You mentioned Chris King to anybody in the world of cycling, and the first reaction I get is this. Whoa, whoa. It's a 48-year-old company that built its name on reliability, durability, serviceability. Feel the burn, baby. Oh yeah. Is a slam. Dunk. Absolutely. Breathtaking. Welcome to the Bike to Bites podcast. I'm your host, Garrett be. This is a companion podcast to the Bike to Bites television series. You could check out the links in the show notes to find out more information about where to watch the series. In today's podcast, I'm joined by Jay Cecip, the sports marketing and events manager for Chris King, the provider of the incredible wheel sets that are outfitting our season two Parley bicycles. Now I'm excited to get into the episode, but before that, 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 a partner with superior insight, with expertise in cutting edge innovation across ai, security cloud and workplace transformation Plus is on the front lines of today's modern enterprise e plus where technology means more. Well, let's get into it. Welcome to the podcast, Jay. It's great to have you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Oh my gosh, it's our pleasure. I'm super excited to kind of be doing this podcast with you because you guys have been just such an incredible partner and more than an incredible partner. You are an institution in the world of cycling, and that was what got me super excited when we were able to come together and say, yeah, this is a great partnership. We should absolutely do this. And so I thank you so much for your support. I just really appreciate it. Yeah, you're welcome. This is going to be, I mean, it's great partnering with you and doing these rides and connecting with the food and everything. That's kind of our, well least my, it's in my wheelhouse. Yeah, there you go. And it's in Chris's. Yeah, exactly. I know Chris couldn't be with us today, but he's here with us remotely in his thoughts. So while he's riding around in his camper van and doing all the things that he loves to do. Exactly. He's been in the desert for a couple months now and tooling around and meeting new people and just bouncing around on some rocks with his four wheel drives, and he's on that side of that chapter of his life anyways. Well, which is really interesting because it's a great jumping off point for us, right? That's where Chris is at now in that chapter of his life. But let's just rewind the o'clock for the calendar or the years for a second. 1976 was the moment. Where did this idea come from that Chris was like, Hey, I think this is the kind of company I want to build. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I've been blessed with the time that I've spent here. I've been here 15 years and Chris is pumped a lot of information into my head, and he didn't definitely turn me into the face of the company, not by any means. He is the face of the company. He's a single proprietor, he's the owner, but he's injected in us, quite a few of us, this knowledge of the history and how and why and all that good stuff. So I'm paraphrasing exactly sort of what he has told me in stories. So he's post high school graduate. It's in 1976. He's working at a bike shop, I think it's called Henderson's in Santa Barbara. I'm not sure if that bike shop still, I don't think it exists anymore. But the story goes is that he had a great mentor and back then industrial arts was a really strong program. So he took a machinist class. This machinist instructor really took him under his wing and talked him a lot of what he knows now, of course, through the years of experimenting and becoming a machinist. And he thinks like an engineer, but he's not an engineer. He really is. He went to high school and he did well in this program. So post high school, he bought a lathe. We still actually have the lathe. We just pulled it out of retirement and pulled it into retirement. So it's sitting in the hallway, it's this German hast lathe tool room late that he borrowed money from the mom's friend to buy this lathe. And then he had a neighbor that had a mill that was in the basement, and he worked for the aerospace industry. And so between those two machines, he was making kind of bits and bobs for, well, people need a shim. People in the bike shop, they need a spacer or a shim for different spacing for the rear hub or the front hub or these kind of things. And one day, here's the deal. Back then there was no good headsets. I think Campinola made a nice chrome race, hardened chrome race headset, but still loose balls. And you take that off road and at some point that ball bearing is going to pit the headset and you're going to have some weird kind of funny indexing going on. I think strong light made a needle bearing headset that was really durable, but for the most part, headsets were you rode it on the road, you kept it adjusted as best you can, and then you serviced it, you greased it, and every now and then you decide to go off road and then your headsets toast. And people were riding their road bikes off road because roads in Southern California, especially in the hills in Santa Barbara, were not awesome. Were there even a lot of off-road bikes at that time? I don't think there, there. People were starting to build and ride like. BMX type. Kind of clunkers. They were taking Old Beach cruisers and going off-road with 'em. And back then there was really one headset standard, so everybody kind of used the same headset and you upgraded once or twice. Eventually someone came into the shop and goes, what would really be good if someone made a really good headset? I think one was, I think someone actually challenged Chris and he goes like, Hey, you want to make a name for yourself in the bike industry? He wanted to make a really good headset, and he kind of had the means and kind of had the knowledge to make headset cups. And back then headsets were really pretty basic. There was a adjuster nut and there was a lock nut on top. So just for a second. For. Maybe our intro level cyclists who might not know what a headset is, so no, no. And I think this is great for the advanced aware for the advanced team. They're dialed in, they're already hanging on your words right now, but let's just, if you could educate our listeners, our viewers for a second about the headset and what that does in the context of how bicycle works. So the headset is the bearing system that allows you to basically turn your handlebars from left to right. Basically, it's a system that helps you rotate your handlebars left to right smoothly without hearing. Yeah, it's a bearing system. It's a bearing system, and there's a bearing on top of the head tube and there's a bearing on the bottom of the head tube. So it keeps your steer tube fluid parallel and fluid through your head tube and. Fluid and fluid. And smooth and smooth. That's the idea. That's the job of the headset. And when the headset's not adjusted properly or the headset is kind of lesser quality and it gets damaged, the bearing gets damaged, then it's not so smooth and it comes out of adjustment, which is even ultimately more annoying. And I think that's what was happening back then, those two. So someone challenges him at. This point, someone challenges him, and at the time he was also working part-time at a medical company that made drills for surgery when you're repairing bone repair and stuff like that, and bone fractures. And those came with bearings that were really high quality US made four 40 C stainless, all the stuff that you want from a really good quality bearing. And he's working there part-timing at the bike shop. So over there, he's the service and warranty guy. So literally taking apart the drills, replacing the bearings because every once or twice they use it, it goes to an auto plate, so it gets sterilized. And those bearings as well as they're sealed, well, you're basically submerging them in the water or saline solution and they're done. So the bearings get harvested, they start to collect a big pile of bearings while he's working there for, I can't remember exactly how many years he was working there, kind of clear into the eighties, I think into the early eighties. He had a real job, which was really, to me kind of funny, but he had a bucket of bearings that I think he bought or it was given to him. So he had this bearing supply, this surplus bearing supply that he was using as, but he was also modifying them. He was servicing them. He was kind of reworking the seals a little bit. But anyways, that's what he was pressing into these cups that he was making. So the thing is that everybody makes bearing cups, right? Campinola was making bearing cups that pressed into the head tube. Everybody was making a adjuster nut and also a lock nut on top. Everybody did that. So he was kind of doing the same thing. But the difference is that he created, he was maybe one of the first few people, or maybe the first one to actually press in a cartridge, a really high quality cartridge bearing that you can service with the high quality materials. And. So partridge bearing is connecting all of the bearings. The partridge bearing is literally an inner and outer bearing race. That was one unit. So back then, even when I started mountain biking in the kind of late eighties. Were they individual bearings at. The time? Yeah, the lower end bearings were literally individual balls, like loose ball bearing, and then eventually some headset, higher quality headsets or had bearing races, sorry, a cage. A cage where all the balls were captured in. And that was kind of like what you replaced when you wanted to service your headset. Got. It. What he did was literally stuck a whole cartridge in there. That was a high quality inner and outer race that was, that's the only thing the ball bearings touched was inner and outer race. And nobody had ever done this. This was truly innovative at the time, or no. I'm not going to say that nobody ever did that because I don't know that part of it, but I'm going to say he was one of the first ones that put a cartridge bearing. That's what he became known for, the headset. So once he started doing that and started testing the headsets and people, he was selling the headsets, literally the bike shop he was working at on the weekends and installing them, and the headsets were staying adjusted and they were withstanding the abuse that people were putting on the bikes. And then the order started coming in. So little by little he was like, okay, I'm doing this by myself. I'm still making all the parts. I'm pressing on all bearings. Eventually, oh, I ran out of bearings because I went through that big bucket of bearings and he's buying bearings from different surplus, the people that had surplus bearings for sale. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? Aerospace and airplanes? Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it amazing just as you're telling this story in terms of this chapter of his story, it is almost like the DNA of an entrepreneur. He identified a need in the marketplace because that's what customers were saying. That's what was happening to them. He sees the need as serendipitous as it was that he had this other job, it sparked an idea in his head that, well, wait a second. I could take these surplus ball bearings that are being given to me or what have you, and I can invent a better way to address this problem that I'm hearing from people who are coming into the bike shop or having with their headsets, and he figured out a solution. I think normal people would be like, that's garbage, and I'm going to figure out some other way. But he's always very resourceful. I mean, he's always been like, every time I talk to him, he's always got like, oh, I'm going to reuse that for something. Reuse this for something. But the crazy thing is I asked this of him once and he goes Like that bearing, that cartridge bearing, was that even the, I mean, isn't that just by luck? That was even the same size that you would need for a headset. And he goes like, well, I had full control. I am machining the cup. I was pressing the bearings in the other part that engages the inner race of the bearing, which is the inner ring of the bearing. I had full control of that too. So all the only things he had to stick to was literally the head tube inside diameter and the fork steer tube diameter and the threads, right? Because back then there was literally the British had their own, the French had their own. Threads. There's no standardization. But there was very little to deal with compared to these days. So he had full control of what he was putting the bearings into, therefore that size really just had to be kind of close to what he needed. And he happened to have a huge 55 gallon drum bucket full of it, and that was still good and just needed some love. So this starts to work and take off. That starts to work. I think he hires an employee or two. He moves, I think his first shop, his first shop was at the back of a bike shop. He had a laid, I think his first employee was a woman that was just helping him assemble these headsets. And at this point, that's all he's doing is the headsets, right? That's it. That's it. For a long time, there was one size of headset. It was literally two inch, I mean the one inch, like a two nut. Headset. Now, how do we get from the headset? What comes after the headset? When does the spark say, well, wait a second. If I found a better way to do this, I certainly think I can take this technology, these learnings and apply them to some other things. So when did those other things start to come into play? Well, the next thing that happens with headsets is, okay, so you've got a good bearing there, a high quality bearing that would stand the abuse of riding offroad or basically neglecting to service your headset. So then the next thing he had to address is headsets coming out of adjustment. And that was a very common thing. If you worked on bikes when you were a kid, you're always like, oh man, this headset's loose again. You got to tighten. Take those two wrenches and basically tighten, adjust, adjust the adjuster nut, and then tighten the lock nut on top of it. It's basically a jam nut kind of system. And then if that comes loose, you're kind of in the same situation. So he decided to come up with a system that's kind of a wedge call it system that threaded. So he got a trademark for it and he got a patent for it. He was awarded this first patent, so it's called the grip nut. So you there was a call it that squeezed onto the threads of the head tube as you tighten the lock nut on top. It's a pretty simple system, but it was definitely unique and therefore he was awarded a patent and that made his headset really the ultimate headset to own if you were a cyclist. And then at this point, mountain biking was becoming a thing. So now he made this one product that was unchallenged. I mean, it was the best thing you could do for a headset for your bus, I. Think. So what was available to a customer if they didn't have this Chris King headset, what did they have? And when they bought the bike and since he had the patent on it, nobody else could manufacture it. So is it the kind of thing where people would buy their bike with whatever came standard with it and then aftermarket, they'd say, well, no, I don't want this thing, I want that. Yeah, I think, well, so Chris King never really sold parts to big manufacturers and did OEM. Okay. He did some OEM work with Trek in the past, but that's down the road. But at this time, he was selling headsets to different dealers all over the country, maybe mostly in the west coast still. And so he used to tell me, he goes, yeah, I couldn't keep up when in 1976 when I first came up with this headset, and I still can't keep up. Now he's still making the most amazing headsets out there. But the differences back then is that there was really no choice. You had all the headsets out in the market that would basically fail or come out of adjustment, or you had a Cing headset, which was three times the price, maybe four times the price of a headset. So something you definitely aspired to own or saved up to have a bike shop, install the headset on your bike. It was a status symbol, but it wasn't just a status symbol. It actually worked and actually worked really well. It worked overwhelmingly better than any other headset in the market. I mean, I know because I had one and a lot of people had one and everybody switched it from one bike to the other. We would sell bikes and keep the headset. So this is the beginning of Chris King as a big name in cycling was this innovation in headsets, this patent was issued. It was if you wanted the premier headset for your bicycle, this is what you'd be seeking out and buying. But he didn't just stop at headsets, right? No. No. Because it's funny, I came into knowing you not through the headset, but through the wheel set. And so when did he start to say, this is great, this is humming along. I still have other ideas and thoughts and things that I want to innovate on. When did he dive into hubs and wheels? Wheels was definitely way later, but hubs was something that he, so here's the deal now. Now in the early eighties, these bearings that he was kind of buying and from surplus places or military surplus, they kind of started to dry out. Dry up. So inventory was kind of going. Away. The SARS was starting to dry up and then all these manufacturers that were making bearings domestically, they start to move offshore. So he's a little stuck in the early eighties here, like 81. He's like, okay, things are starting to get a little bit tough to get these bearings. Now he's very size specific, right, because he's making cups and he's making, so he's looking for certain specific bearings and us made serviceable all the stuff that he designed his current bearing from. I think he learned a lot from these bearings. And then at some point he said, okay, I got to make my own bearings or I got to design my own bearings. So he designs his own bearing, tries to get them made struggles with that because the tolerances were really tight. The walls of the bearing, the material material is really hard to machine and the walls are really thin. So he starts to get some bearings made first and then initially, and then eventually he's like, okay, I got to make this myself now. So he's buying specialized equipment to make bearings. So what makes Chris King unique compared to other component manufacturers is that everybody machines parts and puts bearings into it that they purchase. And those bearings are mostly made overseas, whether they're Japanese bearings or Chinese bearings. For the most part, it's an overseas bearing. Chris, since he has so much invested in making bearings from the early eighties, and that's kind of what spawned other products, is the fact that he has this thing, he's making bearings and each bearing, there's 30 steps that goes through from the beginning all the way from blanking all the way to when you press it into a part. Alright, so hang on one second. So at this point in time, he realizes that inventory wasn't readily available in the us. People were offshoring and getting these bearings from elsewhere, whether it was China or Japan. He found problems with the products that were coming out of China and Japan that led him to decide, I need to do this on my own. I need to be more in control of my own product. The specs. In other words, what drove him to say, I don't want the bearings from Japan, I don't want the bearings from China. I want to make my own. Well, he came up with a bearing that he designed that was specifically for the bikes. Specifically. For the headsets, and that's not something you can just have made anywhere because this thing doesn't exist. So he wanted the bearing that wasn't, it wasn't going to be put on an alternator or a generator. It didn't have to go fast. It just needed to be really high quality, really serviceable and needed to be his kind of specs in his size. So he was not going to a bearing manufacturer to have these bearings made. He was going to really high-end machine shops in Southern California and they were not, it was either coming back as something they can't do or they can't quote or it was coming back with a lot of scrap. So a lot of the parts he was making had to be scrapped. So he had to learn how to make bearings. And again, at that time people were abandoning ship and having stuff made overseas. So there was machines and there was these old machines. And I mean I can look down at the shop floor right now and literally there's machines that are older than both of us maybe combined just kind of, I mean there's some old stuff out there, but that's kind of like the black magic of making bearings, these old machines and the knowledge, you're doing all the steps and now that you're invested in all these machines and the knowledge, you want to put these bearings into other things, of. Course you got to. Start. To, what is the word, amortize? Your investment across other product. Opportunity. Exactly. So at the time, headsets were still one size and one style. So he was filling all those headsets with all these bearings that now he's making, and then he's like, well, where can I put this bearings into? So he designed the bottom bracket, but that was using a different bearing. He decided to use a roller bearing because it would disperse the load from left to right of the bottom bracket because the load is kind of a little bit different on the bottom bracket. And he was using. He wanted, and the bottom bracket holds your, it. Holds the cranks. The cranks. So that's basically the bearing system that allows you to use your cranks smoothly. And the cranks obviously has the chain, the chain wheel and the chain, and that transfers the power to the back wheel. So everything we do in this company has a bearing in it for the most part. So the focus is really the bearing And the where can we put the bearings so it goes into the bottom brackets. And at the time there was a square taper bottom bracket, which meant there was a spindle inside the bottom bracket and it took him a while to figure that out and come up with the bottom bracket that he wanted to come out. Took him so long to do that. The standards change and now the bottom bracket is basically a headset with threads. So here we are back to making a headset with threads that went into the bottom bracket and the same bearings went into the bottom bracket as the headset and also the headset started to grow, right? Gary Fisher decided, oh, we need to go from one inch to inch and a quarter because now we're mountain biking. Now we're pounding the hell out of these bikes and we need with no suspension forks and we need something scouted in a one inch headset, which kind of belongs. At that time, the industry decided it belongs on a road bike or a commuter bike. Mountain bikes decided, oh, we need something bigger. So they go to an inch and a quarter and then some other brands like Ibis and decided that inch and a quarter is way too big. We needed an inch and eight. So Chris is kind of in the middle of all these conversations because he's the go-to headset dude in the west coast. So he's. Now starting to manufacture this for to be utilized across multiple. Yes, but still a aftermarket Part. Always been an aftermarket part. So this is something you go to a bike shop and it wasn't uncommon back then, even for myself, that started a little bit later, 10 years later than when the headsets were first really more people were starting buying the headsets. I started to see these headsets in bike shops and cases like a whole display case that's kind of differentiated. The bike shops that were kind of mom and pops and the approach shop, you walk in and you saw all these cool parts anodized different colors, and when you saw a bunch of crisping headsets that was like, whoa, that was, you're like a kid in the candy cage. You're just looking at. So you go into one of those bike shops and as a customer you buy a bike from a manufacturer off the shelf and that comes with a headset and a bottom bracket and a hub and a wheel set that's already on that bike. And then the pro shop has the ability to say, oh, we could upgrade you to something that's a little bit better. And then you start to take that very bike that you just bought apart, you start to replace it with these great products that you guys are manufacturing. Yeah, that's still the case now. I mean it's probably less now because I think most of the parts that are coming on bikes now actually are designed to withstand a lot more abuse than back then. You're still the standard bearer you guys in terms. Of this. I mean of you mentioned Chris King to anybody in the world of cycling, and the first reaction I get is this. Oh, whoa. And that says it all. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's a 48-year-old company that built its name on really reliability, durability, serviceability. It's something that I think a lot of people aspire to but the headsets. The headsets. Like I said back earlier, people were, I know so many people that would sell bikes after they're like, oh, a new bike came on. I want to buy a new bike. Would take the headset off, put the old headset back on, sell the bike and take this violet or turquoise or black or whatever, colored headset and put 'em, install it on a new bike or a new frame and then go from there. It's something that people transferred. It's not uncommon for people to tell us that, oh, I've owned that headset and it's been through five, six different bikes. And they pull it out and they put it onto the next bike that they buy. And so we started with the headset, we then migrated into the bottom bracket and then the hubs came next. Yeah, no, the hubs in the bottom bracket were same. Time. A little bit in time, but the bottom brackets, it's a funny thing because that bottom bracket standard changed pretty drastically. So he backed out of the bottom bracket thing. What's the next easiest thing for him to put bearings into was really a front hub. The front hub is basically a cylinder, like a head tube on its side, a flange where all the spokes went into. And back then there wasn't a lot of different standards either. So it was really through axle. He had to make an axle where a qr, which is reation for quick release lever. So he was able to press in bearings into that as well. The same bearings that he was making for headsets, so if it was good enough for headsets and can withstand the abuse was so now. He's creating another skew with a product that he was able to repurpose and use somewhere else on the bicycle that needed it. So he was using it in the front hub. And then of course the rear hub was a lot more complicated that needed a drive system and he experimented with a Sprague bearing, like a direct one-way drive bearing. So he experimented with different kind of drive systems. That would be a unique drive system for the time because back then the drive systems were kind of a pulse system. So the Paul systems would basically, the Paul would basically engage against the drive shell and then that would drive the hub and he didn't want that system. Those things had a lot of parts and there was only x amount of teeth engaging the drive shell. So he wanted a lot, basically a lot of surface area to be engaged at one time to. And why was that important? I think for him, because he worked on a buy shop, he probably had to do quite a bit of servicing and he just saw some of the problems, some of the issues, the problems, and I've taken those hubs apart and trust me, you take that apart, it springs fly everywhere and it's like a lot of small parts. And he wanted to create a really simple drive system that had a lot of surface area of one part driving the other part. So you have the durability, you have the strength, it can handle a lot of torque. He wanted the Swiss watch like synchronicity, but with simplicity is what he wanted. Yes, he wanted a simple system that was really easy to service, but at the same time really durable. And so him and his engineer at the time, his company was probably, there's probably a dozen of them at this time, maybe more came up with a drive system that was really unique. And at the time, nobody had anything like this. Therefore again, granted another patent. So for 20 years he owned the market. He was the only one in the market using this ring drive system. I mean there were some companies that were making something similar but nothing even remotely the same. And for all of us who don't have a Chris King hub, what is the signature element that alerts you to the fact when you ride this bicycle of yours that's got a Chris King hub, what is going to happen that is going to tell you that this is a Chris King hub. Without seeing the hub? You could definitely, if someone you'd definitely hear the hub when they're coasting. So. It's a buzzing noise that is, it's music. It's music, yeah, it actually sounds elegant. It sounds of quality. It's not like a cheap clanking buzzing noise or a clicking or it's a very precise sounding. And that's what you would see or hear first, something that's audible. And then eventually you would see maybe a colored hub if somebody was next to you. And then. Do you know there's sections of the road that you ride and then you could go from a slight kind of grade going up And you're pedaling hard, you're pedaling hard, but then it comes down a little bit and you ease up and then you coast a little bit. So you hear that little, you hear the buzzing, and then you go and you get back up into a hill and you're riding again. That buzzing in between the two climbs on either side of the coast. And then you hear the, for me, when that happens to me, it's like when I hear the buzzing, it's like, oh, it's my reward. I just went up and now I'm coming down. Oh, nice. Oh, now I'm back up again. It kind of tells me that I've rewarded myself and the noise is very soothing to me, very relaxing, not noise. It's a hum. That is like music. It's the best way I could describe. It. Yeah, it's not very loud. Although all the hubs are different, right, because it depends on much how people service it, what kind of grease, what kind of oil. Now we specify, but it also depends on what kind of rim is it laced up to, what kind of frame material it's ultimately mounted on. And all that sound can kind of reverberate and be delivered differently. But for the most part it is a nice, to me, it's the sound of precision. Can I share something with you? Yeah. Side note, we've been working on some music for some of the work that we're going to be doing moving forward on bike to bikes, including some of our social posts and things of that nature. And I went into the recording studio and with the bicycle and we recorded that. We recorded that very beautiful noise, or not noise, I would say that very beautiful hum or buzzing as you call it. We actually captured and it's in the track of the music. That's awesome. It's very, very, very cool. It's how you're riding on a Chris King hub, it's signature. And the hub the sound hubs make is they do have their own kind of signature. Different brands have their own sound. People say that sounds like a disc hub, that sounds like a whatever brand hub, right? Chris King has always had its own sound. I think it's probably the first, I think hubs that people really talked about, the sound it was making because it's been around since 19, the mid nineties basically. So it's been a while. And. What makes, one of the things I also think, and correct me if I'm wrong now, serviceability, you stand behind your products and I think this is something that the viewers, the listeners need to understand when you're buying, whether it's a Chris King hub or Chris King wheel set, if there's ever a problem, if you ever experienced something that needs to be done, what's your policy with your customers? So started about, I can't remember how many years ago now, but X amount of years ago we started a lifetime warranty because we started to look at our warranty records and the service records, and it's after X amount of years. I mean, we have enough data to basically say that and we're always producing more and more product so that you technically should have more warranty and more warranty issues or any sort of service issues that come up. We started to see our data where it was pretty flat, very low single digit returns on any issues. So at that point we decided to call it and make a decision to make all our products basically have a lifetime warranty. But before that, our headsets had a 20 year warranty. But this is pretty groundbreaking. For. In the world of cycling. For sure. Park back then with a 20 year warranty, was not. Heard of. Not heard. And when I first started here, headsets were coming in for servicing or repair or whatever we needed to do some servicing. It started to creak or it started to bind up. It wasn't smooth. And we'd get headsets that were from the seventies in here and I'm like, I can't believe this thing is actively still alive. But anyways, sure it's caked up with grease. It's pretty disgusting. We clean it. Yeah. No questions. Asked. You do what you. Need. To do. Do you put it back in a working order? This is beyond 20 years. Okay. We were still, and we would just service it just because Chris' mentality is if the part's good, get it back out there and keep that bike rolling or working as best as it can, right? I mean, the archive, historian archive hat that I wear for the company makes me want to take that headset back, trade it in for a new headset, which we've done quite a few times because for the most part people are like, I'll take a new headset for one of my other bikes and you can have that thing. That thing is, I've used that thing for 30 years and for me it's like, it's great. That's when you guys take the old one, you refurbish it and then you sell them as vintage and now there's a whole nother product skew for you. That goes in a marketing drawer. Yeah, exactly. So that we can look at it later and go like, oh my God, look at this headset. It worked until this date. And sometimes they have the bearings that were not even made here. So it was made with some of the surplus bearings and those are really. Cool. Wow. That's a rare find. Yeah, it's kind of rare. Well, here's the deal. At one point Chris told me at one point the peak of his headset production when there was really no real good competition out there. So people were really buying a lot of headsets and the standards were not, it wasn't insane. So there a proliferation of standards. He said he was making 60,000 headsets a year, which he doesn't even know where they go. He said, is there a hole in the middle of earth where all these headsets went to? But he made a lot of headsets and you saw them in chops, you saw them on bikes, on the trails, and you started to see a lot of people racing pro mountain bikes and in the racing circuit and west coast and the East coast and in Europe. You know what you're making. Riding his parts. Do you realize, Jay, what's happening in this conversation? What's now going to have to happen after I get off this podcast with you that I am in possession of the Chris King wheels and hubs, but I don't have a Chris King headset on my Parley Road bike or gravel bike. But guess what, guess what's going to happen now after this conversation, I am going to then pick up the phone and call you and say, Jay, I've been thinking about our conversation, all this talk of these headsets and maybe I need to make a change. Well, we need to look at the, so here's also what happened in the industry since kind of the late nineties onward is this, the frames. Changed. Desire to innovate. So it was like all these standards started to happen. Everything from the rear spacing on the hub to obviously the coming of this brakes from mountain bikes onto the road bikes and then bottom bracket. You can't just leave one thing alone. So the bottom bracket starts to morph and starts to get larger, different bearing diameters, different crank spindle diameters. Head tube is maybe I would say the worst and offender of these innovations in the bicycle in the standards to a point where I'm not a hundred percent sure we can put one on your. Car, I don't think can, I think we talked about it and that's fine, but I know we were able to put the wheels and I know we were able to put those gray hubs on and. Yes, the wheel standard seems to have settled down the hub standard. So let's talk about the wheels for a second because I want to get into all of the work was in this. It started with a little bearing of an idea and it exploded into these other product SKUs for him. You're making hubs, so now he's making hubs. And clearly the next progression would be like, why can't I just take my hubs and put them on my own wheels? Why can't I make my. Own. Wheels? I think I can take my knowledge of engineering and apply my entrepreneurial mind into a mindset of how do I do something better than what's already being done. And so enter Chris's desire to say, I think we're going to start making our own wheel sets. When did that happen. Again? I'm going to go back in time. I think around the nineties, a lot of these companies started coming up with their own wheel systems. Back then it was a hub. Someone made spokes like Will Smith and someone made rims like Mavic or Wineman or whatever, and then this is how it went. You went to a bike shop. Every bike shops built wheels. I want a custom wheel set made. I want this violet crisping hubs. I want stainless steel wheels, bespokes and some nice alloy rims. And then I think Mavic and Shiano started making wheel systems. Campinola started making wheel systems where wheel system, meaning it's their own, it's a ready to install, complete, complete wheel, right? Proprietary spokes, proprietary this, proprietary rims and all that good stuff. So hub sales were, and then bike shops started like, oh, well we do so much better. There's a lot of labor in building wheels and cutting, getting, calculating the spoke lengths, cutting spokes, all that stuff. So a lot of bike shops went towards selling wheel systems. Now. They didn't have to deal with all the individual parts. It was just out of the box. Here you go. Exactly, exactly. What Chris found is that, okay, well we got to build our own wheels. So initially the first iteration of our wheel department, he was lacing his hubs onto Mavic rims. So mainly mountain bikes. So mountain bike hubs. I'm a mountain bike rims. And they were building complete ready to go wheels and going to races, selling wheel sets, selling wheel sets directly to bike shops. I mean, my brother and I built custom bike frames since 1992 and we sold a lot of cing wheel sets. We didn't know how to build wheels. I have no desire to build wheels. I can't tell you what the first thing that goes into building a wheel. If I was to start myself, I've seen it happen thousands of times, but I unboxed a Chris King wheel set load inner tubes, tires on them, sold the bike to the customer and basically told the customer, okay, you are now proud owner of a Chris King wheel set. If anything happens to the hubs or the wheels, call Chris King. I have no idea what's inside the hub. I have no idea how to service the hub. All I know is they work really well and if you take care of them, they'll last you a lifetime. That's it. I never even owned my own pair of Chris King hubs until I started working here Just because they were not cheap. Even back then for somebody in the bike industry that was not, that's something you aspire to own. It's not something I ever owned. So that's how I found out how simple the system is and how easy it is to maintain was after I started working with Chris. When I told my master mechanic friend of mine, good friend of mine, he's on one of our podcasts here, Mike, and I told him that Chris King wheel sets with the rims, the hubs, the spokes, the whole bit. We're coming to these new bikes for season two. His mouth just went like that, just dropped. He goes, are you kidding? I go, no. So the stature that they hold in the marketplace even today is pretty incredible. I mean, you guys have done an unbelievable job. First it starts with a great product. It starts with a great philosophy, great product, and then getting it out there that this is a product that people should be entertaining wanting to ride with. And so the reputation is stellar and it holds up because I rode these bikes with those wheels and man, you can feel the difference, not just hear the difference, not just hear the difference. You can feel the difference. You. Can feel it. So there's been three iterations of a wheel department at Chris King. So the final iteration is basically we hired a gentleman named Greg who basically developed the whole wheel department created. We decided that you can't just have one offering. You can't just have Mavic rims. Back then, that was the best rims. And so the second wheel department was just one brand rims too. It was dt. So we decided to just use DT rims and the market kept on shifting and evolving and the demands of all these bike shops and customer and customers wanted. They just wanted a bunch of different rims. So we had to create a wheel department with a huge offering of rims. So basically almost like a customizable thing. You had aluminum rims from stands from head from and carbon rims from nv. That's what built our wheel department. Now we started to see, we had this opportunity to basically work with a company to develop our own carbon rims. And Chris has very strict, he has a very strict guidelines on who he wants to work with on or who he puts associates his name with as far as putting his name on a brand. So it had to be. On anything, on. Anything. Which is why I was really honored when you guys were like, we want to be your partner because I know how particular. Yeah, for sure. Just the product alone, it had to be sustainably made. It has to be recyclable, has to be as environmentally friendly as possible. So there was all these guidelines that he never really wanted to have his own brand on rims until this product came about. So we were approached by fusion fiber CSS and said, Hey, we have this new method of making a carbon rim without resin, without using resin. So it's basically a thermoplastic. They use this nylon, they weave nylon into the carbon fiber, so So it's all basically plastics and there's no. Fully recyclable. There's no chemical resonance. Exactly. And there's a second life if the rim cracks and it will, I mean, at some point if you ride really hard or you hopefully don't meet in an accident, the rims may or may not crack anyways. If they do, they can chop it up and reuse the pieces and remold it into something. Are the rims also lifetime warranty? Yes. So anybody has Chris King wheel sets with the Chris King full set with the rims, something happens to them. You're going to replace 'em, you're going to fix it or replace it. Yes. Amazing. Now, I think there's quite a few companies that do lifetime warranties now too, especially carbon frames, because they've learned a lot in manufacturing carbon where they can put more material in certain places where the frames may or it. May be more vulner damage, right? Yeah, exactly. And then that's how they control right? Quality and that's how they control the way even rims, the way the rims feel, right? How compliant, how they accelerate, how they corner. These. Are all done with layup of material, but you also need to lay up material where you're going to be able to make a really strong product. So that's a lot of the work we've done with the fusion fiber was really our own layup iterations to make product a certain way and be strong enough so that we can actually put a lifetime warranty on the whole wheel system. They're amazing. So let's tell the viewer, the listener for a second. So I've got a parley road and I've got a parley gravel. Tell me what I'm riding with you guys in terms of what you outfitted those bikes with. So you're using the R 45 hubs. R 45 hubs are our road hubs. For a long time, Chris just made a mountain hub and the mountain hub kind of also worked as a road hub. And then when the road market really decided to come up with its own standards, we decided to come up with an R 45, which is used the same drive system as the mountain hub, but just daintier and less points of engagement as far as the ring drives are concerned, lighter, faster. So that was the road hub. And then the R 45 D is the disc brake road hubs, which is what you're on because both of your bikes are disc brakes, hydraulic disc brakes, and those hubs get laced onto, we have two different rims, the GRD 23, which is the kind of gravel all road, it's a gravel specific rim, but can also double as a road rim. And then there's the A RD, which is the deeper cross-section, road rim more for aerodynamics and all that stuff, but also obviously has a harsher kind of right quality. They're. Beautiful. Perform quality. They're beautiful. And I will tell you, when we were kind of in the design stages, you and I were going back and forth, and I know at one point you were kind of retooling originally I came to you and said, boy, really the bikes were going to be orange and gray from a pink color scheme. And I was like, oh, maybe those orange hubs would look really cool. And at the time you were in the process of retooling that orange color hub that you guys were making and we were talking, well, what would, and I go, well, you and I were talking and you're like, oh, we don't want to just put black on there because so many people do black. And then you go, Garrett, and this was your idea. Why don't maybe the turquoise blue? And let me tell you, at first I was like, I don't know when I got them and I saw them on the bike, man, wow, it's a perfect compliment to the color scheme on the bikes. And they look beautiful and everybody comments on them. I mean, that's the thing black everybody has, we sell, most of the parts we sell are black, but when we do sponsorships, we tend not to sponsor with black because we sell a lot of black and we need them, we need sales needs them. Because pushing those out quite often, frequently. And at the same time, they get lost in when people are watching the hubs or seeing the hubs in the race or in the print ad, whatever. It just doesn't really look like a crisping hub because it's so small. It's a small part. It's. You're going to be very pleased because in a couple of the episodes, they mounted a camera literally in the wheel. And so there's a couple of times where they'll cut to a shot and you'll see the beautiful turquoise hub as the bike is rolling and it's awesome. I like complimentary colors. So I think even the mango hubs, which now we have mango again because we had anodizing is a whole different story. We had dye issues and all that stuff. But anyways, now that we have mango hubs back in the market and they're readily available and for sale, but the turquoise hubs I think is a nice small little compliment. Color. Because when you stand back, the hubs are kind of like, they kind of disappear too. Behind the disc brake rotors behind the cassette, behind the carbon fork, which is now fairly stout. You. Can't miss these hubs on my bikes, trust me. And that's the point, the little splash of color. It is really nice. It's a nice. Compliment. Can I ask you why you guys felt so strongly about our partnership? I mean, I was super, super excited that you were on board and you saw the opportunity, what we're doing and our show's a little different, what I would call a cycling more than an enthusiast. I'm doing it a lot more than let's say a weekend or a weekend rider, but it's not pure cycling, it's not Pure travel, it's not pure food. It kind of marries it all together with some great context and stories behind these people that are, and that's the really interesting thing for me. These people that we interview, these chefs, these restaurateurs in every city that we design a route around, they are in their own, the Chris Kings of their own domain in their little world, they're entrepreneurs. They had an idea, they wanted to do something differently. They thought that what they had as a concept was innovative and people would gravitate towards. And it's kind of like what Chris did in the world of a different product or different service. And so the fact that we were able to pull it all together and do a show like this and then have you see what we were trying to do, I'm just curious, what was it that ultimately sealed the deal for you that said, you know what? This is a good partnership. So when you approached us, I talked to Chris a little bit about this, and it's really funny because Chris is a serious foodie. He's actually a really, really good cook. He's got to ride with me in season three. I mean, he has to. Make that happen. I want him to. And I think he just needs, he's really shy. He's a pretty shy guy and he definitely doesn't point a lot of attention to himself. He's humble. He's a foodie. And so I, he actually owns, so besides Christing Precision components, which is the component side of things, he actually owns a bike frame brand called CLO as well. And he's a frame builder. He can build his own frames, steel frames. And the other brand he has is called Gourmet Century. We used to do this a ride where, God, I can't believe I'm saying this because I hope he doesn't want to do this again. But anyways, gourmet century was an event where it was a one day perfect, he coins it as the perfect day on a bike. So he has these chefs cooked these meals and you do a breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but it's all based on a ride. And it's a metric century. So it's not a small ride, but it's definitely food. And then the ride next, when I was mentioning to him and he goes, yeah, it's a show where Garrett, the host, is riding around entering these towns, meeting with these restaurant tours, eating at these restaurants. And so it's mainly a food show and then a bike is kind of like intertwined in there. And then it's a travel show. It's everything that Chris really loves. And that's where, and. That's what sealed the deal. That's what sealed the deal. And the fact that, hey, our parts have been on tour bikes. Mark Cavendish has raced our parts, our parts are raced on most of the downhill UCI downhill. So our parts have been in the F1 of bikes and the rally, the off-road rally racing of bikes. I mean, our parts have been in the highest performing bikes out there, but we also want to make sure that everybody can ride our parts and ride parts, our parts on their bike. So it does belong on everybody else's bike too. I mean, so the fact that you are not a racer, you're traveling around, you're going into towns. I mean, you also deserve really good parts, your bike, and they look good on your bike. And I think it's something that, it doesn't have to be on a high performance bike. I think it just can be on a very nice bike that people, they want learn how to service their, they get the value of it. For sure. Well, look, it didn't hurt that we were putting your parts, your wheel sets your hubs On a parley, which with a Shimano drive train, it was a perfect combination of what I would consider some of the best of the best. You know what I mean? And so why not ride the best if you want to go and see a place and you're going to go and commit to doing, I want everybody who watches our show to get inspired to say, you know what? I want to go see that city and I want to see it on two wheels because I haven't seen the city like that. And you know what? Put yourself on something that is going to give you enjoyable ride and make multiple days out of it. We do a 30 mile anywhere between a 15 and 40 mile ride, but that's in a day, right? But you can spend multiple days in a city and see different parts of it. We just do one route. You can design many, many routes and experience this great ride in every one of these cities in multiple different ways. And so the fact that I'm on a bicycle that is high performance and gives me the comfort and the security of knowing that I'm covered, I'm enjoying myself. Bicycles is like when Chris and I always talked we used to back then when he was, we'd sat and talked a lot bicycles. It gives you the sense of freedom, right? It's an escape. It's a equipment oriented activity. So the better your equipment is, the more comfortable you are with it, the peace of mind, knowing that it's going to be really reliable, and the fact that it can be fixed and problem. It problem. It's a fine instrument, right? Because when you play a fine instrument, you're playing a fine instrument. The difference between playing a fine instrument and not, when you're on riding a bike with Chris King parts, you're riding parley, you're on a fine instrument and you know what you deserve. If you're going to play an instrument, if you're going to ride a bike, you deserve to ride on the best and enjoy it. And it's been. Yeah, it's part of the enjoyment really. It's holistic. Well, you guys are going to, I have to get you to come. I know we were going to try to do it here in season two. We have season three that's coming, and I'm super excited about it because it's going to be a very different landscape than season one and two. And that's all I'll say because I'm not allowed to reveal too much, but we're super excited about that. And Jay, I think of this partnership and it just makes me smile because I love the passion that you guys have about what you do every day, and it aligns with my own passion of what I like to do and love to do every day. And so I feel like it's very, very synergistic. I'll ask one last question before I let you go, because it's always one that I love to ask innovators, entrepreneurs. I'll ask this of some of the chefs that we interview. What's next for Chris King? I like that answer. That kind of stumped me because we're always having to play a little catch up and a little maintenance just because the bike industry is finicky a little bit when it comes to how they innovate and whether they include us or not. We're always having to do a little bit of catchup and maintenance. So what's next for us? I think we're just kind of the line in the sense that we just got to make sure that we keep on making the best parts we can in the Chris King fashion and mindset and keep kind of plugging away. So we've been doing the what's next since 1976, I think. Chris, well, you're doing it really well. You're doing it really well. So Jay, that was a great answer. Before we kind of say goodbye to each other, I would love it if you could let the viewers, listeners know, how do they find Chris King? What's the best way to connect with Chris King products? I would say local bike shop or pro shop in your area that actually sells Chris King would be a good start. Our website, chris king.com, has a dealer locator. Good description of all our parts. You can see the whole offering. There's certain parts that you can buy directly from us as well. And our social media feed, Instagram, which is at Chris King Buzz, BUZZ. That's a good place to learn and see the culture and see everything we're doing. More. Real time. I assume the buzz is a tip of the hat to the beautiful sound that comes from Chris King hubs. Is that what that is? Yes. And now the bees also actually on our logo, so. Yeah, there you go. So you're not shy about owning it, which I love. Well, listen, Jay, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it and I look forward to connecting with you again soon. Yeah, for sure. Alright. Look forward. 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 debees. 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 in interesting places I visit. If you're interested in watching the Bike de Bites TV show, please visit bike de bytes.com. We also have some really cool stuff of Bike de Bites apparel and some other things that you can check out while you're there. We're very fortunate to be able to bring you this podcast, and it's because of sponsors like e plus E plus helps organizations harness the power of technology for truly transformative results cloud and workplace transformation. Plus, brings you the right solutions at the right time, in the most efficient way. Plus is on the forefront of today's modern enterprise. Check them out@eplus.com. Well, that about does it for now. We'll see you next time. And remember, pedal Eat and Repeat.