15 years is a long time. Under the right circumstances of retrospect, it feels like the blink of an eye. Somehow, both of these statements feel equally true. The truth is our memories oscillate between both statements. It’s as close to a quantum paradox as my little brain can muster.
There we were, my buddy and I, looking at the tail sections of our new Buell 1125Rs. As cool as those machines were, the fenders were ugly. Though that’s true of most motorcycles, these felt especially egregious to our eyes and we decided we could do better. Frankly, it was just supposed to be a little project for us. Like most endeavors, things have a way of taking unexpected twists and turns (and opening up a few doors in the process). What started off as a simple sheet metal project quickly turned into a fender eliminator that other people wanted to spend their money on. Small footnote: for those of you who missed it, or were too young to care, America used to make sport bikes. And spoiler alert, they were really good just before they were really DOA!
Not too long after, suspension tuning was the next fixation. With the heart of a mechanic and the education of an engineer, I just wasn’t satisfied with the stock suspension on my dearly beloved 2007 Triumph Speed Triple. As amazing as that machine was, the forks (especially) felt horrible on anything that wasn’t perfectly smooth. Legend has it, Hinckley cheaped out on the forks because they figured no one would set the front wheel down. They were mostly correct…
As like most people do, I tried buying stuff to fix the problems. It was breathtakingly expensive, but that’s true of most high quality suspension. The trouble though, was that it wasn’t very good. Sure, it felt different, but it didn’t feel like I thought it should. For a while, I was trapped between the endowment effect and the sunk cost fallacy. One thing led to another, and after a whole lot of trial and error, I started learning how suspension was supposed to work. Whereas most products sold to consumers are designed for professional riders on the road course (or MX-type track), the market clearly wanted something that would be useful on the daily. The rest is history.
I’d like to think I learned a few things over 15 years, and perhaps, ended up (maaaybe) a little wiser. Although we’ve always been a family-run operation, we’ve had employees come and go, and we made some great friends along the way. For better or worse, I was born a hard-charger and have to be reminded to stop and take a breath. Maybe smell some roses, and maybe celebrate the smaller things in life.
I’ve you’ve read this far, thank you for your time. You’re only on this email distro because you are one of our customers. Thanks again, from the bottoms of our hearts. As a token of our appreciation, we’re going to do something we hardly ever do and we’re going to run a sale. In fact, to celebrate our founding 15 years ago, we’re going to run a special each month for the rest of 2026. Hope to see some of you at races, track days, BDRs, and wherever else the wind blows us!
– Nick, Mari, Manx, and Penae