089 – Beyond Lumens: How Outbound Lighting Designs Bike Lights for Real Trail Performance (Guest: Tom Place) - Mountain Cog

Episode Transcript
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Josh (00:13):
so, uh, I went on a bike ride earlier today, okay and uh,
on the back of my bike I had myfriend ruth, okay, and it was
an epic ride.
Unfortunately, about halfwaythrough the ride, she fell off.

Dane (00:27):
You know what I did I don't know, you had to go pick
up your baby ruth.

Josh (00:31):
No, I did that's a good one.

Dane (00:33):
We got another I'm trying, I'm trying so hard to figure
yeah no, um no, I just left her.

Josh (00:39):
You know why why?
Because I'm ruthless oh, jesuschrist tom's not even laughing.
These are so bad.
Why did I agree to this podcast?

Dane (00:46):
They're always bad.
Why do we do that to ourselves?

Josh (00:49):
I don't know, but we are here today, tuesday night, with
Tom Dangerplace, who's co-ownerengineer testing customer
service.

Dane (00:59):
Wait, Danger's your middle name.

Tom "Danger" Place (01:00):
Danger is his middle name, or at least his
nickname, at least not legally,but people remember it, so it's
easier.

Josh (01:07):
Tom danger place uh from outbound lighting.
Um alpine lending is achicago-based uh manufacturing
company for lights and they aremaking next generation bike
lights.
I do have a couple questions,and you touched on one already
before we kind of get into it,tom.
Where the hell does danger comefrom?

yeah, yeah, uh, that is uh.
So basically nobody in the uscalls me danger anymore, aside
from a couple random old highschool friends.
Okay, came from uh watching aleslie nielsen movie.
I think it was naked gun 33 anda third oh god, I love that
movie love it.

(01:44):
I spent a lot of time in theemergency room growing up and so
I was very accident prone.
And at some point he says butFrank, you might end up dead.
Might end up dead is my middlename.
That just went in this otherdiscussion and so that's where
the name came from.
And then it only really becamecommon when I was working crew

(02:04):
for bc bike race and, uh, when Iwas managing the bag team.
There are four other toms, fourtoms total, on crew.
On staff so radios?
yeah, I had to go by nicknamesand so at that point a lot of
people only knew me as danger.

Josh (02:20):
Nice with that second canadian family well, I think we
should try to bring it back soto our listeners.
If you run into Tom somewherein the world, please call him
Danger Well and a funny thing isI worked with a guy, bruce.

Dane (02:32):
He had a son and his son's middle name was Danger Danger.
Yeah, he did that on purposeand it was legit.
It was a joke, but it was alsolegit.

Josh (02:41):
I mean, you know we were going to name Maddie Hazard.
Yeah, yeah, Hazard, we didn'tsee through it, Okay.
Second question On the website.
So I work in a?
I've got to give you somecontext here.
I work at a company with 30,000engineers right, Huge company,
a lot of engineers.
On your website it says you area socially dependent engineer.

Can you double click on that a little
bit?
What does that mean to me?
Yeah, a lot of um outgoingfamily people, and so I kind of
grew up with these two weirdinfluences and I'm just this
kind of uh strange engineer whoI like to talk to people uh
really that and, uh, to theextent that I actually need it

(03:39):
almost all the time, there'svery rarely a time where I need
like alone time to just sit andquietly reflect.
I can't sit still.
Um, I have severe add and Ijust need to be around people
all the time.
So, um, when I say sociallydependent, it's not like it's
different from extroverted.
I don't need to be the centerof attention, I just need to be
around people right now, asoften as possible that's cool,

(04:01):
that's awesome.

Josh (04:02):
So out of the 30 engineers , I think I've met about three.
Oh, that match that descriptionso that's you're a rare breed
from my experience, tom did youever watch um office space?

Dane (04:11):
oh yeah so that guy who was like I talked to the
engineers and then I talked tothe customer, wait was that
office?

Josh (04:17):
space that was office space I am a people person and
he's, you know the jump toconclusions, the swing line
scaper guy I had that job, thatwas my job, and and it was to
talk to engineers yeah and thentalk to the customers and I had
to translate and, and that's alegit thing, I mean, isn't that
pretty much what you do todaybetween your mechanics and the
customers at the bike?

Dane (04:37):
mechanics.
I just keep them from stabbingpeople that's all so it's a very
, very critical job.

Josh (04:44):
All right.
So you guys have been on lotsof podcasts and I'll urge our
listeners to go out and justsearch on Outbound Lighting and
you will see a whole bunch ofpodcasts.
I think the most recent one wasin January of this year with
Bikes and Big Ideas, nice.

Dane (04:59):
Is that the one that I heard?
So there's a reason that Iwanted to get a hold of you, and
it may have been that one.
Okay so there's a reason that Iwant to get ahold of you, and
it may have been that one, so II can't remember if that was
that one, or biker bar One orthe other.

Josh (05:07):
I also have a bone to pick with you, Tom.
We've met before, oh.

Oh, oh.

Dane (05:12):
Oh.

Josh (05:13):
So I was actually at Seattle this year and I really
wanted to talk with you to kindof line this up, and I stood
outside your booth for like 20minutes and you looked at me and
just sat there and talked tosomeone else and put me on the
pain on my list.
I'm like I'm never talking tothat guy ever again.

Dane (05:27):
I'm going to tell you right now I did that four times
stay in the shop, but I did makelike, like sexy eyes at the
people I was ignoring just sothat they know that.
I know they're there, but I,tom, didn't make sexy eyes at me
.

Josh (05:37):
No, see, we got to work on the sexy.

I'm just messing with you.
It sounds like you'redescribing a scenario in which
we did not meet all right.

Josh (05:48):
So, um, lots of content out there on outbound.
We don't want to um repeat allthat stuff, but we do want to
get, you know, spend a littlebit of time up front here to
just kind of learn about thecompany, the products we want to
.
As a, you know, guy from anengineering, an engineer, and a
guy from an engineering company,we want to talk about your
design, trades and then yourgo-to-market strategy.
So, if you're cool with it,maybe we could just start with,

(06:08):
like you know, tell us aboutoutbound lighting a little bit
history.
What are you guys about?
How'd you guys get started?

sure, um, I'll try to run through this
with hitting the highlights.
Uh, so my business partner,matt, founded the company in st
louis.
He did a kickstarter and gotover the kick curse, managed to
stay in business for a year andnot have tons of debt and had a
customer base that was stokedand he was doing something novel
and interesting.
I'll skip a lot of my backstoryleading to that point, but

(06:39):
basically I was looking to getinto bike lights myself after
leaving Cree, a career job whereI was comfortable and making
money and happy and had noreason to leave To go to the
bike industry.

Dane (06:53):
To make more money.
How's that look in the rearviewmirror?

It's interesting we could talk about
that too.
It's a double edged sword, forsure it's more fun, less money.
That too, uh, it's adouble-edged sword.
For sure it's more, more fun,less money, yeah.
And uh, honestly, it's just alot harder personally, because I
I actually give a shit, yeah,about the end consumer, like all
of my friends and family areriding with my product it I I
carry a lot more weight withthis than I ever did at a job

(07:20):
where I was in a 24-7manufacturing environment with
gigantic contracts on the line,because it just you were
punching a clock.
You did your job.
This is more personal, but atany rate, I reached out to Matt,
cold Call via email, basicallywrote him a novel, said we
should work together, and hewrote me a novel back.

(07:40):
That was even longer, and so westarted working on some design
stuff.
I was working part-time becauseI had a full-time job and we
wanted to be careful about, youknow, if this was right and good
working relationship, if we hadcomplimentary skill sets.
And at, I think, a month 11, wewere about to launch Hangover,

(08:01):
our first product designtogether, and so I flew to
Chicago to help them assemblethe first production run right,
and so I flew to chicago to helphim assemble the first
production run, and that was thefirst time we met in person or
talked.
Um, he's, uh, so matt's deaf,uh, so he doesn't talk on the
phone.

Dane (08:15):
A whole lot no like like, like literally deaf, or yeah,
he's deaf since he was a child.

Oh wow, crazy he's got hearing aids so
he can hear and talk to you yeah, but if he turns off his
hearing aids, he can't hearanything.
Wow, crazy it's he.
He loves it because he couldjust tune out the world
literally yeah, sleeps very well.

Josh (08:34):
I wonder if I could get one just to tune them on my
wife's, like the frequency of mywife's voice out, just like
what do you call it selective?

Dane (08:43):
selective hearing my wife already says I have it, so let
me ask you let me stop you realquick.

Josh (08:49):
Just did you get involved before or after the the
Kickstarter campaign?

Well, after it was probably close to two
years, okay, and he had beenbasically assembling lights in
his living room until herelocated to Chicago and there
he got about a thousand squarefeet of just general warehouse
space that were just kind ofcordoned off and he could work
in this cold, dank warehouse inChicago, right, but it was

(09:16):
better than the living room,right.
A lot better electrostaticdischarge protection, for sure.

Josh (09:24):
ESD.
I can see the ESD thing hookedto the couch right, the little
cable hooked to the couch.

Oh yeah, it was playing fast and loose then,
but we've tightened that upquite a bit.
That's awesome.
I got a story about Crocs latertoo.
If we want to get into that, ohnice.
Anyways, we started workingtogether then, and shortly
thereafter right at thebeginning of COVID actually we
decided to.
I was going to quit my job andbecome partner with him full

(09:51):
time, so I'm minority owner andso it's just the two of us.
For a few years, we had Andy,who builds every single one of
our lights.
Still today, he's the onlyperson who does that.

Josh (10:02):
We'll help out, occasionally Shout out toy.

Yep, thank you, andy.
Yeah, uh, he was a part-timeout of work actor, uh, and he
became in building in the winterand then we brought him on
full-time and now he's salariedwith benefits and he kicks ass
um do you guys write?

Josh (10:21):
do you guys use marker and write his name on his shoe?

what's that?
What's?

Dane (10:26):
that cartoon toy story?
Yeah, that reference is so old.

then we brought on uh lauren, uh matt's
wife.
She uh was a corporate hrmanager for many years, was very
good at relationship building.
She does all of our packagingand shipping and then our supply
chain, vendor management, anyinternal policies and
documentation she kind of does.
Like all of us, we have severaldifferent jobs.
Andy's the only person who hasone job Right.

(10:54):
And then we added Greg, who's a, an engineer, whose entire job
is just to make automatedassembly equipment for Andy to
assemble lights faster and moreaccurately.
And then I hired Jason back inMarch of this year just to do
customer service.
So he's just answering emails.

(11:15):
I say just, we spend a lot oftime on customer support and
that doesn't mean likewarranties and repairs.
Obviously we cover that stufftoo, but any random question we
get from a customer we we diveinto in detail, because our goal
is to spend a lot of timeupfront to make sure I'm sure
somebody gets exactly what theyneed for their use case, so

(11:36):
their happiest long-term, ratherthan letting them flail around,
try to figure it out on theirown and then maybe just be
dissatisfied and not convey thatto us.

Josh (11:45):
So there's just six, six of you guys right now, six total
six total.
Wow, and if you can't answerthese questions, no, no problem,
just tell me that and we cancut stuff out of this podcast.
If there's things that I'llsend you a copy before we
publish it and you can cut outanything like me talking right
now.
But, with six people, like ifyou're, if you're willing to
share, like how many units doyou guys sell a year?

Um so this year, uh, it's tens of thousands
per year.
Wow, yeah, six, wow.

Dane (12:14):
It makes me even prouder to have them in the shop,
because to me that is, that islike homegrown, you know what I
mean that is, that's got more ofa story than a lot of the other
brands out there.
And there are stories in a lotof light companies in the bike
industry.
They've got good storiesactually in a fair amount of
them, but that's a pretty solidstory and when you're talking to

(12:34):
somebody they have a lot ofchoices.
You want to give them a littlenugget like that so that they
understand that they'resupporting six families, you
know they're helping six peopleout, and these there's real
people.
There's not a bunch of robotsin some foreign country making
stuff you know.

So we have a bunch of robots in the us
making those are american robots, god damn it andy is
controlling those robots, butwe're actually quite big on
robots.
We just want them here yeahyeah, and I appreciate that
honestly.
Like I feel like all not maybenot all, but most of the bike
light companies I mean, likenight rider light and motion,

(13:11):
have kind of similar storiesfrom 20 years ago or so.
Yeah, we're just a lot newerand they've grown a bunch and
kind of been saturated in themarket and so they're they're in
a very different spot.
Yep, in their um, theirprogression and um, I think
we're taking a different I'd andI think we're taking a
different I'd like to thinkwe're taking a different
approach philosophically to thewhole company, to from our

(13:31):
design approach to the way wesupport customers, and that'll
kind of be our, our story goingforward.
The only there's really notmany companies that I just
fundamentally do not like in theindustry.
I know the guys at Exposure andthe guys at glowworm all really
good people, good humans.
The only ones I really don'trespect are magic shine, because

(13:52):
it's just deceitful I knew man,I knew, I knew I liked you tom.

Dane (13:56):
I, I knew it, I was like, I like this guy.
Oh, that's yeah I don't I don'tneed to sit here and trash the
competition though yeah, no, butas a retailer, uh, one of the
things you know, like if, as wetalk about the topics that we
want to talk about as a retailerand a bike shop, you know
there's a big shift to direct toconsumer, you guys do that and

(14:17):
one of the podcasts that I heardyou talking about is moving.
You know you're, it didn't seemlike that's your end goal.
It seems like that was justyour startup strategy to move
more towards a retail, more inthe shops and less DTC.

Josh (14:31):
Yeah, what's your go-to-market strategy?

Yeah, so I think the end goal is probably
50-50.
And I say that because we don'treally view the local bike shop
market as a competing market todirect consumer.
Yeah, the type of customer thatcomes into their local shop
looking for stuff is not thesame guy who researches things
on the internet and findsexactly what they need or hunts

(14:55):
for deals or whatever.
And there's some overlap, forsure.
But there's.
There's a lot of customers thatwant to be able to shop local
first of all.
They want their shops ofcustomers that want to be able
to shop local First of all, um,they want their shops to exist.
They want to support thosepeople, um, but also a lot of
people that just trust theirshops and what they recommend.
So if our shops, you know, likeour product and use it and can

(15:15):
speak articulately to it, thentheir customers will buy that
from them and then everybodywins.
Um, the main reason that, uh,there's's, there's always going
to be a direct consumercomponent, component, thank you,
because this is the age of theInternet.
We just we can't get away fromit.
First of all, there is a typeof customer that doesn't care

(15:37):
about their local bike shop.
They're going to go findwhatever they need on the
Internet and have it deliveredto their door and that's the end
of it.
The main reason that we want tohave a split there and why we
start heavy direct to consumeris because that's where the
margins are, and to survive as afledgling company, we really
need margin to reinvest in thecompany and to be able to grow.
If we're just slicing marginsthin, so the shop gets their cut

(16:01):
and distributor gets their cut,um, it's really hard to grow as
a company.
You don't have a lot of moneyto reinvest, which means scaling
is done in a very haphazard andkind of reckless way and we're
taking the approach of uh, wewant to kind of stack up that
money and we don't really stackit up cause we ended up spending
it almost immediately.
But the reason we have robotsright now is because we have a

(16:22):
heavy E2C component and we'retaking money and just
immediately reinvesting it ingrowth.
So we're going to hire a couplemore people, a couple engineers
, full time so we can accelerategetting products out, because
we still have a lot of differentsegments within the industry to
cover and ultimately, I thinkthat as we grow our dealer

(16:53):
network slowly, we'll eventuallyreach some balance point where
we have both direct consumer andlocal bike shops, kind of
living happily together.

Dane (16:56):
Yeah, I'm finding that's a really like the way of the
world, like you're talking about.
This is the new way things aregoing forward and it's that
symbiotic relationship.
It's not a parasitic, you know,and that's when that's been
tough for the past.

I mean, you could speak to this too.
Uh, perhaps more so with allthe like fire sales and
overstocking and understockingand just massive reactionary uh
tactics at these companies.
Everything's on sale all thetime and you just can't trust
anything.
And as a bike shop, it's reallytough to buy inventory and then
see it go 40% off a week laterand then deal with that.

(17:31):
Um.
So that's one of the thingsthat I think has made this
really possible for us.
Um, the way we've kind of builtour brand is that we don't do
discounts, we don't do promos,we just don't play those games.
We don't want to be likelimited time by now to just try
drive up sales.
Yeah, um.
Also, my dad always said if youdon't respect your time, no one

(17:52):
else will either.
So we feel like we're charginga reasonable amount for the
engineering, the usmanufacturing, for the support,
for everything that goes into it.
And it's not a luxury item, butit's also not chasing amazon
products, yeah, and.
But it's not a luxury item, butit's also not chasing Amazon
products, yeah, and but it's notsuper expensive.

Josh (18:08):
I mean it's there's still affordable prices from my
perspective.

It's affordable for a lot of people.
There are plenty of people thatcannot afford a $3,000 bike and
the spending 10% of that onlights is a tall ask, um, and
I'm I'm sympathetic to that.
I also think that we can't dothat.
If we start with that productat the beginning, then we can't
grow, we're not going to surviveas a company, because the race

(18:32):
to the bottom is already beingwon by Amazon and the magic
shines the Chinas of the world.
We are trying to do somethingdifferent and create a really
stable business, not just forour employees, but also for the
shops.
So if we as a brand do not havesales throughout the year, we
have one sale per year aroundblack friday just because we

(18:52):
have to, and we can talk aboutstupid sale culture I just want
to be your best buddy dudethat's all there is to it like
he talks all the time about howhow sales devalue the products
well, so I'm the consumer's mind.

Josh (19:06):
I got off I.

Dane (19:07):
I got a little squirrel um , a little rabbit hole here.
I got off the phone withreynolds and I was talking to
reynolds and talking to one oftheir national sales manager
guys not the steel company, notthe steel company.
This is the carbon company soyeah and um, and we were talking
about how, when you sell directto consumer at a sale price,
the consumer tends to, uh,basically hold on to that sale

(19:32):
price as the actual value of theproduct.
Um, but when you sell a sale orclose out, like in my industry
yeah you know, I'll get a hotsheet or something.
This is way back like ancientdays when we used to get faxes
of hot sheets that's how oldthis is but we would get a hot
sheet of items that they'regetting rid of.
There's three of these left.

(19:52):
Do you want any of them?
And the bike shop does not thenvalue that product any lower.
It values it even higherbecause we now have an
opportunity to create value forpeople.
But we don't devalue the brand.
But when you do it with the endconsumer, it devalues the brand
and that's that race to thebottom.

So yeah, and that you're, you punch on
something that's.
That's very psychological, butit's real.
If you buy something for $250or 150, the $150 product,
whether it's the same product ornot, is going to feel like a
less valuable thing in yourbrain.
You're going to value it less.

(20:33):
So if you paid your money, yourhard-earned money, for
something really nice, you'regoing to like it more, just
generally speaking, unless youhave problems or what have you.
But you're going to be moreinclined to like the product and
that makes for a better userexperience.
Granted, that doesn't meaneverything should cost more, but
there's a balance right.
And for us, I feel like a lotof our policies kind of stem

(20:55):
from my frustration withinternet discount sale marketing
culture that is justsystemically deceitful and awful
, but also just driving theentire industry down.
Where, yes, bikes are tooexpensive, prices can come down,
but we're trying to find a spotthat is reasonable, where we
can sustain our business andprovide a good product and

(21:17):
support our shop and a goodvalue to the customer as well.

Dane (21:20):
Yeah, if you have to over inflate cause you're going to
count on putting it on sale.
It's, it's a, it's a problem.

Josh (21:29):
You know because you're you're over inflating to just
put it on sale like.
So I think I think it'd be agood time.
You best I can tell from yourwebsite you got four core
products.
Maybe you can tell us about it.
Maybe I got that wrong, but Ithink you got four core products
.
Can you tell us about yourproducts?

yeah, quick rundown, we have.
We have four front lights.
Right now we're adding moreproducts, so we'll we'll fill in
the tail lights, becausesomebody is going to ask about
that.
All that's under developmentand moving forward.
Um, right now we have threeprimary mountain bike lights and
one road light.
Um, the road light uh is a verydifficult educational task for

(22:01):
the us market because we're 90or 95 north america, yeah, um,
uh, mostly us and canada and um,very little in europe.
For a lot of reasons trade wars, uh, import fees, all that.
The europe, european market isvery used to this thing called
stvzo uh, which is a, a testingstandard for beam pattern for

(22:24):
bike lights and it regulatescutoff in the beam so that
you're not blinding oncomingtraffic and you're not extending
outside of your lane.
It's very strict and kind ofabsurd, but it's good in that it
forces bike light companies tohave better design so it's not
just Just full on blindingtraffic, which is not safe.
So detour is our approach tothat.

(22:45):
Where it's it has a cut offbeam like a car headlight, but
with a much smoother, more evenflood, so you still have
foreground coverage.
You don't just have some weirdshaped spot down the road and
people aren't used to that.
So it's different, but we thinkit's a better approach to road
riding, especially in heavyurban environments.
So that's, that's what we'releading off with as our base

(23:08):
product.
And can I?
Can I?

Dane (23:10):
do a little a quick translation, just for people
listening that the cutoff beam,so basically the beam has.
This is coming in modern carstoo, where the beam doesn't emit
light above a certain level.
So if you're standing down thepath where somebody's coming at
a bike, uh, coming at you withthis bike light on, if your head

(23:32):
is at a certain height, youdon't see the light, it doesn't
glare, it doesn't blind you.
And that is very, verydifferent because, um, you know
what Tom Tom is saying is a lotof lights can just pump out a
ton of light, but I get brighted.
So when I'm commuting with my,my lights, a car will bright me
back, like my lights are sobright it's they see it as

(23:53):
distracting, and so that's avery different technology.
I don't see any other lightsout there that have that.

Uh, they're predominant there's not a lot.
There's really not much for usmanufacturing that does that.
There's not a lot of us brandsthat do that.
Um, and what you're touching onis a quick, important aside, uh
, is that it doesn't take a lotof light.
Well, it doesn't take a lot ofintensity in your eyes to be
blinding.
Yeah, your eyes are are verysensitive.

(24:19):
They respond non-linearly tolight input.
Um, so a little bit of lightcan go a long way, which means
that if you have just a roundspot beam and some of that's
going to somebody's eyes, it's,it's going to be blinding and
glary, so it makes you squint,it causes your pupils to
constrict, which lets less lightin, which makes it harder to
see everything.
It's just generally not great,um, and so that's, that's our

(24:44):
approach to roadblock.

Josh (24:45):
The price point for the detour, I think 185.
Do I got that right 185?

retail.

Josh (24:49):
Yeah, awesome yeah all right, so let's talk about your,
your mountain bike lights somountain bike lights, uh kind of
our bread and butter.

Uh, mainly because I mountain bike, I
really don't road bike um, andgod bless you you know, and, and
there's just a lot more uhdifferentiation uh to be had in
the mountain bike light market.
Uh, there's a lot of lightsthat are just a bike light, not
a handlebar light, not helmetlight, not a trail light, not

(25:19):
anything really specific, it'sjust a general light that can
kind of go anywhere.
And I kind of think of thatapproach as designing a Mazda 3,
where it's kind of okay ateverything but not really great
at anything.
So what we're trying to do isdesign products very
specifically for both the typeof riding and where it's going
to be mounted.

(25:39):
So handlebar lights have verydifferent beam requirements from
helmet lights and with thatcomes different power, battery,
weight, size, requirements forergonomics, and so we're trying
to optimize it to keep theweight and size down on your
head, on your neck, and then putthe power and the width on the
bars, where it both benefits you.

(26:00):
In tight corners and anytimeyou're moving the bars around a
lot, um, which is a lot, and uh,so you're not feeling bars
around a lot, um, which is a lot, and uh, so you're not feeling
the weight as much, and it just,it just kind of makes more
sense, um, and so we're.
We're not only trying tooptimize all those things but
then also hit a sweet spot wherewe're providing as much light
as possible without making thelight so big and cumbersome to

(26:24):
get the run times that arereasonable that you have to have
a gigantic external batterypack or a huge honking mount.
We're trying to hit that sweetspot in there and, as a result,
you're not going to see like a10,000 lumen light from us
unless we're just screwingaround for fun.
We're not going to productizethat because it doesn't really
provide the value you think itdoes, because your eyes respond

(26:46):
non-linear non-linearly to light.
So it takes four times as muchlight to feel twice as bright.
And that sounds verywishy-washy but it's.
It's a.
Your, your rods, your cones arechemical receptors in your eye
and they they will saturate.
Your pupil is an aperture.
It opens and closes to protectthose rods and cones.

(27:07):
So if you get a high intensityof light in your field of view,
your pupils close, which letsless light in, so everything
feels dimmer, it's harder to seedoesn't mean that more light is
bad, just means there's a,there's a balance to everything
where too much can make it aworse product in other ways.

Dane (27:24):
So just buying the most lumens isn't always the right
way to go.

That's what we think.
We think that if people try itwith the properly engineered
product, they'll see that aswell.

Josh (27:40):
So your mountain bike products right.
So you've got the Trail Evo,the Portal and the Hangover.

Yep products right.
So you've got the trail, evo,the portal and hangover.
Yep, yeah, evo and hangoverhave been kind of our, our, our
core products for a couple yearsnow.
Um, both are very currentbecause we do a lot of rolling
updates.
We're also not a the kind ofcompany that does like a new rev
every year that you have to buybecause it's 10 brighter or
anything like like that.
It's not worth it to buy awhole new light because it's 10%
brighter.
All else equal.

(28:09):
So we try to update things as wego, like we improve the USB
doors, we improve the structureof the light, we improve the
water ceiling, whatever.
But we just kind of roll thoseinto the product.
So the current hangover, versuswhat we launched almost five
years ago, every single part ofthat has changed, except for the
top shell okay, the optic, thebattery, the led driver, the

(28:30):
charging circuit, the ledsthemselves, the usb port, the
lower shell uh, everything.
Um, and it's not a v2, whichmay not be a good business
strategy, but that's the waywe're doing, that's what you've
done.

Josh (28:43):
So the uh from a price point perspective, the, the
trail evo's like 245, theportable, the portal, which I
think is your brand new longerlasting.
That's.
That's the newest uh helmetmounted light right yes, um.

So hangover is the helmet light, portrayal
evo's the handlebar light.
That's the core set.
That covers, honestly, themajority of customer bases for
pretty average trail riding.
Honestly, even pretty rippingtrail riding, it's plenty.
And then the portal fills a gapin between for a couple of
different use cases.

(29:18):
So we got a lot of feedbackfrom customers and so we try to
design a product that kind offit around that feedback.
What were the use cases thatdrove the portal?
The primary use cases would bemore aggressive, faster, higher
speed, gnarlier, steeper trailriding.
We want to see deeper.
Like you know, I live inBellingham now.

Dane (29:38):
Nice Lucky.

A lot of really steep chutes there.

Dane (29:42):
Yeah.

Everything is steep.
It's not like the PhoenixValley.
Phoenix Valley you can go realfast over really rough terrain
where a handlebar light isincredibly useful so you can
actually read the terrainproperly.
It looks three-dimensional.
Yeah, In Bellingham it's notthat everything is smooth, but
it's not nearly as rough, it'sjust way steeper.
So, for example, if you'recreeping up to a steep chute or

(30:06):
you're about to drop into thatchute and look for a catch at
the bottom, you need to see deepdown into that chute before
your butt drop in and beforeyour handlebar points down.
So there's a lot of opportunityfor, or a lot of people who are
kind of looking for hangoverwith more power.
So that was one.
And then there's a lot ofpeople that just want matching

(30:29):
runtime hangover.
Just to make it as light aspossible, we use an 18650 cell.
On the portal it has a 21700,so it's 40% more battery
capacity so we can match Evoruntime in adaptive medium and
low output.
And then we also have customersthat want something that's more

(30:49):
versatile and a lower cost ofentry option for bar mounting.
So with Evo you can kind ofthink of that as a horizontal,
flat, wide beam.
Hangover you can think of it asa spot, but more of a vertical
like.
It kind of has a tail below thespot, so it's more of a
vertical coverage beam.
And then Portal is a little bitmore T-shaped.

(31:10):
So the idea is that it givesyou more punch down the trail
for use as a high power helmetlight and still gives you that
vertical tail.
But then it also hassignificantly more width than
hangover.
So if it's being used on thebars as, say, a gravel light or
cross-country light, um, it'llstill give you the width you

(31:31):
need.
So you still have peripheralcoverage.
You're not just seeing thetrail, you're seeing the sides
as well oh, that's cool.

Dane (31:36):
So I was going to bring up that um, when, um, you know,
I've been selling lights foryears.
I remember going out with thenight rider guys with, uh, the
trail rat, uh, which was a lead,you know, acid battery like,
super, like.
I mean I've been Knight Riding,because in Arizona when I get
to ride is usually in the summerand you want to avoid the sun
yeah.

(31:56):
And I, you know, we always hadthis philosophy you put the
biggest light on your helmetbecause you have to look into
corners and, um, if you had oneon your bar it was just kind of
an accessory, like the bar lightwas.
If you were going to have one,we said, put it on your helmet.

(32:17):
When we started carryingoutbound, it was almost the
opposite, and it took me a whileto get used to that, because
when I, uh, and we do 24 hourraces we do racing at night when
you come up to a corner and youhave it on your bar, you're
often need to look into thatcorner before the light gets
there because you haven't turnedyet.

(32:38):
And so I kind of kicked andscreamed without bound when we
brought it in, because Becauseit broke your bias.
It broke.
It broke the the mold thatwe've been living with, and I
didn't understand how he'slaughing Like he's heard this
before.
Oh, I'm sure he has, I'm surehe has heard it a million times
and he's probably over, you know.

Explain this over and over Jesus Christ,
keep going.

Dane (33:01):
But it's important because there are a lot of guys like me
out there that may have friendsor may work in a shop and they,
they don't understand.
And and what it took was, um, Iwas on a ride and I swapped
bikes with a buddy who had anoutbound light and I didn't, you
know, I had a uh lights inmotion and I'm like, ooh, you

(33:22):
have a light.
You know, you have an outbound,I can try this and I want to
check it out.
I could not believe it was juston the bar, he only had the
hangover and I could not believethat I could see in the corners
.
I didn't slow down at all, Iwent just as fast as I did with
my helmet light, but I only hada handlebar light.
And then you add the fact thatit's showing the steepness of

(33:42):
the terrain that you're hitting,showing the steepness of the
train that you're hitting.
It's showing the shadows andthe contours so you can pick
lines and prepare for, prepare,prepare for hits, you know.
And uh, it was pretty.
It's very different.
It's very, very different, andwhen people experience it, it's
kind of groundbreaking for them.

Josh (33:59):
I feel like you should be a marketing guy for outbound
right now.

Dane (34:01):
Well, I, you know, I mean to be perfectly honest, um yeah,
our, our manager our manager,ben, brought the outbounds in
and I, you know, I didn't reallyknow much about them, hadn't
seen much, um, I think, uh, thehomegrown, um, tara and al had
uh, and art had uh, a kind ofmentioned stuff and I had a

(34:23):
little bit of awareness.
And then Ben's like, well, Ithink we should bring these in.
And I said, you know what, ifit sells, bring it in, I don't
care, you know.
And then it started selling,which was great.
But then I started payingattention to it.
And it wasn't just anothernight writer.
Lights in motion, magic shine.
Whoever you want to slot inthere.
It wasn't just another brand oranother.

(34:43):
Look, you know of a light.
It was there.
It wasn't just another brand oranother.
Look you know of a light.
It was a truly differentproduct and a very different
product from what's out there,which, uh, which is really cool.
And in some of the podcastsI've listened to with you and
just you know our conversationstonight so far, it's been really
nice to see that you guys areactually just doing something
different, but not just for thesake of different.

(35:04):
It actually works, which isreally cool.

So yeah, I, I am um, you know we talked
earlier about I was like.
So it becomes very personal tome because it's not just a job,
it's the two things I care mostabout in the world.
It's bikes and lights lightingmy career before this and so I

(35:27):
really, very passionately wantto make something that actually
adds value.
I don't want to make a me tooproduct.
I don't want to make somethingthat I think somebody else does
better because somebody asked to.
Some people are going to ask mewhy is this a better product
for whatever use case, and if Ican't tell them honestly what it
is, then that sucks Like.

(35:48):
No, I don't.
I don't want to live my lifethat way.
So we're not always the bestproduct for everything, but we
really try to think throughevery detail, and that's that's
ultimately how we decided uponhaving more power and more width
on the bars and less power anda narrower beam on the helmet.
Is it not only made more sensefrom, uh, from a shadows and

(36:10):
depth perspective, which we'lltalk about a second, but because
you're needing more power onthe bars, you end up with a
bigger battery there instead ofon your head.
Yeah, so you can get away withself-contained lights, not
requiring big packs or wires andnot having a bunch of neck
strain, and they're just doingtwo different purposes from what
you're you're used to Now.

(36:35):
The helmet light is intended topoint down the trail and see at
speed out in front of you andthen around tight corners, and
that's kind of where I want theyou know the spot with the
vertical tail underneath it, sothat when you stare into that
corner you're not just lookingat where the spot is, you're
looking at the trail leading upto that spot as well.
So it fills in a lot more thanyou think.
And then on the bars it's super, super wide and even so that as

(36:56):
your bars move around back andforth, you're not getting this
single dancing spot moving backand forth.
So it's a lot harder to loseyour line because you're just
spreading this whole area andthe benefit of that is the depth
.
So having a bar light belowyour eyeline projects shadows
out that you're now looking downinto.
So in the Phoenix Valley, wherethere's nothing but gigantic,

(37:18):
sharp rocks trying to kill you,very true, is this rock sticking
out of the ground or is itflush with the dirt?
Because that will tell you, doI need to lift my wheel over it?
Do I need to be in a differentbody position or do I just
cruise?
And if you just have a helmetlight, it doesn't matter what
brand model, none of that.
If it's above your eyes you getno shadows.

(37:40):
So everything looks very twodimensional.
You can still read the terrain,especially if you know the
trail, but it is harder becausethe way it looks during the
daytime, when you have shadowsand depth, is different.
So your brain is having to workharder to process the terrain
if you just have a helmet light.
So we want the handlebar lightdoing the heavy lifting, giving
you the majority of your fieldof view, and then the helmet

(38:01):
light kind of fills in gaps.
We don't want it to overpowerall that depth you're getting,
cause that kind of ruins thevisual effects.
It just makes it harder to seeUm.
But it's hard to convey that topeople who are used to having a
handlebar light as an accessory, because until you actually try
it and see it, and even onceyou try it, it's new and
different.
So it might take some gettingused to.

(38:21):
Um, even if it's better,different makes people have to
process it differently.
You know, if you're, yourbrakes are better now.
But if they grab tighter andyou're not used to the way they
engage, you're going to pull thebrakes differently and it's
going to be hard to get used tofor a bit.
So there's there's a lot thatgoes into it, but I'm glad you
finally came around.

Dane (38:40):
I, you know, I, I I'm going to admit here and you're
going to hate me for this Idon't actually have a set yet.
Uh, the outbounds, cause rightbefore we opened the shop I
bought two new lights, Um and so, but uh, my kids are getting
into riding and so I'm going tokick them down, those two so
that I'll be an outbound rider.
But it did take, it, did?

(39:02):
It?
Did really help for me to ridethem, because, as a guy who's
been riding for a long, longtime overcoming, you know, it
almost sounds like smoke andmirrors when you say, oh no, do
it the opposite way, Becauseyou've had so many people for so
many years tell you the otherway around and you kind of have

(39:23):
to experience it way around andyou kind of have to experience
it, which in fact, you know.
Having a demo set in the shopis not a bad idea, because then
you can, you know whether yourent them, you know, cause some
shops will do rental lights, youknow, to see if people want to
try night riding, or you justtake them out and just loan them
to people.

Josh (39:41):
That would be a good, that'd be a good idea, I think,
yeah, I think, to get people tosee the difference.

Dane (39:45):
Yeah, think it's a a smart move for us.
We do a lot of night riding andthere's still a lot of people
that are like what?
You night?
You ride your bike at night.
That's crazy, you know, and uh,you have no idea.
Like it is amazing and it justfreshens up the trail yeah, we
did a night ride last night, itwas it was amazing.

Josh (40:02):
It's fun yeah it took that trail that I've written a
hundred times and made itawesome.

Yeah, I got lost, so and there's points in
there that that I want to touchon, um that it is definitely the
best way to see it for yourselfis to actually see it in person
and not just pictures on theinternet.
Yep, we publish beam shots andwe try to give the best
comparative information we can.
It just doesn't do the samething as going out and using
them yeah, and using them whenit's on your agenda, where

(40:30):
you're just going for a ride,you're not in a group of 30
people with a bunch of lightsflashing everywhere and all this
chaos and distraction is alsogood.
So having like a single or acouple demo lights at a shop is
is great, because then you cango out and do some experiments
and see whether you like nightriding at all and whether you
like it with the right equipment.
Because that's another thingthat I get from a lot of

(40:53):
customers is I don't want to buyreally nice lights because I
don't know if I'm going to likenight riding, so I'm just going
to buy this cheap stuff and seeif it works and see if I like it
before I invest.
That's great.
But see if it works and and seeif I like it before I invest
Like that's great.
But I bet if you bought a $300bike from Walmart and tried
mountain biking for the firsttime on South mountain, you
probably would not enjoy it.
You would not want to spendmore money on it.

(41:15):
But if you borrowed somebody'syou know, uh uh, pivot
switchblade, for example, youmight actually really like it.
Um, the problem for us is justfiguring out how to manage that
as a small company, becausewe've got a, you know, we've got
probably 300 shops nationwideright now.
Um, they carry our stuff andwe've had this request from a
few and we've we've kind oftried some pilot program things.

(41:37):
But how to get demo lights andmake sure that they're actually
being used?

Dane (41:41):
so I was just going to touch on that.
Have you in in yourmanufacturing process?
Is there any way to change acolor at all Color of the light
itself, where somebody's like,oh, get a demo, and then the

(42:03):
shop gets a demo and then theyjust sell it, you know, and it
doesn't really get used and themanufacturer's taking a hit to
get that out there so that itcan work.
Yeah, like the demo seats youused to be able to get, they
were like really ugly colors orsomething yeah the WTB demos
were all yellow and they saidtest saddle.
So you couldn't just go sellthem.
You know, and I remember whenthey were done with those and I

(42:25):
had to sell them and I'd tellpeople yeah, this is a test
saddle, but it was prettyobvious, you know.

I don't know if that's an idea that you guys
would work on, but, um, I, Iwholeheartedly appreciate what
you have to deal with becauseI've been doing this so long,
you know, and there are you know, it's a great idea and it's
just the scale, yeah, by whichwe need to do that for it to
make sense, um, not only for theshops, but for for us.

Dane (42:50):
Anything that splits our manufacturing line, yeah, adds
cost and complexity and justmake andy come in on his day off
and uh, you can just do it onthe day sucks to be in you know
you work literally all yearround assembling lights, but
could you, could you do more?
Hey, you're not here onchristmas.
What are you doing on christmas?

right now we have uh, we do have some.
We have some lights that welaser etch the outside of the
shell, um to just say demo light.
Um, oh, that's for, yeah, ourpoint of purchase display stuff
for shops yeah because we wantpeople to be able to see and,
like, touch the lights and playwith them, yeah, but we don't
want people to steal them.
So we have a seven-second timerprogrammed in so that if you

(43:29):
get the light, it willautomatically turn off after
seven seconds.
So you can check it and playwith it, but you can't go ride
with it, gotcha.
So if somebody stole it, it'sof no use to them.
And if they tried to warrantyit.

Josh (43:40):
I would get it back, you would know.
All right, so we've talkedabout a lot of these things
already, but I want to have yougive me a grade.
So I sat down like I was anengineer and said I'm going to
design bike lights.
What are the different trades?
Design trades that I'd have tomake?

Dane (43:57):
So I made a list of what I think the design trades are.
Can you tell me, as somebodywho's supposed to know this,
what do you mean by design trade?

Josh (44:06):
So you're trading off different variables of the
product.
You know so if you want it tobe like the battery life to be
long, and then you're tradingthat with the weight of the
product as an example so you'remaking those two trades, so it's
kind of trade off, battery lifetrade offs, trade offs.
Okay, yeah, design trades okayso, uh, I got size, weight, heat
beam pattern, light output,battery life, price and

(44:29):
durability and I kind of wraplike weather drop and like dust
protection in the wholedurability Maybe you have a
different term for that or water.
What did I miss?

I wish I had that list in front of me.

Josh (44:42):
to go back to Size weight, heat beam, heat beam pattern,
light output, battery life,price and durability.

It's like eight variables um, those are
all excellent.
You definitely need to thinkabout all of those.
Um, ergonomics, another one,okay, yep, for both the controls
and the mount interface.

Dane (45:00):
Damn it, I've missed that oh yeah, the's very unique on
them, so very unique.

Yeah, and it's a little.
It's different.
There's a learning curvebecause it's not a normal like
snap in where there's a clickand a detent.
Yeah, but we did that so thatit doesn't have play over time,
because if you have somethingthat just snaps over an edge at
some point it'll develop playand then, once it does, it'll
just get worse and worse andworse as you ride.
So we want the cam interface.

(45:27):
There's not really a lockingpoint, it just closes and holds
the light.
Yeah, and that's somethingdifficult for some people to
understand, like how much do Ipress on it?
Why isn't there?
Why isn't it going far enough?
And it's like well, it onlyneeds to go as far as it needs
to go.

Dane (45:41):
Yeah, it just stops when it needs to, but two years from
now it may stop a little farther.
Is that the?
Is that exactly?

yeah, as it wears, it can take up the slack
by just closing a little bitfurther.
Yeah, but then you know we wantpeople to be able to reach down
with one hand, pull the leverand pull the light out of the
mount in two seconds, withouttools, without having to look,
without having to fiddle, forlike a little tab or an arm or
something.
And then the button.
You know we put a lot of timeinto the button.

(46:09):
It's not perfect but as sillyas that sounds, the most common
issue with pretty much any otherlight from a warranty
standpoint is customers thinkingthe light is bad because it's
in lockout mode.

Dane (46:22):
Yeah, oh, my God, don't get me started.

Yeah, the reason why we have lockout modes
is because they've got a singleoptic with a single high power
LED where all the light goesinto a tiny spot.
So if it accidentally turns onin a bag of clothes, it will
melt the clothes, yes, it will,for example, burn a hole in a
vinyl seat in a Sprinter.

Josh (46:39):
You've got some pictures on your website of that actually
website of that actually, anduh, the.

So you have to have a lockout mode for a lot
of these switches to preventaccidental activation, because
they want the switch to protrudeenough so you could feel it
through gloves and still be ableto easily press it, which makes
it really easy to accidentallypress it.
So we're trying to make ourbuttons uh, geometrically so
that the outside edge of thebutton is solid and doesn't
compress.
Only the middle compresses.
So if you press it up againstthe surface you can't

(47:09):
accidentally press the button.
It has to be a finger pressingdown into the button.
I got it Gotcha.
And then with how we'respreading out the optics, we're
not having the same lightintensity so that and we've
tested this a lot, including inshipping boxes and that sort of
thing we turn on the lights athigh power and pack a bunch of
black tissue paper around it andstick it in the box and just

(47:29):
see what happens.
You know we do that for safety,but then also that means that
the worst possible scenario foraccidentally turning on your
light is it runs the batterydown and we have thermal
protections in there, so itdoesn't damage anything.
It's annoying at worst, butit's also really hard to do that
.
And so ergonomics of the buttonwhere, if you can't feel it

(47:49):
through a glove, you know mostnight rides are in colder
weather, except in the Phoenixwhere it's a thousand degrees
all the time.
Yeah, it's so true, you can'tfeel it through the button, then
it's annoying because then youhave to, like, spend all this
time hunting for it and thatsucks, yeah.
So I'd say that you covered, Ithink, the majority of the
basics.
The way we approach that from adesign perspective is we,

(48:11):
obviously we, we do competitiveanalysis.
We take, we have a list offeatures, from the mount to the
battery indicator, how itconveys that information to you
while you're riding, to theergonomics, the button to the
beam shape, blah, blah, blah.
But we also ask people what doyou not like about your current
lights?
What causes you to not want touse them?

(48:31):
What frustrates you when youride?
Because oftentimes you'll,you'll.
You know, one of the bestcompliments you can get on a
product is I didn't even know itwas there.
I forgot it was there.
Yeah, you know like the gripsare great because my hands
didn't hurt and I didn't evennotice it.
Yeah, uh, was there.
You know, like the grips aregreat because my hands didn't
hurt and I didn't even notice it.
I feel like that's what we'rekind of striving for.
We want you to forget thatyou're riding at night, you
forget about the product or justusing it.

(48:53):
And if you have something thatsticks in your brain and annoys
you, it pulls you out of that,and so if we can find these
really easy pain points fromother products and or even our
own products and fix them, thenwe can make a better experience
for the den customer.

Dane (49:09):
I I've got one for you.
So my biggest pet peeve with mylights is forgetting to charge
them.
So if you could go ahead andfix that, that would be great.

Yes, we're going to start putting solar
panels on all of our lights.

Dane (49:23):
Oh man.

That's a joke.

Josh (49:24):
Yeah, I was going to say you say that and we're going to
get like three emails fromengineers going you can't do it,
there's not enough surface area.

Dane (49:32):
Yeah, and then we're going to get one from an engineer
that has like a six-foot trailerthat he pulls behind his bike
to charge his car.

Josh (49:39):
Look it, I power my lights .
All right, we like crazystories, so interested in any
crazy, unique or funny storiesyou have and I want to give you
some scenarios so you know, inyour time there, any crazy,
funny, interesting stories thatyou experienced on a night ride
yourself no-transcript.

Oh no, I got one for you.
Um, actually on BCT.

Josh (50:16):
Okay, black Canyon trail.

Yeah, it was well before outbound, um, I was
still, you know, working atCree, so I was a lighting nerd,
so I had, um, a flashlight in mypocket that had 27 different
modes and multicolor and allthese different things.
Because I always carry thatwith me.
Who wouldn't?
Because I always carry thatwith me, who wouldn't?
We started a ride on BCT wewere going from Is it Bumblebee?

Dane (50:42):
Yes, thank you.

Down to the Pi place and it was going to be
like, should be like athree-hour ride if we're moving
and we weren't, and we did notlook at time of day, sunset,
this is in January, so whatshould have been a three-hour
ride ended up taking us, uh, sixhours.
Oh jesus, about an hour intothe ride my buddy davis says

(51:06):
it's cool.
I looked at the weatherforecast it's clear skies and
supposed to be a full moontonight.
Um, so we're like, okay.
I guess, we guess, we can rideon moonlight, and so we're
riding and it gets real dark.
We're all in, you know,t-shirts and shorts, and it
drops like 40 degrees, so it'sin the thirties by the end of

(51:30):
the night.
We're riding just by moonlight,which is fine, until you pass
by a saguaro and there's ashadow from it.
And you don't know what's inthat shadow, and it's usually
loose rocks, um.
So there's just a lot of usjust all over the place eating
shit because we couldn't seeinto those shadows.
And at some point my buddy hasa and I can't turn on my
flashlight because I'm the onlyone with that light, which means

(51:51):
that I'm going to turn that onand ruin everybody's dark
adapted vision, making itpossible for them to see in the
moonlight.
So I'm just leaving it off,except when we get to the big
washes, where we can't see wherethe trail goes because it's all
just dry and washed.
So I'm turning on to look forthe reflective sign on the other
side of the trail.

Josh (52:09):
So you know, so you know where the trails at.

Yeah, yeah.
And buddy Adam brought his dogand the dog at some point just
started going nuts and it wasjust barking off the side of the
trail and um, so I was theperson in the back with the
flashlight and so I come by andI I turn on the light to shine
on the dog and there is probablya thousand pound long horn
staring at this dog, yappingright in its face, you know,

(52:33):
gigantic horn sticking, and itwas like dog, we gotta, we gotta
go, let's get the hell out ofhere and kind of grabbed it and
ran and we sprinted from thereand, uh, nearly died a couple of
times in shadows, but, uh, wemade it out and then I had to
sit in the parking lot for anhour while they shuttled back to
get the drop car yeah, yeah,that's I.

Dane (52:53):
I have a similar.
We were coming down the trailcalled Salmon Yaga Ridge on
Mount Lemon, which nobody rides.
Very few people will even knowabout this trail because it's so
bad, and there is a book thatwas published by Cosmic Ray.
I don't know if you ever sawthe Cosmic Ray book when you're
up in Phoenix, but he's a guywho Trail book for trail book.

(53:15):
And so he had this route onthere and we're like, oh, that's
awesome.
And he had put on the star passtrail which is in Tucson, and
he had said it was like threehours and we do it in like 45
minutes.
So we're like this guy doesn'teven know he's, he can't ride,
he's super slow, he's doing starpass in three hours, we do it
in 45 minutes.
This Sam and Diego ride that wedidn't know anything about,

(53:40):
from the top of Mount lemon allthe way down, he says is six
hours, we can probably do it inthree.
And then we realized we have todrive all the way up there and
we don't even start till threeo'clock in the afternoon and
it's this.

Josh (53:53):
It's about an hour drive to the top of the mountain.

Dane (53:55):
Same exact scenario.
We didn't have lights, nothingyou know, and we got out about
10 o'clock that night and rodesome of the hardest terrain,
which is, uh, by the time youget down to a, a jeep road
called charlotte gap, where it'srutted and you're trying to
feel your way through.
And we didn't have a full moon.
We're basically blind, liketrying to ride these ruts to go

(54:16):
in line have a full moon.
We're basically blind, liketrying to ride these ruts to go
in line.
So I don't know if you've everridden like sandstone type ruts
which, as you're riding, you'renot just going through bumps,
you're there.
There are veins that you slipinto and your front tire just
washes out.
I I think I counted about 30crashes so, and we made it out

(54:37):
alive, so very bruised afterthat, oh, extremely I wish we
had a full moon.
You guys are pansies.
Because, uh because what's the?
Uh, so in my day there was nomoon, we didn't even wear shoes.
Yeah, bike, we did this onskateboards wheelbarrows wheel.

Josh (54:58):
All right so next interesting story.
Question uh, it mostinteresting customer return or
warranty oh god, that soundsgreat oh my god, I don't know if
I can say any of these.

There's um, I have a folder in my email
called the wall.
It's not the refrigerator, butthose are the customers that go
up on the wall.
I get the full gamut.
The overwhelming majority ofpeople are just spectacular to
deal with Yep.
But there's what's the saying5% of the people take 95% of

(55:34):
your time, yep.

Josh (55:36):
I've had a few um, maybe just generally like what are
some of the weird things thatpeople have asked you to do
without getting any specificperson?

oh, I get custom requests all the time.
I get uh custom mounts for uhscooters.
Uh-huh.
I think the weirdest custommounts that I got were one for a
snowblower and one for anelectric unicycle.
Oh my God.

Josh (56:01):
I didn't even know there were electric unicycles.
I mean, I guess it's possible,but why would you want that?

They're spectacular.
You should look up shibby time.

Josh (56:09):
Oh you're talking about the ones that go like 60 miles
an hour.

Dane (56:12):
Is this the wheel I'm thinking of like, yeah, yeah,
yeah, I was thinking of like,yeah, yeah, those are, those are
I would.
I was thinking just like apedal unicycle, but I I know
what you're talking about.
Oh, those are the ones thathave the, the wheel that's
straight out in front you don'tride like in between your feet
yeah, I see people doing likered bull jumps on those things,
you know, yeah that's.

That's shibby.
Oh god, really nuts.
Yeah, the best way possible.
Um, so the custom mounts is oneI get custom like.
People just have to have acertain color point of LED.
We make 5,700 Kelvin, 80 CRIlights.
They can't do with anythingother than 4,000 Kelvin or 3,750
or Amber, or they want green,like.

(56:50):
I've gotten literally everyrequest and every single one of
them is like well, you shouldjust offer the color I want and
your color that you're currentlyproducing.
I was like yes, but everysingle customer who's ever asked
for a different color point hasasked for a unique, different
color.

Josh (57:06):
Yeah, it's not like you're getting a bunch of the same
color coming in Now.

Dane (57:09):
they use a film in theater that they put over the lights.
It's gel something I can'tremember what it is where you
can just change the color justby putting it over.

Josh (57:18):
Just you're just giving them another design.

Dane (57:19):
No, I'm telling him, I'm telling him how to handle those
people.

That was actually a fun one we got was a
guy who is very crafty andwanted to tune the color himself
on the Evo.
He had a crash and it was apretty gnarly one.
It broke the top shell and sohe got some stuff inside the
light because the housing wascompromised.
And he sent me some picturesand the pictures were kind of

(57:45):
blurry but it looked like, youknow, through the front optic of
the light it looked like acouple of the LEDs were like
burnt and there's a phenomenonwith chemical incompatibility
where the leds will actuallyturn brown, um the phosphor will
turn brown, um it'll oxidizeand it kind of looked like that,
like the leds smoked themselves.

(58:06):
Somehow something really badhappened and I was like I need
this back like immediately so Ican figure out what's going on.
This is like potential safetyissue.
And I get it back and, uh, hehad cut out two pieces of Amber
sticky film and put them overthose those, just those two
lenses, because he was trying totune the color of the light and

(58:27):
didn't feel the need to saythat when I was talking about
how it looks like the light hadmelted and caught fire.
Uh, anyways, it was fine.
That was a fun one.
Um, I had an interesting onejust the other day that was
actually really nice person totalk to, was not a jerk, was not
a problem, it was just thestrangest email because, uh, he
was talking about how the he gotthe light and it just reeked

(58:51):
like dirty garbage, like thisputrid, nauseating smell, and I
was like I cannot wait to findout what this is.
So I said, look, we definitelydon't want you dealing with that
, uh, but I I don't want to justsend you a new one and think
that's going to fix the problem.
Yeah, can you send it back tome?
Here's a shipping label.

Josh (59:11):
I want to smell what you're smelling and figure out
what's going on so that I cansend you back something did you
ever think, like working inowning a bike cup or a bike
light company, that you'd betelling to a customer like I
want to smell what you're?

smelling like that's not something you're
ever going to think about yeahthat quote goes up on the wall,
yeah no doubt.
But I I got the light back andeverything's fine.
It is totally normal, withinthe standard mean.
There's no like weird plasticoutgassing smell or anything
like that.
We're not using PFAS or anyweird chemicals.
There's not really anything tocreate such a smell.

(59:46):
Yeah, and I was talking to afriend about it and she had
mentioned this phenomenon calledMCS.
It's multiple chemicalsensitivity.

Dane (59:54):
Oh, that's yeah, People smell different things.

Yeah, mcs, it's multiple chemical
sensitivity.
Oh, that's, yeah, people smelldifferent things.
Yeah, turns out some people arejust ridiculously sensitive to
certain materials chemicals, uh,whatever it is and something
about the rubberized overmold orthe seals or whatever in our
products was just driving thisguy crazy.
Response yeah, like a like.

Dane (01:00:17):
A lame example is my daughter hates gas, the smell of
gas so much that I can't havethe door open on the car when I
gas up.
And I actually like the smellof gas, which I don't know why.
It's because it gets you highpretty much.
Yeah, it kills brain cells,right.
But um like that um, but yeah,she killed your brain cells, but

(01:00:41):
uh.
But but seriously, my daughtergets like really really upset.
I mean like more than justannoyed or it's just uh, there's
something there there'ssomething that's pushing her
past that.
So yeah it's crazy, so that thatthose are awesome.
Hey, tom, who does yourmarketing?
Like, do you have a marketingdepartment, or do you hire a
company, or who does yourmarketing?

Tom "Danger" Place (01:01:02):
Yeah, we have six people.
So, yeah, we're kind of themarketing department, I suppose.
Um, my, my partner, matt, is uh, he's, he's a very introverted,
quiet guy but he is reallyfricking funny and he's got a
bunch of super weird ideas.
Yeah, and we like toincorporate andy, because andy
is a is a classically trainedactor.

(01:01:24):
That's his career and he ishilarious.
Um, he is really good and itjust loves to ham it up.
So we, we made a video a coupleyears ago of him, uh, basically
talking to himself and it wasjust a silly, weird back and
forth and, uh, we got so manycomments that are just like not

(01:01:47):
even recognizing that it's thesame dude.
It's like they're wearing thesame shoes and everything.

Josh (01:01:52):
It's like do we say anything?

Yeah, so Matt does that and pretty much
all that.
It's just us internally comingup with ideas for things that we
think are silly.

Dane (01:02:05):
One of the best.
The reason I bring that up isone of the best advertisements
I've ever seen from any companywas their one-star review ad.
I don't know if you've everseen this I think I've seen one
of them.
I don't know if it's, yeah,it's it's basically uh, you
gotta, you gotta tell you knowwhich one I'm talking about, I'm
sure, oh, yeah, yeah yeah, uh,the guy uh blinded himself and

(01:02:27):
was pissed off because that is,and that is definitely a concept
we 100 stole from snowbird.

Oh, okay, all right, there's another guy.
I uh, uh, forgive me, I can'tcome up with his specific name
off the top of my head, but uh,he came up with this ad campaign
for snowbird.
It's a ski resort that doesn'thave a lot of green runs.
Like it's all pretty steepterrain and it's like review for
snowbird one star, no, greenruns one star too steep.
This is great advertisement forthe right audience.

Dane (01:03:01):
And that's how this was one star.
I opened the light up andnearly blind myself with how
bright they are.
You should put a warning onthem.
It's just like that's great.

Josh (01:03:10):
That's great.

We get a lot of weird reviews.
Yeah, yeah, thankfully mostlypositive, but man, there's some
gems in there.

Dane (01:03:18):
You know, no matter what in life, you could do everything
right, there will always bethat one person or a few people.
Yeah, you can't make everybodyhappy, for sure, no, but having
that humor really shows a goodpersonality.
It shows a story.
Again, I like companies withstories, and your company has a
lot more story than others, andthat that's important, and you

(01:03:40):
guys convey that really well.
I was really impressed, so Iappreciate that.

yeah, we're matt and I were actually just
talking the other day when wewere all bent out of shape,
because we take what we doextremely seriously and we want
to make sure we don't run out ofstock and we don't have
production issues or qualityissues.
And I get I'm known for havinga lot of anxiety, workplace

(01:04:04):
anxiety and Matt is cool as acucumber almost all the time
it's.
It's actually very good forbalance.

Josh (01:04:09):
But he just said we're just making bike lights at the
end of the day, chill out,danger, chill out, it's going to
be OK.

Take this very seriously.
We we work really hard to makea really high performing,
excellent quality product, butwe're making bike lights Like
let's have some fun with it andrelax a little, and that's what
our, that's where our marketingcomes from.

Dane (01:04:30):
It's brilliant.
I had a customer once.
I was selling them a custombike and it was a Trek and they
had a program called project onewhere you could order a, you
could pick out of a catalogthese different color schemes
and get your name put on it.
And you know, I think he pickedlike the lightning bolts and
stuff, and so they would custompaint these bikes and they had a

(01:04:50):
range of time, you know, likesix to eight weeks or something
that it would take, and rightaround eight weeks the guy is
just stressed out and calling meand just like where's this bike
?
You know why?
Why isn't it here and and inthe bike industry we're, we're
not like that, you know, becausesix to eight weeks could mean
10, 10 weeks.
It just happens.

(01:05:11):
And I, uh, I I was working at abike shop and we had a cafe and
I literally took him over to thecafe, bought him a cup of
coffee, sat him down and I saidI told him this is the bike
industry, it's not medical, it's.
There's no life and death here,there's no rockets, there's
nobody's dying.
When this stuff happens, I go.
Majority of the people workingon your bike right now are high

(01:05:35):
as hell.

Josh (01:05:43):
And I was.
I was dead serious.

Dane (01:05:46):
I was dead serious because he was just he.
He had that anxiety like, oh myGod, where is it?
You told me this, you told methis and I'm like dude, you're
lucky these guys get off thecouch to get your stuff done,
like no joke.

Josh (01:05:59):
Like you know, I've had, just just for the record, 88
episodes.
We've never had someone fire upa joint in the podcast.

Dane (01:06:05):
No no, I don't break the stereotype but this, this, this
kind of idea of the bikeindustry it is.
It is.
There's a lot of people thatare doing it for fun, they're
doing it for passion, they'redoing it because they love it
and they're not necessarilyworried that somebody's going to
die if they don't get it doneright away.
And you gotta, you gotta kindof go with the flow sometimes so

(01:06:28):
, tom, what are you excitedabout for the future of outbound
?

just about everything.
Um, I'm excited to have somemore employees, um, for the
first time ever.
Normally, management and takingon more responsibility is quite
stressful, but I like peopleand I like having the bandwidth
to focus on the things thatreally I do best and can really
add the most value to thecompany.

(01:06:52):
So bringing in a coupleengineers so we can really
accelerate our productdevelopment and transition to
production and our sustainingsystems and just tighten
everything up and grow, I'mexcited for that.
You know, bringing in morerobots is going to be fun where
we can make the process asefficient as possible.
You know, like I think Andystarted out, he was building you

(01:07:15):
know 50 lights a day.
Right now he has the capabilityof know 50 lights a day.
Right now he has the capabilityof building 400 a day.
He doesn't do that every day,but that's one person, and

(01:07:39):
that's because we've had allthese operational efficiency
increases from machinery thatwe've either designed in-house
for roboticizing you know,thermal grease application or
spot welding, batteries orsoldering terminals or pressing
optics or what have you.
So that's going to be reallyfun as we expand our facilities.
I think, more than anything,I'm really excited to get some
more products out, likedifferent products.
We've got a taillight coming.
That again.
I don't really ride road bikes,but lots of people do, and
taillights are basically acommodity market.

(01:08:00):
It's a race to the bottom.
People don't think they shouldvalue the beam pattern in
taillights because they don'tuse it to see where they're
going.
They don't know what the beamis, they just know if it looks
blinding from a distance or not.
So there's plenty ofopportunity for us to make
something not only reallyimpactful but something that
looks really cool.

(01:08:21):
I'm actually super excited forthat product because it'll look
like a total departure and morelike Porsche taillights than it
will a bike light.
So, getting some more productsout and just um, kind of really
just continuing what we're doingyou know we're doing.
You know we're we we are notthe type of company that is
trying to sell as many lights aspossible, as quickly as

(01:08:42):
possible.
We're not trying to increaseour valuation so we can sell off
and live on a yacht.
We just we just kind of likedoing this and we want to keep
doing this for a long time.
So we're now in a spot where wecan grow incrementally and take
kind of a next kind of big stepfor us.
So that's pretty cool.

Josh (01:09:00):
Well, that's awesome, tom, thank you.
I want to thank you so much foryour time tonight.
Thanks for you know there's asubset of our listeners, I'm
sure, that aren't familiar withOutbound, so we've now
introduced them to your product,which is great.

Dane (01:09:11):
We've heard the story.

Josh (01:09:12):
We've heard the story.

We've heard the story into the story.

Josh (01:09:22):
Story hurts.
We laughed a little bit, whichis good.
Tom, you got any final thoughtsfor our listeners?

well, let's talk about tariffs no we said we
weren't going to talk about no,no, we definitely don't have to
end on that.
Um, I don't really have a wholelot of thoughts.
I'm just, I'm happy to be heredoing these things, uh, in the
bike industry with um, with myfriends that you know it's, it's
just cool to take a, uh, aleisure activity.

(01:09:47):
That is what we do for fun withthe people we love, and be able
to improve that and to be apart of that experience.
So um probably won't die amillionaire.
And to be a part of thatexperience, so um, probably
won't die a millionaire, butit's pretty, pretty fun while
we're here.

Josh (01:10:00):
So how can our customers find you?
Obviously, one of the 300 LBSis that you, that you have your
products in for sure.
If they're in your LBS, gothere.
But how can they find youonline?
What are your socials?
That kind of stuff.

Um, we're just outbound, lighting on
Instagram and Facebook.
Um, we don't do.
Oh god, I think we still have atiktok I would like a shirt.
Oh god, we still have a tiktoklauren had started one at some
point and she thought we shouldbe on tiktok and she basically

(01:10:33):
just started posting reallyirreverent stuff that had
nothing to do with bike lights,like it had to do with us and
what we were doing, but it waslike us at Halloween assembling
lights and costume and stuffwith no context and I don't know
if that's still active.

Josh (01:10:46):
I should probably follow up on that.
All right, don't look on TikTok.

Instagram and Facebook and just on our
website We've got a dealerlocator on there as well.
Awesome.

Dane (01:10:56):
So if you want to look for a local shop, we have a map and
if you want your local shop tohave them, ask them.
Yeah, you know, that's honestlythat is important.
If you want to support yourlocal shop and you want to get
those lights there, just ask.
You know they will bring themin.

And we are not pushy salesmen.
We do not have sales reps thatgo in knocking on shop doors
because we we don't want shopsto have our stuff unless they
want to have it.
Uh, and that's worked well sofar.
We're we're growing very quick.
We're adding a lot of shopsevery week, um, which is great.
But it helps the shop too,right Cause if the shop knows
who we are and they've seen theproduct, they use it, they
believe in it, then they canhelp express that to the

(01:11:39):
customer and, again, everybodywins in that scenario so, yeah,
you, you do.

Dane (01:11:43):
You do a great job of pushing people into the shop
because, like you said, there'sa lot of people that don't want
to get it online.
I I'm amazed on how there isstill a lot of people and and
some of them are converts wherethey've had a bad experience.

Josh (01:11:56):
They bought something and got crap.
I mean, I only know threepeople that had magic shine
lights catch on fire Only three.

Dane (01:12:05):
Man, you got way better, actually, that's not true.

We have had one catch on fire, but it was
because somebody dropped it intoa fire pit.

Dane (01:12:13):
I don't think that counts.
So you're saying they areflammable.
I don't think you're sayingthey are flammable.

Josh (01:12:18):
No, uh, shout out to rob and arrowhead for that one um,
yeah, hey, tom, thank you somuch for your time tonight.
It's been great to get to knowyou a little bit and hear more
about outbound really appreciateyou, man, absolutely great,
yeah, thank you for having meyou.

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089 – Beyond Lumens: How Outbound Lighting Designs Bike Lights for Real Trail Performance (Guest: Tom Place)

Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}089 – Beyond Lumens: How Outbound Lighting Designs Bike Lights for Real Trail Performance (Guest: Tom Place)