My footage and editing of Chris Moeller, in 1991, when S&M bikes was being run out of the garage of a one bedroom apartment, on Alabama Street, in Huntington Beach, California. Clip from the first S&M Bikes video, Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer, that title was the pick-up line Dave Clymer used to pick up his girlfriend.
I was sitting outside the front door of the tiny "Winnebago" apartment, on a lawn chair. It was 1991. The apartment, officially on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, actually opened up to the backyard of three other units. It was like we had to go into someone else's backyard to get to our front door. The whole apartment was 8 feet wide, tiny living room, tiny kitchen, hall and tiny bathroom, small bedroom, then the single car garage that housed S&M Bikes. There were two tiny windows. It felt like you were in a motorhome, so it got dubbed the "Winnebago," before I moved in.
The fledgling S&M Bikes company, then doing about $100,000 gross revenue a year, lived in the garage. Chris lived in the bedroom, and most nights, his girlfriend stayed over. I slept on the living room floor. Shaggy, who looked just like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, slept on the two cushion couch. I wound up getting fired from my video duplicating job in North Hollywood, while making the "Leg Muscles" video, a story which became a BMX industry urban legend. That's a tale for another day. After losing that job, while making "Leg Muscles," I wound up living in the Winnebago.
Mornings usually started with Chris' then girlfriend Shelly, waking up early, stepping over me and my sleeping bag, and heading out to work. The three of us roommates were up late, usually drinking a bit, and slept in. Often there was an early call from some East Coast bike shop a little later, wanting a Dirtbike frame or a pair of Slam Bars. I groaned in my mild hangover, crawled halfway out of my sleeping bag on the floor, and reached up for the landline phone, sitting on a little wooden stand we found in an alley. I'd bring the phone down to my head, and croak "S&M Bikes." We had a sheet or two of scratch paper, and usually a pen pr pencil on the stand. I'd take down the order, hang up, and go back to sleep.
Somewhere around 8:30 or 9:00, I'd wake up, roll up my sleeping bag, and tuck it in a corner of the living room, then pour a bowl of cereal. I'd usually open the front door, and sit outside it and eat breakfast. Chris would often wake up soon after. I distinctly remember him coming out with a cup of microwaved hot water day after day, and sitting outside the door in the other sketchy old lawn chair, in cheap shorts and some random, well worn T-shirt. He would drink a cup of hot tea. Some days he'd go get a free cup of coffee at his bank, about three blocks away. Money was tight, even for him. Shaggy and I had $200 rent and a little food and beer to buy. Chris had bicycle frames, forks, and handlebars to get built, and orders to ship out, many bills to pay, rent to pay, and a small company to keep running. A pack of ramen really was a standard meal once or twice a week, and sometimes more than that.
One day, Chris came out with his cup of hot water, sat down, and opened up a tea bag, and made his hot tea. We'd usually talk about what orders needed to go out that day, or getting 25 more sets of Slam Bars made, or maybe a place to go ride later, after the day's orders were packed, and picked up by the UPS guy. After drinking his tea, on that particular day, Chris sat his tea bag on the plastic arm of the lawn chair.
The next morning, Chris came out with his mug of hot water, grabbed the tea bag from the day before, still sitting on the arm of the lawn chair, and made another cup of tea with it. I joked about him re-using it, and he said it was still good, and tea bags cost money. Then he finished his tea, and set the used tea bag on the arm of the lawn chair, again.
When he came out the third morning, mug of hot water in hand, and made tea a third time, with the same tea bag, I laughed again. Chris Moeller was a cheap ass motherfucker back then. Maybe he still is. But that is part of what it took to start and run a tiny bike company, in the recession, in 1991. He started S&M, with a $1,200 loan from his Grandpa, (his business idol), as fas as I know. Chris had to live cheap, and re-invest as much money as possible back into buying frames, forks, bars, t-shirts, and the other things S&M Bikes sold. H bought a batch of something, sold that stuff, and took that slightly larger amount of money, bought more stuff to sell, and repeated the process. In this way he multiplied the business' money, and built a small company, without any debt. That's pretty freakin' amazing, considering how much money most traditional businesses start with, how much debt they take on, and how many of those businesses go out of business.
Up in the Hermosa Beach area, skateboarder Steve Rocco was doing the same thing, with a little skateboard company called World Industries. The word was that Rocco named his company "World Industries" as a joke, because it looked big time when the name was printed on a credit card. Rocco's story is documented in the film The Man Who Souled the World, which you need to watch, if you never have.
By 1989, the third wave of skateboarding popularity (60's, 70's, 80's), the second wave of BMX racing popularity (70's,80's), and the first wave of BMX freestylepopularity, (80's), had run their course, and they were business aspect of the two sports were fading. Then the recession of 1990 hit the real business world. The Big 5 companies in skateboarding, and the handful in BMX companies, were hit hard. The industries, run by diehard, old school business guys, went into a nosedive.
Into that mess a few well known skaters and BMXers started their own little companies, which everyone with any business experience, expected to fail. These companies all seemed to have a top name rider/skater running the business, and a smart guy, and less known, less skilled rider/skater, as a sidekick. the sidekicks helped out to a greater or lesser extent, behind the scenes, depenidng on the company.
Steve Rocco started World Industries, and freestyle skating world champion, Rodney Mullen was the smart sidekick. Tony Hawk started Birdhouse, with freestyle skater Per Welinder as the sidekick. Freestyle skater Pierre Andre Senizergues got a shoe company in France, Etnies, to make skate shoes. Then he took it over, working with good friend, and another freestyle skater, Don Brown as assistant everything in the early days. In BMX, Haro pro Ron Wilkerson started 2-Hip, putting on halfpipe and then street contests. His sidekick was former East Coast freestyler Kevin Martin. Meanwhile, Chris Moeller started S&M Bikes in 1987 with fellow racer Greg Scott. They parted ways about 1989, and Chris took over, and I became his brainiac sidekick for about 4 years, after he hired me to make the first S&M Bikes video. John Lucero, another pro skater, and curb skating officianado, started Black Label Skateboards. Ed Templeton started Toy Machine Skateboards. Mat Hoffman and sidekick Steve Swope took their Sprocket Jockeys trick team, and morphed it into several businesses, including contest promotion and Hoffman Bikes. All of these businesses, and several others, really took root in the long "double dip" recession of the early 1990's.
These businesses were not ideas pitched to rich angel investors, who gave these budding entrepreneurs $5 million to burn, while waiting to see if the businesses turned into something that could be taken public, or sold to Google or Yahoo. Hell, Google and Yahoo were still years away from being invented. These little bike and skate businesses were started with a thousand, two thousand, or maybe five thousand dollars, and no clue of how to actually run a business. They were started by guys who were thinking, "We need bikes that don't crack," or "We need to make skateboards where skaters can help design their board and graphics." Basically, the ideas going in were, "We don't know what the fuck we're doing, but this NEEDS to happen."
S&M Bikes is still going strong, 33 years old now, and Chris Moeller is a millionaire. He's probably still a tightwad, at least until one of his twin daughters asks for money. He still rides, with two replaced hips, and it still a brilliant business man. Me, I'm homeless in the San Fernando Valley, but wherever I go, local police are told by someone (apparently from a federal level) that I have a 216 IQ, and they can't fuck with me, since a whole bunch of three-letter agencies have spent the last 18 years fucking with me, went kind of overboard. Apparently that ridiculously high IQ test score (I took that test when I was going to join the Marines in 1985) is overly important to certain groups of people. I've never been told in person what the score was, but have overheard police, who were told, talking about it. I really don't believe it, but that's the only explanation I have for a couple of decades of really weird shit happening in my life. Seriously, that's my story, as best as I can figure it out. OK, my story is far from typical of the others in this bunch, most have fared much better.
Steve Rocco sold World Industries for $20 million in 1998 or so. Rodney Mullen is a skate legend, still skates, and gives TED Talks to super smart people on the subject of creativity. World Industries also spawned Spike Jonze' film career, and Johnny Knoxville, and the whole Jackass phenomena. The three Jackass movies, made for $35 million total, are three of the most profitable movies in the history of film. Really.
Black Label Skateboards is small, but vibrant. Mat Hoffman owns like 9 companies, and has been re-engineered with alien DNA. OK, I can't prove that, but that's the only explanation I can think of for why his body still functions after so many horrific crashes. Toy Mahcine skateboards is still going strong, and Ed Templeton still skates, even after seriously breaking his neck. Ed's also a world reknowned aritst.
Birdhouse Skateboards is still around, I don't know if Tony is affiliated with it these days, or not. But the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game made over $ 1 billion in its ten year run. Tony's doing well, and still skating hard.
Etnies shoes morphed into Sole Technology, which puts out Emerica, E's shoes, 32 snowboard boots, and Altamont clothes. At its peak, Sole Tech did somewhere around $200 million in sales a year, dwarfing these other companies. Now they're battling Nike and Van's, the big boys in sports shoes. More power to them. Pierre and Don are my old bros from years riding and skating at the Huntington Beach Pier, they're good guys.
So now we're in the beginning of another, more serious, recession. I personally think it will be a long, drawn out, depression or great depression, kind of like the Great Recession of 2008, and the long recession of the 1990's, put together. I've dubbed this The Phoenix Great Depression, follow the link to find out why. The dirtbag riders and skaters of 30 years ago are industry moguls now. Will young guys and gals in BMX, skateboarding, and other action sports, start a new series of small businesses to take them out? I don't know. They're all in it for the long haul, and I expect them all to be around for a while.
A whole slew of other companies were also spawned from bike/skate world in the recession of the 1990's. My focus in this current economic collapse isn't on the BMX, skateboard, and the now huge action sports industries. In this economic downturn, I think millions of Americans, many recently laid off, others already working gig jobs or running small businesses, will do what the BMXers and skaters of 1990 did to that world. I think we will see a huge wave of small businesses emerge, many out of sheer necessity, in this decade, the 2020's. Some of those will grow into giants, and into completely new industries, going forward.
Still in the grips of the Covid-19 business shutdown, small business itself has taken a beating. Millions of small businesses are on the ropes now, to use the boxing metaphor. Many will fail. But there just aren't enough major businesses to put 20 or 30 or 50 million Americans back to work, as we exit this recession. Millions, literally millions of new small businesses will be necessary to do this. I think we will start seeing micro and small businesses rise up from the ashes of this massive economic collapse, and create some amazing things. I saw it happen in our little BMX and skateboard world 30 years ago. I think this time around will be even more exciting.
Here's the garage on Alabama Street in Huntington Beach, that housed S&M Bikes in 1991. The back end of the Winnebago apartment
I have a new blog now, about side hustles, gig jobs, small businesses, and making a living in recession of 2023-2025. Check it out:
No comments:
Post a Comment