PNW Components: How the Brand Got its Start, and Where the Team Gets Their Inspiration
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2022
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aaron and Emily Kerson founded PNW Components in 2015. The customer-focused brand is known for offering quality components like dropper posts, handlebars, and now clothing at affordable prices.
In this interview we ask:
- What kind of bike industry experience did you have before starting PNW?
- Did you observe any problems you wanted to solve, or were there efficiencies that were being overlooked?
- What was the first product PNW launched? Why did you choose that product or product line to start?
- Who does your product design and development?
- Is working with local bike shops and brick and mortar retailers becoming more important as the brand grows?
- What is your customer service philosophy? Is the customer always right?
- Why did you decide to offer a lifetime warranty for PNW products?
- What’s one thing buyers can do to keep their dropper post working smoothly?
- Are there unique advantages and/or challenges to working with your spouse?
- Is there any pressure to increase prices on the products you sell? How are you keeping prices low?
- PNW, along with a number of brands, recently launched a line of cycling apparel. Why clothing?
Learn more about the company at pnwcomponents.com.
✏️ A written transcript of this conversation is available to Singletracks Pro supporters: singletracks.com/support
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab. |
| 0:08.3 | Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal. |
| 0:16.3 | Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:20.1 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. |
| 0:23.1 | My name is Jeff, and today my guests are Aaron and Emily Carson. |
| 0:27.8 | Aaron and Emily's founded PNW components in 2015. |
| 0:32.6 | The customer-focused brand is known for offering quality components like dropper posts, |
| 0:37.9 | handlebars, and now clothing at affordable prices. Thanks for joining me, Erin and Emily. |
| 0:44.2 | Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. |
| 0:47.0 | So, Aaron, I want to start with you. You had a lot of experience in the bike industry and also |
| 0:52.7 | e-commerce before starting PNW. So tell us a little bit |
| 0:56.7 | about your background. Yeah, I mean, it started with bike racing. I started racing BMX when I was |
| 1:02.5 | like eight years old and that then progressed into this is a weird connection. So it was a friend's older brother left his bike at my house. |
| 1:13.7 | And it was a 24 inch wheel rock hopper at the time. This was like, I don't know, |
| 1:19.3 | 1995. And he said, hey, you know, I don't have a way to get it back to my parents' house. |
| 1:26.5 | Like, feel free to ride it. So anyway, so I completely got hooked. That was when I was like a little, I don't know, around 11, 10 or 10 or 11 years old. And I don't know, something about it. It just totally hooked to me. It gave me a sense of freedom and I could go explore. I had really bad asthma as a kid, so like playing sports was always really hard for me, but something about biking, I was able to make it work and kind of became |
| 1:50.1 | obsessed. So that's how it started. Got into downhill racing and dirt jumping and free ride and all |
| 1:55.2 | that stuff and working at shops to basically fund my addiction of, you know, wanting to get, |
| 2:00.8 | to get shop deals on bikes |
| 2:02.8 | and parts. And that was my whole life. I mean, that's where all my friends came from. That's all |
| 2:07.8 | we did was we would watch like New World Disorder videos and crank and all the, I'm probably |
| 2:13.8 | faking a ton of them. And then we'd go out and ride and then we go back and watch more videos. So anyway, that then progressed into, you know, getting into like the elite levels of racing, trying to find sponsors. I was never focused on fitness. So like I had the skills, but I never was willing to like go to the gym or do anything like that, ride cross country. So it just, it helped me back and it just, it kind of owes what it was. But so kind of fast forwarding, |
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