On how Rapha was created from the brand up, because, well, everything is brand.
Our model, we talk about being content, commerce and community. There are three things that we focus on that we've been focusing on for 15 plus years. The content is really important.
The following is a transcript of The Crux Podcast Season 1, Episode 8 with Simon Mottram of Rapha
Kyle Duford: So, in 2004, today's guest raised 140,000 pounds to start British cycling brand Rapha, with the singular mission to make cycling the most popular sport in the world. Now, the world still has some catching up to do. But Simon Mottram and his business have revolutionized the sport in which he loves his childhood by building this unbelievable brand to counteract the lack of what he would say, you know, good design in the sport. I think you called it, Simon, gaudy cycling fashion. It is my pleasure to welcome Simon Mottram to The Crux and I couldn't be more thrilled. Simon, how are you?
Simon Mottram: I'm very well. It's very nice to be here. Although remotely. Yeah, I think it was this explosion in the paint factory to describe those products. I have a feeling given that our protein kits recently have become more vibrant, that we're in danger of becoming an explosion of paint factory ourselves. So, it’s how you manage the evolution of design is quite an interesting one, which we may touch on. The response to the hideous kits that were out there and there’s still quite a few, as we said.
KD: Yeah, and I think everyone tried for a while to be “Rapha for blank," and taking your lead of making these really sophisticated kits and styling, and they stole some colors from you, it's still some different nuances. Like you said, I'm sure we're going to come on to that. But today, we like to talk a lot about branding and I run a branding agency, Rob runs a communication agency. We both work a lot in the outdoor inactive lifestyle worlds and we're both fans of cycling. So, for us, this is a big deal. You created this iconic hero brand and it almost seemed like you just kind of did it out of the blue. Many folks who were in the sport, were just all sudden, hit with this, especially here in the US, maybe not so much over there. You did so many firsts. We talked about briefly off air, you brought in print journalism, and again, with Modial. You brought in community rides, you brought in multiple women's events, with the Women's 100, and really promoting women's cycling in a way that never been done before, especially from an apparel company of all things. You brought back the gentleman's races and this kind of, this old style of cycling, which people just loved and kind of missed. So how did you do it really? I mean, that's a loaded question. But you brought the brand back with history into cycling, and you really lived up to the mission of making this the most popular sport in the world. So, kind of what's your instinctual reaction to hearing that, knowing that you were the first to the brick wall in so many categories in the sport.
SM: Yeah, let’s not even say that. There is quite a long list. To understand it, I think you have to know two things really about me. One is that I am the brand's guy, so I spent 15 years doing brand consultancy in the world that you're in and spent a long time thinking about brands, advising clients on brands, writing about brands. This was back in the ‘90s, when certain brands like Apple and Nike was sort of establishing a way for brands to behave, which was pretty holistic and big. It wasn't just something which belonged to the marketing department. It was something something much bigger than that. It was what the whole organization needed to use as a sort of navigational device if you like, that's what the brand came to be.
So, I grew up with all of that, and frustrated that clients weren't always taking advice, which you know, the problem that comes with being a consultant, but the other thing about me is that I'm completely positive about the sport and madly obsessive about bike racing and cycling. I'm just in this fortunate position where I could see those two things coming together. I think it was really important that I wasn't in the cycling industry. Often you expect these kinds of new sort of revolution, new concepts to come out within businesses, because surely the people in the market know the market best.I think there are so many examples of new brand, challenger brands, people coming from outside who just have a different insight and from my point of view, my insight was that the customer wasn't an ex pro, wasn’t hardened racer. I therefore could see it with the eyes of the enthusiast. I was an industry veteran so I can see what the customer is lacking.
From a brand point of view, being a brand guy, I could sit in the middle of this well, initially piece of paper but very small style and I could make absolutely everything fits the brand. The brand was – we didn't even talk about brand, because the whole thing is brand from signing letters that went into the packages, to the actual sticker we use on the packages themselves, to the fragrance we're putting our skin care, to the stories we wrote, tone of voice, the voice on the answering machine at the head office when we used to have answering machines. Before we all went to work from home. Every detail matter and I had this amazing opportunity to make every detail fit with how I thought cycling should be, which is sort of aspirational, exciting, emotional, not totally technical, kind of industrial. So, I could infuse everything with this.So, I'm very fortunate to be up here and I’m fortunate that it works. I'm sure other people might have tried that might not have worked and timing is quite helpful, too. But I think that's what it comes down to is being a brand guy as CEO, and how often in the outdoor sports world, do you have somebody who is a brand person through and through, sitting at the top of the table. It's very rare. They tend to come from finance, or sales or in Mark Parker's case, at Nike from product, which is one of the reasons I think Nike was quite successful. But it's rare that it's a brand person. I think that's a shame. I think the chief brand officer should see it.
KD: I mean, I think that's an amazing, articulated sentiment for sure, about brands. One of the things we kind of go on about over here is—you use the words every detail matters. It's so true, because the brand is not a logo. You know that and we know that, but a lot of people who are listening or even people who just say brand, what they mean is a trademark, what they mean is a logo, and I love that you said it's even down to the voicemails on their answering machines, because that's literally the phrasing that we use here as well. It really is every touch point. It's all about that storytelling.I want to come on to that in a minute. But you said something that was interesting about the detail and how you went into every little nook and cranny. That goes into the inside pocket stories that you would weave into these unbelievably complex places on a jersey. I remember I had a coffee mug that there was even a quote on [inaudible 00:07:16] at the very, very bottom of it, which I was – this is going to sound so completely dorky, but I would love to finish my cup of coffee just to read that dynamite phrase every time. The detail in your product is one of the things that's woven into the brand. How has storytelling become kind of the leading touch point for Rapha?
SM: We talk about our model. I mean, we all have these consulting sort of models for our businesses. Our model, we talk about being content, commerce and community. There are three things that we focus on that we've been focusing on for 15 plus years. The content is really important. I think, before anything, before any products, before any kind of retail space, any publishing, anything that we've done, what we're trying to do ahead of all of that is to share a passion with the customer around the sport. That's what we do. I think that's what Rapha does quite well. I think we do it quite well because we really care about it. I know that everybody else in the market is passionate about cycling. I wouldn't be in it, if they weren't.
Of course, they care, but I'm not sure they care as much as we do.So, the storytelling is really, it's almost comes from within. It's not something which is a "strategy and a set of objectives." It's an impulsive kind of desire to connect with the customer about the thing that we love. And, one of the things that struck me about cycling 20 years ago was that I discovered this incredible history and culture and cycling which unless you're deep, deep, deep in it and probably lived in West Flanders and come from a particular kind of generation, most of them no idea about it. The places where it happened, the story of the racing, the rituals and stuff that we've been in sighting now have become quite well known. We all know about Ventoux. We all know about Tim Krabbe's The Rider. We know about how racing kind of works. But back then nobody talked about it because all the cycling world wants to do, was selling a new piece of carbon fiber, and show that there's a better piece of carbon fiber.I just felt like everyone missed the reason I love the sport. I love riding my bike and ride every day and it’s special for me. I get that amazing endorphin feeling, literally every day when I ride my bike. But it’s even more big thing in my head, that this wrapping which is a history of racing. The World Championships last weekend, if you saw the World Road Championships. These things are incredible stories with incredible heroes, and that's emotional connection to this sport that makes every physical ride that much more working. I just thought that – I knew that the industry completely missed this, that niche that consumers like that stuff. We like connecting with things. We like to dream. We like to be sharing something inspires us. It’s not a bad thing. It's not ugly to look cynical markets like. It is life. It's nice, and it's creative and it's valuable itself. So, always, a plan. There’s apply, you know, the business plan I wrote started with a two-page essay about "More than true suffering." It’s all about why we ride a bike and and not many people will put that in front of the business, because it could probably cut off more people than it appealed to. But even some of the business plan was trying to use story and narrative to bring to life what this thing is really all about. So, of course, that ends up putting story inside products that people could discover when they're fishing for something for that content, or when it goes into the wash. Of course, it meant that we started with an exhibition, maybe start with a month-long exhibition. We didn't start with a website and a product, pushed out to Instagram with lots of vision benefits, which sadly a lot people do themselves. They started by opening doors and going, “Look, come and celebrate. The heroes are sort of coming to that and watch it. Watch it every day and have a few beers.” And by the way, in the corner, we've got some products, we got some product which we're going to be launching. It’s a little bit late, but we’re going to be launching soon. Now, we launched the storytelling thing. I just think, before the cycling, has so many stories and ride is a story. That’s how you connect emotionally.
KD: You mentioned Tim Krabbe's The Rider, and Mt. Ventoux, which is is their favorite climb to do, and some cyclists might know that. I don't want to let you off the hook on this one, because you seem to be well known today, I would posit that Rapha and you in particular, are one of the reasons why people know these things so well. I mean, you named the company after Jacque Anqutil's old team, which a lot of people didn't know. You've brought history to the forefront. I think you're one of the guys who actually won't let the heritage of the sport die. So, in many ways, you're seeing now what you intended in the beginning. So, I just want to give you credit for that. Because people don't know who Pellesier is and people might have known Anquetil, wgi won five times and so forth. But you're not letting that stuff go away. I was in New York, when I saw your pop-up shop when you use the same model to enter into the US. I was in that store. I was sitting to the Citroen H-Van, and I think you had like four pieces of kit. Because it wasn't about that. It was about the community. I met people there watching the tour on TV. Gosh, I want to say this is 2007, 2006, maybe... I'm not sure. And there weren’t people in Lycra. There are people who were like, “What is this thing? This is cool.” And like kind of community tables of long ago, I sat at a long table. I'll never forget this, Simon. there was a long table kind of like picnic bench style, but longer than that. A big glass top, underneath it it had old maps of France with the Tour route that year marked off. And the conversations that were had around that table were not just about cycling, it was about people, and life, and community and we're all drinking different types of coffee. And it was like, “What is this thing?" I mean, you built something which has brought community and cycling in history to the forefront, which I think – gosh, we haven't even talked about product yet. I think that's something really special about a brand that most businesses would be lucky if they ever saw a glimpse of. I would say that's probably because you started off as a brander first. Would you agree with that?
SM: Kind of you to say. Yes, it's culture with promoting in a particular culture and for a particular tribe that I'd like to be much, much bigger. I think that's right and it definitely – product is vitally important for us. It's the way we make our money largely substantially. It's our primary way of connecting with customers, and helping them get more out of their riding lives. But it doesn't start with products and we've had many arguments about this with ex colleagues, and then friends about – friends from places like Nike, where it started as a product. At Rapha, it starts and ends with a passion for the sport. I often think in terms of listening, you could take away everything. We took away everything we’ve got, products, trademarks, IP, computer programs, assets, physical locations. All of our people. You take all of that away, and you could only take one thing, the one thing you have to have is luck in the sport. Because that's where I’m at. Everything else comes from that, which is brand first as you say rather than product first. But the product absolutely needs to live up to the brand’s promise and the way it's delivered and sort of like that too, and it has to be put in.There's definitely a thing about the stories in the past and this rich back story that cycling has. But it's also about having that question current and where the story is today, when you look at the sports today, celebration stories of heroes, not just focusing on the detail, which is what everyone does. So, where the roadmap? Where is the moment where you go, “Oh, my god. That just inspired me to ride.” That person has shown something of themselves, which is uplifting to anybody, not just a bike racer or a cyclist. They're the things that inspire us. They’re the things that get us out of bed in the morning. I just don’t think that it includes many brands, either they haven't got time for it, because it's usually just trying to make money or they just think it's marketing or beneath in some way, or they don't know how to do it. But for us, it's the thing that we love, absolutely love. It has to be contemporary. [inaudible 00:16:10] more than doing the home for the French route this summer. One of our big initiatives with this summer is classic storytelling. It's classic, kind of let's look at the sport and let's connect to people around the human story that's much more understandable than 200 people in skin suits and sunglasses, being very serious, and technical. Let's put long guy out there and see if he can beat the peloton with no support at all, and wearing sandals and can be alone too, and yeah, beaten by that five days. Probably too soon, it was kind of almost too good. That's the sort of story I can tell my mother about who doesn’t know anything bout sports or a person on the street and they'll go, “Wow, that's interesting.” Because that tells me something about a human being and an idea and the spirit. Whereas a sprint at the end of the stage and sort of France is just noise and colors, that’s all it is. So, we've always tried to get to the human sword.
Rob Reedy: I think in the early days of the brand, what turned on a lot of people was really the inclusion the brand had. I think that a lot of brands were race to win performance, and Rapha allowed people to be themselves in terms of, you may not race to win, but you ride to live. I think that's the community that's so overused in so many ways. But in my opinion, from what I saw, for the Bay Area, California, that was just the head. These new riders come into the sport, and they're able to have a social identity that wasn't tied to a specific force, but it was more about, it's okay to be an intermediate. It's okay to race on the weekends, and it's okay, whatever level you are, you are part of a larger group of passionate riders. I think that was missing at that time of the embryo state when you brought it to the US specifically, that no one really embraced, and I kind of watched it from the sidelines. And I thought that was it was so refreshing, because it brought people together for a reason, not just this logo, social identity, "Look how cool am I, I belong to this tribe." But more about "I'm driven by this, and I associate myself with these people," that's really powerful. I feel it still continuous.
SM: I think that’s what the best friends do thought. The best friends can help you to be something and to be part of something. It's a delicate balance. We got our fair share of criticism in the early years for being exclusive. We weren't cheap, because our products were designed to be better. We use better materials and things. So, we had a certain price point. We have a particular fondness for black and white photography or used too, which people found a little bit challenging. We were very particular about design, graphics, language, and what have you and the stuff which people who are designers and brand people kind is instinctive. But I think in the world of cycling that we've seen as being perhaps a little bit exclusive. What was always interesting was that for anybody who came into one of our clubhouses, or went to an event or picked up the phone and spoke to us, or saw us on the road, we were anything but exclusive. We were so passionate about the sport and loves to share it with everybody. We weren't, as you say, we weren’t about racer, and sort of cascades down from the racer. It was the weekend warrior or the enthusiast or somebody starting the first time. We love them all becoming part of this movement that makes cycling bigger.There's an interesting balance to be played there, to be taught. I think in the last – not that great that last time, but he sort of got away from the exclusivity thing. We've managed to – that was a useful thing for establishing ourselves. But we've been able to open our arms even wider, and take a lead on things like diversity and women's cycling, and helping people get up onto a level in the first place. And that's just something which we've always wanted to do, and it's only in the last five years, we've been able to really get behind it. But an interesting journey. And you know, we've got a sharp identity, and we stand for something on the ground, which you have to do. It's very easy for people to take shots at you, and you've got to have fairly thick skin to stick to what they're doing. Because you know, it’s right. We’ve had our fair share of that.
KD: You had a lot of people who just didn't get it and when you don't get something or you didn't come from the cycling world, so you almost didn't earn your stripes. So, people looked at that as – I'm speculating here, but I think they looked at that as like, “Who the hell is this guy?” And then because you weren't speaking to them any way, you were speaking to the cyclists that mattered, then it kind of grew from the bottom up and I can tell you riding around San Francisco with Rob twelve years ago or Portland ten years ago, Rapha was exclusive in the US and you were looked at little – you definitely looked at it you had money, but you were looked at somewhat differently.I can tell you in about a three four-year span, why I kept coming over to London every month, where it started to grow, and I started – I'm sure you're very well aware, the Regent's Park loop that everyone does over there. I would probably do that 20 times every morning before work when I was there and slowly starting to seeing people donning Rapha, especially in the rain. You'd start seeing a lot of more kit show up.I remember very vividly being passed by a group of cyclists who I would call them just kind of like, you know, no team, no name, guys, right? They're just wearing mismatched clothing, whatever. They're just out there still bikes, and you're there in a train, they're in a peloton, and they just smash you. And I remember very vividly, 2015, being caught by a group coming from the clubhouse, and cycle club, and absorbing me and I wasn't wearing RCC at the time. They absorbed me. They asked me my name. It was to your point earlier, it is inclusive and it was so telling to me that the very people that were actually discounting and not being accepting of others were the ones that were giving you guys crap for doing so. The ones that were accepting were the ones in Rapha. Now, you go to London, now you go to any major city in the US and more you see Rapha everywhere.I think it was because, and this is again, me speculating. I think it was because you saw a lot of people look at their shops, look at the Clubhouses come in, kind of go, “Oh, I get it now.” Well, they weren't scared of it anymore, you kind of introduce them slowly. And then they wanted to be a part of it. And that was just a really awesome way of building community that I don't think anyone would have been able to do from a business standpoint, because you came at it from a community standpoint.
SM: Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I ride Regent's Park three times a week and have been for 25 years. So, I know every inch of that road. You’re right, the cyclist now awash with Rapha in a way that wasn't 10, 15 years ago. I think that's right. It doesn't get an inclusive building of community. And we know from our own research, that the number one driver of new customers to Rapha to seeing it on somebody else. It's word of mouth, physical word of mouth. It gives you amazing momentum as a flywheel thing that happens there. So, if you reach critical mass in your city, like we have in London, and we’re probably close to doing that in San Francisco, and LA, part of LA, probably the west side of LA. It starts to – it picks speed, and it starts to suck in more people because it is something aspirational you want to be part of, and as you say, it becomes more accessible if people can see it. Yes, I could be that person too.The key part, almost a key part of our strategy is to be physical, to be there. A lot of that is focusing on being physical, it’s not. It doesn't have an immediate payback. It's not something which gets through the sort of Finance Committee, in some companies, because it's an investment. It's an investment in future relationships, and spreading the brand. But it's so important that we do it and it's a long game. It's no accident that we're doing very well now, and just kind of real momentum. Because we've been building it for 17 years. We've been investing in the ground for nearly 18 years, and that pays back. So much of it will be hard for other people to do. They do it it for a month and people would say, “I don’t see immediate payback.” Money's tight, let’s not do that anymore. We have the freedom and the discipline to keep doing it, which is wonderful for me as the brand guy and the founder, to be able to do that stuff.
RR: On that note, I distinctly remember having conversations of, as the Rapha had the growth in the US and more people were were wearing and having the look that the early adopters, just like many brands that they, somewhere like pushback were like, well, now there's too much Rapha, right? Can you tell us a little bit about how you've retained those people along the brand journey? As the brand gets popular, and as more people are wearing it, some people are just like, “Well, it's for everyone else, I'm going to go over here.” But it doesn't seem to be the case. I'd love to hear how you've sort of physically embraced that.
SM: We’re not an inflection brand. That’s not our thing. It's not about being cool and at the moment. It's not about people having it because nobody else has got it. We've benefited from being open a few times. But that's an accident, that's a byproduct. That's not something we look for. To understand that, you have to go back to sort of what we're here to do in the first place. This isn't about trying to carve a niche within cycling, and create our own little area that is really lovely and we can protect, and that gives us a nice standard of living, and we can just keep going forever. That probably would be quite interesting, 20 years ago, when I was first starting out. But even then, that wasn't the ambition. The ambition is all about the sport. And as we said at the beginning, I want to make cycling the most popular sport in the world.I want millions of people to live their lives by bike, because I know how amazing it is. I honestly still believe everyone can be converted. All those kids that are playing football or soccer now. At some point, we can take them off and they can realize that for the rest of their lives, there's something much more powerful and fulfilling to the game by riding the bike. So, that’s huge. That ambition is behind all of this.You have to grow. You have to get more people. You have to spread the word. You have to also develop as a brand to be relevant to more types of people. You have to lead and innovate and try stuff and create new markets. You can argue that we had a fairly strong hand to play in creating the sort of premium cycle market, certain sort of premium lifestyle cycling market. I think we largely drove that. And that's what we're in the business of. We’re in the business of creating markets and reaching millions of people not building a sustainable 10% growth business that has a nice return to shareholders. If we do the other stuff, right, that will come. We do have business discipline and financial discipline, of course, on the next accounting. So, I’m not averse to any of that. It's really important to think about it properly. But you don't start with that.For me, anyway, I want to work somewhere which is trying to change things and create things and make a big dent in the universe because that what we're trying to do. Again, something that I think people want and they want to be a big part of that. But other people don't like that. They can say, “Who the hell are you anyway?” We’ve had a few editorial articles in the past in cycling that contains literally with that, as a headline. Who the hell are Rapha anyways? Which is quite interesting. But that mission is wrong, you know, like it or not. So far, it's gone pretty well. But early in that mission, there's so much to do. So, still pretty timing. There are some huge sports out there that maybe have less participation than cycling for bigger sports. And there there are sports that have way more participation and you've got to get them turn its two wheels.
KD: You say you've had your fair share of articles written about the brand, but yet I'm staring at an article from places of magazine when you came out with your flagship product, the classic jersey. They said it was the best bike jersey the world has ever seen. Haters are going to hate, as they say, right? But you were talking about a community and the whole conversation has been revolving about community and brand and how those bounce back and forth.Now, it's no secret that we just came out of the worst global pandemic in modern history. While a lot of businesses suffered one thing that has really gained momentum during that time is obviously athleticism, at home gyms. Cycling in general, we know that it was the single most boost to the cycling industry in 20 years and then you know quickly it crashed because you know, there's no bikes to be had. There's nothing to be sold and unfortunately, so many businesses went out of business because of it and so forth.But in your country back in old Blighty, you grew 200% in cycling alone, and as an apparel company, that on the back of wanting to grow the business has this penchant for bringing people into the sport. How has Rapha brought them – how have you merged the two? Because I think it's almost unlike any other business problem that anyone has seen. Because you see this influx of people who were – they could have been middle aged soccer moms. They could have been older people. They could have been former cyclists. It was anybody and we saw this in the US and other parts of the world as well, that was almost a gift to you on a silver platter, was it not?
SM: Yeah. It's very hard to talk about the pandemic in terms of business point of view.
KD: Of course, yeah.
SM: Incredibly helpful. But from a personal point of view, for lots of people who work for us and for our customers, it's been very challenging. But there's no doubt, it’s given cycling, as we say, a huge boost. We've definitely benefited from that. I think what we know from looking at our own data is the sort of progression that people go through when they take up cycling. There'll be loads of people who've taken up for the first time, but just as much have been the people who have run businesses. We've had the mini booms, certainly in the UK and parts of the US for a while the last 20 years. Whether it's because of Olympic success in the UK, or the Armstrong phenomenon, or whatever. Lots of people have gone through the process of thinking, “Oh, interesting, I might give that a go.” And what we saw, particularly during the last 18 months, two years, is a huge number of those people, because of circumstance of the pandemic, working from home and everything else, going, “Actually, we can visit there.” Which is relevant, again, to me. In fact, impacted more than ever. I'm going to get that bike out of the shed, I'm going to put on that kit that I had two years ago and go wherever. I'm going to go out. I'm going to remember how amazing this is.So, for us, it's been, it's less all the new starters. I think Rapha is still not the brand of choice for somebody who's learning how to ride a bike or thinking of cycling for the first time. I think we might get there. But I think that's not quite where we are at the moment. Partly because of range and price and conditioning or what have you. But we're definitely becoming very good as a brand that people who are picking up enthusiasm, go to next. When they realize that that journey by another brand, but maybe it's just a bit shapeless and not very nice or just didn't seem to support in the way they should. Or even the the images they didn’t have. They’re too much of a beginner and they want to have some a bit more serious because they've decided now, no cycling is something I'm going to take seriously.There are people that we’re doing particularly well with at the moment. We need to reach higher up that funnel, people coming into the sport and help people move their way through it. Ideally, want people to stay on that journey for 10 plus years. I've been on the cycling journey for 30 plus years and still learning things that I haven't done and I want to do. Why would you let them drop off? There's so much you can get out of sports. So, that's increasing our job is to reach out the funnel, but then to help take people by the hand and move through the journey to become good as you across the seven page of the cyclist idea that the seven page cyclist and somebody that didn't like me who doesn't have to prove their speed anymore, because they're a bit old.The GPS is in their head, they kind of know everywhere to go, because they've done so much riding. They understand the history, that sort of reading ability, they're not trying to prove anything, but they can keep up pretty well wherever you go. To me, that's Nirvana. That's what I try and be. Everyone can get there. They can have this amazing habit that's infused into your life, every day. That's what we're trying to do. But managing the browns on that journey, as you will understand, is an interesting delicate task, because you've got to remain authentic to the most hardcore enthusiasts, while also appealing to, and being relevant to somebody who's much less sophisticated, at least, trying to understand this thing for the first time. Quite hard to do that. That's what we have to do.
RR: For the product specifically, for gravel and mountain. Before years ago, you could put an insert name, the blank of Rapha of mountain biking, where people kind of took your mystique of design and aspirational in the whole vision you had and moved it over to a different category. And now, Rapha, is here. You're leading that. Was that a natural progression into the next level? The main point, is that to bring into the sport, that's one. But then there's also people transitioning from one category to the next. To me, it would feel rewarding. I'm curious to hear how internally that the transition went, and was it just a natural progression to go into that?
SM: Naturally, it’s not been easy. I think, our roots, my roots are very much in road racing, and road cycling. From there, came cyclocross, and from there came cyclocross, and from there can nascent gravel. We did the Rapha Continental back in 2008 to 2012, we sort of only rides on an off road, that we were lively using road bikes, and just saying, “Listen, you can ride anywhere. You don't have to just go on the tarmac.” That was sort of one of the forerunners of gravel, I suppose. And bikepacking kind of links to it, or there's a natural evolution. I think mountain biking is easier early on. So, well, mountain biking is a different tribe with a whole set of different codes and a different culture. It is different to road cycling. But actually, increasingly, it's one of the things that we as cyclists do. I don't have a mountain bike, but I do single track on my cost bike. It's the same kind of thing. I'm doing the same activity. I don't always wear tights and Lycra. I might work something a bit more roomy. I think once you get to extreme downhill racing, there's something going on that I find terrifying. And then descending in mountain paths on kind of skinny tires, that's quite terrifying too.So, I think they're more similar than we used to think. We know that lots of our customers, they have a mountain bike, they have a cross bike, they have a gravel gravel bike. People don't buy cross bikes apart from me. And they’ll have a road bike or two. It's part of that cycling life. So, it became something that was more and more good to us. It certainly helped with our shareholders when we sold the company to them in 2017. Our rabid mountain bikers. I think they don’t mind me saying that, they're very passionate about that, and one of them is cycling and that helped give us a bit more steel to get in there and do it. It just feels now it's such a key part of cycling on what cycling, riding or living life by bike or whatever. But it now feels more natural. If you said to me, if you didn't do it in 2012 and said mountain biking is not going to happen, I just said, no. You'll ride off road and that's great.
KD: My first off road adventure was in a Rapha Prestige race. But it was off road in Portland. And it was thrown together to be the one of the most challenging Prestige rides that we had done. It was single day, 10,000 feet of vertical climbing, it was like 88 miles in a single day. It was four of us together as you do in your races. And one of them was a former employee, Eddie Castillo, who worked on E-commerce with Tom back in the day. One of my partners we worked with, Chris Carmichael at his place.So, we had this great team together and that introduced me into gravel, into off roading, as a longtime road cyclist that swore off mountain biking. I swore off any kind of non-road and I saw that happen quite a bit across so many different groups of riders, especially in Portland, which is known for road cycling. It was just really interesting to me. But Rob asked that interesting question about people who came in and tried to be the Rapha of blank.To me you have very iconic brand assets. You talked about the black and white photography. We know about Rapha Films where millions of people have watched content that you've created. You guys had copywriters on staff that most businesses don't employ. You're all about those assets. Yet, there's two that I want to ask you about. One is that left side arm strike, which I love. And the second one is the color pink, which a lot of cyclists we know is a nod to the jeered Italia and the the original does that a newspaper and so forth, but it's become distinctly Rapha. Can you speak to those two in particular, those iconic elements and how they came to be?
SM: Sure, that's absolutely to your earlier point. You can’t the Rapha of something else, unless you do it like we do it. None of the other brands quite realized how all-encompassing and holistic, the approach had to be. The floor [inaudible 00:39:31] nice premium product with style and performance. That means Rapha or having direct to consumer business model, that means Rapha – they got some of the ingredients, but without the holistic view.Yeah, those two identity elements. It's great to have. We have a trademark. We have a registration for the left arm stripes. So, we have to protect that carefully and biggest sports brands with great big budgets can't use it because we actually own that, which is a pretty amazing thing.
KD: I didn’t know that.
SM: Yeah, we have it here in the US and a few other markets around the world, our most important markets, we paid to protect that. That came from looking for something, looking for an identifier, looking for something which wants a logo. To your point earlier on, this isn't about a logo game. This is about creating identity. And back in the day, in the late ‘90s, I used to wear a lot of product support for my things, not necessarily part of the brand. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford some of their products. I don't know if you remember, many are also, which is what they call this red stripe, kind of sport using as an identifier. But I love the fact that I combined all the [inaudible 00:40:48] and there would be the red model. Just use sparingly at the cusp or whatever. And I knew other people knew, Carl, knew that that was part of sport and I wanted something like that.
So, when you saw a Rapha on the road, you know it is Rapha without seeing the logo. And that just came from my brand and design background, I suppose knowing that that would be something vital. I worked with the designers working to build the time and we explored all sorts of different things, different graphic devices, different ways of constructing garments, things that you could put onto lots of different garments to suggest that it was Rapha. When he showed me an asymmetric arm stripe, I instinctively knew that was – in an instant, that's definitely the thing. Because it's jarring, it's unexpected, it's totally memorable, and ownable. Whereas you put it on both sides, which traditionally in cycle sports in the ‘50s and ‘60s, with the stripe on both sides, but then it becomes generic and undifferentiated and undetectable. But this one stripe on one side and we made it the left side mainly because of the center of Rapha not being an English brand, I want it to be from the heart. For me, that's Europe. So, in Europe, they drive on the right-hand side of the road. But left-hand side of the road, therefore, the left side made it more visible. So, it's kind of a perverse peculiar way of doing things. It kind of works in the US as well, which is quite nice. But that's where the left arm strike comes from. We've been really consistent in the use of it. We’ve had it bounce by the articulation so it's over an angle, which is quite nice because it's just a [inaudible 00:42:43] mountain biking. There’s still there to protect your item. Very important to us.The pink thing is interesting. We've actually just got a Pantone color reference system which I'm sure most people listening will know about. We've actually got a Rapha high pink Pantone color which is being launched. I think it's being announced in the next few months. We registered it already. They registered it as a specific color that has do with Rapha which is amazing.
KD: That’s incredible.
SM: There aren't many Pantone® colors with a brand name on them. And of course, it started not being live. It just started being PMS 190, for those who would care to look. That came because I wanted everything to be black to start with. One was we didn't have many products and I wanted the range to feel coherent so it will go together. So, one color made sense. Secondly, I was always infatuated with the messenger community. I saw the bike massagers in London and New York and San Francisco. At the time, they were generally road cyclists. Now, I think they come from all sorts of backgrounds and increasingly, they’ve got e-bikes. So, they're not riding traditional bikes at all. But back in the day, they raced bikes during weekend, and they were kind of convex to the road, as the phrase that’s used to describe bike races. You are kind of convex forced to go off and do these unspeakably hard thing on the road. I saw that morning, those bike messengers, back in 2000, or whatever that I saw on the peloton on TV, because the person on TV with lightnings would come in, looks after it better. They have helmets and sunglasses, and they look shiny and sort of perfect. Where you see a messenger in the middle of London or middle New York and they were grinding. They were doing 100 miles a day in the most dangerous roads imaginable. And they were carrying all this stuff and their bikes would be generally single speed or fixed gear road bikes. Back in the day, they often wore vintage cycling gear. So, I love them. But they always black which is practical. So, they’ve had black trousers or a black jacket.I thought black definitely worked me there. And obviously black is a color that the rest of the world outside of cycling, the fashion world, the style world, black is perennially the color because it's more flattering, it’s cool. It's just endlessly cool. Cycling at the time there's a bit primary, right? Blue, bright red, bright yellow, and white. Maybe there'll be a black or a gray version, but it was a little bit low grade. And so black was just cut through. So, we wanted it to be black, political black or monochrome, without any corrections. It's just a bit shaved down too serious. I wanted to have a little accent and it couldn’t be yellow, because yellow is the tow service. It’s too obvious. The more important for me was the fact that I wore sneakers. I used to have a pink logo back in the day before the multi strike, and it has pink on dark grey. I knew that color combination is really nice. I painted it myself, and made a little bit of a time, and that’s the color, and then we go back story for the heroes.So, we put paint against the black, and just use it sparingly. It just works really well for human as blacks. That's a long-winded way of saying—
KD: —no, it’s great.
SM: It became like this because increasingly, we wanted to be more visible. As you get older, you ride around cities every day, which I've always done. You feel more vulnerable, and you need to stand out. Also, from a racing point of view, bright pink was really interesting to start using on kits. So, we developed the PMF 190 into a high vis color as well and now that's what we use, probably more than the paler pink. I think, the brown, [inaudible 00:47:07] or whatever. There is only a color in the market that is an amazing place to be.
KD: It's very identifiable. I remember the hashtag that was #nomenwearpink. That came out years ago in the US because there's just so much, like you said, identifiable features of it. It's remarkable. We'll be looking for that branded Pantone color when it comes out. You never know maybe we'll use it in some design at some point. We call the show The Crux for a reason. A crux in climbing in the outdoor world is typically the hardest part of our route or bouldering problem. So, for you in business, or cycling or life, what was a memorable crux for you as the CEO? And how did you overcome it
SM: A challenge, you mean, sort of the ultimate challenge or a defining moment?
KD: Exactly.
SM: I mean, to be honest, it’s been challenging all the way through. It's a constant battle. But when I sit and look back to it, there haven't been that many times when it really went badly wrong. We make huge amounts of mistakes and we make huge amounts of things that go well. I think it's quite interesting when you need to do a lot, when you pour all your passion and, in my case, the eating the cycling analogy and burning matches, we burn all our matches all the time. We didn't save some matches for the final sprint. We’re kind attacking the whole time. It allows you to do things that don't go well. But the machine remains the new stuff and innovations just keep feeling positive. It helped me feel positive through it.So, I'm not sitting here again, all that must have been a nightmare. But the things – one thing that having said that there are moments where it's been challenging. One moment was 2018. We have had some 10 years, probably from 2008 to 2018. We just had an outpouring of innovation and creative products, whether that's garments, or starting a member's club or rolling out club houses or going into the products or explore and bike packing and gravel. We've just gone crazy. We've started really low. We've done what we accomplished 20 books. We’ve done few things with of music and outside. We’ve got skin care, sunglasses, footwear, which have gone mad and wonderful, but we’ve created this, I've created this thing which was perhaps a bit sprawling, too unwieldy.We realized that we needed to simplify a little bit. Not that I believe the future of all businesses, successful businesses about being simple because I absolutely hate them. You don’t think at times, saying things should be more simple. It's like something that everyone – it’s a cliché that everyone just piled into, because surely it must be nice. I think [inaudible 00:50:13] is an example of something that’s the complexity is not simple. You got simple about pressure at cycling, but everything else is not taking the easy road and the short road, the narrow road. It's about making it more.It's all about removing all complexity. But you definitely want to complex expanded to many clubhouses, too many different types of cities and you need to close one quite painful in Sydney, which we recovered, I think somewhat in Sydney now, but it's been a long journey back. I realized we could have done that. But that was painful. We built a travel business, which was amazing for the people who enjoyed it. But it didn't reach enough political. It was too high end and it didn’t make any money. So, it was sucking too much in the business, so I had to close that down. We've got too many people doing different things in the business. So, that was a pretty big challenge.Also, I think by doing too many promotions, so if you speak to our customers who are in around 2017, 2016, there's a lot of products out there, and plenty of chances to buy off price. So, that was a bit of a wakeup call. And we went on a two-year, 18-month, two-year sort of journey to get back in control of things and remove discounting from the brand. And make sure that podcast model was working to really do good here, focus back in on the core cyclist and not try and be everything to everybody. So, we became more aggressive in our core markets. And look at price points to make sure we're reaching more people.So, quite a big change. That was probably the hardest thing, I was saying. Although existentially, that I was finding in the first few years where we're in danger of running out of cash, literally every week. You hustled and we're borrowing 23,000 quid from a friend to get a batch of social jackets out of the factory in China so I could sell them and pay him back. The bank doesn't have to give me any more money. I didn’t get the products that couldn't make the sale. One of my friends was fortunately wealthy and generous and he came in the industry, loaned his money. Things like that was much, actually much bigger issues. But we were tiny then, so everything was scrappy.
KD: Yeah, I love it. I mean, you have an incredible story. Rapha is an incredible brand. We touched on so much and you started to touch on some things there at the end, talking about kind of swelling the brand a little bit and there's so many things that you've accomplished that we just didn't have time to talk about. One of the ones I'm most jealous that you briefly touched on. And that's having a collaboration with Paul Smith, who is one of my favorite men's fashion designer. You're lucky to have done I think multiple collabs with him, including an RCC kit, which I own and it's my favorite one because it's got those stripes and it has the Rapha logo. So, it's two of the best worlds.We didn't even touch really what really is part of the clubhouse is the one that makes them so special in your staff and the canyon bikes you can run and all of that sort of thing, which I would encourage people to look into to visit rapha.cc on the website. Again, another first, .cc. You can’t popularize that as a cycling domain. I mean, accidentally. It means so many things that you should be proud of including up to very recently, Team Sky sponsorship, Bradley Wiggins, work you do with Cavendish, whose poster hands in our office here and you know, Palo skateboards as you know, the latest co lab, so much stuff and I encourage people to go to raphe.cc and not only buy the product, but read about cycling.Simon, on closing, I have to tell you this, because in my research, which I didn't need much for because I know the brand so well, I contacted a few people that used to work for you. And the common theme and I was reading these to my wife this morning, and she was like, “I want to meet this guy. This guy sounds really kind and really amazing.”
Here's something from Katie Jager, who used to be in PR for you, she's an American who was over there and was a friend of mine when I was over Dr. Martens, she said, “Simon's a brilliant leader. His ability to communicate a clear vision for the brand while bringing out the best in people who work for him has been a huge part of our office success.” Slade who we mentioned earlier, who is a great guy up in Portland. Anyone in the Portland area knows who Slade Olson is, specialized for a bit you stole them. He was at chrome industries. Now, he's at Nike. He said that you're the smartest, most visionary driven business leader he's ever known.I saved the special one for last and this is from Simon Huntsman, who you would know, as your head R&D guy for many years. He was the fourth employee at Rapha and he said, it's very hard to sum you have in one sentence, but a few words immediately spring to mind. Free thinker, inspiring leader communication genius, extraordinarily measured, supremely focused, stylish, generous, and he left the best for last, and that was kind. I want to thank you for your kindness of letting us spend an hour with you. I know you're a busy man running a big brand. I think that sums it up. You are somebody that we would look to you as brand inspiration as a leader inspiration, and I thank you for being a guest on today's show.
SM: That’s very kind. I’m very delighted to be here. It's lovely to hear such nice comments. That's amazing.
KD: Well, if I can embarrass you a little bit, then my job is done.
SM: You have.
KD: Simon, thank you so much. That's to you and your business and to your ever-growing influence on the market. Hopefully, we'll see you climbing up Mont Ventoux maybe someday soon.
SM: My pleasure. Yeah, I rode Ventoux last week, and we should go for a ride soon. I look forward to it.
KD: I would love that or if we have to, Regent’s Park.
SM: Exactly. Mini Ventoux.
KD: That's right. Thank you so much.
© 2021 The Crux Podcast. The Crux Podcast is a production of The Brand Leader out of Greenville, South Carolina. For more information on the show or to be a guest, visit us at thecruxpodcast.com.
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