We sat down again with James Drew for the final part of our conversation series to talk about his own love for bikes that eventually led to him pursuing a career in the industry as well. After a few stints with other brands, James hit out on his own with Bike The World, a distribution company here in Switzerland that today represents illustrious brands such as Chromag, Industry Nine, and, more recently, Title. We touched on his years in skateboarding and why he got into mountain biking, his career, his riding today and how he approaches riding bikes with his own kids.
This is part 3 of our conversation series and there are quite a few references to Episode 1 where we talk about what it means to run a business in the bike industry in 2021 and Episode 2 where we talk about marketing, sponsorship and social media. Make sure you have a listen to those, too, to make sure you are not missing out on any of our takes and thought experiments.
In part 3 of the conversation with James, we cover:
- What brought James to mountain biking and how he got started in the bike business
- How he made a side hustle into the full-time job that it is today
- Biggest changes and developments in the time James spent in the industry
- How James approaches riding with his three boys
- Pro tips from two calloused bike dads on where to spend it and how to placate your kids
- Where James loves to ride in his own time
Before we jumped into the main conversation, we introduced our Stutz & Giggles initiative to help support the next generation of shredders. We also picked up on a listener question on our take on carbon fibre and its “inately hideous recyclability”.
Finally, we go through our three not so serious closeout questions that we are discussing with all of our guests to get a feel on how they really tick when it comes to bikes and riding.
Music credit: “B-Roll” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License