big Grand I don’t know but anyway we built this track for like I guess nothing maybe the council got us the dirt but the track was built for nothing yeah yeah I mean like literally M dad must have paid his mate Jimmy to to for the drought for the h and I think we just paid for it you know because say it’d be good for us if we had a BMX track yeah and I didn’t want a u inside of you yeah traditional and it was a u inside of you wasn’t it if you think about it but like it wasn’t like you know a herping first turn like Reddit or something so uh it was 90° first corner so that was quite important because I always felt that having a herping first turn in the BMX track was like it just killed the speed didn’t it yeah yeah um and obviously if you look at tracks nowadays they like variations on that cie cookie cutter design really do you know what I mean so um yeah so yeah so I guess that opened in 82 and we had a national uh so your first national was in 8 too yeah because I’ve got that picture I me I might not sent it to you actually it’s I mean Bad Day brings back flashbacks uh it’s the picture of me and Tim Ms coming around the first Corner uh it must be like later on in the day because it’s flash photography um and there’s yeah you can see me and Craig burrow and Tim and aled you know down the start streight over the wops over the Kong and then Tim just came on the inside of me into that herpin and just Lifted Me elbow and I lost the front end and um so was King Kong on the original track no no that was a pro section that we built afterwards yeah yeah so it was just a single thing and then we wanted to build a bigger jump um and so yeah we built that and it was a bit of a weird one really wasn’t it because you weren’t jumping up that high because you pedal up it yeah just a normal set of yeah it was just a normal set of doubles when you got there yeah because of the whole height of it huge yeah Chris welsby Shout out um to Chris who’s now in UAE um on talker he’s the first person that jumped it and we we hadn’t really put the surface on yet and we were like not patting it down like this to try and make it ridable and we’re like who’s going to jump it first because like we were like it’ll be historical and you’ll be the first person you’ll have a blue plaque be a blue plaque here saying that you were the first person jumping chrst I’m jumping I’m jumping so came cranking whether he came from the start H I don’t know but round round the left and Burn yeah and then up the jump of course his front wheel just dug in didn’t it was just a total slow motion I think he probably cleared the jump like just with his it was pretty pretty yeah no surface on the um but yeah that was a good track and I built some good tracks to be honest you know I did that and I did White Haven because my sister was in ly was my sister Lyn was in White Haven I had a big set of doubles as well on the second straight yeah and and the best one of the best things I ever did I don’t if you remember like first Corner second corner you had angled whoops yeah so like you could go on the inside and you could jump yeah or you could go all the way around the outside and miss them out them out or there was actually four lines you could like hit the first go out or you could go wide and cut in yeah so that was one of the um and of course that was a naturally downhill track that was a good track too and Birmingham wheels and I know there was input because I’ve said oh I’ve designed Birmingham Wheel track and like you know a few people are like no you [ __ ] didn’t but yeah so I did go down there and meet with Chris from the wheels project and um you know at least gave them some direction and some input I’m not saying that other people weren’t involved so if I upset anybody by saying oh I came down I designed the track you know I I wasn’t I wasn’t me me and my Pyon went down so again we marked the track out told him what he wanted he said how how why do you want the start I’m like well how why can we have it yeah used to always bug me with BMX he’s like it was just too narrow at the start and someone come out the gate and they come over on you even now even if watching like I don’t know [ __ ] Zelda or wherever they have these races New Zealand or wherever the hell they are yeah you come out the gate and you you you you your elbow or your you know your handlebar goes in front they’re screwed that’s it yeah so Chris said how wide you want it I’m like [ __ ] twice as wide as normal can we have it twice as wide as normal he’s like sure I’m like sick it was huge so we made the start all the start and that was definitely my idea don’t care what anybody says see super W you come out the gate and you weren’t going to be worried about like elbow who was the fastest you know got down and then you know then he had that massive drop off yeah that was a sick track I’ve never seen as many frames broken as on that track on that drop off well not so much there then you come out the corner ter broke his wrist there and then you went onto that long straight and those whoops there that snapped head tubes a go go yeah honestly so many people coming back with like the forks and the front wheel in one hand and the frame in the other yeah because you jump it and like there was so much you were carrying so much speed speed um yeah that was a uh but again oh so it’s so funny isn’t it like people design tracks and like they make a load of money make a load of money that’s what they do great brilliant I went to Birmingham Wheels in my Austin 1750 with Mike parum yeah we got there and they had um Birmingham Wheels project was like funded by the pration service or something so they have money to keep kids out of trouble type of thing and they bought a color photocopier this is like 19 whatever early 80s it was 30 grand 30 grand so anyway and he’s like oh you know and I never thought to like go I’ll help you design the track and I’ll put me invoice in I was just you didn’t give a [ __ ] did you somebody wanted a track if anyone said to me can you come and help me design a track in like I don’t know whereever Elgen I’d just go yeah sick I’ll come up there I’d pay my own fuel yeah you know you just it was for the good of BMX wasn’t it yeah yeah it’s all changed now that’s why I’m in Wigan not in like lag France you know um that’s why I’m not in Marias as we speak yeah I’m in Marias yeah uh but me and my pad and drove down there I didn’t have enough money to be able to get home so I’m like Chris man I’m like so sorry can you sub me a Fiverr to get to get home in fuel so I don’t you know we don’t have we don’t you know even though we got a 30 grand photocopier he took me five he got me five pound note out of the petty cash and gave me that and we had to drive home doing 50 m an hour to may make it stretch that’s if Mike sees this that’s like that is true and Alam man we built the AL man track too the one I went to that one too so that was I went I went twice I went with ruffle once and I went me and Mike went I won’t go into that because it was it was quite funny story but I’ll leave it for another time part two yeah so um that was a good track wasn’t it it was a bit uphill wasn’t it toward the Finish but apart from but that’s just because of where the track was I couldn’t anything about that wasn’t my fault sorry if anyone didn’t like that part of the track no it was because the second straight was like downhill on it and then it did a 18 18 and then went back up a a bit Yeah but no all good tracks and and and different layouts which I think is really good because you know doing the same sort of layout is boring is it I think all the tracks that I did like Kirby do you ever go to Kirby I built Kirby Kirby um maybe some others I don’t know uh Kirby was great that was um funny funny story about Kirby cuz my my dad worked for AC Delco in Kirby so um he wor he worked there for like 35 years or whatever but the first I remember the first race meeting at Kirby and um my dad said well I won’t Park here because everyone’s parking here and and the first the first I think must have been a club meeting or something like that and when we left every single car window had been put through and all the stereos had been robbed and um and obviously me dad knew Kirby so he knew not to par where everyone else had right outside the the new track but I remember it was like again it wasn’t a Hing first turn was it like it was a 90 degree first corner and then 90 degree again yeah yeah uh I remember um it was after I stopped racing and I was there and um who was there now um um can’t remember I can’t remember his name now who was the Riders yeah from Liverpool Flo or Pete power Flo Flem dog oh my God I cannot remember Flem dog so fem dogs and I remember going down the straight with him and pulling him on the straight and he’s like oh you’ve still got a star in yet I’m like yeah and Flo Flo had a lot of power yeah no he was like B like you know I said I’m not raised for like three years or something do you know what I mean but uh yeah but yeah that that was quite a uh yeah that was quite a good uh we trained there as well me and John Lee and Tony Holland in 85 when we were first on TKA used to go the guy from like the Leisure Center and he was like a top cyclist I can’t remember his name I’m sorry and he um he put together like a circuit training program for us so we used to go we used to go every week and on the concrete B Drone no no in the gym just like w doing whatever he told us so he put together this Pro and for John to come from Charlie all the way down there to Liverpool he U Kirby he was quite a he was quite a track but he was good um he was really good to us I’m sorry I can’t remember his name yeah and so obviously um yeah just going back so you had the robin you were bringing the Robinsons in um when did you start bringing the Talkers in well that was that was 81 so we went go to California in 81 we were like Chu we need a cheaper bike oh we’ll go see Steve Johnson we got a bike and a jersey and pants from from Mike yeah and went to Partington there’s a picture in BMX news isn’t the talker for pardon there a picture of me and Dave Arnold where we’ve just come back from California and I’ve got a trophy and whatever in the picture and um then yeah so then we must have ordered some bikes and then yeah and then and then after mik then we had a team which was like um Melanie manise um Sean goold uh and Scott Barber okay so we had a a talker team you know as well and I think that first year and that was in 82 or 81 81 that first year I looked looked at this I’ll just see if I can I’ve not been able to find anything ever to to to add on to anything that I’m saying so far um you 1981 standings so in 1981 um in yeah according to the British BMX hall of fame um the national 1981 16 plus me 15 Andy ruffle 14 Nicki Matthews 13 Brian Jones who didn’t ride for us but was from hindley where we were from I’ve met him in the last 10 years and I didn’t know him when I was younger oh really right yeah I know he’s a good good lad really strong Rider uh 12’s Chris Young Who didn’t ride for his then but then rode for us just after fact I think he did ride for his an 81 no Chris did R for is an 81 Jeremy grabwell Scott Barber Darren Mills Mark Pete so in that first year 16 plus me Allens Robinson yeah 13 well we won’t counting but that was Brer 12 Chris Young Alan talker 10 year old age group number one Scott Barber Alan stalker nine Darren Mills didn’t ride for us on Robinson but Rod a Robinson and his dad used to have a setup where we used to kind of sell stuff on the he was from the East Coast so he’s also on the the cover of that magazine the book rers ready pedals ready go by Jeff barl and eight Matt Oakley Ro for rally later seven Mark Pete alens Robinson so out of all those age groups and this is males there’s only two classes for female uh one two three four five of the Riders rode for us in the first year and we’re National Champion that’s amazing is it which I hadn’t realized that until I looked at it when I was doing that research for the talker Stu uh just recently and you never really yeah yeah mad uh and how we got those Riders from like from further a field like Scott B was from it switch yeah yeah I don’t know and then you know Scott wrote for us for a few years and uh I think one of the pictures I sent you is that the great photograph as we’re visiting the Amy Factory we’ve all got the Amy hats on yeah and Scott’s Scott and his dad came with us uh for for that so [Music] um so yeah that that was T so yeah t was like it was you know that was all go and and again you know having the help of uh you know Steve at that time uh was was was amazing so you know we’d stay we’d stay at you know we’d go over me and Tony Holland and go stay at Steve Johnson’s apartment uh he he lived in in feron nearby where the where the factory was and and then Mike Miranda and Tommy brackens lived you know nearby you know when they joined talker in 1984 so you know them years they joined did they yeah well to um brackens first and and then might you know soon after because they were good friends uh and they had uh they had an apartment to uh together so um yeah we were lucky to get the talker thing and me and Tony were the we were going to uh not Berry Farm amusement park um in in Southern California uh and we were I remember him being in his van and um Steve dropping us off and goes I’ll I I’ll drop you off if you like and I’ll pick you up later I’ve got a meeting with Bob Harrow I’m like okay um I didn’t think anything about it so we went on all the stuff in fact I hardly did because I didn’t like it had Montezuma’s Revenge do you me monum I I didn’t like any of that [ __ ] so Toby Tony went on it and I was just like brother coaster and then Steve came back and picked us up and I said oh how did he go to the meeting with like Bob and he’s like good good good you know do you mind if I ask you know what it was about and he’s like oh he wants us to make frames the har freestyler yeah but although we were importing the hro plate to them because we went Chuck introduced us I never thought be a right good idea that getting those High We St friends saw a few of them yeah you probably had enough going on just it just like and then somebody else that and I’m like talker’s making them why am I look back and I’m like yeah but we were happy just to do and all the years that we did talk on Robinson we just did talk on Robinson yeah if anyone else was running this as a business like properly they’d be like we need CW we need need to add all these other you know how business Works don’t we do you know what I mean you accumulate these yeah I wish it was more like like that I wish one business had one one or two Brands other businesses had one or two Brands I think it’s just shares it out and makes it a bit a bit better you know um yeah 100% because obviously the reason why people are doing that is because they’ve got an eye on selling the thing down the line haven’t they it’s either got to be able to get more benefit for the shareholders or they’re just going to sell the whole thing to like a Investment Group aren’t they that’s what happened unfortunately yeah um so I never thought to even do I was like oh harof frames yeah yeah be good that for somebody I never and then obviously harro became yeah this is 1981 so by the time by 1984 Hara was massive Hara was one of the first companies that had complete bikes made in Japan by anlon and it was just you know huge um you know how Shina were doing it by then and it became you know an absolutely you know an a Glo a global brand as it is today very very quickly before Bob sold it in like 89 um so yeah I don’t know but yeah that’s the that’s the you know the the talker thing and all the talker thing was going great and then you know we had a freestyle team and then when it was Kelloggs we had you know the Terry and Andy the freestyle team and then after that the other Andy and Julian and then U Terry and Andy win Terry Jenkins Andy Irwin we had um a input into what became the freestylist frame which we’ve had reissued yeah just in 20 in and 29 inch form and um yeah and then they did they did hubs they were starting to do cranks they did bottom brackets so they had this they were developing the brand into more of going more into like highend PNA like Hutch really yeah you know like with the pedals and the cranks that was the example that that was that was you know the people going from uh and then we had trouble with Robin oh wow yes yeah I don’t know you can see those well the these are actually these are actually the ones that my dad used to make for oh wow so yeah my dad used to uh because he was an engineer he used to um you know I remember him coming home from work and he’ the cage would be a flat piece that he’d m m at work and then he made a steel ball exact size for Hutch pedals and one for Shimano sorry sonor yeah yeah and then he used to I remember he used to beat it round and then he’ drill the holes and counter sink them and then he had a you know a wheel and he buffed them so they looked Chrome and then I wanted some red ones for some reason but yeah he used to he used to make those with the obviously the bigger spikes and I remember Flo used to used to come and buy them and a few other Pros used to buy them but can you imagine how long it took him to make those well you couldn’t even get anyone to even have the skill to even do that now you know it’s just gone well me dad used to sell them for8 pound to the pros you you the only way you could have them made is if you had someone do the cad draw and send it to Ty Ty um but yeah because the thing was with them the Hut well two things uh the teeth used to work really quick and then the ends used to bash in yeah so really I mean I I’d go through two or three cages at least a year yeah um yeah you used to just run through them so that was T’s idea to be able to do more parts and then then obviously they got Tommy on board and then Mike and Richie Anderson and it was just all like and on the other side of the coin like Robinson it was just like Chuck still couldn’t get the frames made we couldn’t get any frames and obviously Robin was our like Premier brand we had product to sell uh and then obviously went to Rich long to get the frames made there but it was just bad so we I was just like listen you know I’ve had enough of this we’re better off just going all in on talker so is that so what so in in 18 obviously so when I got into BMX racing and I think I did a racing in the end of 82 I had a an ultra burner and then obviously I used to get the magazines and look in the magazines see all the American brands and then you know I lived in I lived in rainford which wasn’t a million miles away from where you guys were but as a kid it’s quite a long way away um somebody had told us in our village because we had our own little crew where we used to ride our BMXs with and uh I think the first ever BMX I saw was a uh it was it was it was an um a kid who was a year older than me and his older brother um called Glenn and Scott NS and they they were they were the two kids that had these BMXs and I’m pretty sure that one of them was a talker a black talker with yellow Parts on it and that was the thing that I just look saw and I thought wow what is that and then so I got I ended up getting a Huffy Pro Thunder from rogerson’s cuz that was the closest shot to where I lived in in you know um just the other side of billing but he got a little bit further just a I didn’t know I had no idea I just told me Mom I wanted a BMX and she took me there and we got one and then I think the the summer after I got an ultra burner from Kirby Market or something like that from a washing machine shop and then somebody told me about this BMX track which was your your track and three sisters so my dad took me and my mate and we ended up racing like similar to your motorbike story I had no idea what a BMX track was or racing uh never you know only red it around the village and we used to build jumps and then did a race there and then somebody must have told me about your shop so I remember me mom taking me to your shop and walked in downstairs and I seen this team Robinson bike I’m pretty sure it must have been Tony Hollens because it had you like ukai one and 38 wheels on it and stuff and had like blue and red Amy grips and blue and red parts and it was insane and then we went upstairs to to the counter and my mom said to you um you know I want to buy Robinson for his son cuz I’d heard that Robinson was the coolest bites going and then you spck me up at Robin an expert with all blue Parts on and um I got that for Christmas in 80 that would have been Christmas 82 and then my dad T me racing in the start of 83 at three sisters and that was it raced every weekend till I was 17 I think um but but you know coming to your place and seeing them Robinson bikes they were just incredible like you know there was there was nothing there wasn’t anything better that we thought you could buy you know and and arguably there there wasn’t the the team team kit and the and the chrome bikes with the blue and red on I just it was incredbly cool I mean we we were really lucky that we had that we had that and and if you look at you know the Robinson uniform or the talk uniform or the CW uniform or OB the SE uniform yeah man that stuff was good I mean it’s it’s stood the test of time and um you know now if someone you know you know this again better than me you’d have like a team of designers like 10 people involved in maybe this is where it goes wrong e you know I mean try Lee do a thing how many people are involved man it’s not just Troy anymore is it you know the I mean those um the whole I mean using SE as an example I mean you know Scott briy out you know whated this kind of like light blue and brown and Camo and create the whole brand you know and then he had the like the bus with the turrets on the top yeah and all that kind of like you know the the bmx3 helmet and all the wings and I mean it was like Mega like if you went to a marketing company now and you said that you wanted to create a new brand and you wanted to have you know a unique look I mean they wouldn’t speak to you if it unless it was like under 100 Grand right no if you wanted to create something that good yeah I mean this stuff was like no disrespect and I’m not [ __ ] on them or anything like monster or Red Bull or any of these other brands that stuff eats [ __ ] compared to like that stuff then yeah yeah unreal I you know I mean it’s great and the monster claw thing you know it’s iconic and all that but like look at like look at any of those pictures of the SE Riders from I mean who would have thought to come up with like the best combo would be like a baby blue frame with like box like remember there’s a picture um there’s a BMX Plus cover uh and I think the magazine was from 1980 and it’s someone and the kind of doing it the wheel the front wheels yeah it’s like sideways on the front wheels turned away from the camera and in the background it must be somewhere like in the Pacific Northwest there’s all like it looks like Twin Peaks scen in the background and everything about it like the team product sticker and the whole and the bill Walters pant you know the we never really had them here did we you know with the big BW patch at the bottom I mean it’s so good and that was like Scott Bry out yeah he was just oh wait a minute I’ll invent BMX yeah undisputably from scratch yeah and then for a laugh I’ll invent a brand that is like still you know highly regarded and selling a lot of bikes still spoke to Lions actually this week yeah which is you know reinvented itself for like yeah you the times that we live in yeah it’s astonishing that one person would be able to do that you know I mean the closest things are probably are probably tro Lee are are um are Mitch pton at pro circuit yeah you those people that have been involved in their businesses on the ground you know for a long long long long time but even then you know I’m I’m sure that well certainly you know Troy and I don’t know Mitch but you know Mitch doesn’t do all the graphics for the shirts I’m sure I mean I know he still Tunes cylinders and stuff like that do you know what I mean but I I just can’t get me head around how good and the same thing with Robinson you look at that kit you know the red XEX shirt you should have brought some things to illustrate all this you know with you know and then the blue and then the the light blue the two light blue lines I mean it’s just it stood out so much on the track and and that’s what made it like so desirable because the bikes were Chrome Molly and the geometry was me they were same as everybody else’s bike really but the whole oh the look yeah yeah yeah the look The look and feel of it was like was you know it was it was it was unsurpassed and I think these were the brainchild of like the one person that ran the company yeah and that one person had to like if you think of Steve Johnson at talker he had to be involved in everything I mean like everything like the look and feel of the jerseys and I remember like there’s there’s a famous picture of Tommy brackens and Mike Miranda and they were in the just the white jersey before he had the black top and they’ve got like around the neck here there’s like a little yellow bit and it says talker remember Steve saying to me the reason we’ve done that if there’s ever a head shot of the riders in the magazines that’s the bit that always gets seen so the brand it’s always cut off yeah because you just see it from here so they they come up with this idea and who’s even done that now no one does that yeah I mean if anyone’s watching that if anyone’s watching this and then in a year’s time you’ve done it you’ve done it like you owe someone some money I’m not sure who I’m getting a I’m getting a a a jersey designed at the moment I might add that in Alan 12 and a half percent 12 and a half percent that’s my final offer um so yeah I mean in saying things and what I liked about that era was like you know you just looked at on the gate and you could from the uniform you could tell what what bite you rode you know that that’s what I really like and miss miss now you know even you know World Cup downhill now um you’ve got you know specialized gravity team for instance with bruny finals and um Jordan Williams now obviously specialized huge brand but every week they’ve got a different kit on and it’s really like lowkey and you know it’s got the big S on but I don’t know I just think it’s missing missing that what what early BMX had you know I like to it doesn’t have to be doesn’t have to be retro no just needs to be I mean some colors you know go together you know remember Steve talking to me a lot about this about you know how the eyes work yeah you know what I mean that that having that contrast with the black and the yellow yeah you can just really see it on the track uh and you know and ultimately that maybe people have come away from that now because they have got the energy drink sponsors and and everything else and even if you look and then to tie it all in I mean if you look at um a similar story to this is like uh talking of Mitch pton um when they first did the peak Honda team with Jeremy McGrath and Jeremy Buell and Brian swink Etc in 1991 when they were the first satellite new satellite Motocross team and of course the first team that ever did this was fox really yeah you know in 1970 seven with with Pat Richard and he was on the rm25 with the water cooled kit and the fox hershocks and the AL swing and all that so it it it it has got that parallel in other um in other sports and you know and obviously Fox still use that you know the head is still effectively that is the flag buring logo to this day and and it’s from 1974 so you know good design good design uh end endures and the SE logo the SE bubble logo whether it says SE bikes or SE bicycle or BM racing or whatever that it does endure doesn’t it do you know what I mean yeah 100% but I don’t know why companies are shying away from using that corporate identity because that is so it’s it’s so important and I look at I’ve watched a few of the um you know those uh the World Cup event the one that they had in New Zealand and the one they had in Australia the Hardline no no BMX racing sorry yeah yeah Australia and New Zealand and you look at the shirts and you’re just like yeah you know and I know um people uh if they’re with the national body like Kai white they’ve got to wear the the BC shirt with that most offensive uh that offensive logo won’t discuss it won’t discuss it here it’s not time and place [ __ ] that most offensive logo here on the shoulder um um so they’re a little bit stuck but you see some of that and it’s just like logos plastered like anywhere just got like they’ve got this blank shirt and now it’s so easy as you know to get stuff done digitally you can get a and this is the reason maybe specialized he can get a shirt done for the weekend you could just say yeah I want 20 shirts for this weekend and there’s the template there are the logos slap them all on it’s too easy to do but back then it either had to be screen printed or or in talker’s case they were the one of the first places that had a heat press yeah so all those white toer jerseys from the Eddie King era until they had the um sublimated shirts in 1984 you know the Mike Miranda Tommy Brackin era uh they were all you know they were all heat press so they they they couldn’t make them up like that but you know typically it was screen printed so you had to pay for the screen and yeah everything was expensive wasn’t it to be able to do so you couldn’t just say I’m going to make 20 shirts for this weekend and hot shop would make them or whatever do you know what I mean it’s RSD orever do them here nowadays it was it was a lot more um it was a lot more difficult so uh yeah we’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole there but I guess in summary these people at the beginning of BMX they not just only one person or two people or three people two people in the case of you know GT they created these logos these Brands all this thing and you know all the hardware and everything as well and I’m not disputing that they did have people engineers and different people on the ground you know doing that stuff but you know the vision and the brands came from one person yeah no it was it blows me away that yeah and and now here are with all the technology that we have and we can’t come close we can’t come close to an SE logo well I mean I think one of the reasons is and um Ju Just from my experience trying to get team jerseys designed over the last few years is when there’s too many people involved it just becomes a nightmare and it takes too long and then you end up just one person wants one thing one person wants another and you just end up going you’re that over it by that point you just go oh yeah okay do that you know well whereas if it’s just you and somebody else you can really nail down exactly what you want yeah no uh definitely but you’ve got to have that good idea in the first place haven’t you yeah for sure I have been involved in a couple of creative projects recently and you know the magic number’s three isn’t it yeah yeah you know I mean sometimes if there’s just one of you sometimes I’ll do something and they’ll be like yeah some say yeah um and I’ll go oh yeah what am I thinking I mean yeah we were doing something recently involved in a a um a record with with Dave Arnold again in in the band that he was in and we we’re not reissuing we remastered uh um and reformatted an album that we put out because I had a record label in 1980 whenever it was 1989 and um we were talking about the title and I just came up with this title and I’m like yeah is amazing and then Dave said to me that’s not the band is it like you’re just thinking too highbrow there and I’m like yeah you’re right that’s tall [ __ ] stop me so sometimes you just go down this route of like want to please yourself don’t you do you know what I mean it goes away from what it should be and and as soon as he said that I was like oh yeah I’m an idiot sorry and then we ended up with something that was a little bit like that but was more in keeping so sometimes having too much free reign if you’re not a genius which I’m not uh can be uh can be dangerous can’t it no okay guys we’re gonna have to call it a night and we’re going to have to do a part two because there’s way too much um interesting stuff that Alan’s talking about so I hope you’ve enjoyed um part one of the Alan Woods podcast please like subscribe and do all that stuff it keeps us going and um please join us back next week for part two thanks very much stay on your bike