Jason Reddick has spent 18 years at Combat Motors, where he serves as production manager for a company that hand-builds custom motorcycles in small batches of 20-150 units. His background spans jet engine mechanics in the Air Force and motorcycle technician work, giving him the hands-on experience needed to tackle the diverse challenges of small-batch manufacturing.

Nate Wheeler is the host of the popular Manufacturing Insiders podcast. He also owns weCreate, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient.

In this episode of Manufacturing Insiders, Jason Reddick explains how small manufacturers survive when traditional supply chains fail them. Recent tariffs have forced his team to completely rethink their sourcing strategy while simultaneously learning new skills like 3D printing and CAD design. The conversation reveals how tiny production runs create obstacles that large manufacturers never face.

Jason walks through the reality of building products when suppliers won’t take orders under 1,000 pieces and overseas partners suddenly become too expensive. He demonstrates how manufacturers with limited resources can develop internal capabilities to reduce dependence on external suppliers. Learn how one company is adapting to supply chain disruption by becoming more self-reliant rather than scaling up.

---

Nate (00:01.146): Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders. Today I have Jason Reddick with me. He is a highly experienced manufacturer of custom motorcycles with Combat Motors. Today we’re going to talk about small batch OEM, the process, what it takes to navigate some of the logistical challenges, and some of the manufacturing challenges there.

Manufacturing Insiders is really on a mission to connect manufacturing leaders with each other and to share insights. Jason’s learned some great lessons over his 18 years at Combat Motors. And they’re lessons that really anybody can learn from in the manufacturing space.

The other thing that we’re really big on at Manufacturing Insiders is connecting manufacturers with the resources they need to be successful, whether it’s cost saving tips, profit generating tips. We worked with a lot of manufacturers. We’ve interviewed a lot of manufacturers and we have a lot of knowledge.

So if anyone’s looking for some information about how to grow their manufacturing facility, let us know and we can help you out. Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders. Jason, looking forward to our talk today.

Jason Reddick (01:11.064): Thanks for having me, Nate. I’ve been looking forward to it.

Nate (01:13.238): Awesome, sweet. So you’re a little bit of an atypical guest. A lot of our manufacturers tend to be contract manufacturers. And you guys are OEMs, but even more than that, you have your own set of challenges as a small batch OEM. So can you run me through what it takes to design and manufacture a custom motorcycle?

Jason Reddick (01:37.25): Well, first, we don’t use the word custom. We strive to be as close to a large batch OEM as we can. That’s what we’re pushing for. We’ve been working for that since the day I walked in the door.

It’s surprisingly hard. Some of the bigger challenges that we have are with the economy of scale. Since we’re dealing with small batches, usually somewhere between 20 and 100 builds per model, we have a tough time getting some manufacturers to produce what we need. If they’ll even touch it at all, a lot of times they price themselves out. And we’re stuck with looking at hand manufacturing or producing it ourselves or having really small, unreliable, unrepeatable parts made. So that’s our most consistent, longest running hurdle constantly.

Nate (02:34.862): So how many motorcycles are you manufacturing in a batch? A line, I guess you could say. Do you do them by years? How does that work?

Jason Reddick (02:47.254): No, the year to year, as in calendar year to year like you typically see with larger manufacturers, doesn’t really work for us. One, because we will keep producing a bike as long as the demand holds out, as long as its product life cycle keeps going on and we have sales for it, we’ll keep selling it. And then we also don’t have, we’ve never had the manpower to design a bike that fast.

Because of the amount of work that it takes to, say for example, build a custom motorcycle, you’ve only got to do that once. You don’t really need to keep track of what you’re doing, what parts you’re using. You don’t have to be too selective about where you’re getting parts.

Can you ever get them again? Are they going to be repeatable? And can you afford to buy them in bulk? We have to do all those things. And given our small pool of personnel, we just can’t get a model from concept to going down the road in 365 days. It’s typically not something that we can do.

To go back to the original question, models have gone as few as 25 builds up to more than 150, probably pushing close to 200. And those will take varying amounts of time to build over the life. Over my time in the company, we’ve usually averaged about 25 builds per year.

Jason Reddick (04:21.454): Of course we’ve gone higher than that, we have dipped lower than that in tough years. 2008 was really skinny, 2009 wasn’t much better as an example. So some models will run for several years and others maybe a year and a half to two years.

Nate (04:39.554): Yeah, so very small batches. When, so you can see the picture on the screen there. So when I’m looking, first of all, these are just absolutely phenomenal looking motorcycles. I mean, just the coolest looking bikes you could possibly find. So when I’m looking at this, what percentage of the parts in this assembly are we talking about that you guys are going to have to make custom? And what percentage would you say are components that are coming off the shelf or you can order them from another manufacturer?

Jason Reddick (05:19.81): We would probably be looking at something in the tune of 80%. I would say it varies from model to model. It should be about 80%. We have manufactured parts in the past, but we typically do better to leave the manufacturing of parts, especially specialized parts, to those that do it for a living. For example, our brake systems, we purchase those as a kit. We will typically carry over a kit from one model to another, which shortens development time and also reduces risk and we don’t have to take the risk of this brake system going to work. Our engines are as much as possible off-shelf parts.

It allows engine builders to do what they do best. We get better results on that. But the billet parts, we design all those, we have those manufactured. That makes up the meat and the potatoes of every machine that we do. All the carbon fiber parts outside of the wheels, we design those and have those manufactured, which is a challenge unto itself. Just doing the carbon fiber parts. Those are quite challenging. But things like the wiring harnesses, those are all made, we make those specifically for each model.

Jason Reddick (06:36.548): I design those from scratch and we send them out to have them reproduced. But I’d say 80% is a good starting point. We’ve gone higher than that and we have gone lower. It is huge.

Nate (06:48.89): That’s huge.

Nate (06:52.9): So I’m so impressed with you in particular and how many parts of this process you’re involved in. How in the world did you get the knowledge to be able to do all these different things, designing wire harnesses, designing parts, prototyping? You talked about some of the 3D printing that you’ve been doing to prototype. How did you learn how to do all this?

Jason Reddick (07:16.146): It’s definitely a body of work. It’s nothing that I set out to do. I started out as a technician in the Air Force. I was a jet engine mechanic there. I worked on engines for F-15s and F-16s. And then once I got out, I was a motorcyclist by hobby. I got out of the military, went back to college to get my bachelor’s from UAB.

While I was working through college, I worked full time as a motorcycle technician. So that’s where I was getting actual hands-on professional experience. That’s when I started in the motorcycle industry as a professional. I did that all the way through college. Once I graduated, I was hired on with what was the original company for Combat Motors. We did a rebrand a few years ago. I was hired to just be the production manager. The company hit some tough times and they needed somebody to step in and put a few bikes together.

Nate (08:20.012): Yeah, it’s just temporary, right?

Jason Reddick (08:22.774): Yeah, it was supposed to be temporary. I pulled my toolbox out and started building bikes and hundreds of builds deep since then. But to be honest, if I ran across something that I didn’t know how to do, I’d be self-taught. Start doing the research, make phone calls, ask people that know better than me. Trial and error. There’s been some errors, let me tell you.

But yeah, a lot of it’s self-taught. You run into problems and it’s like I’ve got a problem here. This isn’t working. Why? There are no instructions. So you can’t just say, well, this didn’t work. Let me pass it off to somebody else. In a company where we’ve been as few as four and five employees, I’m on a tightrope without a net. If something doesn’t work, there’s no place to hide. There’s only one person to blame and only one person to turn to. That’s me. So start learning.

Jason Reddick (09:25.486): You can’t be afraid of, oh, we’re not doing this because we don’t know how. Because if you’re afraid of trying something that you don’t know how to do, you’re not going to get very far. You’re going to hit a roadblock really quick, and that’s going to be the end of it.

For example, I’ve been learning how to 3D print over the last few months. It’s just something we were looking into trying to get our newest bike off the drawing board. And then elections came around, tariffs showed up. We’re like, wow, we need to start reconsidering these suppliers that we’re looking at, because the numbers are changing fast.

I’ve got to keep the nose to the grindstone. If I could just look at some of these parts in hand, then we can reduce the number of pieces that we need to prototype, meaning having them made out of billet, which is wildly expensive, especially if you stand a good chance of the part needing some kind of an adjustment, even if it’s a rethread or whatever. So I’ll look into it and find out that Utah Tech here in town in St. George had a makerspace. You can rent 3D printers.

They have a class to teach you how to use it so I went down there, took their 10-minute class on how to use a 3D printer and tried to make a part. It worked. I came back to the owner of the company and said, hey, this worked. Maybe we should consider getting our own printers. So we did the math and we’re like, well, if we can make X number of these parts and scratch them off the prototype list, that can justify the cost of the printer. So we went and bought two. And yesterday I ordered another one. We’ve got a third one on the way.

Nate (11:10.672): Wow. What model are you using?

Jason Reddick (11:15.342): We’re using Bamboo Labs. We have an X1C and X1E and their new H2D on the way. I’m not sure if you’re familiar.

Nate (11:22.138): Not too much, but I just thought somebody might be interested in knowing. And I’m fascinated by 3D printing. I think it’s amazing. And I would like to get one at some point and mess around with it and see what I can do. I’m not real good with the CAD stuff, so I’d have to learn that.

Jason Reddick (11:41.806): Well, nor am I. When we were going through this design process, after we moved to Utah, our designer lives in Florida. I’m here. So when we have design engineering meetings online and he says this is what we’re working with, I’m looking at it. And we start going back and forth. Well, if we change this hardware, how do you want to build that? Does this look the way you want it to look? The designer says, well, I’d like it to keep looking this way. Can we make that happen?

Just out of my own curiosity, I started looking into some CAD software, working with Onshape a little bit. They have some free trial things. So I started messing with Onshape and just teaching myself how to navigate the software a little bit has helped me communicate with our designer better.

He can fly up and down SolidWorks like it’s nothing. So once I was able to even just communicate with him in a language that he understood better, I had messed with the software some and it improved our working relationship there. And once I looked into 3D printing, I had already familiarized myself with CAD design so I didn’t have to jump that hurdle to start doing 3D printing.

Jason Reddick (13:06.19): I had already looked into the CAD design, at least enough to move parts around, modify things a little bit here and there to make them print better and move on. So I was right back to that body of work. I’d simply put a little bit of time into learning something. I don’t need to be the master of it. I just need to be familiar enough to get myself into trouble.

Nate (13:27.364): Yeah, and to be able to relay the information to the person who’s doing the design. That does make sense. Boy, I’ll tell you, Jason, I think a lot of people would want to poach you. It’s hard to find somebody that can take on that almost entrepreneurial mindset inside of a business and be willing to take on different tasks, and be continually learning new things to add value. So they’re lucky to have you there.

Jason Reddick (13:56.878): Yeah, I feel lucky to be here. I’ve been here for a long time. I like what I do. It’s definitely work. A lot of people misunderstand what we do and say, oh, that would be really cool to do that. And I’m like, well, no, you have to understand it is still work. I have days where I come in and I’ve got to work.

But I definitely have one of the coolest jobs in the world. I can’t imagine anything that would replace it.

Nate (14:30.31): Yeah, having something that’s so unique, these bikes are so unique. And just seeing the finished product and actually maybe seeing somebody out on the street riding one of your bikes would have to give you a pretty big sense of pride, even more than if you worked at Harley Davidson or something. They’re handing the design down to you, here’s what you’re going to make. You make it, you weren’t that involved, but your fingerprints are on every part of this bike.

Jason Reddick (14:59.726): Yeah, I have been around long enough and I’ve built enough of them now so that I built most of them at this point. I’ve definitely built more of these than anyone ever. The company’s been around since ’91, far above and beyond any build. So most of them that you see, I built it.

But see, the thing is, I think I would have that sense of pride no matter what I was making, no matter what I was building, because I certainly don’t have time to wax poetic about the ones that are already done and gone and down the road or on their homeowner, because they’re not mine. I’m building a bike for a customer and ultimately the customer has to be happy with it. It’s their machine. But yeah, I guess I do have a bit of pride to it, but I like to think that I would put that to anything.

So you have to put that same enthusiasm into 3D printing. I have to make sure the parts that I’m making are good. I had to put that same enthusiasm into learning the bit of CAD so I could work with my designer a little bit better. I had to put that enthusiasm into learning how to build bikes or even when we went racing. I had to put the same enthusiasm into figuring out how to make a bike go fast down Bonneville. That was a whole other challenge on its own. So it goes from one thing to the next and it builds all together and you’re proud of what you make, not necessarily what the thing is, if that makes any sense.

Nate (16:47.566): Right. Yeah, you’re proud of the work that you do. So who buys your bikes and why do they buy them?

Jason Reddick (16:58.414): Typically, given the price points we’ve been selling at, most of the folks that buy from us are quite wealthy, quite well to do. Many of them buy our bikes for the exclusivity as much as anything else. Quite a few of them simply just get put on display. I’ve seen many bikes come back through the shop on trade-in or whatever.

Jason Reddick (17:26.478): And it looks exactly the way I built it years and years before. We actually have one on the rack here now that I built in probably 2017 or 2018. Judging by the mileage, I’m the only person that’s ever ridden the bike. It looks like I finished building it yesterday. It looks like they had it under glass or something. It’s completely spotless.

Jason Reddick (17:51.182): So collectors buy them. A lot of customers, most of the customers that collect have more than one. I’ve seen customers that have as many as nine. So that’s honestly what causes a little stress. One place at one time like my god, no break. I hope everything’s going well, because that’s a lot. There’s no one else to blame for those nine things except me.

But yeah, we do have a few customers that have just one and we’ve got some guys that went out and got loans for them because they wanted one so bad. They had been looking at our bikes for years and years and years, and they always wanted one, so they went out and got a loan and bought one.

Jason Reddick (18:44.302): Which is actually something we’re trying to get to with our next model, where we’re using a homologated engine, so we’re backing off the displacement a little bit, sacrificing a little bit of power to get something that will homologate around the world, which will make it easier for us to have customers get financed for our bikes, which is the first time in company history. So we’re really excited about that.

Nate (19:07.6): Can you define that word for me? Homologate.

Jason Reddick (19:12.622): Meaning that the engine will pass emissions. Yeah, see, another hurdle that we’ve been trying to get over for decades is emissions. It’s something where we’ve always been able to fall into the exemptions. There are some exemptions given how few we make. That’s what we’ve been having to work into for a long time.

And now that we can get a homologated engine from S&S Cycles, we’re going to be able to get into more countries around the world, more than we ever have before. And hopefully, that will open up our customer base to people that don’t want to just collect it. They want to buy it and go ride the thing around. So we’re hoping to expand.

Nate (20:03.556): Right. Curious, what sacrifice of power do you have to deal with when you have those emissions? I’m not sure if you’re using a catalytic converter or what, but what do you sacrifice there?

Jason Reddick (20:24.27): We’re probably looking at, our last engine was about 135 horsepower. So not a huge amount of horsepower, but the torque was almost 150 foot-pounds of torque, which is stump pulling power. That’s big. So we actually won’t be losing very much horsepower, maybe 10 to 12. We’ll drop quite a bit of torque. It’ll get down to about 120 or so.

But to be honest, those huge powerful engines like that, which we’ve typically been using, niche our customer base a little bit. Because a lot of people, when you tell them how big the engine is, they’re more than two liters out of a two cylinder. I’m not sure if you’re familiar, but that’s a massive motorcycle engine. That is mega massive. A lot of people are like, that’s too much. I can’t ride that.

So we are going to be sacrificing some power, but it will again hopefully make it a little bit more palatable to more customers because the idea is to bring our MSRP down so we can bring our numbers up, our production numbers up and grow the company, get more personnel in the door and get more bikes out the door.

Nate (21:39.556): Yep. So in terms of comparing your current production to five, six, seven, eight years ago, are you seeing growth? Are you at the same level? What’s it look like?

Jason Reddick (21:55.15): We’ve stayed pretty flat. Typically, the value of the US dollar overseas has probably the most direct effect on our sales. We’ve had plenty of years where the US dollar got really weak, and it seemed like every bike we were building was going overseas. They were just every one of them going in a box and had to be shipped everywhere you name it, anywhere from Russia to India to China, Saudi, Kuwait, Australia, Canada, the list goes on and on and on.

That usually has the bigger effect, but we’re talking plus or minus five builds per year. But for us, five builds, that’s a massive percentage. And we can really feel that.

Nate (22:55.142): Yeah. Wow. So tell me about the challenges that you’re experiencing. You mentioned the tariffs before, and it’s a topic we’ve covered in a couple different podcasts. I always like to get someone’s perspective on the effects of it. What are you seeing?

Jason Reddick (23:16.526): The way we bring in parts for our bike, as I said, we use specialists to produce things. So what that means is we have huge chunks of our bike that come from overseas. Again, if I go back to the brakes, they come from France. Our wheels come from South Africa. We’ve got Italian parts, we’ve got European parts.

So if we just draw a line through all the parts that have to come across the border and increase their price by 20%, 30%, 40%, whatever it may be, we’re really feeling that pretty hard. And we felt it pretty quick.

We try to do the US on everything. If we could, we would. If we could, we would buy every single part from the United States. That’s what we would love to do. But we’re not going to end up with the best product that way. That’s just a fact. So that’s really our biggest challenge.

We’ve been caught by the tariffs in between the drawing board and reality. Maybe it’s fortunate that we hadn’t already started bringing in parts from overseas for this machine. We were able to stop that before they started coming in and then we’re committed to purchase orders and things like that. But it certainly put a hiccup on us. We’re gonna get past it.

We just have to back up a little bit and find new sources for the parts that we can. And then the bits that we feel like we want to stay with overseas, we have to find a way to make up the cost. I don’t like to say losses, I would say ultimately the customer is gonna have to take on the price of that. If it costs more to build the bike, we have to raise the price of the bike.

Nate (25:22.214): Right. I don’t know if you were aware of this, and I actually recently became aware of this. I was meeting with our congressman here, we started talking about the tariffs, and he mentioned a company that was going to be hit particularly hard by it because they were getting a certain product from China to be able to make their product. And he said that they were able to go to the higher levels and get an exemption for them. So I don’t know if you’ve gone that route, but if you have a group of products that are coming from a specific geographic area overseas and tariffs are going to really hurt you, I think there’s something you can do.

Jason Reddick (26:11.244): Yeah, I would certainly assume that our procurement guys are doing that. That’s outside my reach at the company. I hear it in meetings and I’m always aware of how much things cost, obviously, because of how small we are. But that would fall under our procurement guys’ tasks. And I’m sure they’re on it. We’re actually looking into just grouping as many parts as we can to countries that are more favorable as far as tariffs and importing. We’re not married to bringing in from one specific place. We’ll get them from wherever as long as the parts are high quality. Ultimately, that’s what matters. Are you making the best product? If you’re making the best product, you’re gonna win ultimately. It might take a little while, but you’re gonna win. And so that’s what we’re looking for. We’re just looking for the parts that will give us the win.

Nate (27:17.958): Right. Yeah, I just see so much potential in the business there. I think that there’s a lot of people out there that would buy one of these bikes if they knew about it. And I think you mentioned before that a lot of your business comes from word of mouth. Have you done anything else that has been successful in marketing these?

Jason Reddick (27:42.03): As far as what the company has done, over the years, just like everybody else, our marketing strategies have changed. When I first came in, it was still all about magazines. Of course, that didn’t last long. It was starting to peter out. I used to be able to go to a bookstore with paper books and everything. There were magazine stands and we would be all over magazines. And they slowly moved away from that and of course we do social media now as a big driver. That’s where we get most of our exposure. We’re still in the DuPont Registry and things like that, but the marketing is a tough one. Because a lot of people I think sometimes don’t even really believe that our stuff is real.

People look at them like my god this thing is insane. But do they say that when they go see a Harley? No, because they’ve seen them all over the road. So they’ve been sensitized to it a little bit. So we use whatever medium that we think we can market but I’m convinced it’s still word of mouth given how small we are and the niche price that we’re still having to hang onto. Word of mouth is the biggest one, because everybody that can’t afford one tells all their friends that they want one and nobody likes to hear that their buddy has got something cooler than them.

It’s just like bicyclists. I see somebody with some super flash wheels on their bicycle and the first thing I do is like, man, I got to get a pair. I got to get a pair of those hoops. And a lot of our customers know other customers and they talk to each other and that’s still the biggest one. But we’ll do shows, not your typical Sturgis, nothing like that. We typically don’t yield anything from going to those places like Daytona. It’s just an expense for us.

We do better going to places like Carmel. We go to the Concours d’Elegance, things like that. And we have better luck with that.

Nate (29:51.566): Yeah, so Daytona you’re talking about, like do they have a bike show there?

Jason Reddick (29:57.742): Oh, Daytona Bike Week? Yeah, I was referring to Daytona Bike Week. That place is a circus. But again, I’ve gotten out of that one. I haven’t had to go to that one, which I’m not too upset about.

Typically, the most common reason I would ever get out of the shop was to go race, to go to Bonneville. Surprisingly actually, we drove a few sales from racing bikes. That one did pretty good. But it was the same thing. It was social media. A picture got out there of one of the race bikes that we built and everybody thought the paint job was the coolest thing ever. So now we’re selling bikes and everybody wants the race bike paint job.

Nate (30:51.568): Huh, yeah, that sounds like a great way to do it. It’s kind of organic, you know?

Jason Reddick (30:54.06): Yeah, it is. But that organic part is the hard thing, because how do you manufacture organic? Exactly. We quite frankly don’t have the marketing machine that Harley-Davidson does. They do a fantastic job. I mean, they’ve got their product dialed. They know what they sell. They know who they’re selling to. They know how to reach them.

They’ve been doing it for a long time. So most importantly, they have momentum. We haven’t ever been able to build that kind of momentum again, given such a small company and the small amount of personnel. It’s kind of tough for me to be here helping design and engineer bikes, doing the build process, prototyping harnesses, checking parts, building bikes, test riding, and figuring out how to market on the internet. It’s a bit too much.

Nate (31:51.3): Right. Yeah, that makes sense. No, I can totally see this is a purchase somebody is going to research before they do it. They’re going to be looking at a lot of bikes. And so one thing I would do if I were you or tell somebody to do it is write an article on your website that’s titled alternatives to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. And I think you’re going to get a lot of people that are in that research phase, somebody that’s looking for something a little bit more exclusive.

Jason Reddick (32:27.468): Yeah, you said in the research phase. Surprisingly, almost all of our customers, I’d say 99% of our customers purchase our bike sight unseen. They have never even seen one of our bikes. They order it online and the first time they see one is when theirs shows up on their front door. When we hand deliver it to their front door or if they’re overseas when the crate shows up.

So how do you motivate someone that’s researching in the middle of the night, one in the morning because they can’t sleep, so they’re banging away on their computer and they find the coolest thing ever. And how do you motivate that guy? Because we’ve been in movies, we’ve had bikes in a bunch of movies. I mean, the list is longer than I can think of. And surprisingly, it doesn’t work.

Nate (33:20.794): Which, yeah, and featuring some of that stuff on your site too would be awesome.

Jason Reddick (33:29.454): Well, but I couldn’t tell you a single bike that sold because of a movie. It’s kind of wild. It’s a tough nut to crack. With Harley-Davidson, they have momentum. I think the marketing machine is something that’s got to get rolling, and you’ve got to keep it rolling. If anybody knows how to get it rolling, give us a call.

Nate (33:53.446): Well, I guess here’s the thing. Tell me a movie that one of your bikes appeared in. So somebody sees the bike in Transformers. They’re motorcycle enthusiasts, right? They’re like, where did that bike come from? And what are they gonna do? They’re gonna Google, what is the bike that so-and-so rode in Transformers, right? So your job would be to have an article on your website that draws in that search query.

Jason Reddick (34:01.976): Transformers.

Jason Reddick (34:33.367): Fair enough. That’s good. That’s a good point. Yeah. I guess you got to play the algorithm.

Nate (34:40.634): Yep. And that’s what we do. That’s what we’re good at, getting ranked for those terms. Yeah, and there’s other things you could do on social media too. I mean, I’d be posting that we did it and tag the movie, hashtags, hopefully getting in front of some of those people that are researching. But yeah, there’s a lot of things you can do. And I think you have all the tools. I think it’s just a matter of using them. So if you were to use all the tools perfectly and you could ramp the sales up by a couple hundred bikes a year, what’s the viability of that at your current operation? What are you going to have to do?

Jason Reddick (35:23.886): Oh, if those kinds of orders rolled in today, the viability is probably close to zero because of how small we are. But is that going to stop us? Absolutely not. We would immediately reach out, get more people in here. We’d start building more bikes. We’d make bigger orders. We would make it happen. That is no problem. We could scale up what we have here to close to that. We would be busting at the seams, but that’s fine. We’ll just find a bigger building.

Nate (35:55.246): Yep. Yeah, and once you could get to that scale too, you could have some of your own CNC machines, laser cutters, whatever you need to make a lot of these parts in-house and actually be able to justify the cost of that equipment.

Jason Reddick (36:09.728): Right, yeah, which we have considered. As soon as the tariffs hit, one of the first and most obvious questions was, is it time to start doing a make or buy. Do we continue on with the buy or do we start considering making it? We have capacity in the industrial part where the building is.

We could get a hold of a building pretty quick if we wanted to. Do we need to start looking into CNC mills to make our own? I think the biggest challenge there is that we’re not gonna be the only ones making that comparison. Mills, lathes, those things like that.

And the price of those things are going to skyrocket. Their availability is going to hit the floor. Nobody’s going to want to sell them because everybody’s going to be doing the same thing. That’s definitely something if somebody’s thinking about doing that, my suggestion is you better get on it right quick because everybody else is going to have that same idea. Horizontal and vertical integration is something we’re more than willing to do. If you’re, say, you’re a hypothetical, my dream world, hundreds of builds come rolling in instantly.

I would be instantly saying, okay, we need to start making some of our own parts. Because we still honestly wouldn’t be able to get into the big manufacturing numbers for some of these companies. Some of them, some of them we call them up, or hey, we would like you to make X part. Like, well, yeah, sure, we’ll do that. How many do you want? Well, we would like a couple hundred. We probably started like a couple thousand units. No, we’re gonna make maybe two or 300 of this model and then we’re gonna have a new one designed and move on to that.

Jason Reddick (36:09.728): Prices of those things are going to skyrocket. Their availability is going to hit the floor. Nobody’s going to want to sell them because everybody’s going to be doing the same thing. So that’s definitely something if somebody’s thinking about doing that, my suggestion is you better get on it right quick because everybody else is going to have that same idea.

Horizontal and vertical integration is something we’re more than willing to do. If in my dream world, hundreds of builds come rolling in instantly, I would be instantly saying we need to start making some of our own parts. Because we still honestly wouldn’t be able to get into the big manufacturing numbers for some of these companies. Some of them we call up and say, hey, we would like you to make X part.

Like, well, yeah, sure, we’ll do that. How many do you want? Well, we would like a couple hundred. Like, well, we probably start at like a couple thousand units. No, we’re gonna make maybe 200 or 300 of this model and then we’re gonna have a new one designed and move on to that. That’s not gonna work.

Nate (38:04.23): Yeah, you need one of these guys that I work with a lot. I know quite a few around here, but out in Utah, not so much. You need one of these guys that ‘s like him and his kid, him and his wife, and they’re pretty much running this thing out of their home. The guy’s probably been doing machining for 25, 30 years, so he’s good at it, but he has no overhead cost. And so he can pump out five parts for you. He has no problem pumping out five parts for you. I know there’s gotta be guys out there like that. Is that something you’d be interested in meeting?

Jason Reddick (38:34.958): Yeah. Those are the kind of people that we work with all the time. It’s surprising. You can find them. They’re out there.

When you find a good relationship with someone like that, man, you defend it. You take care of them. You’re nice to them. And you can get some really cool stuff out of people like that. We get stuff like that from our clutch manufacturer, from our exhaust manufacturer. Even our brake manufacturer out of France, they’re not an overly huge company. They’re fairly small. We are more than happy to deal with people like that because that’s who we are. We’re a small company like that.

I understand when larger companies have us on the phone and they’re like, well, it’s not really what we do. The numbers aren’t enough. And I understand. I get it. They’re just making a business decision. They’re looking at what we want and what they can offer. And it doesn’t match. It’s nothing against them, and then that opens us up for other small companies like us. And if we can right size each other, then let’s make some magic. Let’s make some motorcycles.

Nate (40:00.152): Yeah. So is there anything you’re looking for right now? Any relationships that, if somebody’s listening, you might be looking for a fabricator for the exhaust system or anything you’re looking for?

Jason Reddick (40:10.958): Carbon fiber and 3D printed saddle cushions. One of the printers we got coming in I’m gonna try to prototype a 3D printed cushion but whether that works, I don’t know. I’ll find out when the printer gets here and I start trying to see if I can do it, do a little bit of experimentation.

Because we ran across some companies at a vendor show in Las Vegas a couple years ago and they had a 3D printed motorcycle seat cushion. Hey, that’s pretty cool because we’ve always gone to one of these small mom and pop places that make saddles. They cut the cushion by hand and they wrap it, which makes fantastic stuff. But with all hand manufactured things there’s variability. The plus or minus grows on each of these things. So every one of them is different.

They don’t fit quite right. What if we can have a 3D printed saddle then the repeatability will go through the roof and then with that repeatability, as with all the parts, if we can make all the parts completely repeatable and interchangeable that means we can lower the minimum skills that are required to be an assembler. So we don’t have to have someone like me putting bikes together. We want someone that’s less skilled than me bolting them together so then we can scale up to that dream of hundreds of bikes a year.

Nate (41:50.406): Right. So when you said carbon fiber, are you looking for someone that can machine it or are you looking for a supplier of the material?

Jason Reddick (41:59.598): A maker. Say our designer comes up with a fender that he wants, its shape as such, mounted as I like. We send them the step files and then they produce the fenders, fairings, feet, cowlings, things like that.

Nate (42:20.528): So what’s the process? Do they use vacuum forming or is that outdated?

Jason Reddick (42:29.102): That would be one that you should talk to a specialist. I think vacuum forming is kind of behind the times now, as far as really big, high quality, nice large volume type things. We have had plenty of carbon fiber parts vacuum formed, don’t get me wrong, over the years. Lots of them most of the time more than likely. But again, we have to keep getting nicer and nicer so we can start selling more and more bikes. Because we don’t want our bike to look like a custom bike. We want it to look like an OEM bike. So we have to continuously push the quality of all of our parts, everything.

Another example was the saddle. It’s nice to say, oh yeah, this is a handmade leather saddle, but that’s not really OEM. Because the fit and the finish isn’t OEM fit and finish. They’re not all exactly the same.

Just an interesting point about a handmade leather saddle, probably 90% of our customers don’t take care of it like you’re supposed to. So with a 3D printed one, hopefully we’ll be able to go to a material that’s more weather resistant so that our customers, once we start getting the price point down lower and lower to customers that aren’t interested in preserving their bike as an art piece, all they want to do is go throw a leg over it and have a good time. So we’ll hopefully start meeting their needs.

Nate (44:02.36): Interesting. Yeah, I did a podcast with a guy a little while back that they have a pretty cool operation, but they make seats. I don’t know what they use, it’s probably a range of materials, but then they will upholster them. But they’re custom for handicapped people, people in wheelchairs, like custom handicapped seats. But they actually can custom form them to people. I don’t know how they measure them or whatnot, but I was just thinking, it can’t be that different, right? Making a motorcycle seat from a wheelchair seat?

Jason Reddick (44:45.422): I wouldn’t think so. You’re right, the prosthetics that they make for people are mega impressive. I’m always impressed when I see somebody out there with a crazy piece of hardware, machine bits, super precise carbon fiber shaping fit perfectly to their body. Man, all respect. Yeah.

Nate (45:07.568): Well yeah, what a value add too, right? Like the seat cushion for this bike is made for your ass.

Jason Reddick (45:13.902): Yeah, that would be something we would definitely have to put on our really high-end model, like our $170,000, $180,000 model. Yeah, that would have to go there.

Nate (45:20.069): Right. Now I’m going to talk to him. I’m curious about this.

Nate (45:29.99): Yeah, very cool. Yeah, man. Well, hey, I think you could sell a couple hundred bikes a year, a couple hundred more.

Jason Reddick (45:41.114): I think we can too. That’s the goal. We’re here to push the company forward all the time. We’re trying to get a little bit better every day. And that’s the dream. If we can get to a couple hundred builds a year, I don’t know if I’ll be so busy I don’t know what to do with myself, or I’ll be so happy that I know exactly what to do with myself. It’ll be one of the two.

Nate (46:06.83): Right. Yeah, hopefully when you get to those volumes, you can really just do what you love doing about the whole thing and have people in those positions take care of the rest. That’s kind of the hope.

Jason Reddick (46:20.174): That is the dream. That is the dream.

Nate (46:24.592): Well, hey, I appreciate your time today. I think you’re an impressive dude. I mean, just the amount of things that you’ve learned to be successful in this operation and the passion with which you convey yourself and then really a fantastic bike. I mean, I think anybody that is passionate about bikes and has the money to buy one of these things would love to have one. It’s awesome.

Jason Reddick (46:49.026): Yeah, they’re definitely something to own. There are a very limited number of people in this world that have ever owned one. You would be in a very exclusive club.

Nate (46:57.466): Yep. Yeah. Which I think is very appealing to a lot of people.

Jason Reddick (47:04.108): It is.

Nate (47:05.123): Well, thanks again for coming on, Jason. All the best to you, and feel free to reach out if you need any help from me.

Jason Reddick (47:12.716): I will, you do the same. Bye.

Nate (47:14.788): All right, sounds good. Bye.