YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Weiner

lines on the record: 77
first: 2023-11-13
most recent: 2023-11-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Of a bike. I think we need a guy Ross, Dave Wiener playing card that'll go out with a series. We'll have to think about that. All right, we'll do it. That's a very possible.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I've actually thought about that before, and I have taped the card to my kids' bikes, and they find it amazing.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's all hard work. We have been in the right place at the right time, but we wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time. If we didn't work our butts off. And, you know, what I learned in doing business systems, and I think I probably was involved in implementing close to 100. What I learned is that some of the most successful businesses were just the ones that worked really hard. We work really hard at everything we do. And so we have got lucky sometimes, but I think that's because we're prepared for the situation and always being prepared for the situation, that means that when those opportunities come and when luck hits us, that we're able to capitalize on it.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I stepped away from life for some time this year It was talking about the business, it was really comforting to know that the business was doing great, that Connor and my team have totally taken over and that everyone missed me on a personal level, but didn't miss me in the business. And they were continuing to do everything they could to run the business responsibly, especially in a bad time. And it showed me today how fortunate I am to have an amazing partner at work and family at home and great people behind me every step of the way.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, on January 11th I was a Riding to my kids school to volunteer at an event and I got doored. Somebody opened their door without looking, which Yeah, laid me on the street, and what followed was not good. So there was a couple incidents that followed that. But I wound up in the hospital for four weeks and over a week in ICU.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at the same time, a lot of these companies, and there were a lot of new companies that started, they invested some money, they bought a lot of inventory, and now they're selling it really cheap, trying to turn that inventory into cash as quick as they can. And so there's a lot of sales going on because people need to move their inventory. And so it's just a much harder time to sell a bike than it's been in our nine years. And this will be our first year that we don't grow. We're not doing what we hope to do this year, but I think not losing right now is winning. And we're doing a good job of not losing. And it means while our competitors, some of them are shutting down locations, some of them are laying off staff. We're not doing that.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we've got about 25 now from kids bikes to commuter bikes to adventure bikes to gravel bikes, and now we're working with cargo bikes as well.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Took that long. Right around a year. And even, you know, I'll say that not on high end components. So about a year ago, we started to get basic inner tubes and tires and things like that. But the hiring gearing system that we're using on our higher end bikes, some of them we still are six months out.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably the better part of three months? And all of a sudden everything started to sell, and the emails you couldn't stop them from coming in. The media was saying, you know, you can't go to the office, but you surely can ride the bikes outside with your family. And people were doing it. And, you know, when the media started to send that message, it wasn't just us. Every single bike company had no inventory. We sold out of everything quickly.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so in the beginning, our business fell apart. Nobody was thinking about buying a bike when COVID started. Everybody was thinking about buying eggs, buying milk, and what was it, Lysol wipes, right? And it was really hard. Our employees didn't want to come to work. Nobody was emailing in, asking about bikes. Certainly they weren't coming to our showroom in Manhattan to look at bikes. It was really scary.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if it was five. I would say it was a little south of that, but it was a couple million dollars. And we were cash flow positive. Not by much, but we were cash flow positive every year. And I loved the organic nature of growing the company. And I didn't feel any need at that point to put gas on the fire.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slowly and happily. And slowly is probably the wrong word. We were growing at 50 to 100% year over year. And when you're that small, you should be, right? You can't grow at 10% when you're a brand new company or something's wrong. So we're growing substantially, but we didn't feel the need to bring in outside money yet.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't in those first few years because I didn't see yet how it could help us. Look at a business and you say, Well, if we had more money, we could grow faster, right? But did we want to? Did we want to grow that faster? And we were getting approached by VC and PE firms rather consistently. And a lot of the people that run those companies ride bikes and they were hearing about us and they were reaching out. And the timing just didn't feel right. We didn't have enough staff to even think that through. We just wanted to keep growing.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in year three, I started to take home a salary and started to realize that we had a real company. We had a handful of employees at that time. And I could take vacation both financially and physically.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did the same thing I did before, but I did it differently. I went to China and Taiwan and I met with 10 different manufacturers. I narrowed it down to three. I asked the three to make the exact same thing and waited. It was the exact same process I did earlier. But the difference was we were a bigger company. We now had a bank account. We now could come and say, all right, we need to order a few thousand bikes. We now have three models, not one. You know, we actually had a website and an email address and articles that say that our bikes are good. And so we were able to go to a different tier of manufacturing and found three great factories that could all do the job and wound up settling with one, I think, around 2016, 2017.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reliability was at the forefront. None of them made bad products, but they made unreliable products and the timing wasn't always what we expected. First three assembly factories were not meeting our timeline. I was going to every single one of our productions and they might have the wrong components. They didn't know how to assemble a bike the way I would expect them to, and it was taking much more of my time than I could ever imagine. And we needed to do too much rework on the bikes that were coming in. And it became to the point where not only was it not sustainable for our current bikes, but we worried that we were going to add these higher end commuter bikes and how could we grow with this company?”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's it. It goes back to listening to the customer. Pay attention, I think. A lot of times your customers will tell you exactly what you need to do.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. They started looking online and they found our Kickstarter, and they found this idea of a no-rust bike. And they were really intrigued. And they were our first hotel, and they were a wonderful customer that helped our brand look good. And we started to open up. A sales department in priority that just focused on selling to hotels.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they're right there across the street from the ocean, and they said, we have a bike program, and our guests use our bikes to ride around the beach. But the problem is we bought some six months ago and they're rust buckets.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, wouldn't that look good? So We had never thought about hotels until the Viceroy Santa Monica was our first hotel and they called. And Connor and I had actually lived together briefly in Santa Monica, so we knew the area, and that was a very cool hotel.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so one of the things we started in our Kickstarter was you could buy 10 bikes and get your brand name on them. And we did that thinking that there were companies, and there were, there were companies that bought 10 bikes and wanted their name on it. You know, how I built this, right on a bike.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we were getting it up to the 30s. We were getting the margin up there, but we were also starting to buy in volume. At that point, we knew that we weren't going to make 100 of these. We needed to make a thousand of them. And like anything else, when you buy in volume, you do get better pricing. And we also knew that if we were going to make a run of this, we had to give it our all.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. In listening to our customer, we learned that a lot of people were using the classic as a commuter because it was low maintenance. And anyone who rides their bike to work every day needs the most reliable bike they can because they get up and they've got however many minutes they have to ride their bike to the office. And the bike can't let them down. And we needed to... Make this bike, to turn it up, to make it more aggressive and how someone sits on the bike so the geometry needed to change. The brakes needed to change. You can't go fast on a city street, for example, with a coaster brake. You need disc brakes just like you'd see on a motorcycle or any other high-end bicycle. You need a disc brakes. And it needed more gearing. And it needed a belt drive system that scaled to the type of powerist could put out.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And now I'm pretty deep. I have one successful product. I have one unsuccessful product. I know that the way I can grow this business. It's simple in theory and hardened reality. I need to have a bike that changes again, that changes everything.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the classic bike was still doing well. So I knew that we had a win that could carry the company, though it couldn't carry me.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think there were a variety of problems. One is I built a bike that I wanted. It's not a bike that our customers were telling us they wanted. And so the first lesson there was, you know, listen to your customer. Because as much customer support as I was personally doing at the time. I was hearing from customers what they wanted all day and I didn't deliver it. I delivered something that I wanted. And also to make a $300 bike for a three-year-old is a tall number for a lot of parents as it should be.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So I made him a training wheel bike. And I made it with all the features I want, a belt drive, of course, all these rust-free aluminum features. I made it with puncture-resistant tires. The whole tire didn't need any air. So as a parent, you could just get the bike and go. You don't have to worry about putting air in the tire every month.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we did. And the first thing we realized is that while we had this amazing model, Probably need more than one. So the next lesson learned came in a bike. I wanted to design the next bike. And at that point I had a two-year-old. And so I couldn't think of anything better than designing a bike for him.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, if I remember correctly, we sold about 2,000 bikes that year at 1,500 in the first month and then 500 in the next six months that follows”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was disheartening because you do, like I said, you do have a Kickstarter where you raise half a million dollars in 30 days. Yeah, we're going to pay your.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, the bikes work great. The problem was getting the customer the bike they ordered more than anything. We had this task of. Labels, eight boxes, and somehow they got it all wrong. So, somebody that ordered a weight small got a black large, and someone that ordered a black large got a weight small. And that was really stressful. I was doing all but 100% of the customer support at that time, and that was a really stressful time. And especially because we didn't have spare bikes yet. So, you know, if one customer got a white one that ordered a black one, we had to find out how to get that white one to the person that ordered it.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I threatened some of our importing guys that I would drive to the Port in Newark and be there in half hour. But they told me that wouldn't help. That would only make things worse. And we waited. And that was incredibly stressful time because customers who bought these for Christmas gifts were not happy”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, we got unlucky. There was nothing more to it, but that's a stressful time because we're going into Christmas. We promised everybody they'd get it at Christmas. Your bike's going to ship in two weeks, and then two weeks later we say, we don't know when your bike's going to ship because customs held our containers. and they won't tell us anything.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I live on stress. I do very well under stress. I think that's kind of my happy place, unfortunately. But doing software programs, I became a project manager. So I handled this the same way I would a big software implementation. I had every step. I had every supplier. Everybody was in my database. I knew who I was contacting, which days. I knew who I was following up on, and I wasn't letting anything slide. And if you were my supplier back then, I'm sorry. I probably called you too much. I probably checked in too much. I wanted every update and I stayed on top of every detail. And I loved it. I loved that time.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you know, this is a conversation that my wife and I have. I like to say that when I started priority, I worked less because I worked so much in software. And she says there's no chance I 100% worked more. And so I've got to assume like most things she's right. I never felt like I was working more because I loved it. And I can talk about bicycles all day long and I can talk about customer experience all day. And I love going to Asia to work on the bikes and work with the production team. I just loved every moment of it.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I became very good at customer support and any of our original Kickstarter backers, they've asked a question and I was generally up till ten or eleven at night doing supp”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the biggest risk decision we made at launch. That was our single biggest expense before we launched. But they told our story to the media and we had, it must have been a dozen articles on the day we launched on Kickstarter with major media. And I think in the first day in Kickstarter, we sold over 200,000 dollars in bikes.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did it the next day. I think I did the same thing as looking for a bike company. I think I called 10 of them. I set up appointments and I dropped everything I was doing and I found a PR firm.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I think it did make it to the front page of Kickstarter at some point, not on day one. A friend who I just met, a friend of a friend who had a watch company, I met with about maybe 60 days before our launch, and he was telling me about growing his watch company. And when I told him about priority bicycles and what I wanted to do, His advice to me was you need to hire a PR firm today. It was 60 days to go, you need to hire them today. Because otherwise you're only going to, the only people that are going to support you on Kickstarter are your friends. Yeah. So you got to spend the money. You got to hire a PR firm and they need to tell your story and then you got to hope it works.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we always felt that if we got some bikes out in the field, people are going to love these and they're going to go to work the next day and say, what a cool and different and unique bike they bought.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time, I don't think you could find a belt drive bike under $1,000. It was a really... Amazing value bike. And at the time we wanted to raise $30,000. I felt that if we raised $30,000, it would be the world showing me that this was good enough to make more and figure out how to sell them.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be too expensive to be cost effective And so we're 10 years later, we work with many bike shops and we actually sell quite a bit of bikes now through bike shops and more to come. But back then it was we needed to have a direct relationship with the customer. It's the only way we could get to that price that they needed. We felt that customers were looking for that product, or at least I did.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's where some of my experience in working with software systems came in. I knew we had to sell the bike online as much as I grew up working in a bike shop and I love, love, love bike shops. We wanted the bike shops to help the customer make sure it's assembled correctly and certainly be there if they have a problem. But we wanted to ship these bikes directly to consumers.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. There was. And also that factory, they had worked better with us in the process. I think one of the factories took our drawings and didn't ask any questions and produced what they thought it was. The other two asked questions, and certainly the one we went with asked the most questions. And because they asked the most questions, they got the best answers. And we also thought that they had suggestions on how to make that design a little bit better. And they were right.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So leading up to the Kickstarter, I had narrowed it down to three different factories and I paid all three factories to make essentially the exact same thing, knowing that if you ask three companies to make the same thing, you'll get three very different items.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't weld myself. I bought an off the shelf bicycle frame and I made modifications to it. I made a cut in the frame to get the belt drive on. I had a friend of a friend weld it in his kitchen. It wasn't the prettiest, but it did work and it did start to show what we wanted to create.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not quite yet because we hadn't started selling it yet I was confident that if we had a good quality product that we could sell some, I didn't know if we could get to the 3000 that some of the better factories wanted. I did think I could get to 300, which some of the smaller companies wanted.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, 80 to 90% of the companies I had tried to make appointments with would take them but didn't want to talk to me. And the first question they ask is, you know, where's the money coming from? How many bikes are on your first order? And my confidence was the other way around. I remember meeting with these suppliers saying, I know we're going to sell a significant number of these bikes. I need to know if you can make them and how good you can make them.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Any serious factory doesn't want to talk to you about making a couple hundred bikes. The number used often in the industry is 300 because it used to be you could get 300 bicycles in a container. You can't anymore, but because the boxes have gotten bigger, but no one will entertain an order under 300. And that said, most better factories won't talk to you under 3,000.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes and no. Certainly when we talk about the belt drive, that was very much on us, and we had to do on our own because bike companies, bike manufacturers didn't know anything about belt drives yet. But working with the tire makers to make sure we get the tires the right color and the right type of rubber in them, that was really important. But the simpler components like a handlebar, I drew what we wanted as a handlebar and I handed that over to the different bike companies and they can price out getting what I'll call the more straightforward components.”
2023-11-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Priority Bicycles: Dave Weiner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT