US Manufacturing and Investing in Bike Businesses, with Matt Lyon of Hydrapak
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2022
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matt Lyon is the President and CEO of Hydrapak. He’s worked in the outdoor industry for decades and serves as the Board Chair of the California Outdoor Recreation Partnership.
In this episode we ask Matt:
- How did Hydrapak get started?
- How many leaky reservoir prototypes did you go through? What’s the hardest part of the pack to reliably seal?
- Do you have any tips for cleaning and caring for hydration reservoirs?
- When you go out for a ride, do you prefer bottles or a hydration pack?
- What are the challenges when it comes to making environmentally friendly products? How big of an impact does using recycled materials make versus creating long-lasting products that need to be replaced less often?
- Aside from supply chain issues, has the pandemic caused you to rethink your businesses in any significant ways?
- What are the advantages of building products in the US using US-sourced materials? Do you think this plays a big role in consumer purchasing decisions?
- What are some of the things the California Outdoor Recreation Partnership is currently advocating for at the state level?
- As a registered investment advisor, is the bike industry a good place for individuals to invest their savings and for retirement?
- As someone who has studied mechanical engineering, what frustrates you about the biking experience today?
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hear that? It's your big McDonald's hunger calling because the big arch is back and this time |
| 0:05.3 | is here to stay with juicy beef, cheddar cheese and that big arch sauce. Hungry? You are now. |
| 0:11.7 | Order delivery on the McDonald's app. |
| 0:15.1 | Serve from 11am. Upcharges and fees apply to delivery orders. Subjects availability, price and |
| 0:19.0 | participation may vary. Hey, everybody. |
| 0:21.1 | Welcome to the Single Tracks podcast. |
| 0:24.0 | My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Matt Lyon. |
| 0:28.0 | Matt founded Hydropack in 2001 and currently serves as the brand's president and CEO. |
| 0:34.6 | He's worked in the outdoor industry for decades and serves as the board chair of the |
| 0:39.2 | California Outdoor Recreation Partnership. Thanks for joining us, Matt. All right. Thank you. Glad to be here. |
| 0:46.4 | So tell us a bit about how Hydropack got started. What was your first product and what was like |
| 0:52.9 | the problem you were trying to solve with it? |
| 0:55.9 | Boy, we got it. |
| 0:56.4 | So Hydropack is 20 years old. |
| 0:58.3 | We started in 2001. |
| 1:00.5 | I had been in the kind of the sporting goods industry for a few years. |
| 1:05.0 | I was working at Marin Mountain Bikes for five years prior to that and had been involved at |
| 1:12.3 | launches of high-tech snow shoes and also some was in the footwear industry for a couple of |
| 1:18.6 | years. So it had a real chance to get around making products that people could use and could |
| 1:27.2 | get direct feedback from. And I've always had a |
| 1:30.0 | real affinity for sports, for being active. I've always been a cyclist, a hiker, a biker, |
| 1:36.9 | other things to start. And so I actually left Marin Mountain Bikes in the summer of 2001 and started looking for something |
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