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Welcome to Momentum, a motorsports podcast powered by High Gear Success. I'm your host, Heather Wilson Schiltz. Here we share the stories and strategies that keep the world of motorsports moving forward. And today I'm chatting with Eric Stephens, Director of E-Commerce for BWI, which is the parent company for Denali Electronics and Vision X brands. So thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me, Heather. So you oversee a huge digital ecosystem across multiple brands, multiple platforms, multiple markets, international markets. So how did you find yourself in this role? Uh it it was a a bit by accident, like a lot of fun things that that happened. But backing up a long time, about twenty years, um I I organized a a group buy for some motorcycle accessories from Germany, from a little tiny company with six people called SW Motek. And I thought that was it, but uh over the next few months I started organizing more group buys for more and more people. set up a little tiny uh website as a side thing for that I called Twisted Throttle. And uh fast forward about two years and I was making more money at that than my day job. So I left the responsible uh career that my parents helped pay for with college and um started playing with motorcycles and outleting them for for a living. So uh over the next 10 years started uh importing and distributing. about a dozen different brands and eventually figured out that uh there were some product types and some opportunities that that we um we didn't have a good supplier for one of them was lighting and so we started taking what we knew about vehicle specific hardware and making things fit and giving a a a really good customer experience to solving the problem of how to do vehicle specific wiring, vehicle vehicle specific mounts and helping people be safer on the road, you know, by by seeing it being seen. So so that was what eventually became Dinhali. And uh Dinali electronics as a lighting company grew and eventually became much larger than the original twisted throttle company. And uh about four years ago now, uh I sold both companies to BWI. And um It's been an interesting journey of of scaling since then because they asked me to start working or overseeing e-commerce and and digital marketing for a bunch of brands outside of the the motorcycle industry and the uh the four by four industrial and and side by side space. And they asked to scale these brands globally. started to work on ways to effectively translate into 20 languages, localize currencies, uh try to figure out how to advertise in in cultures and languages that I I was not a part of. so it's been a it's been a fun uh learning journey as as we've figured out how to take what work here and start to to move it to a much larger space. Well, and that's a ton of different pieces between like kind of seeing an opportunity in the industry, researching it, it sounds like some product development. And then like, by the way, we're also gonna um sell it and market it, like just no big deal, just like the jobs of a billion people combined into one. So do you kind of enjoy that challenge? Uh absolutely. It's it I think I have the most fun when there's a little bit of uh technical work on on digital marketing and websites, a little bit of work um doing product development and a little bit of work building relationships with with people that you know we're we're excited to work together with on the project, whether it's an ambassador or you know, a dealer or know, anyone else in the industry. It it's just really fun when when it all comes together as uh part business, part creative, part social. Yeah, I would say most people don't have the type of brain that can kind of do all of those things well. like myself, I would consider not very technical. Like I love the creative marketing side of it, but like product development, like not a chance. Um, so that's pretty cool that you're able to kind of bring all those things together and then have built these things from the ground up and then be able to like sell and still be involved years later is really cool. Yeah, it it's a lot fun. And and and I've been lucky enough to uh partner with folks that are really good at at what they do. You know, well any one person can only take something so far, and then you've got to build a team that that has experts in each thing. so so as as we started growing Denali, I initially hired a really talented designer named Nate Bastien out of the Rhode Island School of Design. And he's he's grown into the brand manager and has really taken over a lot of the the product development and helped that grow. Yeah. So each each piece of the the business has been something uh that at a certain point you gotta find someone that you partner with and and and uh watch as they do something that you probably couldn't have done all all by yourself. Letting go can be a challenge, but also I love delegating stuff and I love what you said, kind of like partnering with people. if I have something that I'm not good at, like I love being able, if I can afford to, to outsource it to somebody that is good at that piece because that's gonna result in a better end product. Yeah. Well one one of the things that that being at at BWI has has taught me is that one person or one team can only take it so far. The um when when they asked to start taking brands into multiple countries, working with multiple brands, we had to start figuring out how to create systems and then and then organize brand teams uh with with specific skills. Let them go do their own thing. it's amazing what you can achieve if you start uh letting go and letting other people that are maybe newer to it than you grow it and see where they can run. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the systems part is something that I've been trying to work on now five years into owning my business. It's like everything revolves around me, right? Like if I'm not doing it, it's not happening. I would like to eventually be able to get to the point where I can outsource a little more stuff. And um that requires processes and explanations and and systems, like you said. Yeah. It's easier for me to get out of my own head if I'm uh hiring people for for outsourcing things that had a a a like a normal commercial background. They don't necessarily know our business or they know what don't know our brands, but they have a normal skill that might be working by websites or doing email marketing or what have you. And then what I have to do to make them successful is figure out how to turn it Turn it into something that you don't need that insider information to be able to execute what's needed. And if you can start to take take uh skills that people have uh that are sort of um I I guess a little more standard and figure out how to leverage those that can really help you to scale. You also mentioned to me previously in like bringing in people and building a team that for Denali electronics, like the team is really motivated by rider safety. So can you kind of speak to how those real world rider experiences influence the products that you guys are creating? Absolutely. So way back when Twisted Throttle was the core business, um, we started experimenting with lighting and uh yeah. Very early on, one of the uh early members of the the team was was in a fatal motorcycle where there was a truck coming out uh opposite direction, didn't see him. And uh yeah, that had a huge effect on on everybody in the company. I don't think it's a unique story. I think most people that are in the motorcycle industry or or it within it as a hobby for a long time know someone that has not been seen by another driver and uh has has had a near miss or a uh a not near miss. And and so, you know, our our our team we we definitely have a lot of fun. We we go out and uh ride, we do silly things with with lights, with motorcycles. Um, but but deep down there's there's a motivation to try to make everybody safer doing this thing that we love. it kind of started with with being able to see better when we were riding at night, you know, with the forward lighting. Uh then we started uh making uh insanely loud horns. you know, more more recently we we've um we've had a few n near misses within our social circle and and uh of uh motorcyclists coming to an intersection and not being seen from the side. so we've we've started to really work on developing side visibility, rear visibility lighting, so that it's not just these big blazing lights going straight down the road. but it's it's also illumination that's going to help you be conspicuous and be noticed from from 360 degrees round started working on that and and doing research into which colors which positions of light our are most noticeable, um, you know, leveraging some of what NHTSA has already done because their research budget is way bigger than ours. And trying to find ways to make make it really practical to have illumination solutions that are easy to install but but yeah yeah are are not just looking pretty but but really put the light where it needs to be to to help you see it be so Well, and I think you hit on some things there too, of like, um, you said like looking pretty but also being seen. It is crazy, like sometimes the way bikes are manufactured, like how little lighting there is on them, especially like taillights, I think about too, how tiny some of them are. Like if I'm following somebody on a motorcycle in a car, how like how you barely see it. But people also want their motorcycles to look cool. So it's gotta be uh a a both and situation. Yeah. The um yeah, the regulations on lighting in different countries are are kind of strange. Like in the US they they regulate the size of your your taillights and turn signals almost more than they regulate the the lighting intensity. Uh yeah, if you look at uh the the the European Union, I I think they've done a little bit better job where they've they've regulated um not as much the the size of the lamp. but the result of the light that's being sent towards the other drivers. So they've managed to get a lot more uh small lights in their in in their uh region that are very, very effective. and in the US uh we're we've still got uh larger lights often halogen that just aren't very visible during the I've never really, honestly, before this moment thought about lighting so deeply and like you said, like the the different colors or the intensities. I I mean what comes to mind for me now is uh not even necessarily on a motorcycle, but just driving at night in a car. The newer cars that I see, and I say newer, but probably at least ten years old, have those really bright white lights that almost blind you as you're like oncoming traffic versus the older style that are more of like a yellow light. So I don't know if you know, technical wise what you would have to say about that. Well, the the older, more yellowish ones that don't really light up the road are probably old school halogen bulbs. Uh, you know, like H H four bulbs that were probably at cars twenty years ago. Uh and and those have a a more yellow color that's not quite as uh effective, but they just don't put out a whole lot of light. Um, you know, when you get into the whiter light, it's probably an LED. Uh and and If it's blinding you, it's probably not a street legal light. Uh there's it there are a ton of LED replacement bulbs out there that don't actually result in like if you just swap out your halogen bulb on an old uh headlight, put in an LED bulb, it's probably going to put light in all the wrong places, because the reflector wasn't designed for that sort of light source. Um, replacement headlights, if you're shopping for that sort of thing. You should make sure that the uh the the headlights have homologations on them for for meeting um DOT, low beam and and high beam uh standards. auxiliary lights are usually using SAE uh in the US. Then in in Europe it's easy. It just has a little E on it for E mark. Um so it's it's a little bit easier to recognize. But the the lights that they're homologated, it sounds boring, you know. It's not for off-road use only, but it actually puts the light where you need it for a low beam or for a high beam. And it keeps it out of oncoming drivers' eyes, which which is a hazard if you've got light that's just sort of spraying everywhere. So uh, you know, one of the things that that we're really careful about when we're designing new lighting is building a beam pattern that's effective at illuminating the road. Yeah, whether you need a low beam. fog beam or long distance high beam pattern, but also keeping it out of oncoming drivers' eyes, which which is sort of the opposite uh effect of of what you wanted you. Can you speak to homologation a little bit? I'm somewhat familiar with it um on the the racing motorcycle side of things about you know homologating different parts, but can you to somebody that generally doesn't know what that is, can you explain that process? homologation is is essentially designing your lighting product so that it meets uh street legal standards for use on public roads. And when you're on a public road, you need to make sure that your low beam only is about half of the bottom half of the light field, so it's not going up into oncoming driver's eyes and blinding them so that they veer off into a tree or something like We're into you. Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, high beam patterns can fill up most of the road. Uh depending on the country, sometimes those long distance patterns will sort of have a little carve out for where oncoming drivers are so that you it will leave a little bit of a blank spot. fog beams will will have that uh upper cutoff because it's trying to keep the light low and broad. because if you use a really if you use a high beam pattern, basically a laser beam going going downfield in the fog, it's just going to reflect back and and blind you, essentially. Um so homologation is all about putting the light where um mad scientists of lab coats have figured out it needs to meet a specific purpose to keep you and other drivers safe. Have modern motorcycles become easier or harder to develop these accessories for with all the electronics that they have going on that are just like standard on the bikes now? Has that changed your process or product development at all? It's the amount that that the electronics have become difficult to work on is probably the reason our company exists. back back 20 years ago, all all the wires on the bike were were we'll call them dumb 12 volt wires, where each function of each light or each thing on your bike just had a 12 volt power wire that was either on or off. You know. Na and you could just tap into that and power other accessories. Uh so it was pretty easy to Frankenstein your bike into having all the electrical stuff you wanted as long as you didn't uh exceed the power handling of Yeah, I mean we we use the right fuse and and don't drain the battery and you'll probably be okay. Um newer bikes um that that came out well I mean at this point it's probably about ten, fifteen years ago this that um CAN bus technology started uh finding its way from the auto industry into motorcycles. And BMW was one of the first brands that really uh applied this. But what What CAN bus technology does is it's actually pretty cool. You can run power and computer signals down the same wire. So you could have 10 different accessories on one power wire, all doing different things because there's a a computer signal going through that same power wire. Um but uh it and so you need less wiring on the bike. You can get uh automatic error codes that come back. Um But the challenge becomes if you just tap into those wires, well now the bike throws error codes, goes into limp mode. Um there is no sort of clean power to do each of these dedicated accessory functions like set of auxiliary lights or an extra set of turn signals or you know, whatever else you want to attach to your your vehicle. So we uh we we started partnering with with uh a company that was really good at doing CAN bus diagnostic tools and um developed this this mad scientist thing called a CANsmart. And and so this this little device would plug into your your ECU port on your motorcycle and it reads all these complicated signals that are coming off of your bike and it knows when you're turning on your original turn signal, it knows when you're turning on your high beam, knows your lean angle, knows if it's daytime or nighttime based on the light sensors on your bike. Uh basically anything that your bike knows, this device knows. And we can use those signals to control uh accessories. And so we we had four outputs initially, you know, four different things. We figured that would be enough. Well it's never enough. So um we we recently started figuring out how to send computer signals into our own accessories. So now we can have uh a nearly unlimited number of accessories. powered by this one controller. It's all plug and play. Keeps you from cutting up your wiring harness it sounds simple. It's really simple from a customer standpoint. It's not easy to to reverse engineer and decode all of those different motorcycles uh signal sets because none of them are the same. And and so we eventually made something that's a very simple system to be able to power just about any electrical accessory you want on a motorcycle. Um but it was not simple to create. It sounds crazy to even like think about. So that's really fascinating though. so you talked about it being simple for the the customer, which is always always a plus, right? But also like just even getting them to buy, I feel like sometimes people have really complex, I mean, we start speaking in marketing terms, buying journeys. Um, they research a lot of things heavily before purchasing. So how do you kind of make sure that you're hitting on all those points without like oversimplifying the product itself, like making it easy for them, but still showcasing all the features. Well, maybe maybe show and not tell. Uh I mean I I I think we've we've always kind of taken a website and YouTube first approach to um all the products we we carry and develop. And so it when we come out with a a new product, rather than trying to uh you know build a product description that's death by features and benefits. uh try to take real world situations. What are the real problems people are trying to solve? You know, when they're going around a corner um in in a a switchback mountain road at night, they want to be able to actually see where they're looking, not the trees on the outside of the turn. Yeah. So there's a solution for that. If um you you want to be more visible at night, we can show you the difference between uh how your bike looks to other drivers with and without uh a a change in what's on the bike. Um I I actually think one of one of the most effective things we've ever done is is a what we call functional lighting contest, which we often do at the BMW MOA national rally. so after dark we invite uh just about anybody that's that's at the rally to come over to a big open field. and in that open field, everybody gets a chance to point their lights downrange. And we can see what their original headlights did for distance and then what their bike with auxiliary lights does for distance. because we've built we've put signs downrange uh for your visibility distance. so we can so NHTSA the The regulatory body for for lighting safety in the US has has done a bunch of research. They figured out that each to in order for about 90% of riders to be able to see an obstacle that's coming and react to it and get out of the way, they need to be able to see at least four seconds down the road. and so we took the four second distance, 10 miles an hour, 20 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, yeah, right up to 70 miles an hour. And put the the sign markers down this field. And so everybody gets to see what their sight distance in set you know seconds is, or what what their safe driver speed is, assuming you need four seconds, with and without their auxiliary lights. And it it would actually probably surprise you. Uh a lot of bikes only have a couple of seconds of headlight distance, but yeah, you know, you you If you want to be able to see where you're going, you probably need a little bit more. So it's a good exercise people can do at home with their own bikes. But I've seen a lot of folks walk away from that contest, which is just sort of a friendly thing to do at night. and either change their riding behavior so they ride slower, so they're not outriding their headlight distance, or they go and outfit their bike so that at whatever speed they're going. they can see further than the distance that's needed to to react and get out of the way. kind of has my mind going in different directions because on the motorcycle safety training side of things that I work on, we're you know, focusing on training and behaviors and things like that. But I I guess I've never really thought about the technical side of it if people's bikes are even capable of again, like you said, helping them see what they need, what they need to be seeing. So that's interesting. Yeah, I I was surprised to the when we started doing this testing, there's there's actually a fair number of large adventure motor bikes that that only have about one second of visibility uh on low beam at about two seconds at highway speed on high beam. Uh yeah, it's it's actually a a a fun exercise. so it at highway speed seventy miles an hour. Yes, you're going about 100 feet per second. So I I would encourage folks at home to uh on a dark night, just measure out a street or what have you in hundred foot increments. See how many, see how many seconds you can see down the road. Can you see four hundred feet down the road? If not, you probably can't see far enough to be going seventy miles an hour. So it's a fun little um fun little uh project to to do. So you mentioned going to the BMW MOA rally. You also told me you're gonna be at the TouraTech rally. What are like your engineers, developers, salespeople able to kind of gain from being at the rally with the consumers? How we get out of the lab. So, I mean, we spend we spend all year uh you know in a workshop, kind of drinking our own Kool-Aid and uh you know, focusing on the things we think are important. Um, when we go to those events, which are well attended by some of the most uh enthusiastic long distance adventure riders in the country. uh the booth gets swarmed with people saying, you know. Hey, this thing you built doesn't really fit my bike. Uh, I I I'm not really happy with this. Or, hey, you know, I'm I'm in this riding situation and I can't see really well. Can you help me adjust what I'm doing? or hey, this thing's just too complicated to install. I don't get it. You know, can you help me install it? Well, you know, short term, yeah, we'll help install it. Then we go back and we take all these ideas and we think, how do we make our product solve the problem better? Make it easier to use, uh, make it easier to install and make sure it doesn't break. And in those real world interactions where we take our design team and and they are face to face with the customer, hearing exactly what the person using the thing wants. Uh, there's no arguing with that. Uh you know, when when one of our salespeople comes back, or even when I come back with an idea and yeah, everybody just looks at me or You know, some of the other internal folks are like Yeah, you talk at us all the time. Yeah, we don't believe you. But uh yeah, when when you get ten customers in a row at at a rally saying the same thing. You go back and you fix you work on that, you fix that. Yeah, that makes sense for sure. You start thinking, um, if a bunch of people are saying the same thing, the problem must be me at some point. Yeah, exactly. I mean it I just feel like it it really helps you focus on what is important for the people you're trying to do something good for. Um so there there are a lot of things you can fix, but which ones matter? Well, they'll tell you. And that's important to listen no matter no matter what type of product or service you're you're giving to people. And also, are they the type that actually reads the directions or do they just dive directions. Reads directions. I mean I I mean that's a nice that's a nice idea. And I'm I'm there's one percent of the population that does. But uh, you know, you look at what IKEA does with their directions, they stopped using words. They've got a little not a stick figure, but a little pudgy, fuzzy figure that just, you know puts things together and it's just pictures. Uh so Yeah, we've we've actually tried to make our instructions as much like IKEA uh as as we possibly can. But uh you know, that the you you can't always quite get there. Uh so we we've tried to do that and mix it with with video highlights of the important steps and that that seems to connect with people a little bit better. you know, but you know if you read the instructions, I can I can provide you with exploded parts diagram. So So we'll see how long you spend looking about. kind of transitioning gears a little bit, can you t talk about scaling the brands internationally? So what are some challenges with bringing products into different markets when we're talking Europe, Australia, the US? Like what are those differences or challenges? Well, um boy, you y you know, when you go international, uh there are a lot of things you take for granted. if if you've mostly been in the US and you sort of assume that well everybody that speaks English will probably react to this product the same way. Um but but that's that's really far off base. Um you know, in um if if we go to Australia, for instance, um, you know, We in in that market there was a lot more price pressure on lighting products. There are two companies that that are uh really well known that that are really low priced. So we had to come up with a way to uh have some some more value based on we also found out that that in Australia they generally aren't really interested in riding a night. There are too many kangaroos. people people get uh into collisions with with wild animals uh very often. So culturally, uh it's not as high of a priority to be able to see three quarters of a mile down the road at highway speed. That just seems like a crazy thing. Um, but what people are concerned about is uh visibility to other drivers during the day. And and so in each market, you have to figure out what connects with people, what problem they're actually trying to solve, and then customize. Maybe it's the product, maybe it's the messaging or the experience to to what they expect. in when you go to Europe, it it's much more complex just based on the total number of cultures and and languages that are that are present. Um, I I had a harsh awakening when we started doing uh Google ads in in Europe because uh in the US, hey, you you run some ads. Yeah, even in Canada, you just make some ads and we're done. Well in Europe, um there there is no auto-translate for for your ads in Europe. You've got to make an ad version for Spain, for France, for Germany, um, you know, for for Greece, any any country you want to be in, you have to create uh your your marketing messages in the local language if you want it to be heard. Or or at least effective. A lot of people speak English, but they're not going to connect. Yeah. So we went through a learning curve with figuring out how to translate our ads and uh at least in major markets, our our promotional emails. and within the website, we had to figure out how to uh address how to translate the the information because even if if somebody's using Google Google translate in their browsers, uh, that's not going to help you with SEO in those countries. Um so um you know we we eventually with with the help of AI and some native speakers to to review and make sure the AI wasn't saying anything crazy. we managed to translate our websites into 20 languages. And and so each of those languages is indexed by Google. So we get it it helps us with traffic from each of those cultures. and that's that's just from the uh the marketing. Do guys have warehouses in each different country or how does the kind of the fulfillment end of it work? in in the major markets we we do. So we we have facilities that we own and operate in Sweden, in the US, in in Korea and Australia. So that makes some of the the logics logistics in those areas easier. Uh in in some of the other major markets like the UK and Europe, we've partnered with a importer and distributor in that country so that when we're running an e-commerce sale in in those countries through our website. Uh and actually goes goes through those entities and um you know they fulfill the order so the customer gets uh a local experience with shipping and returns, but they get a website that's you know direct from the brand owner so the information is is uh current correct and and it feels more like you're interacting with with the the brand. Um, you know, if anything, having the localized websites has just helped us uh move a little bit faster because um we don't have to rely on a long chain of of various resellers to get the word out when a new product comes up. You know, we can release it on our main website. And then that sort of pushes everyone to start asking about it at at all levels in those regions. We could um probably have ten episodes on the marketing, the logistics, the that whole side of things. but to keep it shorter for our listeners today, if they were considering upgrading their bike for better visibility or safety, like what's your first recommendation? Like where should they start? if you want to be seen from the front and see further in the clear conditions, uh getting a set of white driving lights close to the vertical height of your original headlight is a really great move. And connecting them to your high beam circuit so that they automatically cycle up and down with your original high beam switch makes it easy to to not get. lost in in forgetting what button to push on your motorcycle. Um if you want to be seen more from uh the rear, uh the first thing probably want to do is an auxiliary uh LED brake light that's again uh tied into your computer or tied into your bike correctly if you've got a a BMW Ducati KTM or Harley you probably need a CAN bus controller. So that you don't uh cook the wires. and if you really want to be seen, adding some selective yellow, that bright neon yellow color on the forward side of your bike, probably down low on the forks, uh, is is a really good move for being seen or noticed by by other drivers on the road. Uh a lot of the traffic studies have shown that because it's a less common color, drivers will notice it. look instead of just sort of ignoring it as background. I love that. Really good tips. Things that I have not considered but will be going forward. Um, can you tell people where they can connect with you or connect with the brands? Absolutely. Uh so the the denalielectronics uh dot com website is uh where you can check out our motorcycle uh products. Vision X Off Road is our brand for side by side and four by four where we're applying a lot of the same uh approaches for for people with those sorts of vehicles. Uh you can find me by uh emailing uh erik dot stephens at us dot brownwatson dot com Perfect. Well, thank you, Eric, for joining me and thanks to everybody for tuning in to Momentum. This has been a production of High Gear Success. If you want to connect or recommend a guest, head to Momentum Motorsports Podcast dot com. Until next time, keep the momentum rolling.