Continuing the Entrepreneur Series of the Be Epic podcast, Matt sits down with Drew Medlock, CEO of Allied Cycleworks. During the episode they discuss Drew’s 20 years of experience in the cycling industry along with what distinguishes Allied from other manufacturers. Allied focuses on creating upper end performance bikes with carbon fiber frames that are made in the US and painted to order. They finish the episode by discussing the growth of gravel biking as a sport and the future of Allied and their foray into mountain biking.
Episode Transcript
Drew Medlock 0:00
We build bikes that we think are going to be fun to ride and deliver the best performance
we can make.
Matt Waller 0:08
Excellence, professionalism, innovation and collegiality. These are the values the
Sam M. Walton College of Business explores in education, business and the lives of
people we meet every day. I'm Matt Waller, Dean of the Walton College and welcome
to the Be Epic podcast. I have with me today, Drew Medlock, Chief Executive Officer
at Allied Cycleworks thank you so much for joining me today, Drew.
Drew Medlock 0:34
Absolutely. I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Matt Waller 0:37
Now, Drew almost all of your career over the past 20 years has been focused on cycling.
But you started as a math teacher, I believe. Is that correct?
Drew Medlock 0:50
Yeah, that was right. For a very short time.
Matt Waller 0:53
Have you been a cyclist most of your life?
Drew Medlock 0:57
Oh, yeah. I would say I'm a cyclist that was a math teacher for a little bit.
Matt Waller 1:01
Oh is that right?
Drew Medlock 1:04
Yeah, my passion has always been with bikes since I was a kid and I rode BMX when
I was a kid, and then got into mountain bike racing. When I was in college, that was
always my kind of primary hobby. And I always had a dream of owning my own bike shop
or working in the industry.
Matt Waller 1:21
Where did you grow up?
Drew Medlock 1:22
I grew up in Texas, primarily in the panhandle of Texas, around Amarillo.
Matt Waller 1:26
Are there good places to mountain bike there?
Drew Medlock 1:29
Palo Duro Canyon State Park, outside of Amarillo is an absolutely beautiful place
to ride. And this is one of my favorite places to go to hike and camp out when I was
a kid. And now it has a really nice network of mountain bike trails and a really good
local following and support system. And it's a really beautiful and neat place that
not that many people know about.
Matt Waller 1:48
So you've been CEO of Allied Cycleworks for a couple of years now. And as I mentioned,
I have an able allied cycle. But I'm wondering, would you mind telling us a little
bit about what distinguishes Allied from other manufacturers?
Drew Medlock 2:06
Yeah, well, I think one thing with Allied as a brand is we're very focused on upper
end performance bikes, we don't make bikes to try to hit a price point or to drive
a value play we really make the bikes that we believe can be used for the highest
level of performance, and are competitive or better than the highest end bikes out
there in the world. And that's really been our goal since day one. And uniquely, we
achieved getting there by making them in the United States, where most of our competitors
at the high end performance make all their bikes in Asia primarily in China and Taiwan.
Matt Waller 2:45
When I went to your factory for a tour up in Rogers, Arkansas, you have a machine
that will produce these sheets of carbon fiber, one way you can't tear it the other
direction, you can tear it easily. And you layer those carbon fiber layers, several
deep before you form it. What do you call that process?
Drew Medlock 3:10
Yeah, so that's what we call our cut and camp process. Basically, a carbon fiber frame
is not like as you mentioned, it's not just one piece or it's not just squished together,
what it is, is actually a stack of tons and tons of small shapes to build up the performance
characteristics we want of each part of the bike. So it's kind of like each frame
is literally like hundreds and hundreds of Lego bricks of different sizes. And each
of those bricks is basically not only there to create a volume structure, but actually
to create a performance characteristic. And that depending on which way we orient
the fibers, some directions, it can be really rigid and stiff. Some ways it can be
more pliable. So every part of the bike is basically tuned for the characteristic
we want. Be it stiffness, compliance, or actual just strength from impact.
Matt Waller 4:03
I remember seeing a really amazing paint shop in your factory where you can make just
about any color of paint. You want.
Drew Medlock 4:12
Yeah, so for all of our bike orders, I think that's another thing that's you know,
a little bit different. So when somebody orders a bike like an Able from us, we will
literally paint it in any color the customer wants, and every bike is painted to order.
We have a menu of colors that we really like like you're able is a beautiful cavalry
blue, which is one of our favorite colors. But customers can pick whatever they want.
And since we make the bikes one at a time, it's easy for us just to build that frame
for the customer and then paint it and whatever they like. I was just at a SBTV gravel
weekend before last and we had so many customers out there riding Ables and Echoes.
It was really cool that I don't think I saw two that were the same. So it's cool.
It's cool.
Matt Waller 4:54
I actually had never heard of gravel biking until just a few years ago.
Drew Medlock 4:59
Yeah and pretty new still.
Matt Waller 5:01
How is the market doing? Is it growing?
Drew Medlock 5:04
Gravel biking continues to grow, like, for example, the big event in Steamboat we
were at couple of weekends ago. I mean, that event continues to draw more and more
consumers to it. I think that gravel has really hit kind of a sweet spot. For a lot
of, you know, people that want to do endurance activities, I think it's a little less
intimidating than road racing. And also mountain biking. It's kind of like sweet spot
in between those two sports where it's not as technical as mountain biking, but it's
not as snooty and pretentious as road racing. A lot of the promoters are also really,
you know, trying to focus on an inclusive environment that's more about fun and the
experience and the accomplishment than it is about winning or what a cyclist typically
looks like or does. So I think that's been a really awesome thing for the sport. I've
been riding gravel bikes, I mean, I've always worked on dirt roads. So even before
it was called gravel biking, but I remember when I was doing one of my local loops
early on in the pandemic, and where I used to only see other racers out there, you
know, a riders, you know, trading on that loop, all of a sudden, I saw people riding
on that dirt road loop in all kinds of different clothes, and we're wearing mountain
bike clothes, and were were just wearing normal shorts and shirt and you know, very,
very casual to, you know, all the way dressed up. And I knew that that's the point
where like, we're hitting a new audience with the sport where a lot of people want
to participate, not just your folks that the typical cycling culture.
Matt Waller 5:46
Many manufacturers have been faced with dealing with shortages of all kinds of inputs.
Drew Medlock 6:36
Yeah.
Matt Waller 6:36
Have you all experienced that as well?
Drew Medlock 6:39
Yeah, the supply chain challenges through the pandemic are real, and still, for the
parts that we don't manufacture ourselves very sharp, and really unprecedented. And,
you know, the over 20 years I've been doing this, I think the cool thing is, is that
the stuff that we manufacture here, which are our frames, you know, we source carbon
fiber primarily from a company called Mitsubishi, which is a Japanese company, but
they actually make all of their raw carbon fiber that we use the fibers and the resin
that makes that product in the United States. So they've actually been a really consistent
supplier for us. So they're lead times have stretched a little bit, but we've been
able to manage through that. And within our own factory, we've been able to grow our
capacity at a similar level that demands increase over these last two years. So our
lead times are still hovering around eight to 10 weeks for bikes, even though we've
been able to over double our capacity over the last two years. So that's been super
cool. The other side of it's a little bit more tricky getting parts from Shimano and
SRAM has really been massive struggle, their supply chains have really blown up over
this last couple of years. And you know, we have lead times on new orders still, you
know, anywhere from one year to two and a half years, depending on on the part we're
ordering. So as a small supply or small company, you can imagine how tough that is
to manage for ourselves and our customers.
Matt Waller 7:57
I can imagine. So what is your vision for the future? You focus primarily on gravel.
But will you get into mountain biking at some point?
Drew Medlock 8:06
Yeah, absolutely. We actually just launched a mountain bike called the BC 40. In July,
the BC 40 is named after the back 40 trail system in Bella Vista, just north of Bentonville.
And really making a performance again, mountain bike, but also something that's a
little bit more designed around having fun and going fast, kind of similar to what
the Able is to gravel. So going into mountain biking space was a huge step for us.
And then we'll continue to be focused on the road and gravel space in the future for
sure.
Matt Waller 8:36
Do you think you're going to continue to be make-to-order?
Drew Medlock 8:39
We're always going to be made to order. I think as we've come out of pandemic and
demand starts to get more normal, which is very up and down. We will build frames
because we are a factory. And once we build up the capacity, we can't let it drop.
So capacity has to stay stable. If we want to grow capacity, we have to incrementally
increase a little bit by little bit every single month. But demand doesn't always
work that way. So whenever demand is low, we will build stock frame so you could see
from us to have like, hey, we got some bikes in stock every once a while. But that's
more of an exception, than then our primary business focus for sure.
Matt Waller 9:21
You think about marketing, what are your primary channels for marketing?
Drew Medlock 9:25
Oh, gosh, all of them. Number one, we communicate about our product through our website.
And so focusing on having a nice website with good content and good product information
is really the forefront or the basis for everything. Then we communicate you know
with our customers through every other kind of channel that we can engage in with,
so social media obviously also still with some traditional ad placement on bicycling
outlets online, nothing in print. Also through doing typical PR like bike reviews,
that kind of stuff, managing our email channel, so build an email channel with your
consumers. And then also going out to key events. So like, like I mentioned, SPT Gravel,
Leadville 100, Unbound Gravel in Emporia, Kansas, those are places where our targeted
customers are out, you know, having experiences and riding our bikes. And so we try
to be out there as well to engage with them in person. And then I don't want to forget
about the bike shops out there. So we sell direct, we also sell to select dealers.
So we have some really nice dealers all over the country that are really specialize
in selling high end bikes. And that's an awesome place to bring brand awareness to
consumers because they become an advocate for our brands and help us sell the story
to places where we don't have the presence.
Matt Waller 10:40
How did Allied start, what are the origins?
Drew Medlock 10:43
Yeah, so we're about six years old now. Allied was actually founded in Little Rock,
Arkansas. And it was kind of a unique situation where the founder, bought some frame
man manufacturing equipment from a company called Guru from Montreal, Canada, Guru
went bankrupt, and basically had materials or equipment to make carbon fiber frames.
And so those were purchased from them on a bankruptcy at a great deal, driven down
by one of our friends to Little Rock, and they set up and basically try to recreate
what Guru was doing. They did that for a little while, and then hired an engineer
from Specialized named Sam Pickman. And Sam really took that concept of US frames
to another level, basically taking his knowledge of manufacturing and design from
Specialized, which is done currently in Taiwan and China, and trying to recreate that
in the United States. And that's where we develop like, like the Able and really came
up with our own brand and kind of created our own identity.
Matt Waller 11:45
So Sam Pickman, he came with a lot of experience, it looks like I see that he worked
for Specialized, he was an engineering manager for R&D there.
Drew Medlock 11:57
Yeah, he was one of the key people that pushed us forward in terms of product design,
and kind of the vision for how to do this with his experience with Specialized. But
that being said, I don't think there's probably only one person or team that had really
a background of actually manufacturing carbon frames, in person. So the rest of us
have worked for a manufacturing company to make different types of frames, like out
of metal in the United States, or working for companies that like Specialized or Canyon
that designed bikes and then sourced them from Asia. And so we were really trying
to put that information together to come up with a path for Allied to manufacture
our own frame. So it's been a little bit of a discovery process. And every model we
develop, we get better at it.
Matt Waller 12:38
You know, a lot of bike companies look at various market segments and targets. And
they go through a formal process for figuring out what their next product would be.
And as I mentioned, I have an Allied gravel bike, and I'm curious, how did you come
up with the idea to develop the Able, for example?
Drew Medlock 12:59
Sure, yeah, our process is probably a lot more simple than say Specialized is, and
then we're small, we don't necessarily have to sell a bike in every single category.
So for a bike like a Able, we really just built a bike that we were inspired to ride
based on the terrain that we ride in every day. So the Able was really an output of
us riding the gravel roads here in Northwest Arkansas, Southern Missouri and figuring
out like, okay, what would make the ultimate gravel bike that we would be excited
about riding on? And it was pretty much that simple. I mean, we do look at the data
and know where the trends are at. But you know, at the end of the day, we build bikes
that we think are going to be fun to ride and deliver the best performance we can
make.
Matt Waller 13:42
Well Drew, thank you so much for taking time to visit with me today. I really appreciate
it.
Drew Medlock 13:47
Absolutely. It's been really fun.
Matt Waller 13:49
On behalf of the Sam M Walton College of Business I want to thank everyone for spending
time with us for another engaging conversation. You can subscribe by going to your
favorite podcast service and searching. Be epic be E P IC
