I bought a basic cheap bike from my local bike shop and I just rode this thing like five miles. It's amazing. It was like me and then I bought a nicer bike and it quickly became a very big part of my life. Feel to burn baby. Oh yeah. It's a slam dunk. Absolutely breathtaking. Welcome to the Bike to Bites podcast. I'm your host, Garrett Bess. This is a companion podcast to the television series Bike to Bites, and you can find that in the links below. In today's podcast episode, I'm sitting down with the CEO of Parley Cycles. Parley was the sponsor for Bike to Bike season two and provided us with those amazing bikes that we rode throughout the season, both a road and a gravel bike. I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor plus for their support of the Bike to Bites podcast. When your tomorrows are built on technology, you need to partner with Superior Insight, with expertise in cutting edge innovation across ai, security Cloud and workplace transformation. E plus is on the front line of today's modern enterprise e plus where technology means more. Now I'd like to introduce our guest, John Harris and the CEO of Parley Cycles. Parley has been so instrumental in making season two a success with providing us the most unbelievable gravel and road bike that we rode throughout the season. John, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, what a pleasure. Delight to get to chat again. Yeah, super excited to talk about our partnership between but before we do, I thought I would give before we do, I thought I'd give a little bit of an overview as to what drew me into wanting to forge this partnership. I started cycling a few years back and I graduated, as you know, from originally breaking in on an aluminum frame bicycle. We did our first season of Bike to Bites, and at the time it was right as we were coming out of the pandemic. It was really a rough time in the cycling community in terms of bikes were flying off the shelves, people were behind in getting things shipped. It was a crazy time. Everyone wanted a bike and the bike that I wanted to utilize in season one was Parly. At that point, you guys were not able to because of everything that was going on right in the midst of the pandemic, ended up riding an unbelievable bike as well in season one, but really when season two came about, it opened the opportunity for us to have a conversation again about me re-approaching the folks at Parley and that was Bob and Isabelle and was super excited that they were at this point in a position to say, okay, yeah, let's entertain this. Let's talk about how this would work. And I came up and I visited with Isabelle and had my initial meeting with her and Tom and I met the whole team there and we just hit it off and I think everybody felt like for all of the right reasons, this made a lot of sense and hence began the beginning of this partnership and it wasn't, I have to say, for all of the listeners and viewers that are watching, that was a tough decision for you guys to make with me at that time because the company was going through an enormous amount of change right in the midst of all of that. And if you could talk to the listeners and to our viewers about what was happening at the time that I was beginning those conversations and then with Parley in terms of within the industry and then how things kind of progressed to the point where you're now here as the CEO and owner of Parley. Yeah. Well, what a crazy last couple of years. I mean I feel like we've been saying that nonstop for the last three or four years, but a time of huge change in the world and certainly a ton of change here for Parley in our little business. Just to talk particularly to the time and what was happening for us at that point, we'd had a really crazy time during Covid. On the one hand, when Covid started and we were all locked in our homes, bikes and bike shops were defined as an essential service and thank God it got us all outside and got us a chance to get some fresh air and get some sanity in our lives. That's when I started riding right during that period of time. A lot of people did, a lot of people, I mean the entire bike industry saw massive surge in activity and engagement, a huge, huge spike in demand all around the world. And of course bike companies like us and everybody else wanted to take advantage of that, wanted to service that demand, wanted to meet that need. And remember when this all started, we all figured this would be over in a few weeks, right? We'd be back to our normal lives three weeks at home and everything will be fine. Who would've known? So who would've known? So at the time we, like many of our partners in the bike industry sort of leaned into service this need that we saw developing and placed big orders on our manufacturers and people are making chains and handlebar tape and all the little bits and pieces that we need to be able to make a whole bike. A lot of those factories are based in Asia or elsewhere in the world, and as we were seeing the spike in demand, those same factories were closing and sending people home to keep them safe. We saw this big and very sudden shift of massive increase in demand and a massive slowdown in availability. It took a lot longer as we all know, for that to return to some sense of normal during the early stage of the pandemic, we saw supply chain or projected delivery times for some of our key components go from 14 to 30 days that we had been used to waiting over a year for a shipment of a compulsory piece of equipment. If you have all the parts of the bike but no handlebars, it's kind of tough for anybody to ride the bike and impossible for us obviously to deliver. So that all brought about a very complicated time for us and honestly for everybody in the bike industry, the industry's still reeling from that challenge as we sit here today in early 2024. The opposite effect is happening today in 2024. There's an oversupply, there's an oversupply, demand has gone down, and now it's the other end of the pendulum. The pendulum swung in the other direction. Exactly. So all that pent up demand, all those orders that we placed on factories to build more equipment that's flowing through the supply chain now are sitting on shelves and many of us have gone back to work and don't have the same time and flexibility in our schedule today to allow us to ride quite as much. So yeah, it's been a challenging time. That period brought about a lot of financial challenges for Parly, to be quite honest. We're a small business. We've always really focused on small volume production of a very high-end, sought after highly crafted product, and these challenges in our business ultimately led to the company in February of this past year needing to declare chapter 11 or enter chapter 11 bankruptcy process to try and protect what was there and try and give is they're fair due respect in the process. This was a really challenging time for Bob and Isabelle who founded the company 23 years ago, 24 years ago at this point, And Bob is considered, even to this day, was considered one of the forefathers of the custom bike carbon fiber bike industry. He was a pioneer. He amassed many accolades and for the work that he had done in that space, his story is amazing, and I did an interview with Bob and we're going to have that up on our channel as well for people to enjoy and to listen to the story. It's a very emotional journey that they've both been on, and I think they had declared the bankruptcy before you came in ultimately to buy the company and to take over its leadership what attracted you, first of all, they're very much part of the ethos. He's very much still part of the ethos of parley. Absolutely. And I know that you've gone to great lengths to want to continue to protect that and that DNA if you will, as you continue to forge forward, but what attracted you here it is this company experiencing these financial troubles declaring the chapter 11 bankruptcy, and yet you saw something that was exciting for you. That. You didn't approach this as an opportunist investor. You approached this with passion and a real, I think, burning desire to want to take it to the level that you think had been under realized. And so I think that's where I would love for you to share with our listeners and our viewers because it's pretty exciting to me that you've come in at a very, very interesting time within the industry and within the history of parley. Yeah, thanks. My own journey has been interesting, and maybe I'll talk about that just briefly and then we can see how those sort of two lives intersected for me. I got into cycling later in my life. Of course, I rode bikes as a kid and fell off them regularly and got up in all sorts of mischief, but I didn't have that passion desire for cycling until probably the last 15 years of my life, and I got into cycling after having some knee trouble and a PT suggesting, Hey, instead of all this other crazy stuff that you're doing, maybe riding a bike would be a good way to get some exercise. And so I bought a basic cheap little hybrid bike from my local bike shop and wow, this is pretty cool. I just rode this thing like five miles. It's amazing. It was like me and then I bought a nicer bike and then I bought a nicer bike and I bought a nicer bike, and so the hook got further and further set for me, and it quickly became a very big part of my life. It became a stress relief for me. I'd been working in high tech for a long time, running a small software business and getting out of my bike gave me fresh air and time to socialize with friends and a way to experience the place that I lived always traveling and I loved it. It has become a really integral part of who I am. You and I share that together because that's exactly that story that you just told. I'm sitting here smiling and shaking my head because it is so relatable to my own experience. So relatable. Yeah, it's a special time when you get to experience a modern bicycle and what it is able to do and being able to propel yourself at pretty good speeds around pretty amazing distances. It's a wonderful, wonderful time. Anyway, so the intersection for me started with me buying a Parley bike about six years ago or so. Did you have knowledge of the company before then, or did you, through your research you discovered that this was a bicycle that you'd be interested in, that you wanted to learn more. About? Yeah, and I was actually guided there by I'd gone and had a bike fitting just to try and make sure I could work through cranky old guy neck and cranky knees, and I just wanted to try and get comfortable. I was doing pretty good distances on a bike by then, and so I'd gone and had a fitting and they said, listen, honestly, there's a couple of different bikes that would fit you reasonably well, but here's a recommendation of a short list of bikes that we think could work. And someone went off and did some research and Parly just stood out immediately for me, I immediately connected with the ethos of the brand. This was something that was a crafted here, relatively local to where I lived. I had no idea that these amazing things were built in this little tiny dusty shop in Beverly, Massachusetts. But the core ethos just and Bob's story about how he sort of evolved from making boats and sort of pursued his passion in making bikes and everything that he learned and contributed to the industry with carbon fiber development and all of the reviews that the bikes had gotten about how comfortable they were to ride and how they'd managed to figure out this magic combination of being able to be comfortable while you have a really high performance bike and you didn't need to suffer and endure pain to go fast. I remember you, I just have to interject real quick because I remember my baby home when I brought the two bikes back from Parley back to New Jersey, I drove up to Massachusetts, picked them up, put them on the back of the car and drove them home. And I remember getting on, I rode the gravel for the first time and I never had owned a gravel bike before. I had owned a hybrid and then I owned a road bike, but I hadn't owned a gravel bike before. And I got on this gravel bike, this parley gravel, and I rode up what I used to consider, and it's in our jersey, New Jersey episode, and my whole production crew was making fun of me because I used to call this thing a hill and they all joke to me like, this is not a hill, Garrett. I go, yeah, it was a hill for me. It was always at the end of my journey that I would do this route that I would always do in New Jersey and I'd go through our national park at Sandy Hook and I'd come back and I'd end the ride on my way home to go up what I considered at that point a hill, and I got on the parley gravel bike and I rode up what I used to call a hill with such just smooth ease and wonderfulness it even. It was the moment that I realized, well, the right that's not a hill. And what made it less of a hill was the fact that I was on this unbelievable bicycle built by you guys that just was high performance, lightweight, supple, just forming and taking all of the ride in a way that I hadn't experienced before. Hadn't experienced before. It's neat. I had a very similar experience when I bought my first Paree. I kind of bought it sight unseen, kind of taking it on the word of the shop I was working with, who I trusted very deeply and still do, and went to pick up the bike, absolutely fell in love with it. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in ages and went out a rider that had a very similar experience to you. And I had come off a really nice quality, high production, well-known brand bike, but the difference to moving onto this party was really transformational for me, and I've loved it. My friends all ride parties now as a result of having to endure rides with me carrying on perpetually about how amazing my bike was that they all finally succumbed. Doesn't it make you feel good when you're riding that bike and people see you out there and they're like, wow, nice bike. Nice bike. And I love that feeling. It still happens six years later. But anyway, so I'd owned a parley and loved it, and I had sort of passively heard the background that the business had entered chapter 11 and had come into some difficulty, to be honest, hadn't really paid it a lot of attention at the time. I was kind of busy with other things in my life and I was kind of disappointed from an owner's perspective, but hadn't really clicked any gear about how could I help until a few months later I was actually out on a ride training for a big charity event we have here in Massachusetts called Pan Mass Challenge, a nice long ride, a nice long, we were doing an 80 mile training ride or something, and there was a new person that joined our group, a sister of a good friend of mine, and we were chatting and then about my own life said, Hey, I just sold my software business and kind of was looking around at what to do next and kind of loved these. I love businesses, I love what they do, I love what they do for people, and I love being able to grow people and develop organizations, and I'm just kind of looking for the right thing and haven't really figured out what I want to do, but I know it's not software. I wanted to go and do something else. 40 miles later we're chatting about bikes and we were chatting about Parley, and she turned around and perhaps only half teasing me, said, John, that's what you should do. It's right in front of you. You should go, go and buy Parley. That's your turnaround story. And so I politely swore at her, we're good friends now after having written 50 miles together and immediately dismissed it. But I woke up that night and immediately and literally three o'clock in the morning, I'm up and I'm on a computer downstairs. What's the story with Parley? Where are they? And what's happening? I just couldn't get it out of my head, called Bob and Isabel the next day and ended up chatting with them 48 hours later. And the more I spoke with them and the more I try to understand what challenges they were facing as an organization and as a team, the more the pieces just clicked into place for me. I couldn't teach 'em anything about making a better bike. They had that nailed, then I didn't come at it with a bunch of bike industry knowledge and wanting to help 'em develop a better technology. Bob is light years ahead of anybody else in the world for that stuff, but what I could do was run a good business. It helped deal with some of the background stuff that. They were the classic story of great founders with vision and creativity and expertise maybe could use a little help as time went on with the operating, which is what you saw as the opportunity where you could make a difference. Correct. I mean is that. That's exactly it. It's a perfect summary. And so how did that conversation progress? That must, first of all with Bob and Isabelle, having met them couldn't have been easy to come to terms with the fact that this is where they were, right? This is where they. Were having a hard time. You've met and Garrett that they're such warm and wonderful, wonderful people, phenomenal become so close to them over the few months, over the six or eight months I've gotten to know them. Just wonderful, wonderful human beings and they put their entire life into the business, everything into the people that are here. As you've met a lot of the team here, there's people in this building that have been here 20 years. I don't think there's a single person in this building that's been here less than five. Yeah, unbelievable. Team. Me, I'm the new guy, but just such a close family, such a close team. Everybody cared for each other and it just poured this passion into the bikes that they were making. And so I think for Bob and Isabel, it was hard to see their baby, this child that they'd nurtured over 25 years struggling and as individuals not having the tools available to help that child through those struggles. I had a sit down interview with each of them individually and people could watch and listen to those here. Like I said, on our channel, I've interviewed a lot of people in my life, and I think one of the most moving and compelling interviews I think I've ever done in my career was sitting down with Bob in the middle of the interview. I was asking him to reflect on this journey that he had been on, and he got very emotional when he started to think about that this was a journey that he's been on with his wife and that the best part of the journey has been being by her side this entire time while trying to build this dream company that they set out to build. And it was very emotional because I think he was in that moment that we were chatting, I think coming to terms with a lot of things about the business, about his personal life, and I think it was a moment of just a beat that breathed in that moment, and I could see all of it kind of imagine just taking your life and hitting a fast forward button and just seeing it. And he was there kind of looking back and fast forwarding through as to this moment that he's sitting here being asked these questions. And it was very, very, very moving. And I will tell you that interview meant so much to me personally. It was a very moving interview. I had asked if Bob would be willing for the two bikes that we're going to get into bike to bikes in a second, but I had asked that for the two bikes that you guys were making for us, the gravel and the road bike before the interview, I'd asked if he would sign the bikes. He doesn't really like to do that apparently, from what I understood. So after the interview, someone on your team came up to me and said, yeah, Bob is going to sign the bikes for you. He wants to sign the bikes. So these. Bikes, so special honor. Oh my God, these bikes are beautiful and they're amazing and I can't wait for everyone. If they haven't seen the bike, the bike show yet, they will see the show. These are beautifully built custom carbon bikes that are, you use the word craft, right? Craft, and I use the word craft and art and performance all combined into one. And so yeah, that interview was very, very special to me. And so I can relate to you. I hear you talking about coming in and sitting down in those early days of you deciding whether you're going to move forward with this as an investment and take this on those conversations that you were having with Bob and Isabelle. And I can totally relate to what those conversations were like. I had similar ones, but for different reasons. And you immediately get attracted to their love, their passion, their heart in what they do. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think something that was important for them is that I viewed this as an important step in my own life. This wasn't a purely financial transaction for me. I'm here every day. I'm first in the morning or near abouts, and I'm certainly lost to leave here at night. And I'm in my own way kind of pouring my own soul into the next step in this journey. And I think that it was important for Bob and Isabel to see that and understand that about how this thing that they'd nurtured was going to continue to be nurtured. A legacy. Legacy not taking advantage of, right? Yeah. What would be their legacy? And you were looking at it as not wanting to, for you, it sounded like a lot of things were motivating you, but also wanting to protect and have that legacy be enduring, right? Absolutely. There was clearly something very important here, right? You've got a founding father of the carbon fiber bike industry, really how we know bikes today. Bob is one of the absolute pivotal figures in that world. How we know bikes on this planet today and this beautiful business that he's built with these amazing bikes was struggling and needed some help. And I felt that that was an important thing to do for bigger reasons than money or a deal or even for a business. It was something bigger than that. Amazing. But tell you, the other thing that really sunk in for me is the first time I came to visit, visit the factory here, and Bob gave me a tour and introduced me to all the people. Well, remember that one of the first people I met was Linde, who's she's amazing, an amazing woman who runs our manufacturing facility here. I watched her build my bikes. I've watched John, I watched, I watched her build my bikes. Amazing. She is incredible. And she was one of the first people I met, and she was explaining to me how they were laying up the carbon and all these considerations that they were making. And my mind was already blown just looking at the attention to detail, microscopic detail. And I remember I asked her a question, why do you do it like that? It seems like it would be easier to just do it in this other way. And she said, well, this is better. And she just smiled. She looked at me and she smiled like dumbass, there's only one answer to that question. We do it because it's better every single time. And this smile of passion and caring and just totally engagement in what she was making a tube, a top two for a bike for a customer meant everything in the world to her in that time being. And I had the same experience when I met Ramel, who was assuming Frames and Cody who was painting them and everybody as we were kind of moving through the building. And when you see that amount of history and passion and knowledge and this group of people who care so much about what they're doing, supporting a brand with this amazing legacy built by this amazing guy with a vision for how these technologies could be used, that's something that we should have around for a long time. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And that brings me to a question. We're going to dive into the bikes and comparisons to what else is out there, but the one question that comes up is there's a lot of people out there making now as a result of the work that the pioneering work that Bob did, custom carbon fiber bikes or carbon fiber bikes, what sets Parley apart? What is it that is done in that wonderful little factory in Beverly, Massachusetts that makes what's coming off the line of these custom built bikes different than let's say others that are out there in the marketplace? And I'm talking about that's manufacturers and designers in Italy and in other parts of Europe who claim that their carbon fiber bikes are the best in the world. I'm just curious to know what sets Parley apart. Yeah, it's something I try to really dig into and understand when I was getting more involved with the business and trying to really connect with that, and at the high level was this amazing brand and amazing awareness for the product, but really what really makes the difference, and I would say that at one side there's this organizational ability to create custom bikes, and a lot of people don't really understand even what that means, but so. Tell us, tell everyone who's listening what that means. So the custom process will mean that we make a bike from flat sheets of carbon fiber for you. There will never ever be a repeat of the bike we made for you because every single thing on that bike was made for you. Custom fit, custom tailored. And so all of the dimensions are custom tailored to your body. All of the angles are adjusted and adapted to fit your body and fit your right style to give you the right experience that you wanted. All the way down to the layup of the carbon fiber. And this is kind of part of that other piece that makes parly so special is that bikes are made by layering multiple, multiple layers of carbon fiber together. They're extremely thin fibers, and so they're all layered up together and then shaped carbon fiber bends a much more in one direction than it does in the other. And so the concept of a carbon fiber layup is how you cut different pieces of carbon fiber and lay them at different angles to each other to manipulate the way that it behaves, the directions that it bends in, how that tube might flex and twist or bend vertically, but not horizontally. That's all defined by how the layers of carbon fiber are all stacked together. And so back to the custom story, we would define a custom layup or use one of our custom layups for each one of the bikes that we make for you based on where you're riding the kinds of roads you ride on your weight, your speed, your cycling abilities will give you a bike that feels just like you want it to feel. And so that's customer, I think in our ability to not only craft this bike but then paint it, put your vision on this bike means that you end up with something that's highly unique. I think though your original question was what sets us apart and custom and our ability to fully custom tailor a bike for you is one, but that knowledge that we have also trickles down into what we call factory bikes, more produced bikes that we are producing somewhat standard sizes when we're taking all that knowledge that we took from the custom bikes, applying it to something that we can produce at a little bit higher quantity and provided a slightly more affordable cost. There are still a very premium product and a premium brand, but a little bit more affordable. And even in the factory bikes, the more reduced bikes we're controlling the way that the carbon fiber is laid up in that bike to manipulate and architect a ride quality and a ride behavior out of every single piece of carbon fiber in that bike so that we get it to feel just like a party. Which is pretty amazing that you offer your customers the end customer, you offer them a plethora of options that are available to them. There's the fully custom size that we were custom fit bike that we were just talking about at the beginning of your description of these carbon fiber bikes and then these ones that are being coming off the factory line, still using the knowledge and the technology that had within this custom category and using some of that as you're making a little bit more of affordable bike for those that might not want the full custom version. It looks like you're covering both ends of the spectrum in terms of what people might want and that you can satisfy their desires and their needs and their ride styles and habits based on whatever is perfect for them, which it sounds like where what you guys do. I think it is, make no mistake, our bikes are extremely engineered. They're produced in very small quantities. Even our more factory style bikes are produced in tiny quantities and they're still sold through a fairly small network of dealers around the world, and they're a prized possession. We're not going to compete with an off the shelf trek at your local bike shop. That's not really our space. But the joy I think, is that if you love riding, if you've experienced that joy Garrett that you and I both had of what cycling opens up for you and you've gone out and smelled that fresh air on a Saturday morning and you've stopped for a coffee 30 or 40 miles into your ride and you've come home a little bit sweaty and a little bit tired and never ever in your life feeling better, if you've experienced that joy, then going out and saying, I want to spend 6, 7, 8, 10 or more a thousand dollars on a bike that brings me such joy is a fairly relatable thing for many, many of our customers. And so being able to start with a bike that introduces them to the Parley brand and the Parly ride experience is wonderful. Many of our customers will start there and over the years develop and grow into wanting something more and more custom. Well, they're absolutely amazing bikes. And I guess one question I want to follow up on the custom carbon fiber or carbon fiber in general, people ask me all the time why a carbon fiber bike? You also own a titanium bike. And some people might have an aluminum frame bike or a steel frame bike, and people always ask the question, well, what's this thing with carbon fiber? What makes it so different? How do you answer that question sitting where you sit and you don't manufacture anything but carbon fiber? So the question becomes, what is so different about that ride with that material than some of those other materials that we've, I just mentioned? The simple answer is it's light, it's stiff, it's strong, but the real answer is that it is so manipulatable, if that's a word, we can really craft the material, craft the product to do whatever we want it to do, be strong in the areas that needs to be strong, be flexible in the areas that not we can have it twist in one direction and not in another. We can have it flex evenly across the length of a tube or be rigid in one section of the tube and flex only at the end. And you can't do that with metal bikes. You just can't. No, yes, you can define the wall thickness and the radius of the tube and you've got some very rough and rudimentary tools to manipulate, but you're ultimately dealing with a single material. And carbon fiber allows us to deal with manipulate things down to literally an individual fiber layer, a layer of carbon that's thinner than a hair way thinner than a human hair. Amazing. And be able to craft exactly what they're all doing and how those materials work together. So the ability for us to engineer in a ride behavior using carbon fibers way superior to any of the other materials, and make no mistake, there are companies making beautiful products out of titanium and steel and other materials for sure, there's an art there, but for us, a lot of the art of what we make is hidden inside the tubes that we're building and is kind of baked in, so to speak. So I was super excited when Bob and Isabelle agreed to say, you know what, this bike to bites thing, we like this. And then you came on board and we were introduced to each other after we had already agreed to do the bikes for bike to bike season two. What was it that made Parley interested in our partnership? From where you sit today and from what you learned from Bob and Isabelle in terms of the conversations that led up to us having this partnership, which I am so grateful and excited about, what's your take on it? Why was it a good fit for Parley? In my mind, it was a bit of a slam dunk. And the reason for me is I think that Back to Bites is at its core for me, at its core is about pursuing passion, pursuing adventure and passion and experiencing the world and grabbing it with both hands. It's about tasting your way, it's about finding new flavors, engaging with people that are passionate about what they're doing. I think that's what we do. Maybe not the taste. Well, you hope not the taste otherwise you've had a bad crash. Something's gone horribly, right? No, but I think we are very much about the products we produce and the people that invest in our products are doing it because they're passionate about what they're doing. They're exploring in their own way, whether they're exploring their own performance abilities in racing or whether they're just out on an adventure ride or making new friends on a social ride doesn't matter that they're doing so with a passion and a dedication and a hunger for new experience. And so for me, having our bikes feature in a wonderful show that you've put together about going out and being hungry for new experience and exploring and being passionate about life, it's perfect. Yeah, thank you. And it's perfect for me too. I mean, those bikes are amazing. And you, I had the opportunity to meet in person not that long ago. I brought the bikes up because I wanted you guys to just kind of check 'em out, make sure everything was okay after we did the season two filming, and that was your first eyes on those bikes, and I saw your reaction to them when you saw them and you were, I think you were a little blown away. So I would love to have you share with me when you first saw the bikes when I came up, what did you think of what was created out of this company now that you are now leading? The thing that hit me first was the paint scheme I think that you chose by now. I've become quite familiar with the underlying beauty of what's there in the frame and the engineering. I'm lucky enough to see that every day here, but your bikes came in and there was this refinement and reflection, I think, of a brand that you've created and it was important for you reflected in two different styles in the bikes that were there. And my first reaction was pride. I don't know if I'm allowed to feel pride actually, because I had nothing to do with any of the experience, but pride for the team here who made them. I think I kind of feel that way. And most of the customers bikes that come in here, everyone that comes in has a different story to tell, and yours clearly had some really interesting stories to tell, and they were just gorgeous. I thought the design and the graphic selection that you'd chosen was amazing, and I noticed Bob's signature on the tube and some really fine touches that were special. Yeah, very, very special. And of course, outfitted with Shimano, the latest and greatest and Chris King Wheels and Schwab, is it Schwab? Schwa, Schwabe. I said it wrong and do that again. I'm going to do that again. The whole thing again, sorry. I knew it was Schwab. So they're absolutely beautiful bikes and I love the fact that we have 'em, and of course, outfitted with the latest and greatest Shimano technology and Chris King wheels and hubs and Schwabe tires and every detail of that bike just with quality, performance and parts placed on it, and they rode the best car you've ever driven. You know what I mean? That's how those, and talk to me about these two bikes. For those of us that are listening and watching, there's two different ones that we kind of had custom built. One was your gravel and one was your road bike. If you don't mind just explaining to our listener and viewers, what makes those two bikes stand out as being unique and special in terms of their design differences between the two of them? Sure. Yeah. So our custom bikes all have a common look and feel on the geeky side, call it common architecture. We use a common approach to how we make the bikes and it gives them, at first glance, a very similar look. However, underneath they are actually quite different. The road bike uses some different angles on the tubes and some slightly different layup in the carbon to create a bike that is a little less compliant, a little more rigid, a little faster, something that's a little bit more responsive and a little bit more of a go fast machine. The gravel bike is still an amazingly quick bike and very, very responsive, but has been designed to soak up the bumps little bit more. And so the gravel bike is sort of designed with a philosophy. You should be able to ride this on the street. You should be able to take a shortcut through a gravel path and cut through a field and over some rocks and down the other side and back on an asphalt road and kind of just go wherever you want to go. And so the engineering of that bike is about, yes, be performant while you're on the road, but soak up the bumps, create a more compliant ride, give something, take some of the knocks out, take some of the vibration out. In the New Jersey episode, I wanted to use the gravel bike, even though most of the ride is on the street, but there's a section about a mile section along the Henry Hudson Trail that goes along the water off of Sandy Hook Bay where it's crushed gravel. And I was like, okay, you know what? I'm going to ride the gravel bike for this ride because I'm going to have that little segment and I want to try out my gravel bike. And I used it there, and I also used it when I did, we did the Burlington Toto Vermont episode and there was a big chunk that was not on the street, that was on this gravel section of road. It was an unpaved gravel road basically, and the bike was just took it all and made it a very, very comfortable ride. So those two episodes, we used the gravel bike and it was lovely. I mean, it was absolutely wonderful. So handled really well. It's pretty incredible. Some of your listeners may not know the term a gravel bike, but it is basically something that looks like a road bike, it looks like has the curly handlebar in front and has a more of a road bike type position, but has cycling wider, more novelty tires and isn't quite a mountain bike. It's kind of a road bike for going anywhere, but it's pretty incredible what you can ride with one of our gravel bikes. Certainly, that's a great example of what it was made to do. Gary be able to just cut through the gravel path and down a quick rail trail through a field. And yet it handled really well on the streets too. When that was on the road, it was handling beautifully. And to your point, I noticed it wasn't, when I'm on your road bike, when I'm on the Point Lee Road bike, I sometimes pinch myself to see how fast I'm going because I didn't one think I was capable of being able to ride that fast. And two, you don't feel it on that bike, you don't feel the speed, even though you're looking down at your speedometer and it's 27 miles an hour or 25 miles an hour on a descent or 30, 31 miles an hour on a descent. It's amazing because you're not, but the whole point about the gravel is that when I did ride the gravel, most of the ride was on a road and there were those gravel sections, but the road portion on that bike were beautiful. Effortless. Effortless. Yeah. Yeah. Not maybe not as much as speed. I think obviously it's got probably you would be able to know better than me. I know it's probably a little bit heavier than the road bike, but performance wise handles beautifully. Yeah, it's a little heavier just because the tires are a little bit bigger and the wheel width is just a little bit wider, so it's just a little bit more stuff there. The frame's almost identical, but yeah, it does create something that's just a little bit heavier, still basically light for anybody but marginally heavier. I like to draw similarity. You mentioned that going fast and not realizing how quickly, as soon as you've driven in a really beautiful gt car, if you climb into an Aston Martin GT car and head down the hide or a beautiful luxury Porsche or something, you have to really pay attention to your Speedo because have you lose all comprehension of quite how quickly you're going because it's so smooth and quiet and effortless and I think you end up with a similar experience on a Parly bike? Honestly. No question. It's co comparable. I remember at one point I was on a ride on a descent and this past season and I looked down at my speedometer and saw how fast that, now I'm not a speed demon. There are people who love to ride for speed on descent. I have a tolerance level. It's usually at around 32 miles an hour, anything over 32 miles an hour, I start to, the brain starts asking me questions that I, and so that's my probably limit maybe over time as I continue to ride and I feel more comfortable. But I think you and I were having this conversation when I saw you and you're like, don't worry, Gary, even at 32 miles an hour, if something went wrong, it would be wrong. So you're not wrong for feeling cautious when you're riding at a speed like that, but I absolutely have thoroughly enjoyed riding both these bicycles in season two of Bike to Bites and the partnership that we have with you is just incredible and one that I'm looking forward to exploring and continuing. And we've come up, we've filmed at the factory, we've documented how our bikes were made, and that's also going to be available in the links below for people to check out because I don't think you've done an unbelievable job describing the process of how these things are built, where it starts with a sheet of carbon fiber fabric and we were able to actually showcase all of that in the factory. And I think it's amazing to think that you go from this sheet to this beautiful custom built, beautifully painted bike that you deliver to your customers, and I think people will have a much greater appreciation for that process when they watch that video below, because it really does a good job, I think documenting the lengths that you guys go through go to deliver a top notch quality product. I wanted to ask you this question. We've talked in this interview about Bob and the iconic level, I think he has reached within the industry in terms of what he's done and how he's pioneered. And you've come in now for this next chapter. What's next for Parley? What's exciting? What's got you so enthusiastic that you decided to buy the company? Because I'm sure there's things turning in your head about possibilities, right? So what are those excites you? Well, the first thing I want to say is Bob's still involved. Absolutely. He's still here. He is very much part of the team. It's wonderful. He's able to focus a little bit more of his attention on design and engineering and working with the team on some amazing new things that we've got cooking and leaves me to take care of the background of the shop, and it is working great. We're getting on well and the business is better for it. I think what makes me excited about what we've got coming, you'll have to wait a little bit longer to hear some exciting news we have coming. Sorry, I'm not going to leak it right here, but we definitely have some new products on the horizon. I don't think I need to be too secretive about that. I think the whole team here are excited about applying the DNA of our lead to some new bike models that we're looking to introduce. I think by the time this actually is released, those announcements will have been made or will be made. So if you're listening and you're watching, you probably already know because making the announcement, probably after we've recorded this, I'm going to be joining you guys at Sea Otter, which you can tell everybody about what that is. It's an exciting event in the United States out on the west coast, and I believe you're going to be introducing some new things there, and I'm excited to be there with you When you do. Seattle is going to be amazing. It's basically, think of it as a week long festival of biking. There's races, there's fun events, there's demo rides, and it's all hosted at the Sebring Raceway, the Motorsport complex up in California. And it's just fun and bikes and sunshine and good times. Yeah, and that'll be an important week for Parley for sure, and look forward to you guys all taking a look at the announcements that we would've made by then when we get there. So as we close this out, I would love to bring it back one more time just to what you were saying about our partnership with you at Bike to Bites. We are super excited that we're going to be embarking on a third season, and that's going to present some unique challenges for us because that third season is going to be in Europe, and we're really excited about that and I'm super excited to be taking these bikes with me because that is part of what I wanted to do when we set out to talk about our partnership together. What excites you about the future of Bike to Bites in terms of, I've just shared with you that we're going to be rolling out a season three and where we're rolling it out in terms of Parly as a brand, how important are those markets to you beyond the US borders? Yeah, I think that that's exactly the point I'm most excited about as we move forward together. You guys are expanding and expanding your experiences that you're covering in Bike Tobys to look at other parts of the globe. And we are too, partly is sold around the world today for sure, and we have a wonderful market in France and the UK and South Korea and Australia, but there's still a lot of holes. There's a lot of places in the world where it's kind of hard to get your hands on one of our products. So we're certainly focused over the course of the 2024 and 2025 on expanding our footprint in Europe. And we've got some really exciting discussions and partnerships that we're in pretty late stage on, and I think some of those would've been announced by the time this airs. And just some pretty cool things that are in the pathway there that will enable Parly to kind of present itself more easily and more confidently throughout the European markets. And as the years go on more and more, I never see us being a commodity brand by any stretch of the imagination, but you can buy a Ferrari anywhere on the planet, and I think you should be able to buy a Parly anywhere on the planet too. For sure. And. A strong path ahead. What was exciting when I was up at the shop with you, I shared with you and the team that, Hey, this year I really want to get out and try some bike packing. I haven't really done that and I would like to do that. And we were talking about which bike can I know it wouldn't be the road bike. And then I was thinking, oh, maybe I take the gravel bike. And it was so interesting seeing the team saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to build you a special bike that you can use for bike packing because we do not want you ruining any of these two bikes to take on those types of rides that you're going to tour. And I'm super excited. What I love is that that interaction, that mindset of what do you want to do Garrett or customer, what do you want to do? Let us help you get there on that custom built side of your business. It's really exciting for me because you're basically not only tailoring it to my fit and to how I ride the bike and my height and my weight and all that good stuff, but you said it earlier about how do you plan to use this bike, right? Was. Another one of the factors that go into designing a bike. And it was just interesting as I was talking with the team about bike packing and they just started spewing ideas. Lyle was there, she was coming up with ideas on how it should be built and where we should put things. And I can't wait because that is definitely something can't wait to try it with yet another member of the Parley Bike family being added to the rest so that I can go out and try some of those new experiences as well. So super excited about. That. Yeah, it's fantastic. Don't get the crowd here. Started on dreaming up new bike ideas. You'll be here long time. You'll never leave. You'll never leave. You'll never leave. John, it has been an absolute pleasure sitting down with you today and I hope that we can do this again and more often because I think as you continue to push the company forward, there's going to be lots to talk about and for us to kind of hone in on about new and exciting things that are in the future. So John, we've spent a lot of time talking about these exciting bikes, this exciting company. So for those that are listening and watching, how does one go about getting a Parley bicycle? Well, the easiest way, just reach out to us, parly cycles.com, give us a call, drops the line through our website. We'd be delighted to chat to you one-on-one, talk about your journey, what you're trying to do, and delighted to connect you with one of our dealers anywhere in the world. There should be somebody close or somebody that we can connect you with that'll take good care of you. But journey starts with us. So just give us a call. And of course, you've been very active as of late, and I would imagine that's going to continue because I've noticed since you've gotten there, it's got more accelerated. Where can they find you on Instagram? Because your Instagram site has been very active and I think people would want to check it out. So my own personal one is beaming 365 and the Parley Cycles is just at Parley cycles. John, it has been great having you on today. For more information on this episode as well as other episodes in this series, head over to our website at Bike to Bites podcast.com. You can also find us on YouTube at Bike Tobys. Be sure to give us a like and subscribe while you're there. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, we would appreciate a five star rating and a glowing review. It really does help spread the word. Check out our Instagram at Bike debits tv and be sure to follow my personal Instagram at Garrett Abe, where I post shots of my daily rides and interesting places I visit. If you're interested in watching the Bike Debits TV show, please visit bike debits.com. We also have some really cool stuff of Bike to Bites, apparel and some other things that you can check out. While you're there, I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor. They've been a huge fan of the Bike to Bites television series and our Bike to Bites podcast. E plus E plus helps organizations harness the power of technology for truly transformative results from AI and security to cloud and workplace transformation. Plus, brings the right solutions at the right time in the most efficient way. Plus is on the front lines of today's modern enterprise. Check them out@eplus.com. Well, until next time, pedal, eat and repeat.