The Rise of Disruptor Brands, Red Bull Rampage & Unbound Gravel

Second Nature is a weekly podcast about the business of outdoor, action, and endurance sports, hosted by Dylan Bowman and Aaron Lutze.

In this week’s episode we talk about the UCI World Cup, Red Bull Rampage, Unbound Gravel, and the rise of disruptor brands. As usual, we finish with Brand, Product, Content (BPC).

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second nature episode 13 The Boys Are Back we are reunited Ludy great to see you buddy thanks for holding down the fort my absence Lucky 13 welcome back I am extremely happy that you’re back I had a great time pretending to be a podcast host in an interviewer I did my best Debo impression but I am extremely happy to have you back well dude you are just it’s such a uh fantastic interviewer that I feel like I should announce my resignation effective immediately you absolutely crushed it with both Tim toson and Ryan thow I’ve got a couple of takeaways to share with you but I missed you dude and I have so much fun recording this stuff I just am like so happy to be back it’s so good to see you again and we got a fun docket to go through today likewise man it’s so fun to do this together and it wouldn’t it be fun at some point to be able to interview somebody with both of us that’d be a cool format like the two of us just peppering people with questions I feel like that’d be a good one well we’ll talk a little bit about my trip to Europe my race some fun other serendipitous things that happened while we were away but maybe first I’ll just share a couple of my takeaways from the two episodes that I missed and of course I did miss those because of my trip to Europe and you happen to talk to two of my favorite people in trail running Tim Tolson Ryan thrower Ryan as you know and as you talked about is my right-hand man my business partner the dude that I go to work with with my hard hat and lch paale every day and one of the things that I thought was just important to reinforce is something that sort of is was glanced on in the podcast but I feel like really should be recognized in that Ryan said he picked up a camera for the first time in 2019 right like he is a true fom it’s only five years later and you know we’ve been working together for three and a half or four years at this point and that all started and 2019 so you know he’s making featurelength documentaries now somebody who just started shooting races picking up a camera you know just as a hobby only five short years ago yeah it’s that easy you can just fire out documentary films no problem but you know what it’s that quote right people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five and Ryan is a shining example of that he was dedicated to the craft he loved what he was doing and he applied all the things together to actually make it happen and he found the right partner in in you and Harmony and free Trail and wow like I think he was even blown away when I was like you know this video has over 150,000 views right yeah he didn’t know that but I loved what he said also about you know when you’re practicing a craft or when you’re trying to get good at something do it every single day every single day you know and it’s not long until you stop feeling like an incompetent and you start feeling like a a capable creative in his case but that applies across all different Pursuits in life whether it’s Sports business career family Etc do it every single day make it a habit till it becomes second nature right ly oo nice nice you got two dads on the podcast here I’m sorry in advance yeah so anyway Ryan’s episode was great and I can’t say enough about you know how lost we would be without him I mean he’s true creative Swiss army knife photos videos podcast graphic design everything I mean everything that we do that we put out has Ryan’s creative genius behind it and we couldn’t do anything without him and I’m glad he got some shine here on the podcast that he produces right and he did the cover artwork for it too right yes he did so big shout out to Ryan Trower Tim was also a great conversation and I I thought it was a perfect companion to build off Rebecca’s episode a couple of weeks ago when you use that to prompt him I think the first question was you know being an athlete being a pro aete having traveled the world and experienced all these different races and how does that form the vision the goals and the passion behind the mammoth Trail Fest and I think it’s important for our audience to know just what a sensation Mammoth Trail Fest has become in a few short years they’ve only run it twice and it’s already one of North America’s most important races he has the benefit of being in one of the the most spectacularly beautiful places in North America there in the Eastern Sierra um you know and the California mountains so he benefits from that but it really is a really beautiful Community oriented event that Tim has stewarded and built in a fantastic way and I think he’s done such a good job with it and one thing that I also felt was important to reinforce was something that he talked about a bit was just like the slow and steady growth mindset which if you’ve ever been to Mammoth Trail Fest you would recognize actually takes restraint because they are in such a spectacular place and I think he does have great Partners in the mountain resort operation who are incentivized to bring as many people as possible to town to have an economic impact in on a tourism based local economy and my instinct if I were the steward of Tim’s race would erroneously be to just pour gasoline on it you know you realize you have something special like just floor the gas pedal and he I think is smartly intelligently and intentionally as he talked about taking this sort of slow and steady methodical approach and make sure he’s not getting ahead of himself he’s not getting over his skis and to that he can deliver a world class experience to each and every Runner without you know compromising that that quality and service of you know some bigger economic win or um you know those other uh you know more financially driven incentives yeah I think we talked about the idea of as an athlete putting on an event that’s sort of a signature your credibility is on the line with this event so if you do get over your skis if you overpromise something that you can’t come through on or you bring in something that doesn’t necessarily fit but might have a huge impact to the bottom line you’re on the hook for it and your credibility is on the hook for it and I think that’s an important thing I mean Tim has lived in Mammoth for a long long time and probably wants to continue living there for a long time and if he upsets the apple cart somehow there’s only what do you say 7,000 people that actually live there year round you don’t want to you don’t want to upset any of those 7,000 people because in a community like that you don’t want to make enemies right your reputation is everything and Tim has an impeccable reputation a great Champion Ultra Runner who’s been one of the best of my generation who’s now got the next chapter of his career really set up he’s actually going to join us at trailcon he’s on the events panel uh and it’s funny actually and I’ll talk to him about this at trailcon but I gave him the option to either be on the Brandon athlete panel or on the events panel and he chose to be on the events panel which I think tells you something about how he views himself and his future in the sport but two fantastic podcasts Aaron I’m sorry I couldn’t join you on them but I appreciate you B sharing or uh you know carrying the burden and carrying the load for the team while I was away that was my only my only requirement is how upset can I make Dylan by not being here I was sort of trolling you on both those choices of who to pull in but you know it’s one thing that really stuck out to me with both of those conversations that after I got off the line with Ryan I realized was that when you have a very specific story that you’re telling in Ryan’s case I’m going to produce content whether photo or video and and uh for Mammoth Trail Fest I’m putting on an event Tim’s got this event that he’s doing it’s a very clear story and it’s easy to get behind those guys in both things and I think a lot of times when we’re out there we don’t have a clear story that we’re sharing with people I want to do everything I’m a Swiss army knife I can do all these different skills and I can put this together I could do that but when people see this very specific story it makes it easy for them to get behind them oh you’re doing an event I know somebody that can help you do that event better or I have a resource that would be helpful oh you’re trying to create content let me make sure that I plug you in with this person oh you’re doing a podcast about the business of the outdoor here let me get you connected to this person I think the more we lock in on these stories and make it easy to retell our story The more support we actually get because we’re making it easier for everyone around us I had a really similar experience this last week I posted on LinkedIn about leaving my job and exactly what I was going to to do and all these people rallied behind me and reached out and sent comments and re-shared my stuff because it was so specific what I was actually doing whereas before it was like oh that guy can do this and this and this and this when you really lock in on your story and you’re able to share it easy people come from everywhere to support it and I’ve seen that happen with both Tim and Ryan and and us too yeah you know didn’t Tim say something like that when you asked him about advice for younger upand cominging athletes he said something about like know what your story is the importance of that great great lesson I thought he absolutely nailed that that answer he provided such great practical wisdom for the next generation of outdoor oriented athletes well dude I had a great trip to Europe I missed you dearly but me and the family we went to Austria and your boy messed around ran 105k 66 miles with 177,000 feet of climbing survived in in biblical weather in biblical weather survived in an energetic implosion a massive Bonk at halfway feared that I was going to be doing the death march thing again but you know battled through it got back to basics stuffed a few gels down my throat finished fourth place no big deal NBD was what did you used to call it the vision quest Quest yeah this was this wasn’t quite a Vision Quest I’ve endured a few of those and uh yeah this is I was happy to put put a solid one on the board it still feel far from the old Debo but it was good to lace them up and go go to battle a little bit here uh before we start getting really busy in work mode and also I implemented some of our friend Rebecca Rush’s advice which was to take a little time off from work periodization again maybe we’ll talk about this in a future episode but basically the next couple weeks for free Trail are the most important busiest hardest of the entire year and so we took this opportunity on our trip to Europe to try and unplug recover from a busy spring so that we’re rested enough to you know for the the inevitable effort that is in uh the immediate future here for us the next couple of weeks so anyway it was a really great trip and uh it’s also good to be back now I feel refreshed both physically I’m like already back out running feeling good about it and now today got back on the laptop for the first time and it was like let’s go let’s get ready nice such a good feeling to be fully refreshed like that and what an epic trip I was following along the entire time Austria is such a cool place and I was saying to Harmony actually there was where you guys were staying in Austria I stayed one time and I remember every morning walking outside and taking pictures of the mountains and I came back from the trip and I had like 50 identical photos it’s just so pictur rest there so I had one fun serendipitous thing that happened which was I finished reading my book open by Andre agasse which we’ve talked on the podcast about a couple of times the Night Before the Race and a similar thing happened the night before my very first ultramarathon in 2008 I finished reading Born to Run before my first 50 mile my first ultramarathon and of course 22-year-old Debo was ready to run through a brick wall after closing the book that night and crawling into the back of my Jeep to try and get a few hours of sleep and holy smokes man what a journey that whole experience sent me off to for the last 16 years and finishing Andre agy’s book the night before Mozart was sort of similar but in a very different way because the closing Pages as you’d probably assume are about sort of him closing the the chapter of his athletic career and retiring and stuff and I was just thinking like oh man like this is so poetic this is like so meant to be I hope this isn’t like my official retirement and uh anyway that was in the back of my head and uh a fantastic book um for any athlete to to read but felt poignant to to finish that book up the night before I went out to you know sort of peel the Band-Aid off and get back to racing myself yeah plenty of time to think about and digest that book on a 106k run to totally the the cool thing was though and I told you about this was that after the race Harmony and I we were just taking a little time off from work we’re spending the extra week there in Austria unplugged she found some cool hotels to stay at we ended up in leogang Austria a place that you know well and it just so happened to be that this tiny little mountain town in Austria was hosting a UCI World Cup for mountain biking something that I know you’ve attended in the past and uh you know events that I I know you know a lot about so tell me Tell the audience a little bit about the World Cup stuff your experience at Leo gong and then I’ll share a few my takeaways the wildest story from that that race on the UCI circuit is actually from 2015 Aaron Gwyn broke his chain out of the start gate and obviously in a downhill mountain by Grace you want to be able to Pedal a lot so you can go super fast and cross the finish line before everybody else somehow he snaps his chain right out of the start Hut and kind of pumps the bike around the corners and over jumps and stuff gets enough speed that he ends up winning the race everyone else has chains Aaron Gwyn doesn’t need chains he beats everyone and it’s still probably the most incredible race run of all time or at least top three but I think it’s probably the most incredible race run of all time winning on that level minus one thing it would be like if you decided that you weren’t going to wear socks or shoes yeah it’s like yeah your shoe falls off in the starting in the starting shoot and you win the race yeah that’s a Perfect Analogy holy smokes dude what a phenomenon what a what a spectacle it was the whole world cup Vibe around it and again it’s this tiny little Mountain Village you know pretty far from any major metropolitan area you’re probably two and a half hours from Munich Germany there maybe an hour and a half from salsburg so a pretty remote place and what an incredible venue and what athletes these people are especially the downhillers like what an incredible mix between psychological toughness and fearlessness and physicality like to survive those courses I’m sure man you’ve got to battle some real fear demons when you’re stay in you know at the top of those incredible runs and then you know simultaneously it’s takes a physical toll to send it downhill so fast and you got to be on the gas for about four four and a half minutes just full blast pedaling as hard as you possibly can but then not overcooking corners and making sure that you stay on top of these Little Rock sections and what’s really interesting is that the Riders will walk down the course and kind of memorize what they need to do and when they need to do and they need to be right on the razor’s edge of being on the outside of this corner and over the inside of this part and they have all these things memorized for a four and a half minute stretch of time it’s a lot mentally to do in addition to the physicality of it like you mentioned what also happened in the last couple weeks was an event called Red Bull Hardline which the whole premise of the event is actually to make the most difficult downhill race ever and if you look at the track there it these huge razor sharp rocks just pointing in every direction and massive 90 foot gaps it’s basically an exaggerated version of what you saw in Austria and before the event they had actually toyed with this idea of having a giant Canyon Gap with a legit drop there was this huge jump and anyway it didn’t go that well somebody tested it and there’s an epic photo but uh didn’t go that well thankfully they’re okay got a concussion out of it but uh which is not ideal but they uh they decided to scrap it for this year but will it come back I don’t know but this event Red Bull Hardline if you thought that downhill mountain biking in a resort like that was crazy this other event is ridic well I learned all about it in the super Rider newsletter this morning so everybody’s got to go sign up and subscribe for that one because that video was pretty harrowing but man so cool to watch those athletes practice for the downhill I got to see see um is it Valentina hle the four-time world champion Red Bull athlete uh female Rider and then I can’t remember the other Red Bull athletes named french guy specialized Rider oh L Lo yeah so he he was uh up there practicing too and you know both of whom you you know the the Red Bull helmet sort of gives it away but you could sort of tell like okay these guys are good and so after the fact Harmony and I looked him up on Instagram and that was one of the things I wanted to bring up here is holy smokes like I guess I didn’t really appreciate how big mountain biking is as a category coming from the trail running world but both the athletes that we just mentioned have somewhere in the neighborhood of a half a million Instagram followers that’s like bigger than Courtney de Walter and to me being at this UCI World Cup it really reinforced the reality that mountain biking and Psych in general is a much more mature industry than trail running is and so the vendor Village the Expo had a real professional vibe to it all the brands had their sort of like mechanics out working on all the bikes there was I don’t know since we we weren’t there for the actual competition itself I didn’t get a sense of how many actual fans there were that had traveled to this remote location to to spectate but what was incredibly obvious is that there’s a lot of Brands investing a lot of money into these UCI World Cups and it was really cool to see just you know sort of a sister category a sister uh sport to trail running you know you could sort of see that this is the trajectory we’re on to and five 10 years down the road it’ll probably look a lot like these these World Cups at at some of these bigger races let’s hope there’s not some organization that tries to claim everything and make it difficult for all the brands and athletes to participate and then sells the rights to a third party that doesn’t have the same vested interests as Red Bull and yeah anyway um no I mean look I think here’s the thing when Red Bull TV was running the broadcast for free of the World Cup Series I think a lot of these athletes really got a big boost a because they were on top of the podium and Red Bull was highlighting these athletes all over the place and so they got a ton of visibility that raised them up to this point of having 500,000 followers or more our friend Kate Courtney also Red Bull athlete also part of the World Cup Series but for cross country racing I think she’s around like 550 right now so I think that they benefited a lot from that coverage and they you know they’ve they’ve worked hard to get to that point not not just athletically but by posting content and doing their thing but the thing that’s happening right now in mountain biking is that the UCI the organization that’s in charge of the series sold the rights away from Red Bull to Discovery and now for you to watch the UCI live stream you have to pay something like $24.99 a month in addition I’m pretty sure to your HBO Max subscription so you can’t just get like a one time you have to get HBO Max and then you have to pay for an additional package which I thought that was the whole purpose of streaming services was to unbundle things but here we are and what I think is happening is that the I I don’t know the numbers for sure but I’ve got to imagine that if something’s free versus there’s a giant pay wall probably the viewership has decreased substantially the interest is still there but the ability to participate in the live viewing and to build true fans of the sport and of the athletes is probably suffering now if you’re in that top five you’re probably still getting the benefit of being in the recap videos and being on the podiums but if you’re outside that top five I wonder if you still get the same if you still get the same love that you got when you were part of the live broadcast because you would be featured and you would be maybe in the pregame or the pre-race feature at or whatever else so I think that maybe it’s no different for the top five but if you’re outside that top five I think you have to work a lot harder to get the visibility that you had when the broadcast was free and that’s the thing that I would caution any sport against is I get the idea of having a pay wall to help put more resources into the sport which I hope is happening but at the same time gosh it was nice when there was uh the medich family of mountain biking basically just funding the growth of the sport through live stream content and everything else that they well I mean that’s always the friction right it’s either needs to be free and add supported so there needs to be a healthy business ecosystem and Brands willing to invest to tell those stories to abroad consuming audience and if that doesn’t exist then you have to Pivot to a subscription model to to even entertain the idea of having a live stream broadcast and you know I’m sure those things are very expensive and you know it’s not it’s not necessarily an easy calculation to make I’m sure and it probably is you know a negative for the sport that it’s no longer free and available on Red Bull TV but Red Bull had a huge presence there they had some very cool sort of like athlete uh per like they had a a remote Athlete Performance Center there in the Expo they had obviously a ton of their uh their cycling athletes uh performing well at the World Cup they had a really cool sort of like athlete Zone at the top of the hill too so anyway that Red Bull brand was still very prominent around the entire event and you know your boy is always walking around looking at the brands checking out what are people wearing who’s on what bicycle what’s like the new cool looking thing with sweet design and Innovation Incorporated and I noticed this brand for the first time called coma I’ve never seen it in the US and the reason I bring it up is because this vendor Village their tents had the vibe going on you know they had like sort of bean bags lounge chairs you know people just hanging out shooting the breeze I think they had like espresso machines and refrigerators with any number of C beverages inside of them and you could tell that they LED with culture and vibe in addition to it seems like making good product and having a lot of the top athletes there from what I understand they’re based in Andor I didn’t want to use this for my bpc this week but comol was a a brand that I uh discovered and followed on Instagram while I was over there I don’t know if you have any insight into their story at all you know I feel like there is a piece of content just waiting to be made of getting Deo on two wheels you love being in the mountains you love Trails you know trails are going to save the world but maybe maybe mountain biking on those Trail I’m a 38-year-old dad I will not be getting on top of that downhill course I would never survive it would take me 45 minutes to get down the thing that it takes those Riders to do in 3 minutes if only there was a YouTube channel that could teach you everything you need to know about riding bikes at that level yeah you could be my coach how the tables have turned now Aon since your ultra running career now I’m getting into mountain biking we’ll get common Sal that sponsor me it’s a cool brand though it seems like yeah based in Andora they make ski equipment it seems like they’re sort of getting into the apparel space now um I loved just like the kits they made for their athletes their bikes look cool the vibe that they were putting out at the Expo was topnotch so cool cool brand for our for our friends to check out anyway I’m gonna two wheels it’s happening man honestly I feel like a lot of people your age are getting into mountain biking right now because to be honest it is a very expensive sport to get like a legitimate mountain bike is starting at a couple thousand dollars the the bike I actually got this week is from Marin uh that bike is a $3,200 bike which is really reasonable for a proper mountain bike that can do everything right out of the box but some of the mountain bikes are you know eight n $10,000 or more and the ebikes even more so I think it is a lot of people in their in their mid to late 30s early 40s or even older that are getting into Mount biking because they can afford it and they have the time to actually invest in going to the trails and and doing that I see that a lot on my channel specifically people saying like oh I used to ride BMX when I was a kid or I used to do this and now I’m on a mountain bike and I absolutely love it and I think I think actually that’s like a big group of people that are coming into the sport right now they’re they’re a bit older because they can for to spend the time and money to to get involved in mountain biking so you’re right there in the target market bud I’m in the demo yeah and yeah clearly there part of what I was saying and that it feels like a more mature Market is that it’s just a bigger economy yeah and the equipment necessary comes at a much higher price point and therefore demands probably a wealthier participant in in order to actually be interested in that Pursuit we’ve got a few other bike related things to touch on today there was some news about redel Rampage so we’ll talk about that first and then I want to talk about Unbound gravel but tell the people what happened at Rampage because this is an event that I know you worked on a bunch during your tenure at Red Bull and this is a a big exciting piece of news yeah big news this week or last week Red Bull Rampage expanded to being a two-day event and they added women into the event which has been something that has been called for for a long time and a huge huge win for a lot of people who’ve worked really hard to get to this point big shout out to Katie Holden who has been really leading the charge in terms of the event organization with Red Bull formation our friend Chris Warden had a huge hand in getting it there and of course the athletes themselves to get to this point this is a huge huge deal prior to women being invited into Red Bull Rampage there was also an event called Red Bull formation which was really kind of the building blocks to help them get the experience at events and with with all the elements in that environment to be ready for events like Red Bull Rampage and that event was really important and I think if I’m honest one of the most important things to get from not being in Rampage to being in Rampage was actually not skill related but experience in events there were no events that I’m aware of that that were for women to get event experience to be on the top of the hill with you have to drop and you have to jump off this thing now it’s a lot different when you’re just riding down the trail at your own pace or when you’re ready or when the photographers ready versus this is the time that you ride you have to throw it down now or never it’s a really important element and and there was no way to prepare anyone to get into a rampage without that kind of stuff that stuff is necessary and I I sort of wish that there were even more opportunities besides Red Bull formation some of the jump jams that have gone down the Fest series crank Works has invited women to participate it’s a huge huge huge moment to get more people on bikes and more people excited and I’m really excited for the women who are competing this year but I’m more excited for the next generation of riders that’s going to see these women throwing it down and doing them proud and they’re going to get involved just always believing that they can be in this event and how cool to pick up a bike for the first time with the dream of being in Rampage because you’ve already seen it be unlocked I think that’s the coolest thing about this whole part be more specific about what Red Bull Rampage is for those who don’t know so for the uninitiated Red Bull Rampage if you’ve ever seen a mountain bike event where people ride off of giant Cliffs and they’re usually now doing backflips in 360s off you know 30 40 foot cliff drops uh they have to put a run together top to bottom and it’s a two- we window so the athletes go out there with a dig Team of two other people and they dig their line into the mountain and those lines can have jumps they can have gaps they can have real technical difficult riding bits in them but they have to kind of design what their run is going to look like and then they sculpt it out of the dirt which is not a small feat it is almost the entire window of the event is just building a line and getting it right with your team and A lot of times the Riders will collaborate on certain parts of the the line together so that they’re all working together to make these individual lines happen down the mountain and then on the FI and then there’s actually a rest day where everybody’s like mandatory rest you can’t ride you can’t work on your course you have to go chill for a day and that was necessary because people up until that point before they instituted that were showing up on the day of the event completely exhausted and then they would get hurt and so Red Bull has done a lot of interesting things to really make this event focused on the Riders so that they can do their best performance on the day of the event and I think the two-day format is only going to add more to that to give them more time to get the job done because not only is there the pressure of riding the scariest lines imaginable and these guys are the most uh decorated Riders on the planet and I’ve been there at the top they are shaking they are nervous to drop in and they are relieved when they get to the bottom uh not only do you have to ride arguably the scariest thing you’ve ever done at the highest level that you’ve ever done at a certain time you also have to fight against the wind and the crowd and then you have to be judged on top of it it’s a lot to take in it’s it’s so much more than just riding a sick line top unbelievable do some of the top downhill mountain bikers compete in Red Bull Rampage or what is the athlete demo who’s competing there are a few Brenan Faircloth is probably the best example of someone who’s more of a versatile he’s kind of like a free racer so he races but he rides Free Ride he’s got a YouTube channel there are a handful of guys who have been racers in the past who are who are involved in the event but a lot of it I mean you’re just dedicated to to Big Mountain riding and filming and doing everything when Carson Storch originally started competing in Rampage he was doing slop style mountain biking and big mountain riding at the same time and when we signed him he and I had some really serious conversations about I think think honestly you should put the slope style stuff to the side and just lock in on Big Mountain you had just gotten third place and won best trick at the event and this requires your full attention if you’re going to do that again you can’t be going to this event on on this bike you need to be locked in and that’s what it requires it requires yearr round Focus to just do this one event one time a year it’s hug so you said Kate May potentially join us on the show to talk more about it but that was a good synopsis of the big news in the mountain biking world that that there will be a female category at Red Bull Rampage starting this year I guess huh yeah and just a few things to add in there so there are a bunch of female mountain bike uh Free Riders that have been signed by Red Bull and and and some other sponsors as well this category is continuing to evolve there are more riders coming into it there are more events that are becoming available and again this is sort of what I alluded to before the the invite to participate in Rampage I really think there needed to be solid infrastructure like Red Bull formation like crank Works to give everyone a chance to really develop a lot of event experience to match their riding experience they’re amazing Riders Hannah Bergman is insane to watch Ride she’s incredible and and every other Rider that will be on that start list absolutely deserves to be there but in addition to being some of the gnarliest Riders on the planet what they were what they really really needed to build was more time in these event environments and that’s exactly what formation was created for and Katie Holden had a huge hand in bringing that to light and putting that together and more things have popped up and and again it goes back to the point we were talking about before is once you have this story people know how to get involved and so once the flag was in the sand with formation then brand started coming on board more events started popping up more invites started coming together women are riding Red Bull Hardline which we talked about is the gnarliest downhill event that you can be a part of so it just continues to grow and continues to build and people are getting event experience now doing so many different elements of of Free Ride mountain biking and that’s the most exciting thing because the end result of all of these different things Rampage crank works whatever is more people on bikes and more people getting excited for different ways they can EXP Express themselves on two wheels and that’s truly the coolest thing so speaking of people on two wheels we’ve talked a bunch on the podcast about how the bike industry has been challenged but one of the only growth sectors in cycling was gravel and Unbound gravel happened last weekend which I think has sort of become at least North America’s most prominent long-distance gravel race is that a fair characterization it’s a big one and the gravel Hall of Fame is there as well so it’s definitely the epicenter for a lot of gravel things so Random location Emporia Kansas becomes the center of the gravel racing Universe for at least a moment in time every year and there was a couple of stories from this that I thought would be fun to Riff on most notably llan Morton winning the 200 mile race which is sort of the Premier event at Unbound there are other distances athletes compete against or compete on but the top athletes it seems like mostly target the 200 mile race which is also on the lifetime Grand Prix we’ve spoken about Lin here on the podcast being an example of that artist athlete and like you and Tim talked about on the podcast and like you’ve mentioned a bunch of times the difference between sort of a project athlete and a performance athlet it seemed like llan was sort of evolving into more of a a athlete but here he is winning one of the biggest races in the world in pretty spectacular fashion so I wanted to give a big shout out to him Ted King our mutual friend I just published a podcast with llan on his show King of the ri I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet but looking forward to to hearing Lan’s thoughts after that incredible performance anything you want to add on Lin I mean it’s clout for sure if you can put down a a project as big as you know the the tour divide and the the uh what was it called when you did the tour to France and you know like the solo tour FR something like that yeah yeah if you can do that and you can turn in big results like you’re doing every single bucket imaginable that’s your best case scenario but wow is that a lot of effort uh to be able to do both things on that level you’re at the you’re at the top of the pile if you can be both project or a performance athlete that’s usually it’s one or the other what a compelling character don’t know him personally but I’ve followed him for a long time and really appreciate the spirit that he brings to the sport of cycling I also wanted to give a couple more shout outs to two athletes who I think just exemplify what it means to be a 21st century Pro and who are also very interesting in terms of their own personal stories and approaches to the sport Heather Jackson was fifth in the women’s race this was sort of her big gravel breakthrough she’s been racing on the lifetime Grand Prix for the last couple of years but I think has always had a hard time like making that break group and you know hanging on the wheel of the front pack finishing fifth at Unbound in what was sort of like a pack Sprint finish you know she’s only a couple seconds away from winning the race at that point in a 200 mile she’s a former professional Iron Man triathlete she’s also a professional ultr Runner now for Hoka top five at Unbound she’s one of the favorites at Western States coming up here in a couple of weeks so one of the story lines for me is if Heather Jackson goes top five in Unbound in western states in the same summer how incredible would that be as a story for a professional athlete that’s incredible that’s like the Bo Jackson of of Endurance Sports right there yeah the coach Prime the Dion Sanders of endurance Sport and then our boy Pac mckelvin figured we give him a quick shout out he was eighth in the race he’s second in the Grand Prix he put up a really nice post today or maybe it was yesterday uh just sort of about navigating the low points of injury and underperformance that he’s sort of gone through in the last couple of years he’s back on top shout out to our boy Pac and check out the adventure stash and so that’s what I wanted to sort of highlight both Heather and Pac are also creators too they do such a good job of sharing their story being a and of course Lort we’ve spoken about him at length doing the same thing so just three examples of athletes who are not and this is also a call back to what Tim said you know when you asked him for advice on what what you or what advice he would bestow on the Next Generation the first thing he said is like go all in on the sport like you have to actually be a practitioner you know you can’t just be an Instagram guy you can’t just be like you know doing the sort of like ego stroking public content creation you know you got to be good at your craft and but also yeah when you tell a great story holy smokes does it touch um you know the the the lives and emotions of people around the world in ways that you can’t predict llan Heather Pac and all do that so well can I give you another story from Unbound that I absolutely love this was actually going to be my bpc at one point but there was a group of three guys and they’re from a company called Rodeo labs and Rodeo Labs you would love these guys they do bikes but they also do apparel they kind of make whatever they feel like making from the way I can uh discern but they they went to Unbound and they went to Walmart and picked up three beach cruisers and then they rode Unbound on beach cruisers and documented the entire thing and it is hilarious see yeah so many different ways to enjoy these Outdoor Sports and you know hopefully that helps them carve out a niche or discover what their story is you know and do something that perpetuates positivity into the sport into the community isn’t it so funny how we sometimes overthink what we need to accomplish a goal like H I got to get the right tech gear everything I’ve got to have the right seat post and the right shoes and the right pedals and then these guys go get Walmart bikes and do the same race as everyone else I think I love that you know I love the anti-hero the anti brand the anti you know the the reverse of everything and this is exactly that like you can still have a really great time and I would argue that these guys probably had a better time than most at Unbound definitely memorable did it on $198 bike like perfect beach cruisers why not so cool well hey you know we’ve spent so many episodes lamenting the state of the bike industry right now but here we are starting our episode with UCI World Cup Red Bull Rampage Unbound gravel a lot of exciting stuff happening in cycling right now and it seemed to me at least from my brief interaction with the sport over there in Austria that it’s in a decent place the brands seem to be doing okay the athletes certainly are performing at a crazy high level and uh hopefully that will trickle down to the industry to the economy surrounding it also moving on another brand that we’ve talked about at length here on the podcast on running I think they’re just being known as on now because they have expanded outside of running there was a great article in the business of fashion a publication that I subscribe to I’m a paying subscriber of business of fashion they wrote an article about this although they basically sort of collapsed that article into an Instagram post that you can sort of get the gist of the entire article just by scrolling through a few slides so I figured we use this as a prompt to talk about what’s happening at on and then use that also to talk about what’s happening in the sportsare economy more generally so eludia I’m going to share my screen here so to our viewing audience and if you only listen on the Pod you got to go subscribe to our YouTube channel check out what we’re doing over there and if you do you’ll be able to see these charts that uh business of fashion published on their Instagram account here we go here go hey we’re we’re like five subscribers shy of 500 right now are we really holy smokes yeah now wouldd be a good time all right all right so if you’re not if you’re not watching us on YouTube I’m just going to do a little quick reading here and then I’m going to pass it to lcy and we’ll go back and forth on what some of the implications are here so again this is on business of Fashions Instagram page I’m just going to read the caption for our listening audience here what they say is the sportsare market is increasingly split into two camps on one side are the incumbents household names like Nike Adidas puma and Under Armour with global name recognition built over decades and sales to match on the other side are Challengers a cluster of sportsware Brands angling to take their place alongside or instead of the incumbents this group includes newer names such as on and Hoka but also Brands like Solomon which traces its roots back to the mid 20th century but but has only recently become a household name the challengers exist across almost every major category whether athletic footwear active or technical sports gear Lululemon which arguably kicked off The Challenger ero when it crossed a billion dollars in sales in the early 2010s is by some estimates the biggest US women’s apparel brand period Challengers are present in are also present in most geographies whether it’s China’s a and leining or Kenya’s Enda no single Challenger poses a threat to Nike or Adidas even Lululemon has a 2.4% share of the overall sportsware Market according to new report by RBC Capital markets compared to Nike’s 17% but collectively these upstarts are making a sizable Dent so they are basically making this argument obviously that there’s it’s the incumbents versus The Challengers something we’ve talked about on the podcast here a couple of times they have data to back this up first and foremost the first graphic just shows the expected compound annual growth rate of the sportsware ecosystem uh between now and 2027 so over the course of the next three years or so and it looks like their predictions are that the sportsware market will Eclipse 500 billion in annual sales globally by 20127 just staggering numbers that are hard to contemplate so that just sets the context for what is more the meat of the point that they’re making here the Challenger brands are n Fuego luty do you want to sort of talk us through this graphic here yeah on running from the way this looks has a 20% 26% com compound annual growth rate which means that they are just priming the rocket ship to take off underneath them is Deckers and how do you say sports ammer ammer sports so we got arteric Adidas here’s an interesting one I heard recently uh I was listening to Jordan Rogers on a podcast saying that although we kind of look at Adidas as sort of a comparison to Nike it’s only 50% of the size of Nike so just to put things in actual perspective because I think I was even mistaken for putting those two next to each other as kind of common uh size but actually Adidas is only 50% of the size that’s really crazy to see just how how far of a lead Nike has had and for so long you know what’s interesting about all this stuff and and you know Nike’s still got a good shot right they got a 5% growth rate here not insane but not nothing uh I’d be nervous if I was below Nike a little bit but at the same time how much of this is they still have category expansion to be done right on running still has a sorry on has room to run they still have to develop specific Market markets which is giant growth levers if they really develop out their sportsware their lifestyle how do they expand Beyond sportsware Etc there’s a huge lever for them to grow whereas what is Nike going to do for category expansion when they’re basically everywhere already right Nike’s got it the biggest Target on their back but yeah the point they’re making here is that especially on and Hoka which is owned by Deckers you’ll see it indicated here on our table with the Decker’s name are freaking stealing market share and the graphic goes on to show it in Stark relief here but before we move to that you’ll notice at the bottom of our list here under arour shrinking minus 1% compound annual growth rate VF Corp which owns Vans and the North Face among other brands negative 2% growth rate so contraction happening at those two giants while the rest these brands are growing at a healthy rate I would say Nike being the lowest at 5% kager that’s still a fairly healthy growth rate especially for a brand of their scale but then on and Deckers growing at 26% and 18% annually that is wild growth rates moving on I wonder if they do you think they adjusted the Under Armour one for the uh the CEO switch I wonder what it would have been if they would have left that one in place I think they just take these numbers straight from their public filing so I doubt it had anything to do with Kevin Plank’s return but here this this I found to be pretty staggering right ly so if you look back 10 years ago 2014 Adidas Nike Under Armour puma and vans owned 80% of this market and the Challenger Brands the H hokas lululemons A6 New Balance leaning and others occupied 20% so now that is 64% to 36% so in 10 years we’ve seen a massive swing in the direction of the Challenger Brands and I wanted to bring up the fact that it feels to me like this is a theme across Society right like the all the big news institutions the local newspapers are slowly becoming you know sort of uh decentralized into sub stackers and podcasters and YouTubers and like similarly like the big inst financial institutions or now it’s like you know Robin Hood and coinbase and you know similarly like the big media production Hollywood you know it’s Mr Beast is bigger than all of them now you know it’s like a sort of not a oneman crew I’m sure he employs tons of people but you know what I mean it’s this is seems to me like a theme across Society right now in the same way that Nike is maybe losing market share against the likes of an and Hoka is sort of maybe a similar phenomenon to what’s happening in those other examples I just mentioned yeah it seems like they’ve sort of gotten a foothold now where there were probably some tools for them to get started but now they’ve got the ability to hire people away and hire the most Progressive and Nimble people to come over to these smaller companies that can make faster moves that can make stuff happen that can do the things that the larger corporate slower moving companies can’t and I’m sure that’s probably what’s helping build that momentum there as well in the same way like you said with media the the older established media Brands out there have to you know kind of stay on their on their task and these newer media Brands can just post anything whenever they want without any repercussions and they can grow faster and they can use every tool at their disposal so I feel like there is advantages for these Challengers and then they can pour fuel on the fire by hiring the best away from the Nikes and the Adidas you know the other thing that someone made in a a comment about too was that at Nike you’re going to come in and you’re going to get paid a certain amount and and that’s it is what it is but at these places like an you can actually get stock in the company and they can balance out your compensation in a different way to plan for that growth and to make you be engaged in that growth and you’ve got all these people rowing in the same direction with a lot more Gusto than they do if they’re just a cog and a machine at a giant company and I think there’s something to be said for that as well you know what this makes me want to do luty because I’m a big dumb idiot I need to start a challenger brand that is my lifelong goal that is what I will be doing eventually in my life I just need to have that on the record because I can’t stop are we not Challenger Brands already doing our media companies well you know we may we may be working on something else that could be interpreted as a challenger brand too so anyway we’ll save that for a future episode so anyway I thought this would be a good way to all right you so you brought up Jordan roggers who’s a guy who we both admire and who puts out cool content mostly on Instagram as where I follow him where he talks a lot about Sports Marketing and stuff but one of the things that he said as somebody who’s I think worked at Nike for over a decade and who knows the ins and outs of these big Brands and of this industry intimately is that typically the playbook for brands that start with Footwear mostly targeting men is to you know if they are continuing to want to grow you then have to Pivot to targeting women and then also move into apparel we mentioned on running or on as we’ll call them is growing at 26% annual growth at that point they’ probably know hey it’s going to be hard for us to sustain this growth rate we have shareholders investors who would probably like us to sustain this growth rate how are we going to do it maybe pivot into women and apparel loty the floor is yours to tell us about the big news from on this week the big news and I don’t actually know if it’s Zena or Zenia I’m I’m an idiot when it comes to culture but I heard Jordan say it Zena so we’ll go with that one uh she is now the new face of on running and they put out a film together and announced their partnership last week there have been I believe nine total Instagram posts on on running’s account about the partnership and this was a huge huge move doing exactly what you said announcing Partnerships outside of sport and announcing Partnerships with a woman who you know represents so much more than sport of course she was famously in a movie about tennis I believe but also you know she opens the door to a lot more and she’s come from a background of a lot of high fashion brand so this is kind of an interesting and exciting move for her we’ll see how this whole thing pans out but it definitely opens the door and I think for most established Brands there is a culture marketing team Nike and Adidas famous have worked with all kinds of musicians people like that who have worked on custom shoes or special oneoff limited edition shoes and they’ve had athletes and they’ve had musicians they’ve had artists they’ve had actors that have been involved with the brands and this is the next step in the Playbook I think for for on to develop is how are they making an impact culturally and what are they doing Beyond just high performance Sports dude this is so funny guess the name of the tennis film that Zena was in Challengers how perfect is that on the Challenger brand targeting Zena who appears in a film about tennis which we should mention on is now a big player in tennis in addition to Roger Federer who is a shareholder and longtime athlete though he’s retired now uh an is from Switzerland of course Roger Federer a great Swiss athlete one of the greatest of all time and now IGA swich just won the French Open an on athlete for the fourth time so they dominate or they do very well in tennis zanda a actress who uh you know appears in tennis films and that uh through line and Serendipity of the use of the word Challenger I think is appropriate here so maybe to bring something back that you’ve mentioned in our convos multiple times a couple episodes ago we talked about Creator or audience Le products if you’re on how do you use Zenda what product do you make audience driven from her yeah her audience is about a hundred times the size of an’s audience at least on Instagram and I think that I’m not sure if they’ll it’s really going to be interesting to see what comes out of this in terms of the partnership will they do a signature line will they do a any sort of line related to her or is she just being used for visibility to show the sportsware line that they already have is it just basically opening the door to more of their Lifestyle brand that that they want to get people involved with I think so far they’ve absolutely crushed it you know I think even this year someone won the Boston Marathon in a parir of on right so so from the sport side like check check check we got all the stuff that we need they’re crushing it in track and field too Anna is like really firing on all cylinders yeah they’re on it they’re on it uh so so this is the next step for them how do they become relevant to people who don’t care about sports and this is a great move for them to do that and they need to do this plus more they have to continue expanding in this direction and I’m sure this is only the first step and what they do with zendo will definitely influence how they continue to grow but this is a a great first partnership to put in place to announce there’s a few little things that uh for example she hasn’t accepted any of their Instagram collabs yet so hopefully it’s not off to a rocky start but you know I think there’s there’s really a lot that could come from this and she can set the tone for the rest of the partners to come and what they do right and what they do wrong here will influence that so if the goal is Jordan predicted to expand from male oriented audience uh to grow with female consumers and in apparel I’d love to know what percentage of the revenue comes from Footwear versus apparel my guess is it’s probably 8020 in the Footwear Direction but what a great opportunity to drop some Zena collection of an active wear sort of Lifestyle athleisure shoe with some sort of you know athleisure oriented capsule of apparel at the same time that point you’re sort of taking on the aloe yogas and Lululemon consumer you’re obviously sort of like trying to yeah capture some of that market that may fall to a bunch of their competitors and also in their I think greatest hopes to continue that ridiculous keger that they’re experiencing now with their business so on what a what a brand what a brand big fans big fans all right buddy let’s close it down with bpc you get us started sweet well I’m going to keep it the mountain bike theme because here we are this week today in fact X Games real mountain bike launched and you’re familiar with the X Games for the live events that they have in skateboarding Motocross BMX but what you’re maybe not familiar with is that they also have a non-live event property called Real Sports so they have this in multiple Sports they have a snowboard one a skate one and they also have a mountain bike one and the mountain bike version of the real Sports series is actually the highest viewership just saying the last time they did it was 2021 and what X Games real mountain bike is or real MTB if you’re Googling it you get a minute and a half to put together the craziest video that you possibly can and there are five five athletes that are chosen to be a part of the event so it’s not like anybody can just throw together videos you’re warned ahead of time and then the athletes work super super hard to just have a 90 second video that’s just all hammers so this year it’s Tom van steenbergen Dylan Stark Remy Morton Matt McDuff and Kade Edwards and all five videos were released today they’ll be judged and then the top three videos they’ll receive an X Games medal like if they had just competed in the event and this a really interesting way for the X Games to give a nod to where Sports have gone it’s not all just about the live event anymore although there’s a ton of value there they can also reach way more people by also creating this other online competition basically and put out in incredible content partnering and collaborating with some of the biggest names in the sport with this series and they’ve done it again like in snowboarding and many other sports but this mountain bike one is something special and I had a chance to watch all five videos today and my jaw was just on the floor it’s all hammers every single Rider throws it down tons of style scary stuff just amazing very cool and the X Games is under I think new leadership now they’re I think uh looking to a really interesting Progressive like yeah push pushing that iconic franchise into the future and into a new Direction I actually know two of the people who are on the new team and both would make great guests here on the Pod to talk about the Future Vision of the X Games I’ve always thought that they need a trail running event in the X Games well now you people to call man let’s do this all right my bpc I just want to add a finer point to it you guys got to buy and read this book open by Andre Agy fantastic book that is an obvious one but the major one that I wanted to point out I got these brand new prototypes here from speedland ly so I’m very much talking my own book here for those who don’t know I’m a partner in this brand based out of Portland Oregon Lu’s Hometown it’s called speedland started by two guys Dave dbro Kevin Fallon it’s still only a three-man team basically two product guys and then a utility guy his name is Clark Morgan the third guy that works for the brand now and it just blows my mind like this prototype was at my house waiting for me when I got home ran in it the last couple of days and it’s such an incredible product this is going to be called the GL lsvt it’s sort of made out of the inspiration of the San Juan mountains in Colorado that’s where you see this sort of design detail here if you’re watching us on YouTube you see the double boas sort of trademark speedland you know premium Innovation and Technology Incorporated this is a mountain slaying boot right here luty it’s a beautiful product and the reason I wanted to bring it up is because of the fact that it’s three dudes at this company and they’re putting out products as good or better as anybody in the world and it just goes to show if you’ve got the right Talent if you’ve got the right vision and you Sprint on something you can create something incredible in the world I’m proud to being involved in this company the GL SVT this is going to be uh available for purchase probably sometime in the sort of October November time frame this year and I would encourage our listeners to go check out speedland on the Internet run speed land.com or runp speedland on Instagram so go support go support Challenger brand Challenger Brands Challenger Brands baby well luty it’s great to be back on the horn with you bro I missed doing it thanks for again holding down the fort and producing great podcasts in my absence I loved listening to them on my trip I’m hap I’m happy to have you back thank you for coming back all right to listeners you know the drill now what you got to do is go to our YouTube channel get us over that 500 Mark smash the subscribe button leave us comments on our YouTube right luty because that helps with the algorithm huge boost and shout out to everybody who did on that one that we mentioned it there were all kinds of comments and guess what that video got even more views than usual so yeah if you if you’re a listener of podcasts whether on Apple podcast or Spotify feel free to leave us comments or ratings or reviews there as well make sure you subscribe to the newsletter second nature. media we’ll be back in your headphones are on your laptop or iPhone screen next week Bron luam Debo see you