Navigating Change: KTM's Journey Through Challenges and Innovation with John Hinz and Brad Skelton

In this episode, hosts Matt and Jeff welcome special guests John Hinz, President of KTM North America, and Brad Skelton, a representative from Gas Gas. The conversation kicks off with laughter and camaraderie as they discuss the podcast's unexpected live broadcast. The discussion highlights the journey of KTM, touching on the company’s recent restructuring and overcoming challenges in the motorcycle industry.

John Hinz shares insights into his long tenure with KTM since 2007, detailing his involvement in various projects, including the launch of an ATV, and how the company has evolved. He reflects on the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to unexpected growth in motorcycle sales as people turned to outdoor activities for recreation.

The hosts also address the current state of inventory and production, explaining recent challenges with tariffs and supply chain issues. They discuss KTM’s transparency regarding its operations, notably the collaboration with Kimco, dispelling misconceptions surrounding manufacturing locations and quality concerns.

The episode emphasizes the community aspect of motorcycling, with both guests sharing their passion for the sport and its role in fostering family bonds and friendships. As they look ahead, the discussion hints at exciting new product developments from KTM, reiterating the brand’s commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction.

Listeners are encouraged to engage with the podcast and the motorcycle community while following them on social media for updates and insights.

https://www.pandorasmotorsports.com/

Transcript

All right, welcome to the Throttle Stop Motorcycle Podcast. We have with us Matt, obviously, you know Matt, and then our KTM rep, who's part of the Gas Gas, air mobility group, however you want to put it. This is Brad.



 How y'all doing today?



 (Laughter)

 So I had a special guest meeting today. I brought John Hines, president of KTM in North America, with me, so we, Matt, Jeff, suckers in, and they say, "Hey, we're going to put you on TV, or a broadcast right quick."

 So here we are. Tell me you get shy when there's actually a camera in front of you.

 Man, I'm always shy. You are done. I'm just a bit shy.

 Everyone, this is Brad Skelton, by the way.

 Yeah, yeah.

 And we're all worried about him being on here with us. Yeah.

 So we actually just wanted Brad to come on, and he needed somebody to put the guardrails on him so they didn't, you know, speak out of line. Right.

 That's better. So we let him run. We let him run. Yeah. So we'll see how that goes.

 It's been a good run so far with him.

 Yeah. Thanks for having us on.

 We really appreciate you being here.



 And I guess how you guys have impacted us, once Brad came on as our rep, our... So we were number one in the Southeast last year. Yes, sir. We were 38th in the country.

 Yep.

 Right?

 38th? Yep. Let's go. That sounds like a good story.

 Yep. 486, and 486 dealers in the US, I believe, 38 out of that. So obviously, we owe a lot of...

 Sounds like I'm doing a great job.

 You. Yeah.



 Well, John, David, for, I guess, putting him on our way up and making a tough put up with him.

 Yep. You guys are doing a fantastic job. Thank you for the story. It looks amazing in how you take care of your customers, how you lead your dealership. It's really an honor to be here. So I appreciate you having us on.

 Yeah.

 Yeah. So, you know, obviously, KTM's come under some fire lately and had its own little... own struggles as far as the... What do they call it? The... The dealership. It's not a bankruptcy. It is a... Restructure.



 Self-directed restructuring of the company.



 And so obviously, there's some things that come along with that. There have been allegations of scam failures. There's been stuff talking about China. And I will get to some of that. Like, I don't want to make that the focus of the podcast.



 But I want to at least introduce you guys.



 John has kids at Ride. John has been with KTM for a long time. And I kind of want to start there and just kind of, you know, talk about something else for a little bit.



 So you've been with the company KTM in North America.

 2007.

 2007.



 I was told by someone who knows you, I won't wrap them out completely, to ask you about your first project with KTM.

 I started with a pretty interesting project. I was working for another manufacturer at the time. And a good friend of mine had come over to KTM. Robert Pierce had come on over. And I had stayed in touch with Robert and was talking to him about what's happening with the company. And he was thinking about maybe doing something different. And he said, "Hey, there's a pretty cool project coming. They're going to bring an ATV to market." And the other manufacturer that I was working with, I was in their dealer network. So I was aware of all the laws, the regulations, the safety standards, everything that goes with ATVs because that business is pretty fundamentally different than motorcycles. For sure. And at the time, KTM was really an off-road racing machine. That's what they knew was off-road racing motorcycles. And so there wasn't anyone truly in the organization that knew that side of the business with ATVs. And the regulation dealers had to follow. And product standards. And some of those key attributes to doing good business with ATVs. So he said, "Hey, you should come on over." Talked to our president, John Eric Burleson, who's a long-term best friend of mine now. And so I went over and met with Deb and Robert. They agreed on the organization. So I actually started with the ATV project, which by the way, was a pretty short-lived project.

 So yeah.

 That project didn't last real long because it was a good while last. Right after we launched it in 2007, 2008 was the global financial crisis. Completely imploded and fell apart.

 You couldn't give away a sport ATV during that time.

 It was tough back then.

 So was that post-Leadman and all that on the... And I don't know if that really affected KTM. I've been around this. That was a 450 adult. Right? It was always...

 Leadman was after, but that was during the beef trade wars. Okay. The beef trade wars was 2008 and 2012. And then Leadman was somewhere around in the middle of that.

 Yeah.

 So those were some government crisis that I actually helped Deb and Robert with in the company. And we had to do all lead testing on our bikes. Yeah. And we had to go to Washington, DC and testify on the impact of the business on the lead law and the impact, of course, on tariffs and get dealers activated and right putters to congressional members.

 All of this stuff is stuff that we think about as dealers. You're going to think about as corporate KTM. But from the consumer standpoint, we don't really think about the beef tariff. Like the beef trade wars that were going on.



 So for them, we were fighting... They're threatening to tariff everything out of Austria under 500 CCs. Is that right?



 With the beef trade? It was like 100% though. Yeah. It was 100% tariff on everything that was coming in. And so that was a major deal. And you've had to handle a lot of issues like that. And obviously that's something that's happening sort of now. We're going to have issues with tariffs coming up before we move on too much. So 2007, 2008, 2009, were you with KTM at the time? No, I started at 17.

 So you avoided all that. That's my eighth year anniversary. I made eight years and I come up here and then who knows now, maybe not eight more minutes, but yeah, eight years. This is probably it. And the one thing that Heinz likes to skip over is ATV stuff, but we still work all the track side support, all the GNCCs. Every GNCC, we still get a customer. Hey man, I wish y'all to make an ATV again. If you'd make one today, I'd buy one today. Like every, so John did a really good job on the four wheel sides. Don't let him, don't let him glaze over that he's not a quiet guy.

 He's going to be honest. If we did a lot of different stuff, I did Husabergs, I did Crossbow, launched the RCA. And a lot of, a lot of those early projects where the company was making some pretty dramatic changes. Yeah. I mean, really focused just off road and race company into a full motorcycle.

 What was your role in that?



 What was your role in the development of like the ATV side of it? You're talking about the safety standards and all of that. I know the Polaris was brought in at the time.



 So what role did you play in that?

 By the time I joined the organization, like the product, so I actually took the product to market, like we launched the product. Okay. Started racing GNCC. We were racing some flat track with Tim Farr.

 ATV Nationals too.

 We had a couple of different race programs that we were doing, got involved in the customer racing side and bringing the product to market.

 So I was going to ask when a factory flat track single was coming. Maybe we need a factory quad also.

 We had it. We had it.



 Tim Farr was one of the greatest of all time.

 Well, flat track, not a flat track quad, but a flat track motorcycle.

 Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.



 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Chris Fillmore. Yeah. That was another little project that we had.

 Yeah. I'd love to get a series started on. Yeah. I'd love to get a series started on this half of the country.

 I only griped with the ATVs at this point is that, you know, showroom space comes at a premium around here. And so we're, you know, putting ATVs.

 That's good.



 That's a lot of ATVs. Yeah.



 A lot of ATVs. A lot of ATVs. A lot of ATVs. Here we go. All right.

 My point is I don't want that again. Like I think I could sell it. I don't want that again.

 We're focused on motors.

 But as we, as you go from there, getting up, you know, through the years, eventually the next thing I know about you is you're, you know, named as the next CEO of KT North America. So how did you get from there all the way to there?



 Yeah. Well, it's a journey. My whole career has been a journey and it's, it's a bit like I mentioned,



 helped out the company with, with Hoosaburg and that came, came back to the company. We brought distribution back in house. We set up a whole new dealer network. Yeah. We basically evolved that brand, brought out brand new product, new generation of motorcycle. We had the crossbow project for a short period of time. We're going to bring that to the US.



 Set up a network for that. And eventually at that time, Audi stopped it. The car is in the States now. Right. And we're working and selling it through a select group of partners of ours, specifically around racetracks, right? Competition vehicle.



 But I worked on that project,



 worked on the launch of the RC8 Superbike and then the whole street bike line, then eventually product manager for, for all the products, you know, off-road, motocross, street. And via that process worked a lot with the marketing team because of the product marketing and eventually took over the marketing department as vice president of marketing, some allegations of the import, regulations of importing all the vehicles in the US.



 Fillmore and I went Superbike racing with the RC8. So we did that project together as marketing for the RC8 and just kind of worked on all kinds of different projects for the company. Actually not in one vertical, but all the projects you had to work across the entire organization. You had to work with customer service, you had to work with marketing, with sales, you know, with, with some obligation, legal, finance, accounting, racing. And I think truly being blessed to be able to work on all those different things gave me this breadth of knowledge across the whole organization on how it works. What do we have to do? How do we take product to market? How do we best support our dealers? How do we connect best with our customers? And eventually, John Eric, after 20 years, decided he wanted to go do something on his own and create his own company and invest in some other businesses and had that opportunity and was well positioned and then worked with him on the business, on the strategy of the business.

 I saw where you had, you had like the announcement came out and you guys kind of worked together for a year or so and then you took over, right?



 Jeb stayed on for a couple months after the announcement, but I mean we had worked side by side for 10 years.

 Yeah. And there was a lot of growth under him. And that's one thing I noticed. Like I was a KTM dealer as of 2014 and they, you know, KTM was a growing company even before that. And I saw how like I actually tried their stock price where it was like $5 had grown to $150 by 2015.



 And then, you know, just kept, it seemed like there was no end to it.



 And then we get into your tenure where you got started going from 2017 to 2019. There was still growth and then COVID happened.



 Like that crazy.

 Yeah. I mean, I don't know how it was for you guys, but for us, we're all worried. Like we were like, what's going to happen to the motorcycle industry?



 Obviously it turned out for the better, but like we reacted, right?

 Yeah. I mean, I pulled 25% from everybody's pay.



 What was it? Middle of April or so that lasted like two weeks. And then, you know, we, yeah. And I mean, like it was, we might as well not even been here at one point.

 It was global pandemic would make your motorcycle business better. Like you missed it.

 I tried. I remember now that my crystal ball is a little cloudy.



 But yeah, I mean, we did. We, we were scrambling and we were worried. I mean, just like everybody else. I'm sure y'all were too. Right. Cause cause it was like you turned the spigot off, not like float it down, but completely off. And yeah, we pulled 25% of salaries from, from everybody, including myself. And then a couple of weeks later, we, you know, it was, it was wide open and I paid every, you know, we, we put everybody back to where they were and then, and then trued everybody up. Uh, shortly after that. And then it was, it was, it was just, it was just weird cause we were, it was more taking orders than selling motorcycles.

 Right. It was, we thought we were going to drive the ship and then we ended up having to react the other direction.

 Yeah. I mean, like pretty quickly it, it became where can I find a motorcycle to sell? Cause this guy wants it.

 It was kind of like the first time in history we'd ever had a phenomenon that nobody had ever experienced. You know, they always say history speaks itself. Right. Well it does, except you didn't have a, you never had a pandemic in a, in a modern motorcycle age. So how, how do you do what to predict on it? I mean, I remember having meetings with Heinz, like we were there to do, we'd have a meeting every day at 12 o'clock East coast time, nine o'clock. And for us on the East coast, that information that come out of that meeting was good for four or five hours until the end of the day. And then I won't say we said idle, but you didn't, it was changing such a rapid pace that we didn't know what was going on until the next meeting the next morning. And you would get one day it was, we were going left and next day you're going right. And like you said, it was, it was funny cause we saw the uptake pretty early on. Like at the time I was handling Florida directly and I called John and I was like, Hey dude, it's the life of come back on down here. Like all of a sudden that was, and then as we started to see that and it was like, Hey, I got, they got us in here and instead of wanting no more, they want all they can get. And we started seeing that ramp and then it was funny to watch it. Like we talked about the sunbelt, then it kind of goes across Texas. And then as it done, it, it started to rise up and that's just like you, how do you know what to do on something you've never done before?

 And we moved during like we were, we were building this facility during that time. Um, and we, like we had started it and we were, we were far enough into it that it didn't make sense to pull the plug. Um, so, you know, we ended up being roughly 20% over budget on, on this building because of materials and, um, Jeff, I don't know if you remember, but the, the roll up doors on the front of the building. Uh, you know, when we first, when I first looked at this building before I ever walked into it, I knew that I wanted those glass roll up doors.



 So like, that was the second thing that, that I, you know, put on the, on the punch list of things to do, uh, during construction. So, um, I had to wait like another year and a half to get my roll up glass doors. You know, we, we worked out of here with like canister doors over there. Um, cause we could, you just couldn't get materials.



 Um, so

 I still have all my notes from that time. And like you said, it was, it was this such a strange time in history for everyone. And I remember I made a trip to Barcelona in February of 2020 and we had a global meeting over there and of course Europe had started it affected by it in certain countries and there was even some concern from some of my colleagues here about me going over and I'm like, no, I need to go. And still nobody was sure, but we knew something was happening. I came back from the trip and I talked to our team and said, we need to get prepared to potentially work remote, make sure we got laptops, phone systems can do it. Make sure we can support our dealers, support our employees. And March 15th, that's when California shut down. I was at home. I remember it happening. I called our, our management team and said, we got to get together tomorrow morning. Everybody's got to read through the California regulation. We got to make sure that we can stay in business. We sat down and said, if we do three things, we're going to be successful. But number one, we got to take care of all of our employees. I'm going to make sure that we keep all the world-class employees. Number two, we got to take care of our dealers. Number three, we got to sell a little bit and collect a little bit of revenue. Keep, keep the wheels turning. I said, if we do those three things, then we're going to be successful as an organization. And every time a state would release, you know, legislation on how they were shutting down or what was shut down or what was going to happen in that state, I would make sure our team would read through it and then we would update the whole sales team and tell them, make sure you talk to your dealers. And we would find ways for them to become an essential business. So we were an essential business because we delivered an essential form of transportation for medical workers, emergency workers, for employees that are essential to the security of the United States. And for our dealers, we would read through all the regulations and see, like, if you had water or food or beverages that you sold in your store, then you were an essential business. So we would guide the team, like talk to the dealer, make sure they've got this in the front of their store. If service was available, make sure you've got signs that service is available and be a service you could provide service loaners or sell out the back or white glove delivery or whatever we could to find a way for our dealers to become essential. Yeah. Essential business is and be able to stay open and help support their customers, help support their employees.



 Just like you, I had people painting the building, painting the fences. We had engine guys that were sweeping out all the warehouses and anything we could do to find work because we weren't racing. Yeah. All racing was shut down. All events were shut down. We had a whole team that was in Texas at the time that we had to call back. Like I remember making the phone call going, yep, I'm, you know, shut it down. You're halfway through the event. And I think it was free stone or something. And it's like, come on back.

 When did you see the racing and all that start to pick back up?

 So we saw it. Um, I could see it in, in the daily retail sales. So we also changed a lot of our business practices and how we looked at the business, how we track the business. And we still use all of those, those different reports and metrics today. So we had to evolve the business to understand what was happening on a daily basis and everything shut down. And then we slowly started to see off-road motorcycle. And you could see Enduro bikes and cross country bikes start to sell. And then as soon as motocross track opened in a certain area, you'd see a little spike of, yeah, of motocross bikes. And we could literally track it. And then it was full size. And then after that it was minis, because parents couldn't buy their kids minis. And we started to see a shift in the days that motorcycle was sell, you know, historically Friday, Saturday, biggest days. It was, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.



 Friday, Saturday would drop off because that's when people were out riding motorcycles, they were actually buying during the week because they were at home. Right. And they weren't going into an office and they had time to, yeah, the motorcycle store, assuming that it was open. And so we saw this like, just like shift and everything. And then clearly off-road picked up that first year and the second year, as soon as the vaccination hit and we saw street bikes go. Yep. And you know, it was your mindset and yeah, in a different mentality for a street bike owner than it is for an off-road owner.

 That's interesting to hear you say that, uh, that there was a shift from, from weekend sales to weekday sales, because we saw the exact same thing here. And to some degree it's stuck, hasn't it? Like, I mean,



 so y'all see the same, y'all see the same thing on, on, yeah, that's interesting.

 We get lots of reports for a weekly report and it shows you kind of get it ramp up to Wednesday and Thursday turns back off. And then you should get a second, like you get a Friday, Saturday deal, but it's funny, I don't ever remember it. Like I don't think Wednesday is my big retail day.

 Oh, it's always been just people show up on Saturday. You're setting up deals and setting them up.

 You're getting ready for the weekend and week. And they were like, we race a lot. So like you always had a, you always think of Monday, been a busy day. Cause I need to, whatever we wore out or need to replace whatever buying you off, but like Wednesday seems to be the, I don't know, like we talk about, you know, it just seems like it's that has been a shift in businesses continue. Right. Yeah.

 As we saw like sales pick back up, um, we saw it and correct me if I'm wrong, but more bikes came into the States in 2020. Then we saw in 2019. Is that correct? And that just kept wrapping up and ramping up. Um, and I think that that's somewhat where we get kind of into trouble as you know, KTM to do that.



 Um, what I imagine happening and what you can kind of elaborate on this, um, they had to sign contracts. They had to sign long-term contracts with suppliers on these parts to make sure that put them in a position where you had to keep producing that level of motorcycle.



 Is that sort of,

 it's sort of to some degree, our company's pretty nimble in that we're a racing company. Like that's ethos and mindset of the organization. So, um, when, when the pandemic started, no one knew. And it started to come back and then it like it with a vengeance and everybody wanted to be out, you know, outside and outdoor recreation and motorcycling. And we're all thankful that was a part of that, that third, it was cycling and, you know, bicycling. And at that time, the, there's year on year kind of repetition where you, you've got a good gauge on, on volume. You've got a good, right on inventory on sell through on, on how the business progresses year on year. And there's different factors. Of course, each year that, that you'll modify your projections for, but no one can, can project what happened in COVID where everybody wanted to be outside and everybody wanted to be a part of outdoor recreation. And literally we sold down to zero inventory. You know, our inventory dealer stock, everything was gone. Everything was off the shelf and our company's pretty nimble, racing mindset. So I talked to our, our management in Austria, our board of directors and said, Hey, we've got an opportunity here in America. Our dealers need more inventory. Our customers want our, want our products. They want our brands and let's take advantage of that. And there was parts of the world that didn't rebound as quickly as what happened here in the United States and Canada. And so we were able to quickly take that inventory and create the right spec for the United States market and Canadian market, bring that inventory in and in fact, bill US dealers and make it a good product for your customers. Right. So from a very like dramatic situation, we were able to react very quickly to make sure that we had motorcycle here and parts here. Yeah. But of course coming out of that, then you got to find the right level again. Yeah.

 And we knew it wouldn't last forever.

 Yeah. And that's, that's the situation that, that every business is in. Right. Not just our business and all manufacturers, all products, all businesses are finding that right level again.

 Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I've, I've said it a lot and I guess I can't deny it now because it's going to be like, I feel like I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like, the dealers are, are to blame because of the influx in inventory now. Cause we all ask for it. Right. I mean, we, no, you don't, you don't think, um,

 how, how low did your inventory get? Like how, like, how many?

 It looked like we were going out of business.

 I literally had guys calling me and going, Hey dude, if you don't give me some motorcycles, I've got customer asked if we're going out of business.

 Right.

 So that's why I asked you like, what, it's your lowest point. What was your real time inventory on your units? If I walked in that day and went, Hey, was it?

 I think probably the best way to answer that is I, we talked about it at one point and we were one to one on sales and deliveries. So created motorcycles coming out the back of a tractor trailer and doors, uh, motorcycles going out the front door was one to one for like three months in a row. And I don't remember, you know, that was right in the middle of, of all of it. Um, so yeah, I mean that just that alone tells you there wasn't a whole lot sitting here on the floor.

 Right. That's the conversation is what, like I see this inventory, like how many motorcycles are in stock today? Like to that's the prediction is you go from, from this level down to one to one. So where's the reality anymore? And like, we've seen people that were, I mean, think about how many new customers come into the base that we talked about it. Well, like we didn't care as a manufacturer. It was just cool to see all the people experience. Yeah. Cause we took a bunch of that customer from the stick and ball stuff. It just got away from us. Yeah. Once I mean, did we all know once you ride a motorcycle, your motorcycle's for like, you'll come and go and all, but I see it. So when you get that inflection, uh, that, that whole big group of new riders, like what is the maintenance of all that, that group of riders look like, you know, and from a parts perspective and all that. So it's everybody's got to find a new baseline. And I think that's what we're all struggling with.

 And it's a partnership. I mean, that's why we're here. We're here to talk to you, to find out what do you need? How can we help? How can we help your customers? How can we help your business? Like that's the type of company that, that we are. And that's what we do. So it, and now we all together have to find the

 right level.

 That right spot.

 Yes. And, and, um, you won't hear any of us. Are you that you guys have made effort to, that's one of the reasons, that's one reason why the KTM is in the financial situation that it's in, right? Just to some degrees, because all the help that has been offered to, to ride that ship, a lot of,

 but also a lot of investment, right. Like our company invest in the work. We're a motorcycle company. This is what we do. This is what we love. This is our passion. No, you, you look through our organization and your organization and. And you're, you're a motorcyclist and cyclist, like you love two wheels and that's the same for us. And when you have a group of people that are so like-minded and so passionate. You want to see this sport grow. We want it to be better. What we've, we've dedicated our lives to. And so we've been investing in the sport. We've been investing in the business.



 We've always wanted to see it grow.

 Like even from like the, the, the motor X cells, like I prefer to get it through KTM because I know that that money goes back to support racing. Um, and that's, uh, that was just recently revealed to me is that the motor X cells actually contribute to that. For sure.

 So it's, it's interesting. So in 2023, we sold 319 orange, white, red motorcycles collectively. Right. So KTM was foreign gas gas. We sold 319 in 2024. We sold exactly the same number 319 again.

 You didn't buy a motorcycle from me and make it 320.

 So these are, did his part. So I bought a bicycle. He did buy a bicycle.



 Two wheels.

 And you made a fool or out of bought one.

 How different is that?

 We did that one flat track. So, uh,



 the KTM number was exactly the same and, uh, the Husqvarna gas gas numbers, the volume were, you know, skewed, but equal 319. Um, and we talked about it the other day, we are up just a tick.



 Um, this year, just a year to date over, over last year, obviously everybody's doing business a little different. Um,



 obviously, you know, there's, there's some hurdles currently, and we kind of alluded to this, um, in the beginning, but you know, all the, all of our KTM, Husqvarna gas customers, all the peer customers are, are aware of the, the issues, if you will, um, whether it be cams or, or financials or, or whatever, um,



 I think it's been KTM, um, has, has maybe been a little too transparent, I think transparency is good. Right. I mean, what are your thoughts?

 That has of transparency. That's been my thing. Like, so the headline within the, uh, peer mobility group, their, their corporate site is, uh, we invest in China and like, didn't even, you know, it didn't, it didn't express like exactly what that meant. And then you see, um, you know, cycle news or whoever comes out with an article and they say KTM moves production to China. Well, they didn't specify which production, like people only read the headline. So we ended up, you know, just thinking all the, all the box are made in China now.

 Yep. And there's, there's two models, two models, yeah. Seven nineties. Right.

 And I want to, I want to address, I think for your, for your customers too. Like you mentioned the cam issue, you mentioned it, right. There's, there's very, very few ham issues that are reality back.

 But I got a Facebook group that says otherwise. I agree.



 There's a whole bunch of people that have gone to your Facebook group that says otherwise, but I want to make sure that, that it's, it's clear to your customers. There's any issue with the motorcycle, bring it to you, your technicians.



 There's service qualified. They come to our training centers. They know what to look for. They know if there's any concerns, they can take it apart, visually inspected, make sure that there isn't any issues and if there is, we're going to take care of it. So when we were standing behind the product, the new, the new, 23, 24, 25



 wind cylinder motorcycles from here on out, I'll have a four year warranty. If the customer comes in and does their service at your shop, they get a two year extension on it. So four years. So we're standing behind all the products and we always have.



 And, and the

 number of actual cam failures is pretty small.

 And I agree a hundred percent. I mean, I, you know, when this, when this first came out, I started paying attention to it, obviously. Right. Because customers started asking me about it. And, uh, we've, we've talked about on here before. I think we're still at two seven nineties. Yeah.

 Is that it's two, maybe a third. Yeah. I don't know.

 So two seven out of so 319 units a year, obviously all those weren't seven nineties and eight nineties, but point being, we, we, this, just this dealership alone has put a lot of those bikes into market. Um, and then you, you stack on top of that, all the other dealerships that have put those bikes in market. And we've only seen two seven 90 camshaft failures.



 I mean, I don't, I don't, like, I don't see the problem, right? Obviously that's a problem. Any, any type of failures at all, but everything has failures. It doesn't matter what brand or if it's twin cylinder, single cylinder, whatever.

 Mechanical can happen. And it also can happen based on where people ride, how they ride, how they maintain, like what happens, but that's why your technicians are trained. They can ask those questions, find out what actually happened with the motorcycle and what is the failure and they connected to our customer service and our operations, we record all those failures. So if there is one, we know it, you know it globally. We can track those things and make sure that they're addressed and when our customers are taken care of. And that's what you do. And you do a great job. We absolutely appreciate you doing that.

 I've been waiting on the internet to call and see my thank you note, because I don't know what the internet would have done for the last couple of years. It wasn't for us.

 Right.

 I wouldn't have anything to talk about.

 They wouldn't have any board.

 It would be out of business if it wasn't for K10 for the last couple of years. I don't know how we got to be the poster board.

 But so, so moving beyond that and the financials, um, I was sitting here trying to remember the name of it. It's not orange brigade, uh, brigade, but you've, there's a customer,



 uh,



 community initiative, um, just, and I, and I've, you know, I'm breeding between the lines a little bit, but it's to put some faith back in KTM. Right. Uh, is that the, is that the message?

 I think there's a lot of customers with faith in KTM.

 I don't disagree. It's all the ones on the internet.



 Who are all the ones on the internet?

 Well, they got who bought the Yamaha and has been trying to go as KTM to turn coat and yeah, for years.

 There's a, I mean, we have an incredibly loyal customer base that, that stood behind our brand for decades and will continue.



 Um, the orange blood campaign is actually about recognizing those customers. The, there's an opportunity for customers to join the organization or something called the orange board where they can apply to be part of, like a board of directors on the company. You can too. Uh, your employees can log on customers can log on versus going to be a betting process and they're going to condense that. There'll be a, basically an advisory group. You are headquarters on, on how can the brand get better? What are they looking for out of the brand? What are they looking for out of products? How can our products get better? So truly like market feedback directly from our customers. And then another aspect of it is, is just showcasing our customers and joining the brand and enjoying the product and part of the motorcycle community that we love. And so a showcase customers in our social and some of the media that we have around, I think it's

 a great idea. Yeah. I like it.

 So these back, but no people vote. We get it back. So I mean, I'm just saying this, Hey, there's your clickbait for this one. The ATVs are coming back.

 These are coming back. You got to go vote.



 Hey, he brought it up and you didn't want to brought it to market. I'm just pushing the boat. That's my job. You, you, you come up with the ideas. I push them. So that's, I'm doing my part.

 We're doing a lot. We're doing a lot better than back.



 Well, since Brad's during the fight, what,



 uh, what background,

 my background, this group of motorcycle enthusiasts, you know, or addiction, you know, I just said, you know, grew up a little bitty riding, ride motorcycle, like everybody else to backyard, like this, you know, want to go racing. You know, family was into other stuff, you know, like to just carry it on from there and then man, I was, I was racing in college, put myself through college as a mechanic and they worked a couple of mechanic jobs and then just one thing leads to another and you know, you know, probably somebody talk about it. You know, you hear people say, uh, find something you can get, you'll do for free and somebody pay it and you never work a day in your life. And I was under this illusion. I was going to be fast enough to do that. And that, that was, that, that was an illusion. I was not that fast, but when I was in college, I ended up, long story short, working in a dealership there to do this deal and man got out and I didn't, I didn't know what I wanted to do. It's like all I'd ever want to do was motorcycles and motorcycles, motorcycles. And I never forget it. Went, went, got out of college, you know, zero plan, typical way I go through life with not much plan, but when to work for a little mom and pop shop back home, a buddy of mine started and, and, uh, I had a rep walk in one day and the other, it was Friday afternoon, you know, perfect fall day, you know, perfect motorcycle riding, whether bicycle riding, whether in the guy in the, he goes, that's where you do and after you leave here, it's about 11 o'clock. He goes, man, I'm going around my motorcycle. It's been, I want a job like you guys, you know, I want to ride my motorcycle Friday afternoon too. And long story short is got him a resume and the company that company was looking for, you know, a rep at the time and got into sales and who to Charleston. I mean, I've been, I've been in the motorcycle business for all, but a couple of years there for at one point I thought I wanted to go get a real job and that was a mistake. So I went, uh, I actually went farming for a couple of years on a commercial farm. And that, that was, that was not, that's not me. That make you work. There's a lot of work involved in working. That's, that's not me working something other than your job. Yeah. So dude, I just, that didn't, that didn't work. You know, I had a little one at the time and he had got into riding and we were racing and farming and racing don't really overlap in the season. So like she did the race seasons are in farm season and that doesn't work. And man, just kind of, you know, kind of party ways with that project. And, and a friend of mine called one day and he goes, Hey man, KTM is looking for a guy in the Southeast and got in and managed it's. Did I work with a bunch of, I don't, I don't, I work is a loose term. Like I said, it's, it's a lot of effort and a lot of stuff, but man, they've



 90% of the time of what I'm doing other than expensive counts or checking emails. Did I would do for free? Like this is what I do. And I, and I guess my real answer was is that when I went farming, the first day I had off ended up back in my buddy's motorcycle shop, like every time you turn me loose, they ended up back in the same place. And then, you know, and so now I got a 15 year old and knowing that he's got up, we've got into racing and, and man, the company allows us to go racing. And we would go to all the GNCC and. No work tracks out support. And it's funny cause most people that see me at the tracks out support think I'm a, I'm a, I want to buy texts. They have no idea I'm in the sales. And it, for me, it's a way to reconnect with the customer basis. I get to go back. I, you know, if we have an issue or a non-issue, you know, you know, I get a, Hey, every one of these fails. Well, when I sell a couple hundred thousand of them, you know, every couple of years, and I don't think every one of them, but you know, it's the whole deal. And then if there is an early on problem, we can address them. And you know, 90% of what we see is customer induced, whether it's lack of maintenance or not, or lack of knowledge of maintenance.

 And we can, there's a ton of that. I've seen KTM Goodwill.

 Yeah. I mean, we, we know like we do that, you know, and like Hans skipped over it while ago, and I don't think it was intentional, but when COVID kind of got over is, I think it was your and Mark Hyde's idea to go to do this track, to support at GNCC. We started thinking back off and customers were looking for parts. We knew we had parts or just, we took a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of parts and put them in a truck and took them to the GNCC and started helping customers with bikes. And you know, we don't charge labor or we don't charge most time. Like we will work for cookies or ice cream, you know, kind of, but we know the parts was there and you know, we sold the parts to work on the bikes. Dude, for me, it's just, I don't know, man, I've, I've made a living doing something I would do for free. So I mean, it's, I mean, that's, you know, it, it sounds corny, but I mean, it's, dude, it's just that like show me, okay. Like a good friend of mine just took, you know, what I consider a real job. He clocks in at eight and out at five and it's like, bro, you, is that really what you want to do? Like, it's, dude, think about it. Like you come in here and you have a bad day and you only sell a couple of motorcycles and you don't have the right motorcycle, but I mean, dude, everybody that comes in here, we, we work in adult toy boxes.

 How can you not be happy? You can't work in adult. Even when we were walking, I like, I got a big smile. Like we're walking into, you don't have to do with Matt.



 But I mean, that's it. But you know, Heinz, we run and he goes, Hey man, tell me about these guys at Pandora's and I said, dude, there are people. I was like, I, like, I know it. Like all of y'all ride on your own time. All y'all ride bicycle in wrong time. I said, Hey, you're going to walk in here. There's going to be bicycles in everywhere. I said one or two of those for sale. The rest of them are Matt and Carlos or some of the other staff. And I said, there'll be motorcycles out front and they're dirty. Those aren't trade ins. That's what they rode you last night. They got them cleaned up and it's, it's a passion. I think some of these people nowadays use the word passion as an overstatement. I think I'm a marketing buzz word as we all talk about, but dude, it's just who we are, like you turn us loose and like take all the, all the laptops out and all the spreadsheets out, though, all that stuff out, we're just motorcycle.

 Do you, it's amazing how much people like, if they get into dirt biking, especially or motorcycling in general, they're devoted to that. It's not like I'm watching football on Sundays. I couldn't tell you who played in the Superbowl. It doesn't matter to me. And like, I have, you know, I go to church on Sundays and so I'm there talking to the other guys at church and like, I've got barely anything to relate to them with.

 Same thing.

 So that's always a struggle.

 I do the, uh, autocross track every Sunday on that. We agree. Yeah. I mean, that's, dude, I'm a Sunday church.

 Yeah.

 Dirt church, right?

 Dude, I'll say this. I mean, it's a family experience. You know, like we talk about when my kid races, like dude, every, like we, we race about every, like I think I have a race in addiction. Like I think there's a,

 I was going to ask you how many weeks.

 A lot like we were looking at from beginning of February to the end of June, we're home two weekends. And a lot of people go, I can't believe you spend that much money racing. And you know, with the travel stuff or you know, you do motorcycles all week, you do motor cycle weekend. But one thing I would tell them is every Thursday night, every Friday night, every Saturday night, every Sunday night, I can reach and touch my 15 year old. He's in the camper with me. Yeah. You know, it likes it. And you know, like I said, so what, what, what is that worth? I mean, like there's the goosebumps, you know, like I said, I remember growing up with the kid and like, like me and my wife and kid yesterday, part of his motorcycle little program is, you know, he's got a workout deals with yesterday. It was an hour bicycle ride. Yeah. Yesterday after work, we loaded up and the three of us went road bicycles for turning into two hours.

 You know, in life, family sport, you talk to like, talk about going to the track and camping with all these other guys who are just out there for the whole weekend.

 And that's it. You can look at my kid's phone and he's got like his buddies here and he's got kids we race with from Canada, from Illinois, you know, from New York, from Florida, like he, like he hangs out with some of the kids around home, but. Those kids just aren't the same as dirt bike kids. The dirt bike kids go out like that's like, no, my, we win some and we lose a lot. You know, we do a lot of racing, but like one of my favorite photos of my kid ever a couple of years ago, GNC, it rained. I know you don't believe that part, but he had a buddy GNC. There's a picture of somebody, somebody got a picture of my kid at Indiana and he's got the bike, everyone. So this, this will be a couple of years ago. So he was 13 side of the track during a race and him and two of his little buddies during the race have got the airbox cover off and they figured out the bike. What's wrong with it? They didn't, they didn't get it fixed, but he figured out what had happened. That's just cool. Like I think there's a viable skillset that comes out of that the kids nowadays.



 I'm not sure you can get that off a video game. No, there's not a reset button in racing. Like you don't get to go, I crashed, you know, I get to start over and like, there's some piece of it, but.

 Well, you also just, you know, can't get that from a lot of team sports. You're talking about throwing out the stick and ball. Like those absolutely have value for personal development and all of that, but there's so much more you get out of motorcross and you're talking about the family aspect as well, like just having your kid with an arms reach all weekend. Every weekend, if you're doing them, if you want to be a family man, go out camping with your kid every, every weekend and follow the motocross circuit.

 Like, that's it. I mean, that we, we, we, we look, we look like the great American. We look like, I don't know, like the, like a national land, pinch Christmas. You know, we show up and we got two dogs in the car and motorcycles and bicycles. Like we should like, like it's like the clamp is we go up and throw all our stuff out and go, Hey, we're home. And three days later you pack it all up and tell everybody from all over the world, Hey, I see in two weeks in another part of the world. And it becomes, it becomes who we are. So you asked me how I got into the sport. And the answer is it's just who I am. Like, I don't know if I got into it or got out of it, but we just do it. Like, like before we went on, you know, before we started this podcast, Heinz is telling you, like each road is bicycle halfway across the United States.



 Like how many other people done that? Like I say, I say just for fun. You know, he's not racing. He's just like, Hey, we're doing it. Nobody's chasing you. But I mean, we talk about all the times, like you can, like there's just a survival instinct that comes out all this. And I think is, I think it's rad.

 I think it's important to remember through all the arguing. Sorry.

 No, we, we always talk about like work-life balance and you talk about it with a lot of our employees and, and what I tell them is I'm, I'm terrible. I have zero work-life balance because for me, it's just like, yeah, there, there isn't a difference. Like I love going to work. I love working with, with all of you. I love working with our employees, with our dealers. I love being around motorcycles. Like we get a chance to every day sit, sit and hang out with our friends and talk about motorcycles. Right. What an, what an amazing opportunity. Like this is life. And when I get home, I'm on the phone, I'm finished on phone calls. I'm turning on supercross. I'm watching GNCC on Sunday. If I'm at home, after the, after going to the motorcross track, I get on a bicycle, go on a bicycle ride. And like, it's just what we do.

 For sure. Yeah. And, and motorcycles and bicycles, maybe more than anything, bring so many diverse people together. Like, like there, there's always differences in people, you know, the, the $500,000 annual salary guy and the, and the $50,000 annual salary guy are different Monday through, through Thursday, right? But Friday, Saturday, Sunday at the motocross track, everybody's the same. And it doesn't matter. You might be in a smaller camper or you might be sleeping in the back of your pickup truck, or in a tent, but like everybody's there for each other. Everybody sports each other.



 And, and it's the same. It's, it's not just a motocross track. It's it, you know, it's, it's out on adventure rides, you know,

 it's, it's different. Johnny's doing the bicycle stuff too.

 Yeah. A little bit. And, and I want to touch on the bicycle stuff too, because, you know, that obviously, I mean, we're, we're building a bicycle shop next door. Um, so, and you know, my wife Carla has been to Kona and she's, so she's been Ironman world championships in Kona, qualify for that in 2019. I raced mountain bikes for forever. I still race a little bit. I've got, I don't know. I think I've got 85 miles this week on bicycles already. So, um, on regular, not, not your e-bike.



 But we all make bad decisions. Right. Yeah. Yeah. What's that? You actually have to work for it. My truck used to have roll up, you know, hand crank windows in it too, but I will all advance at some point, but you just keep riding your record.

 Well, I ride the e-bikes too. So they're, yeah, they're fun, but I ride it like a mountain bike. It's always in boost. It's all the eight might as well just have one mode. Um, so ride across America. Yeah. Um, Tran, what is it? Trans American, what?

 They call it the trans American trail. Yeah.

 Yeah. But it's, it's on the road. Uh-huh. And, um, you guys are doing a section of it yearly.

 So myself and, and some friends and at work and a couple of friends outside of work. Um, we got this crazy idea to ride across America and we're like, there's no way that we can possibly do this. We're all working full time. We got jobs and, and, and like, we're busy. Right. Right. And, um, so our, our director of off-road racing, his name's Aunty Colin. And, uh, finish detail oriented loves logistics. He came back a couple of days later and he's like, no, I think we can do it. I've, I've mapped out everything. We can do it over eight years, do a section each year. Eight years. And he's mapped out every single airport we're going to fly in and out of every hotel. We're going to stay in every food stop, every water stop, calculated mileage, like everything's done. I was like, all right, well, I guess we're, I guess we're doing this now. So, um, we finished four years of it. So we, we rode from Astoria, Oregon, all the way across the Rockies. We landed this year in Colorado Springs. And I think this next year, I think we're going to Wichita, Kansas. I try not to look too far in advance. I don't, it stresses me out. I just, I just load up my bicycle and go and start riding.

 How many days are you doing this at a time?

 Normally it's five to seven days. This is the, uh, 800 miles in six days.

 I spent an hour on the trainer and my butt hurts. Like I cannot imagine being on a bicycle that long.

 You don't think I can tell you later how that feels.



 There'll be a lot less elevation gain this year than it was last year.

 Yes. Yeah. This last year was, was some pretty serious elevation. Actually the whole time at elevation, we were above 7,000 people.

 I used to, every time I had someone coming through to the trans America trail, the adventure version, I, uh, I would always just tell them, sorry about Kansas.

 Like the route is straight and flat. Nothing weird about driving or riding through Kansas.

 We all ride. We ride road bikes, gravel bike, mountain bike, bike. Like there's a group of us. We ride anything kind of depends on the season. We'll change it up. Right. We just enjoy it. And we're riding, uh, this last Saturday, we did a little off-road trail ride and, and motocross on Sundays and we do adventure rides track days. So yeah, just with two wheels, motorcycles, the whichever motorcycle we have, we're gonna, we're gonna go find the right spot to go ride it and enjoy it. And with bicycles and yeah, we just love it.

 So, uh, bicycle business side of things. How's, how's that looking? What, where, where is that headed?



 But bicycle business is, is similar to motorcycle in terms of finding that right level again for all manufacturers inventory and kind of bringing the business back to the, to the right level. But I think all manufacturers would make a lot of big steps, yeah, reducing inventory that they have and dealers have.

 And it's a totally different set of manufacturers. That's wild to think about too, that you're like in a position where you're having to think about the two separate industries, um, and the related. And I think that we have a lot of bleed over from our guys who are running SORX, GNCC, where they're able to pre-ride a course. And they're actually starting to have some e-bike racing that happens, uh, along with it. But, uh,

 in the e-bike crossover.



 Customer.

 Yeah.

 Motorcycle is pretty high. Right. Yeah. It's such a nice product offering to have here and connect off-road riders and racers. Like GNCC is the tool.

 Right. For sure.

 Yeah. Not even, it's not a bicycle. It's actually a tool.

 It's almost necessary.

 And I'll say if you don't pre-run on a e-bike, you're at a complete disadvantage. Right. You like, that's it. We go racing like if the e-bike doesn't get loaded, it'd be just like leaving your gas can. Right. Right. It is a required, I mean, just straight up, like you, you get motorcycle, gas, cam, boots, e-bike.

 Like it also helps, like, you know, that there's going to be a difficult hill climb that's coming up at a certain point. You know, you want to be ahead of whoever that slow rider ahead of you is by the time you get there. Once you get to that, you don't want to be part of that pile up.

 Yeah. I mean, it's like taking route notes in a rally, right? I mean, you kind of, it's, it is necessary now.

 I mean, it's almost as, I mean, it's, you know, look at, it's a safety piece too. I mean, like you figure the old school way of, you know, motorcycle racing or whatever. You and 40 of your closest buddies piled into the first turn together. And like, was this the office we go as on blind? Yeah. Yeah. At least now they're pre-running or at least, you know, people can tell you that they used to walk the whole course or pedal the whole course. I'm telling you, 90% of the people weren't going all the way. Right. Check maybe the first mile and go, oh, I got it. Now it's close enough. They go back with the e-bikes nowadays. I mean, a lot of these guys, GNCCs, they'll pedal a track two or three times. Yeah. There is no surprise. So you get a safety car and they're for sure there's competitive advantage.

 Obviously we're seeing that correction on the bicycle side, e-bicycle side.



 And I know we're going to see the correction on the unit side of the major units, the motorcycles.



 I think that it was something like .... gas gases are coming into the states or is that confidential? Sure. I'm not.



 Generally, we're not, we don't talk a lot about the total wholesale volume for the organization, but across the board, we're trying to right size that inventory. So we're taking a look at it not only by brand and by country, but down to a segment level model of either level.



 You may have a lot of inventory. There may be another that's trying to help support all the dealers that might be able to get dealer transfer and move inventory or a different wholesale volume with another dealer than yours. And so it's truly the business is unique that way where, yeah, you have to understand each individual business and where they're at and what the market conditions are and how we can best support them.

 I'll have to get them to bleep me out during that part.



 But anyway, so we're going to see a great reduction. And obviously we, there's one piece of it that I think that we need to talk about. And I brought it up to you earlier. Obviously we had a time period where Kimco was stamped on the side of the cylinders. That raised a lot of alarm bells and people didn't know that KTM has been working with Kimco for so long. And the accusation comes out, KTM is cheaping out on cylinders. They're moving manufacturing to China.



 And so I just have to point out Kimco is not a Chinese company. They're out of Taiwan. They're started as a subsidiary under Honda in 1967. And since then, they've been an excellent manufacturer to deal with. So it's not because of you know, cheaping out or anything. It's because they're a good supplier.

 Yeah.



 Even if you go on Kimco USA's website, their homepage, you'll see a slide on there. And there's a picture of Mr. Honda with Mr.

 Sociero himself.

 Yeah. And they talk about how they're a proud supplier for Honda, Kawasaki, BMW, and Harley-David.



 And that's the type of world class supplier that we work with. But we're such a small part of their business. They don't even list KTM on their website, but they're listing two large Japanese brands, a German brand and an iconic American brand on their website. So it's part of being a global motorcycle company. We're a global manufacturer. And we have global manufacturing sites all over the world, depending on the market needs and the product needs and the vendor supply chain. You have to have multiple vendors.



 The products that are being built right now are incredibly complex, like the R&D cycle and the investment into R&D, the erasing in our development cycle, requires multiple suppliers in terms of the supply chain. Because if one vendor defaults, goes bad, and you can't supply the part, you can't stop an entire assembly line based on the investment that you've made in that product. You know, a typical R&D cycle is over four years long. When you get down to the final production day and production line, you got to make sure that you've got the quality supply chain and supply chain is on time to be able to build a motorcycle and bring it to market.



 So it's a global organization.



 Just as all manufacturing.

 Right. When the, sorry, go ahead.

 I was just going to say me and Brad have laughed about it, but if all these Chinese motorcycles won a lot of championships, didn't they?



 That's a Brad-ism that I don't know if that's public, but that's me making fun of the internet.

 Yeah. Yeah.

 We all laugh. You go, "I read on the internet." Well, let's go see what we can find on the internet. I can see some interesting stuff that we aren't talking about on here, but I'll show it to you anyway. But I mean, that's just it. Like, it's a running joke. And I don't know if it's even fling the Heinz anymore. I think maybe the first time you kind of took it with that piece of moron. But every time we come out of this deal, you know, the whole Chinese press come out. They're all made there. And it's like, they're not. We've all established the ways they're not. But I just couldn't help it.

 The media didn't do us any favors by saying, like, the headline just said, "KTM moves production to China and didn't elaborate." But you know that's all that anyone ever reads.



 So they've got the click date.

 That's how things work nowadays.

 Yeah. So yeah. Part of social media and part of getting clicks for...

 Yeah. Well, nobody will ever read anything. I mean, Matt even admits it. I send him an email and he goes, "Well, I didn't read the email. I just called you." And I was like, "Well, why the hell did I type the email?" You know, but nobody reads everything. They just read the read number years ago. I can make fun of my own family. I can't make fun of anybody else's. But I was at a family union or some kind of event. And the guy goes, "Hey, did you see Ducati's making a diesel motorcycle?" And I was like, "Do what?" And he goes, "Yeah, they're a diesel." And I was like, "No, they're not." And he obviously was a smarter motorcycle guy in the conversation. So a couple days later, I don't even know what I thought about it. And I Googled it and Ducati was doing a deal with diesel clothing. Yeah. But he read, "Hey, diesel Ducati." And I was like, "That's what's wrong is we don't read the details anymore." And that's what I liked about, you know, Heinz did some of the videos that we did, the facts versus fish. Go, "Hey, here's what you read. Here's what it means. And if you read the rest of the story, you know, I think it was a pretty good radio. Is radio even exist anymore? It used to be a radio show." You know, the rest of the story was Paul, whatever Paul Harvey's deal was, you know. And it's like, I don't think anybody reads the rest of the story anymore.

 Well, yeah. And all your buddies who are, you know, riding the Japanese bikes for so long, they got something on you now. Like they're going to scratch at that every chance they get. And, you know, they're just preaching what they've always done.

 We like it though. I mean, obviously we know the real story and we know our facility in Matakofen in Austria just outside of Salzburg. The Matakofen is the M in KTM. So it's Connery, Krunkenpulse, those are the two founders. And M is Matakofen. That's where the motorcycles are built. That's where racing headquarters, there's a global headquarters brand headquarters. You know, we've got, I think around 700 engineers that work there in R&D that are developing next generation motorcycles. Like we make a massive investment of our rep full annual revenue into R&D projects. We've got a small little elite R&D crew in the United States that helps define the final specifications for the U.S. market. So there's some global product. A lot of our street bikes are global products, but on the off-road side, like the XE line that's just built for us here, that's just built for cross country racing, primarily for doing proceed. So we do all the final settings on engine mappings, on exhaust, on suspension settings. Our team does all the final WP Pro component settings for all the off-road bikes. So the multiple settings on Pro component aftermarket. On the motocross side, we have U.S. spec motocross bikes that are built for our track, our terrain, how we prep track, which is different than really rest of the world, but primarily Europe. We have different suspension settings, again, different engine mapping, exhaust controls, and a different deal for the motorcycle than they have in the rest of the world. So the team here is developing truly specific bikes for this market for grid and chip and for our customers here in the United States.

 So I think we're getting a little short on time, but that made me think, why the big difference in the European bikes? Is it the FIM legal tires with the short knobs and the way the bikes deliver power?

 It's primarily like here in the U.S., there's a lot of track prep.



 It's either a sand track or a real hard track.

 Obviously, on the street side of things, the emissions is a huge component, but on the off-road side of things, that's interesting that there's that great a difference. So under the bikes,

 under street bikes like Euro, Euro 5 and Euro 5 Plus, is all exceed EPA and California Air Resources Board standards. So we're bringing over the global spec already to import regulations on the street. Right. And we will do some small changes on street bikes that are very specific for our market, like the adventure segment, we'll specify a certain tire that we believe it can be better for our market. Primarily, we'll ride more aggressive off-road than they will throughout Europe. So we'll have a maybe better than 50-50 tire on our adventure bikes. We'll have a little more street-oriented tire on theirs.



 The U.S. R&D teams are doing the final specifications on all of the adventure R-model suspension. So 390 Adventure, 890 and not for today.

 So they can set it up with fat boys like me?

 No, no. Set it up for how you want to ride. Yeah. And in the U.S. and Canada, they're ridden on more aggressive terrain and more off-road terrain.

 Right.

 Than they are in Europe. So actually a lot of the U.S. spec bikes are also sold in South Africa and Australia just for that reason. So depending on the global market, the market conditions, then we're able to back the bike, change some small details and make sure that we're bringing the right bike to market for our customers wanting to use it.

 We had a U.S.

 Part of the global company and how nimble we can be and how we can change them.

 We even had a U.S. spec, well, 250, a couple years ago, it was lower than the world spec. As the customers asked, "Hey, I want a lower bike, lower street bike, lower street bike." So we were even building, just building like a C-height different.

 Yeah.

 I mean, that's what's cool about coming to this size is like Hans said with the nimble stuff, if we can make changes as necessary or more or less a feedback. I mean, think about what he said while ago. We only make an XE model for the U.S. mark. You got any other manufacturer that makes a U.S. spec bike because that's what the racer asked for. The answer is you don't. You get a bunch of modified motocross stuff. It's different. That's a huge deal. Turns out putting a kickstand on a motocross bike doesn't make it an off-road race bike.

 We believe that or not. You know, semi-post race road transmission, six-speed venom, we do proper mappings, we do proper exhaust system. So we've got a full test crew that goes out and tests on cross-country and develop that motorcycle specifically make the race.

 Or even down to a translucent tank. You don't think about that until you're out of gas.



 Don't oversize tank. It sounds silly, but I mean, let me know how much gas is in a black tank without taking a top off.



 I mean, it sounds silly. It's a simple thing. But it's a little thing. But it makes a difference.



 So we're kind of running low on time.



 I guess to kind of transition on our way out, what does KTM business look like going from 25 to 26 and 27?



 You know, the one thing I love about our company is it's always changing. It's always evolving. And I think probably one of the most exciting things to me is the product development. And the product is everything. It's what our company is about. It's the evolution and innovation of product. There's some really exciting things coming for our company. I can't I can't tell you what they are today, but I can tell you there's some exciting products in the pipeline.

 Yeah.

 Things I've seen. No ATVs. No, no, no, we're not doing that again.

 You lied to me again.

 We're not doing that.

 There's always that.

 Well, let me just write when we look to the future. We we know the product, you know, it's four or five figures out in development. Yeah. It's pretty bright work. We're pumped.

 And I've always seen like little fuzzy images.

 Yeah. Yeah. We'll share a few things.

 A black and white checkerboard. Yeah. And the three nineties. I mean, like we've all seen those at this point or and they look awesome. So if there's if there's more stuff that exciting coming, yeah, we're all looking forward to it. So yeah, I really appreciate you. This is I think this is a little bit out of the ordinary for a motorcycle shop to do a podcast in general, but then have you guys own on the podcast for sure. So I really appreciate you guys taking the time and y'all are a long way from home. So I appreciate you doing this.

 Yeah.

 We knew it was a big ask. That's awesome.

 Thanks for having us. Enjoy. We could we could sit your hours.

 We can we'll cancel dinner reservations and we'll keep talking.

 I don't care.



 And thank you. Thank you for what you do. And thanks for taking care of our community and all of our writers out there.

 Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank y'all for putting us in a position that we can. So yeah.

 Thank you everybody for listening today. If you have any questions, comments, put them down below in the comments section. I don't know if I'm going to call up John and get him to answer questions for us, but I can always try. But yeah, so so check us out Facebook, Instagram. We have a tick tock now. It doesn't get a lot of activity. I didn't make it.

 I want to see you take that.

 I don't want to add to the talk.

 Well, we don't get any views on there anyway. So it doesn't it doesn't hardly count. But yeah, follow along. Thank you guys. Thank you.