The Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast
The Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast is created by Clive Barber and Noel Thom. They are not inspirational, and they will not provide motivation to get you off your butt and travel the world. They are quite a good laugh though, like a couple of old blokes you overhear in the pub, and wish you were sat at their table. Except you don’t need to because they record their conversations. Weird. Yeah, probably. The Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast aims to be informative, interesting, and fun. With a mix of ‘celebrity’ and ‘citizen’ storytellers, instructional episodes, beginners guides the podcast is a great way to while away the hours when you can’t be out on your bike.
The Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast
TAMP Season 7 Episode 31 Jim Evans Product Manager Adventure Spec
In this conversation, Jim Evans, the product manager at Adventure Spec, shares insights into the company's evolution from a distributor to a manufacturer of motorcycle gear. He discusses the challenges and triumphs of adventure riding, the importance of customer service, and the innovative approach to product development that Adventure Spec employs. The conversation highlights the small but efficient team behind the brand and their commitment to creating durable and repairable products for adventure riders. In this conversation, Jim discusses the evolution of women's outdoor gear, the challenges faced in production, and the importance of representation in marketing. He highlights the innovations in motorcycle gear for women, the significance of training women riders, and the exciting new product developments at Adventure Spec. The discussion also touches on the evolution of layering systems, future aspirations for the company, and the pressing issue of sustainability in the motorcycle industry.
Adventure Spec, motorcycle gear, product development, customer service, outdoor industry, riding experiences, company history, equipment challenges, product strategy, market positioning, women's outdoor gear, motorcycle clothing, product development, adventure riding, layering systems, sustainability, women's representation, motorcycle training, gear innovations, Adventure Spec
Hello and welcome to the Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast with me Clive Barber and my good mate Noel Tom. For the days when you can't ride your bike there's always the Trail and Adventure Motorbike Podcast.
UNKNOWN:Music
SPEAKER_01:Welcome back chaps, this is a pretty special episode for us today and hopefully for you too. It's an episode of two halves. In the first half we are delighted to announce a new partnership with our really good friends at Adventure Spec. As you know we've had a very long relationship with Adventure Spec so it's probably no surprise to most of you that we are partnering for at least the next 12 months. In the first part, we talk about our experiences using Adventure Spec kit. And then in the second part, we talk to Jim Evans, who is the product manager at Adventure Spec. We talk about what goes into making some of the best kit available on the market today. Right, let's get on with it.
UNKNOWN:Adventure Spec
SPEAKER_01:So do you actually see yourself as a sponsored rider now?
SPEAKER_02:I've always seen myself as a sponsored rider, but it's just been a delusional thing on my part, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_01:What can I tell you? I'm fully in agreement. So I think the lovely thing is when Greg started working for Adventure Spec, Adventure Spec has changed quite a lot over that period of time. I mean, they were just selling other people's stuff and then they started to make their own stuff. And now they're exclusively selling their own kit, whether that's hard parts or their layering system of clothing. As a very small UK-based company, I think this would surprise a lot of people, how small Adventure Spec is, the number of people that actually work there, because they've got media presence and awareness out in the market. place that people realize there's like six people that work there they would be quite surprised
SPEAKER_02:i know they could see behind the the wizard's curtain i think they'd be surprised but that's quite a good thing i think i wouldn't say it's a family business but it has that kind of ethos behind it a little bit doesn't it for its numbers it's not a big machine
SPEAKER_01:i think the first bit of kit i ever got was the baltic insulated jacket and i think i've had that for eight years now and i still actually wear that still holding up pretty well
SPEAKER_02:it's part of my smart going out gear
SPEAKER_01:It is. It's my going to the cinema jacket. One of my favourite bits of kit actually is the super shirt because that is basically the first thing I always grab. I pretty much wear that every time I go out. Once you've got that on, it's AA rated, you can pretty much wear anything you want, can't
SPEAKER_02:you? That's your next dilemma, isn't it, is what to wear over the top of it. I'm going away in July and August into roasting hot Europe. I was sort of panicking about the temperature and then I remembered, I've got a super shirt. All I've got to think about now is what to wear over the top of it. And I'm not going to look like a stupid British biker covered in textile gear because I'll have some kind of trendy checked shirt on and a super shirt underneath.
SPEAKER_01:When we went out for chips the other day, I look like a proper hipster with my checked shirt over the top of my super shirt. And it's all you need. It's
SPEAKER_02:hard to believe, isn't it? But then we did see them throw that poor man down the... the runway wearing one, didn't we?
SPEAKER_01:As far as I know, they're the only company that have actually tested their protective gear. A human being, rather than just rubbing it against some sandpaper. But that was actually quite impressive. And I think there's a video of them somewhere as well. trying to cut one with a blade as well. It's pretty impressive stuff. I think material science is absolutely fascinating that you can now make things like that that are as AA rated. That's quite impressive. You're a fan of the linesman pant, aren't you?
SPEAKER_02:Linesman pant and linesman jacket. Linesman jacket. I look great in a linesman jacket with the shoulder pads. You've been the... top model for quite a long time, haven't you? Well, yeah, he was a top model, but then it got unceremoniously dropped when that bloke with tattoos came along. So how old are you? Well, maybe that. Maybe as my looks faded, I was cast aside. Your modelling career went on longer than mine. I think as I left, you walked in the door.
SPEAKER_01:The way it's worked for me is anything that fits a fat bloke, it's usually me. Ah, right. Look at how stretchy this is. The fat bloke can wear that. The other thing I always carry with me is the aqua pack. jacket that either goes in a rucksack or in a bag somewhere on the bike because it is insanely waterproof. All of the Adventure Spec waterproof stuff is at least 20,000 millimetres hydrostatic head. What does that even mean? I don't know. Google it. It's a big number, isn't it? It's a big number. All you need to sell a waterproof jacket, trading standards type rules, is you need to have a hydrostatic head of 1,500 millimetres. The AS stuff is at least 28,000 millimetre hydrostatic head. You're
SPEAKER_02:just saying numbers now. Should we stumble around and guess what it is? I think it's pushing water through the fabric and it's something to do with the sort of the pressure that you're putting on it before that. Those water molecules go through
SPEAKER_01:it. Yeah, that sounds about right. Whatever it means, it means that that jacket is completely waterproof. So I've ridden for nine hours wearing that jacket and it doesn't leak one bit.
SPEAKER_02:How good are you at putting waterproofs on before it starts raining?
SPEAKER_01:Not so good, because you always hope that you're actually
SPEAKER_02:going to... Never happens.
SPEAKER_01:The other thing is, obviously, what they're doing is they say they're creating lightweight outdoors gear for adventure motorcyclists. And it's all about that layering system that's been used for years in traditional sort of outdoor gear. And I think they're really one of the first companies to actually... Get a complete range of clothes that they've actually got now to support that theory. Once you get off-road, you get hot and sweaty, so you can take layers off. Whereas if you've got your big bulky jacket on, it makes it more difficult to do that. I've got the linesman, I've got the Mongolia jacket, I've got both of the waterproof jackets, so I can kind of pick and choose what I take out with me. I think Adventure Spec as a whole are there purely for... us adventure and trail riders. That's their niche. That's what they focused on. They all ride, they all travel and they all trail ride. So what they've actually created is something very, very specific for us. We've been fans of their stuff for years and it's just really nice that they're now supporting us as well. So go and check them out at adventurespec.com and sign up to the newsletter, which is, it's actually one of, I've said it before on the podcast, it's one of the best newsletters out there It gives you lots of interesting things to look at or to read. And there's like one advert for a bit of a product at the end of it. So get yourself signed up for that and check out the stuff on adventurespec.com.
SPEAKER_03:We took the Himalayan that we got for Adventure Spec to Wales for a staff trip and burnt the clutch out. That sounds like user error, though. I wasn't riding it, so I can't say anything. So I trailed it straight to the dealer and he kind of went, oh, what's wrong with this then? Well, we think we've burnt the clutch out. He started it up and went, yep, you have. How many miles is it on? 115. I said, is that the lowest you've had for a clutch? He said, no, I've had lower.
SPEAKER_01:Was Greg riding it by any chance? Mr. Clutchburner himself?
SPEAKER_03:No, he wasn't. It was on his photo bike, as he calls it. We went over Bomber Lane and then we went Happy Valley, both directions. And then we went up the other side of Happy Valley on the main tech. To be honest, those trails are probably at the limit of that size of bike, unless you're a phenomenal rider.
SPEAKER_01:Come on, you can tell us who was riding it. Was it somebody inexperienced or was it Adam, the bike destroyer? No,
SPEAKER_02:no, it wasn't Adam. It wasn't Adam. But did that person, whoever it may be, or she, women can ride bikes too, I keep telling Clive that, were they surprised? Had they been dragging the clutch a lot, do you think?
SPEAKER_03:They didn't think they had. Talking to Chris afterwards, he thinks the trail that we're doing, because it's so steep and pebbly and stuff like that, really, we should have gone down a sprocket just to give it more torque and stuff like that. We had a CF motor as well, and that clutch had started to go as well. Again, 200-kilo bike on that sort of terrain and stuff like that. But to be fair, they did phenomenally well until Himalayan's clutch went.
SPEAKER_01:I talked to John Mitchinson about adjusting the gearing on my CRF to try and get a more usable second gear, and he just went, nah, stick it in first and rev the nuts off it.
UNKNOWN:LAUGHTER
SPEAKER_01:But we are absolutely delighted to welcome new boy from Adventure Spec, Jim Evans. Well, you're not that new, actually. You've been there for a while, Jim, haven't you?
SPEAKER_03:I've been there for just over a year on and off now, but now working full time for the last nearly six
SPEAKER_01:months. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your riding history, and what you do for Adventure Spec, and maybe a little bit about your work history, because that's obviously very relevant to what you're doing now at Adventure Spec.
SPEAKER_03:My name's Jim Evans. I'm product manager for Adventure Spec, but for the last... 30 years I've exclusively worked in the outdoor industry for some famous brands, Trekmates, Rab, Sprayway, Bridgedale, also a founder of Outkit, which was the first direct-to-consumer outdoor brand. And that's where I first kind of came across Adventure Spec. I can't remember if it was Dave or Chris gave us a ring, but was asking if we could make some stuff for them. I've got a bit of a checkered history of riding. I kind of did my test and like everyone else, I've got quite a connection to Long Way Round because I was working in the outdoor industry and they obviously wanted kit. So I ended up supplying some dry bags and bits and pieces through Snow and Rock, I think it was, the brand I was working for at the time. As you do, you then watch it and that looks exciting. I want a bit of that. And then we started Outkit and then GS after GS after GS kept turning up, getting Camping Kit and then setting off to Morocco and just seeding that All the time. And then opportunity arose that I could do my bike test. So I went and got that GS. Holy shit. It was a big bike. I didn't just go through GS. I went to the GSA with all the aluminium panniers and then put all my cycling kit as was. I was quite big into bikepacking into half a pannier.
SPEAKER_01:It's not bikepacking. I'm sorry. It's called cycle touring. No, no bikepacking. No, Jim, you're old enough to know better. Come on. I was at the forefront of bikepacking. Well, I was at the forefront of cycle touring and it's exactly the same thing!
SPEAKER_02:Why do you like bikepacking? Do you just feel like it's been needlessly rebranded?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's just all these young people coming along and thinking, oh, look at us on our bikes going cycle touring with our packs on our bike. It's cycle touring. You've just got ridiculous luggage. Can
SPEAKER_02:you see that? Yeah, sort of. They're both kind of new terms to me.
SPEAKER_03:See, I think there's a real synergy between bikepacking and adventure spec and the tech.
SPEAKER_01:I've got a problem with the word synergy as well.
SPEAKER_03:It's going to be a long night, this. For me, that whole bikepacking was about loading your bike to minimise the effect of the luggage on the bike so you could ride roads, trails, the trails that you're riding without luggage. Now I've kind of come over to the sort of motorcycle world. I've taken the GS and I'd say the GS with aluminium panniers is very much sits in that cycle touring world, if you see what I mean. Yeah, it's a capable bike. You could take it off road with aluminium panniers, but you're immediately compromised just by the weight of your luggage. So for me, that getting a smaller capacity bike, lighter, loading it with less kit allows you to then carry on riding those trails. So I think for me, there's this really nice synergy between, I'll use that word again, bikepacking and... Don't worry, I'll beep it out. And sort of riding the tech, riding trails and stuff like that, being able to ride the roads or the trail or go wherever you want with the bike.
SPEAKER_02:Had you tried other bikes or did you just have the 1200 in mind because of what you'd seen and you just stuck with that dream?
SPEAKER_03:In fact, actually, no, I didn't get the GSA straight away. I shit myself because I went to the showroom and went, holy shit, this is massive and bought a Triumph Tiger 800. I then went, booked myself onto the GS off-road school, sitting there with Simon Pavey doing his thing and we're all sitting in front of a GS... And I'm going, I've never sat on one of these, let alone ride one. And he puts his hand, has everyone ridden a GS? And obviously everyone puts their hands up. Anyone not? And I kind of subtly put my hand up. No, I've got a clue. But from that moment on, you realised how capable of a bike they are and how much easier it was to ride than the Triumph that I had. I chatted to Greg. Through COVID, I watched all his films with you guys in it and stuff. And he was waxing lyrical about sleeping bags and how good synthetic sleeping bags was. And I was working for Rab at the time and I'm a down sleeping bag convert. So I thought, well, I need to put Greg in his place here. He might know everything he knows about motorbikes, but he doesn't know about sleeping bags. So I sent him a sleeping bag and got talking to him. I went to ABR. I ended up camping next to Will. So I got to know Will. I'm just chatting to him. I'm from Cambridge. So we had quite a mutual... talking about Cambridge and bits like that. And then suddenly there was this click that he rides with Greg and I'd just been speaking to Greg. And Will had his 690. So I sat on his 690 and there fell apart the dreams of GSs. And I have a 690 in the garage now. Kind of looks very similar to Will's.
SPEAKER_01:Tell us a little bit More about your role at Adventure Spec. What do you do as the product manager?
SPEAKER_03:It's quite a varied role, actually. Adventure Spec isn't a big company. There's not many of us there. So effectively, I've taken on everything there is to do about product. So that's kind of looking at our product story. And I'll use another twatty word of product vision about product. what products we might do in the future, what products we do now, and actually how we can link those products together and how we can talk about them. So I work really closely with Greg on that side of it. I then work really closely with all our suppliers. So we've got two main factories in Europe that we use for our hard parts and our soft goods, so luggage and clothing. And then we use a few Far Eastern suppliers as well. So I liaise with all of those. I liaise with product designers if we need a product designer, or I might kind of take on that product development myself, depending... where it is. I'm quite handy on a sewing machine. That was my background at Outkit. We started a little micro factory at Outkit. So I'm quite handy at jumping on a sewing machine and just trial and error and making stuff. And I find that really exciting and fun. Effectively, anything to do with product, it's me. And then as I've got a bit of a side gig that anything to do with shows, I kind of take on as well. Throughout my career, I've kind of worn two hats as either a A frustrated product designer. That's what I always wanted to be as a kid. I did my A-levels dreaming that I was going to go and draw Hanes manuals. What a wasted job that would have been today. But that's what I dreamt of drawing, Hanes manuals by hand. I pursued that career and then I went into a job and I was the only one that could use a Mac in the corner. So I ended up kind of learning a bit about marketing. And from that, I've done shows. So I kind of always worn these sort of two hats of marketing and product. When I started working at Rab, a marketing director there, I worked so closely with the product director and the two of us were really on the same wavelength and realizing how much those roles are intertwined. If so many businesses are separated, they might have some people in the product team that maybe do some product research. Product and marketing are so interlinked and the companies that do that well, you can see it a mile off. They understand what their customers want before they even make the product.
SPEAKER_01:We'll come back to the product stuff in a minute. But one thing you mentioned was the size of the team at Adventure Spec. Now, Adventure Spec comes across outwardly like a very big British manufacturing company producing this amazing kit. But the reality is the team is actually very small, isn't it? If you exclude the manufacturing that happens in Europe.
SPEAKER_03:So currently there's six of us at Adventure Spec. So it's a pretty small business. However, quite a lot of our central functions are outsourced. So we have three warehouses in the US, EU and the UK. UK, but they're all outsourced as third-party warehouses. So we don't have any warehouse staff and stuff like that that a business might have. So the team is just a core team, really. So I look after product. Greg looks after the brand and marketing. We've got Adam and Ben in our help desk and customer service team. And Chris, obviously, founder of VentureSpec, keeps us all on the right track. And then we've got Stephen that works on our systems, helping Chris with orders. Very much the sort of nuts and bolts in our backend system. We've got a really good Yeah, you're right. AdventureSpec is not big in size of people.
SPEAKER_02:Was it COVID that changed that and made everything remote as it has done with everybody else?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, once COVID hit and everybody was working remotely, they couldn't necessarily always ship stuff out. Chris embarked on a really big project pretty much by himself, really, to find a computer system that could link to three separate warehouses that could link all the customer service help desk stuff together and the website. And it's a pretty sizable project. I've come from some big companies into Adventure Spec and seen what Chris has done. And hats off to him. It means we can grow really effectively and scalably and sustainably by bringing more staff in.
SPEAKER_01:Another thing that has changed dramatically in a very positive way is customer service because Adventure Spec didn't always have the best reputation for customer service and I think you mentioned Adam and Ben and that reputation has pretty much done a 180 degree turn and I see mostly good feedback these days.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think Adam led I say Adam led that charge. I guess Chris and Greg led that charge and identified something had to change in the help desk and with our customer service. So they recruited Adam and Adam came on board and his background has been very service orientated. Again, similar to me, he'd come from the cycle industry, working in bike shops, some of the stuff he'd done. And Adam's got an amazing amount of fairness. I was talking to Steve at Motor Junkies this weekend, actually, because he's got the first pair of single track pants that were ever made that Greg gave him. And he reckons he's done 25,000 kilometres on those. And they look beat up, but they look nicely beat up, if you see what I mean. And I said, I want them back. And he's like, I don't want to give them back. They're so comfortable. But you've trashed the bottom of them and I want to see how I can make them better. If we can get a product that lasts a season with a guide, that should be a few years use of a normal rider, if you see what I mean. You can make a piece of kit absolutely bomb proof, but it won't be very comfortable to wear. So you've got to take this sort of this pragmatic balance, if you see what I mean. And Adam is really, really good at that of saying, maybe you've worn it a little bit hard. Okay, we'll try and organise a repair for you or send that one back and I'll do your replacement and give you a discount. But it's also fair on a venture spec. You know, you can bankrupt a company really, really quickly if you just say, anytime anyone gets in contact with us, we're just going to replace it. And I work really, really closely with Adam and Ben to get that product feedback, to get the product feedback of how I can make a product better, but also to assist them to sort of, has that product been used correctly or has someone used it differently? Try and understand that. Why is something worn in a particular place? Knee braces and foot pegs are probably the two You know, we've probably got a test pool of 10 riders and maybe a piece of kit will get a year to two years worth of development and riding on different people before it goes into production. But knee braces, we can't test for every single knee brace that comes underneath. We kind of call them grippers. There's certain riders that wear knee braces and then they grip their bike unbelievably tight. You've now got a piece of fabric between either a hard piece of plastic or a hard piece of metal against the metal frame of the bike. And then they say, oh, my trousers are worn out between it. Like, or course they have, you're just basically grinding the fabric away. We knew Adam first, didn't we? Adam's part of our board of directors
SPEAKER_02:on the podcast as well, and we've known him a long time, and I can imagine he's fantastic at that job, because he is a very, very sensible, fair-minded person, as you say.
SPEAKER_01:I had a pair of Merino leggings I wore when it was cold, and I was a bit annoyed, because after a few months, one of the knees had virtually worn through. In the warm weather, I was riding with the same trousers, and it was like something was really... scratching my knee and i realized like a bit of velcro was actually sticking out so i was going to send them back saying these are shit but then i realized it was my own fault for not tucking the velcro away properly tell us a little bit more about the history of adventure spec because it's gone from being a company that sort of supplied third-party kit that chris and dave used for their trips to a company that now pretty much only sells stuff that it manufactures
SPEAKER_03:adventure specs coming up for 20 years old and like you say was founded by by dave and chris who would really earn early pioneers of riding lighter bikes with lighter kit on trails, really. Been banging this drum for 20 years. Chris and Dave were at the first meeting of Horizons Unlimited. They were there with John Ross when they set the TET up and helped John fund the starting of the TET. For such a small company, they've had such an influence on this sort of trail and adventure market. It was really interesting to see ABR that was just finished. We had a stand at ABR. So what was there? 17,500 people at ABR this year. I mean, it was phenomenal. I went to the first ABR with 70 of us in a field. To go to ABR and be on a stand, 17,500 people. I walk around the stalls and it wasn't full of GSs with aluminium frames around them and stuff like that. And this is the drum Dave and Chris have been banging for so, so long. And then to see ABR... evolve into effectively what they've been talking about for so long is brilliant. And now to be part of that with Adventure Spec and my role as the sort of the product manager to now say, you know, where can we take Adventure Spec now? You know, the market's caught up with Adventure Spec. You're no longer distributing all these brands. We've got our own range now. Yeah, big up for Chris and Dave. You know, they were so far ahead of the curve when they started to work with Chris and really sort of say, how's it feel to be in a field with 17,500 people and think, you created some of this.
SPEAKER_01:It's really interesting for you to say that because I remember when I started trail riding many years ago, there wasn't really the equivalent of an adventure spec. I used to wear motocross stuff And I used to wear a mountain bike waterproof or pack a mountain bike waterproof to go over the top if it was raining. And they just weren't waterproof trousers back then, really. It was very difficult to get kit that actually worked. And it is amazing that a small company like Adventure Spec have actually... designed kit for exactly what we do not only exactly what we do as in trail riding but you can travel the world in this kit as well you mentioned the magadan panniers designed so they can be repaired in the remotest parts of the world right you can if anybody's got a sewing machine or a needle and thread you can you can patch them up and fix them if you fall
SPEAKER_03:off the great thing now i think is that we can call them competitors or i can call them competitors but the nice thing now is how many more brands are in that space which is only increasing the the amount of people that want that kit they just have to look at the rise of the TET now because I kind of inherited the Adventure Spec shows. I was going through the graphics and there was a graphic there for the TET and it said 88,000 kilometres. Great, well, I can't use that now. It's well over 100. And even in my kind of sort of former life of making bikepacking kit. Cycle touring. The TET's now being used by cyclists to choose routes because ironically, the TET is reasonably easy to cycle on a bike. It's not too technical a trail.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just watch out there. There's motorbikes coming through. Get out of the fucking way and don't ride too aggressive, you knobheads. So at some point then, you have increased the range of products that Adventure Spec produced. I think the first things you produced was the linesman jacket, wasn't it? And you've expanded the range since then. How do you decide what you're going to produce next?
SPEAKER_03:That's a tricky question. Sometimes it's, can you make it? You know, you might have quite a few products being developed at the same time and one... sort of bubbles to the surface quicker than others. I think the nice thing working for Adventure Spec, very, very similar to working at Alpkit, that the product development cycle is very natural and you develop the products that you want to do because you're going to sell them to the end customer. When I was working for outdoor brands that sold through shops, it was very constrained. You were working quite often off Excel spreadsheets because a certain customer buys a product and they buy thousands of them. You don't touch that product. You don't take the colors of that product. There's no appetite to improve that product. It's selling as it is. Whereas selling direct to consumer and not having to talk to three or four buyers, that's why we started AlpKit. you know, totally in the outdoor industry, you can count them on your hand, the amount of buyers that really control the products that get made, that allow those numbers. So, you know, the buyers for the bigger chains or the more influential sort of independents, if they don't like that product, it doesn't go to market. And therefore, the sort of ranging within those brands takes a lot longer. So it might take, you know, sometimes three years from an idea to come to where you then launch it to the retailer. And then you've got another year before it makes it into the shop. Whereas with, AdventureSpec and OutKit, you don't have to jump through those hoops, how we choose what products to bring. So I've just been working on a document that would effectively a product timeline for AdventureSpec. And at the moment, I've really just kind of looked, where's some natural holes that we haven't got product in? What are people asking for? How can we improve product, if you see what I mean? Because sometimes you can improve a product. So SuperShirt was the first product that I kind of worked on to improve. Working with the factory, we kind of resourced the fabric, which allowed us to buy it cheaper. And ironically, it's now made about three miles away from a house. So the fabric the super shirt's made of is made in the UK. It's then shipped out to our factory in Bulgaria and made into the super shirt. Through quite a workbook exercise, we've managed to reduce the cost of that super shirt to get that sweet spot. And that's suddenly taken the super shirt off. Off the back of that, I'm looking at a super pant, which effectively a pair of leggings made out of the same fabric. And one of the major purposes of that was to expand into kit that we can make for women. It's a really emotive subject. It's something I'm really proud to have been through in the outdoor industry.
SPEAKER_02:Has there always been an issue with women's clothing that the numbers just weren't there to make it viable for a manufacturer?
SPEAKER_03:Essentially, yeah, yeah. You either had to be really brave and put your money where your mouth was and buy lots of kit, which lots of brands have done. You see it in the motorcycle industry. Lots of brands have jumped into the women's sector, done some amazing clothing, And then as quickly as they've come into it, have dropped it because the sales weren't there. Some of that is because the gatekeepers are still the retailers. And if the retailers don't buy it and come through, sometimes the retailers will buy it. If there aren't enough riders to buy it, or for whatever reason they don't know about it, or it all gets sold on clearance, you're back to square one. Well, this is the
SPEAKER_01:other thing, isn't it? I think people don't kind of realise, it's the same with my wife's business, that you're not a massive company, you're not an Alpine Stars, you can't lay out hundreds of thousands of pounds to produce a product that then doesn't sell. It's the same thing with colours. You have to limit the number of colours you make, because if you end up with one colour that nobody likes, then you're just going to end up with a load of stock That you can't sell, basically.
SPEAKER_03:Or you end up with a load of fabric that you can't turn into something. So it's even deader stock sometimes. Again, kind of hats off to Chris, because one of the things I came in and said, I think there's a real opportunity for you to do women's wear here and for us to take a lead on it. He's like, we can, but the numbers are tricky. In our trousers, we do from 28 inch to 44 inch in three lengths in all of those trousers. I can't promise that all of those trousers are going to be in stock at all the times. but they have all been made. There's a huge size range of trousers that are already there. The first job I did when I took on the, let's call it the women's project, was just trying our kit on women as it is before we do anything, before we change anything. And actually the linesman pant is a hands down women with women. It's not a flattering pant, but motorcycling pants aren't. You know, they've got to have a high waist for the protection that they offer. So actually the linesman pant, we found that we didn't really have to do anything for that. Because we've got the short leg and we do it in a wide range of sizes and that fabric's got stretch in it, it works really, really well. Same with the super shirt. We've introduced an extra small. So the sizing on the super shirt now goes from extra small. It may even go to double extra small if we think we need to up to triple XL. And because the super shirt's got so much stretch in it, actually trying it on a lot of women, it's not going to fit everybody. It doesn't fit every man. But I've made some tweaks to the smaller sizes because some of the smaller sizes weren't fitting some men as well. Try and fit the bell curve of most of the people that are riding. So our women's project is really looking at this unisex sizing and how can we increase the amount of sizing we're doing without doubling the amount of SKUs.
SPEAKER_01:What's coming next? What's in development? Tell us all the good stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Superpant. which is a legging version of the super shirt. We'll look to get that certified to AA. And I think super pant will be really liberating for female riders as well because effectively they can wear that on the bottom and then they can access, you know, the outdoor industry for trousers to go over the top. Wearing it over the weekend, it was roasting hot. I mean, I had the super pant on and a pair of trousers over the top, but when I was riding, I wasn't, wasn't overheating. The rest of the team all had Mongolia kit on and I think I was as comfortable as they were. But the nice thing, when we got to the campsite, I could just take the super pants off and I've got my trousers on.
SPEAKER_02:That was with very soft knee armour and soft
SPEAKER_03:armour in the hips as well. Yeah, yes. They've got a coccyx pad in them as well. So hip pads, knee pads and then a coccyx armor in them as well. Mongolia, I've been working a lot on. So the guys were in the Mongolia kit. So that's the new Mongolia 2.0s. It's just going through CE testing at the moment. So that's a nice kind of stage on from the Mongolia and Atacama kit that we had that was developed with Lyndon. Still taking that Rally heritage, but now we've taken it on board of how can we create kits that can be used on multi-day adventures, or you're going to go off on a GS around the world, how could you wear the Mongolia? And how can we take that layering principle in that and move it forward?
SPEAKER_01:No, there's a question for you and I. I don't know the answer to this. I hope Jim does know the answer to this. I'll know. You know everything. You've got the knowledge. There's a concept we need to expand on. What would you say is the most popular, the biggest selling product? two pieces of Adventure Spec kit.
SPEAKER_02:I'm guessing this one. Well, it's easy, isn't it? It's going to be the linesman and the linesman pant.
SPEAKER_01:That's what I was going to say. Yeah, the two linesman things. Or is it now the super shirt?
SPEAKER_03:Is it super shirt and linesman pant or R2? Two big winners. Really? Not the linesman jacket? It sells well. Kind of number three, really, alongside. There's quite a few that tie for that number three, but a super shirt and linesman pants are the two. And I think that's really because there's quite a few people that do something similar to the linesman jacket.
SPEAKER_02:I always pick it off the rail. I picked it off the rail recently for my road trip to the Alps. And mainly because the pockets are fantastic in it. And especially the pocket on the inside. Just put so much in it. That's what I love about it, is that big bits... can go in those huge pockets, as well as it being nice and cool.
SPEAKER_01:Traditionally, again, going back to when I started riding, it was motocross gear or the big Heineken suits that had multiple layers. Because we ride off-road... You get too hot in something like that. Even in the winter, you can get too hot in something like that. So I'm not even sure we need to talk about layering. It's just such an obvious, blooming thing. It seems like some of the bigger companies are now picking up on, which Adventures Pick have been doing for years, right?
SPEAKER_03:A lot of brands in the outdoor industry, it took them a long time to cotton onto the layering system. And now that's standard in outdoor. And when I came into motorcycling and I bought my first... adventure suit. It was waterproof and insulated. Then you go, well, hang on a minute, it just kind of is waterproof. I've got to zip this thing in, but the outside's getting soaking wet. It was kind of really nice to get to know Adventure Spec and the layering system and really understand the principle behind the layering system because it's all about comfort and it's all about safety. If you're wearing a big bulky suit, you just haven't got as much movement. All those layers on the road when you're riding to the trail. So when you get to the trail, you're not freezing cold. And when you get on the trail, you're not overheating. I'm a real product geek. And I love testing fabrics, understanding how fabrics work, understand how materials work and stuff like that. The CE testing for products has been really interesting to understand that and starting to understand how layering works for protection as well. The Super Shirt goes in for testing and we've tested that to AA, which effectively is up to sort of those 40, 50 mile an hour speeds. That's what the Super Shirt is designed to be crashed in. But if you put the linesman over the top of it, you've now got a AA protection. with a single A rating over the top, that's going to be better to crash in than the Supershirt on its own. But that's led me into lots of research around the old Cambridge test and leathers and the research there that they found that crashing in leathers that the riders were all getting burnt because the vibrations of the leather so bike races were then mandated they had to wear a silk undergarments underneath the leather to stop them getting burnt so there's all this sort of stuff that I'm starting to learn about how the clothing you wear crashes if you see what I mean and how building those layers up and again came back to cycling you know when I started cycling and cycle racing I was always told to wear an under jersey you're still going to get road rash but you don't get it as bad So actually, when you go back to sort of this principle of layering that Dave and Chris bought into motorcycling, yes, it was about comfort, both hot and cold, but it was also about safety. So the idea of wearing the linesman jackets with the arms on, riding to the trail, oh, I'm at the trail, now I'm going to take the arms off. Injury mechanisms change. If you crash on the road, you're probably going to be at high speed and you're going to slide for a long way. If you crash on a trail, you're at low speed, but you're going to hit the deck pretty hard. And the injuries that people sustain change. Actually, layering starts to really play into that as well. And the super shirt and the super pant will kind of play off that.
SPEAKER_01:Right, Noel, maybe I'll answer this, but I'll give you a chance to think about it. What is the next product that you want Adventure Spec to develop? I would like some lightweight waterproof over trousers. I know you do the single track pants. but they're a fairly beefy item which you'd probably put on and wear all day. I want something I can screw up and put in my five litre little bag that I've got my waterproof kit in. And I want it to be as waterproof as your waterproof jackets, which are insanely waterproof. And that was my second question, is I want you to talk about your waterproof ratings as well.
SPEAKER_03:So I was trying to give you a sneak peek, but there might be a pair on my rack behind me here of Aquapack pants.
SPEAKER_01:I genuinely didn't know you
SPEAKER_03:were doing those. Aquapack jacket and Aquapack pant are both on my... my list of products to develop. And again, I kind of walk in a tightrope here because I know whatever pair of pants that I develop, a lot of people will come back to us going, I trashed them. So the waterproof trousers that we're looking to develop, how can we do effectively a value for money outdoor pair of So you could wear them around the campsite as much as you could wear them on the bike, but they've got those motorbike features so you can still wear them over a pair of knee braces. You can sit on the bike and they're not going to ride up. You can put them on and take them off really quickly so you don't overheat. However, there's compromises there on the waterproofness. So the fabric that was developed for the single track jacket that we also use in the Aquapack jacket is phenomenally waterproof. It's 30,000 millimetres, which is phenomenally waterproof. For a fabric to be waterproof, it's supposed to be 1500 millimetres. That's the definition of what's waterproof.
SPEAKER_02:We had this discussion last time, Clive, didn't we, about what these numbers actually mean. Could you just talk us through that, Jim, about what those millimetres refer to?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so if you had a piece of fabric and a big column of water, and the fabric was at the bottom of the column of water, it's basically how much pressure, let's say our fabric does 30,000 millimetres, so that's 30 metres, you're holding a column of water 30 metres high. Wow. None of that water's passing through the fabric.
SPEAKER_02:With no pressure applied, that's just the pressure of the water and the weight of the water.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so to put that into context, if you're kneeling on the ground in a pair of waterproof pants on your kneecap, if you see what I mean, that exerts a pressure of about 5,000 millimetres. Interesting. To put it into context. But then you've got to factor in pressure so see if you're sitting on a motorbike your arse is putting pressure on the fabric wind does have an effect on it not as big as people think it does quite often in the outdoor kit you're making kit for people to go out in 70 mile an hour winds that they quite regularly get up in Scotland then there's a balance the more waterproof you make it the less breathable it becomes so there's this real balance of kind of waterproofness and breathability our kit is phenomenally waterproof and It is breathable, but not to a really high level that I'd expect in, say, outdoor kitting. But we're not necessarily working as hard as someone who's running or walking. And that waterproofness is more important. With the Aquapack garments, I've probably gone slightly the other way. They won't be as waterproof as the single track, but they'll be more than adequate. They'll be 10,000 millimetres and above, so more than adequate. But the breathability will be higher. Again, so there's that sort of multi-use, like you can buy one jacket, it can be a motorbike jacket, but if you want to walk the dog in it, you can walk the dog in it.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think people have unrealistic expectations of breathable fabric?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. There's a doctor at Leeds University who doesn't... Lots and lots and lots and lots of work on outdoor fabrics and outdoor kit. And he said the most breathable parts of your jacket are the four holes in a jacket, which are the arms, the neck, the bottom. It's true, isn't it? And I mean, just having the cuffs loose makes a huge difference, doesn't it? When you zip yourself up, you immediately get, oh, nice and warm. You create this microclimate. But you only have to put your hand in a plastic diesel glove. This was a test that Gore did. do really well for their gloves. Put your hand in a plastic deagle glove and then move your hand around. You go, oh, my hand's nice and warm for a few minutes. And then you see all the condensation around. And then you put it in a Gore-Tex one and you don't see the condensation. You do get moisture there, but not nowhere near as fast to build up. But moisture is a killer for the cold. It transmits temperature either from the body or to the body so quickly. Again, that's where layering comes in. So, you know, making sure that you've got a nice base layer that wicks the moisture away from your body and it sits in the outer clothing. So you don't necessarily always notice that sweat buildup.
SPEAKER_01:One very final question then. Where do you see Adventure Spec going? What are the aspirations of the company? Are you going to become a massive alpine star size organisation or are you going to stay niche to the adventure and trail motorbike market?
SPEAKER_03:I think we're going to definitely stay niche to the adventure and trail market. However, There's lots of discussions amongst us at the moment about how big the company could become doing that. So I think we could go down the Alpine Stars route and do a premium Mongolia kit. We could do a budget Mongolia kit. We could do a something else Mongolia kit. We've got a Mongolia kit. Let's leave it, park it and leave it at that. I think the exciting bit is looking at what other stuff we can do and what other kit a motorcyclist having to go outside the market at the moment and buy from the outdoor industry, for example, maybe those products aren't tailored totally to motorcyclists. If I look at someone like Lone Rider, they've launched two tents now that are specifically designed for motorcyclists. They've taken the idea that the GS rider wants to sleep next to his motorbike. So they've given you a porch that you can put the... You just look at ABR and it was a wash with Lone Rider tents. So they're doing what the customers have asked them to do. And I really like the idea of going, what's the adventure spec customer want
SPEAKER_01:I really like the idea of having my motorbike parked far enough away that if it does fall down it doesn't fall on me in the night but maybe I'm strange that way each
SPEAKER_03:their own I guess but no I think there's a world of opportunity for us you know you can't see it but I've got boxes of ideas here that we're working on some of those will come to fruition some won't you know I really like the idea of Adventure Spec following a similar path to OutKit I know I keep referring to it but it's a brand I know really well I'm really passionate about it still really, really good friends with the guys that run it. When we started OutKit, we were going to do carabiners to climbers. That was the premise. We could buy carabiners in Italy, dirt cheap, and we could sell them direct because carabiners were really, really expensive. But then when we came to launch, we went, oh shit, we can't buy carabiners. They won't sell to us because we're this sort of new way of selling. They still want to sell in the old way. Well, we're going to have to do some other stuff. So we ended up doing trekking poles and rock shoes. And then because I was into canoeing, I started taking... the sleeping bags we did to some of the canoeing events. But none of the outdoor companies were selling tents to canoeists, but they were all camping at all these things. So the range kind of evolved. And then one of the proudest moments for me at OutKit was when a guy, John Ross, a guy called Shaggy, said, I'm going to go do this really obscure bike race called I Did A Bike. And he wanted a frame bag and no one made frame bags then. Well, there was one guy, Eric in Alaska, that ran Epic Designs, who was the only guy making frame bags in the whole world. And we met Shaggy because we just won, ironically, product of the year for the Hunker bivy bag in this mountain bike magazine. And he said, I need a sleeping bag, but I could really do with this frame bag. Do you know anyone that can make it? And I was like, well, I can sew. I'll try making you one. And that led to Alpkit then suddenly making all this bike packing and then... now cycle touring. But very different genres of cycling.
SPEAKER_01:Did you make a really, really, really long tent so people could fit their canoes in as well?
SPEAKER_03:No, we made a really, really small tent so they could fit it in the back of their canoes. But I really like that sort of solving customers' problems, however small they are. So those compromises that you make... When you're buying a tent that's got really long tent poles, you go, oh, well, that doesn't fit in my luggage. Right, I've got to put it over here. More and more tents now that have shorter poles that were developed for bikepacking. But then you go, what does a motorcyclist want out of something that maybe a bikepacker didn't want or a climber didn't want or something like that? It's really exciting to be in this space now and riding with people. And that's why I think it's really important to ride with people, to pick up on those little those little challenges, the little problems, you go, I could solve that for them.
SPEAKER_01:A massive thanks to Jim for doing that. I'm sure you'll agree that was a really interesting insight into how Adventure Spec decide what products they're going to build and how they get them built. As far as partnership goes and sponsorship and adverts go, we are only talking to people that we genuinely believe add something to our hobby. So, obviously, Adventure Spec, we're very high up on our list of people to talk to. I hope you enjoy that. Please support Adventure Spec in the same way that they are supporting us to produce lots more fabulous podcasts. Well, maybe fabulous is pushing it a bit. All right, see you next time.
