Delve Talks: Ben Morris, Coaster Cycles

Show notes

Dave Franchino and I had the opportunity to talk with Ben Morris, Ben Morris, CEO and Founder of Coaster Cycles, Coaster Outdoor and CC Face Shields. Coaster Cycles develops innovative, eco-friendly transportation solutions for passenger, last-mile, and cargo needs. Coaster Outdoor focuses on pedicab-based marketing solutions. He started both companies in 2004. This year, in light of the needs for PPE at the beginning of the pandemic, he started CC Face Shields.

Ben shared how Coaster’s commitment to innovation, nimbleness, and community have helped it weather the challenges of the pandemic. Here are some takeaways:

Seize the opportunities

Ben started out as a pedicab driver and saw an opportunity to spread the fun experience he had in San Diego to Boston, where he was going to college. He started with a couple bikes near Fenway Park and it eventually grew to a national business called Coaster Cycles. From there, he quickly saw the opportunities for a new type of outdoor advertising using pedicabs and formed Coaster Outdoor. It was several years later, when they realized that mechanical issues were cutting into profits that they decided to design their own bike (with the help of Delve) and eventually realized they needed to manufacture it, too. Since then, the market has changed and they are looking at last-mile, cargo, and other transportation solutions. In addition, Ben and his team seized upon the Badger Shield open-source face shield design to get his employees (and other community members in Montana where they are headquartered) back to work in the early days of the pandemic.

Understanding the user is key

Coaster initially had no interest in designing and manufacturing bikes, but they knew their users and pain points. When they discovered there was no good off-the-shelf solution, they made the decision to design their own pedicab. We didn't know, like how you started, how you think. “We just knew as the operator, ‘OK, this was a pain point. This was an opportunity. Let's gather all those details and let's put those into writing and get up on the drawing board,’” Ben said. Learning about the iterative process of product design has been integral to their continued growth, but it all started with understanding their users.

Evolve with your market

When Coaster started, pedicab operations were a lot like taxi companies. You basically contracted out with a company to drive a vehicle around and collect fares, but you were your own boss. With the advent of rideshare and scooter companies, pedicab use has evolved into a more event-specific business that’s driven by sports, concerts, and conventions where companies hire them out for sampling and other activities. Even before Covid sidelined these activities, Coaster was seeing a growing market for last-mile transportation and cargo in increasingly congested cities. “We believe the format that we have can be a real asset for these (e-commerce) carriers, not only from an environmental impact, where with many of these instances, we're doing a one for one vehicle swap, one bike on the road, one vehicle off the street,” Ben said. “But we're also, in many cases, able to show cost reductions in terms of efficiencies gained by their ability to operate and bike lanes and not travel around looking for parking and things of that nature.”

Support community and let them support you

When Coaster decided to bring their workers back to make face shields at the beginning of the pandemic, they quickly had an order that outstripped their capacity. They went to the breweries, restaurants, and catering companies they knew in their small city of Missoula, Montana and asked if their workers, many un-or underemployed because of the pandemic, would be willing to build face shields. The response was inspiring. “I think in the height of when we were running, we had 115 people building the face shields,” Ben said. “We were doing about 50,000 a day. A quarter million a week. And about 55 of those 115 were with us (Coaster employees) and the others were in the community and spread across about five or six different businesses. And to this day, though we're not working with them, and the opportunity does arise there they are like ready to go and ready to jump right back in the swing of things and go back to making face shields.”

Learn from Covid

Moving their operations to a single focus showed Ben and his team the potential of streamlining and focusing their efforts in the future to improve business operations. Emerging from the pandemic, Coaster will be narrowing its product line and looking for efficiencies so they may be doing fewer things, but they will be doing them better.

Transcript

Dave Franchino [00:00:00] Hello, everybody. This is Dave Franchino, you know, here, and once again, I'm joined by my co-host, Stefanie Norvaisas, who's Delves Vice President of Strategy. And as a reminder, my background is in engineering, but Stef brings a background in the social sciences and cultural anthropology. So, as always, on this podcast, we're going to be tag teaming with questions for a different perspective.

[00:00:20] And today, we're really proud and excited to welcome Ben Morris, who is the CEO and founder of Coaster Cycles and Coaster Outdoor and CC Face Shields. So, Coaster Cycles is a product that Delve knows well. They've developed innovative, eco-friendly transportation solutions for the passenger market and then also last mile and cargo needs. Some really exciting and innovative products. And the coaster outdoor product focuses on pedicab based marketing solutions and other really interesting business model,

[00:00:51] Ben, I'll talk a little bit more about his background. He started both of his companies in 2004 and then this year, in light of the needs for PPE at the beginning of the covered pandemic, he pivoted in a real interesting way to start CC Face Shield. So, we'll spend a little bit of time talking about that as well.

[00:01:09] And as a reminder for our listeners, we're trying to explore how companies create a culture of innovation. And I've had conversations with a really broad range of people trying to glean their insights and their experience in in things that could be applied to any field, in particular in the midst of this terrible pandemic. There are also some real challenges and new challenges to maintaining a creative culture. And we're going to explore that in this season and, in particular, with Ben. So, Ben, on behalf of all us, thank you very much and welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Ben Morris [00:01:39] Great. Thanks, Dave. Really appreciate to be here. And look forward to chatting with you guys.

Dave Franchino [00:01:43] Yeah. Maybe to get our users or listeners grounded, why don't you share a little bit about your fascinating journey, starting as a pedicab driver and then eventually being an owner and manufacturer of them. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that journey?

Ben Morris [00:01:59] Sure. I'll go with the abridged version because it could be long to delve into the story. So, as you as you mentioned, I kind of started and came up with this concept and this idea around pedicabs after seeing bikes while living in San Diego, finishing up my senior year in college at Northeastern in Boston. And the bikes were at the Gaslamp and they were running all around and people were having a great time and drivers were having a great time. And they got back to Boston. I'm like, "Why are there not bikes like this here in the market?" And so that's what spawned this idea of like, you know, what we thought was a great opportunity and a great idea to get kickstarted in Boston. And so, it started with a small fleet of pedicabs operating around Fenway Park in Newbury Street. And, you know, Boston led to Newport, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C., and then sort of spawned from there sort of across the country.

[00:02:59] And I actually I gravitated fairly early on in the business, less of an interest in the operations and more on the media side. And so, you know, early on in that process, we created our media innovation, which you talk to present day now called Coaster Outdoor. And that business was basically focused around utilizing this asset, this bike, and being able to place media on there for out-of-home agencies and brands of all sizes and all markets across the country.

[00:03:31] And we had early success in that. And we were placing a lot of media on the bikes and working with some great brands. And as we were doing that, we were starting to talk with other pedicab fleet owners all around the country. And they were coming to us and say, "Hey, look, guys, you understand the operations of the bikes. You understand the media around the bikes. But we don't love the product that's out there in the market right now. And why don't you guys go build a pedicab here?" And we actually fought it for a while. You know, we're like, "Look, we're operations, we’re media folks, like we don't know that we want to manufacture anything. And ultimately, in the fall of 2012, we kind of had this epiphany and just said, "All right, let's go. Let's go do this. Let's give it a shot." And so, Justin Bruce, who you guys know, my partner, our chief operating officer, he had a very early call into Schwinn in the Pacific Cycles. And they were sort of open to this idea. And that led us to, at the time, you guys at Design Concepts, and that led us to Madison. And that sort of is what led to this, embarking on this manufacturing journey, which started very early on in the passenger version.

[00:04:44] In a sense, it has evolved into a variety of different vehicle formats. And one, I would say a little more focus right now on the cargo and last mile, but really sort of a broad array of industries and sectors in which we operate in. So, yeah, it's been you know, it's been almost it's been 15 years now. It's been, you know, all three-rail related. We've crisscrossed the country. We've been operating in a number of cities, work with a number of governments, municipalities, and work with a lot of just great brands and great people along the way. So that's to give you the very, very abridged version of it. But we could talk for an hour just about how we got the present day.

Stefanie Norvaisas [00:05:23] That's a great story. And I'm sure that there's hundreds of very hilarious anecdotes filled in there. But one of the questions that you sort of skirted by that I'd like to talk a little bit more about was that decision to go into manufacturing, because that's a pretty big gulp.

Ben Morris [00:05:43] Yes. So, at the time, all of us, the majority of us, were buying from one primary manufacturer. And we knew the manufacturer well. We had a bunch of their bikes and we actually had considered trying to purchase that company. And we looked fairly extensively of what that would cost and what we would get in return. And our ultimate sort of decision that we came to was we would spend more money than we wanted to for a product that just didn't really have market acceptance at the time. And, you know, we thought we would be better off just recreating a better vehicle based on our experience as operators and as advertisers and just taking that knowledge that we had accumulated over the years with thousands of drivers, tons of mechanics, tons of owners, and like go in and put that into what we felt was the best vehicle in the marketplace.

[00:06:42] And we still feel that way today, too. And so that was sort of that shift saying, you know, we think we can do this, and we think it'll make our company more complete. So, let's go try and do it.

Ben Morris [00:06:57] Ben, one of the things I think is really inspiring about that part of your story is I suspect there's probably some of our listeners who feel like they've got a good handle on user needs or unmet user needs. But they think, "Well, I could never develop a product. I'm not an engineer. I'm not a product developer." Maybe you can speak a little bit to the process of or the familiarity that you had with the customer needs and why that was such an important impetus to driving it forward.

Ben Morris [00:07:23] Yeah, well, look, I'll say this. The lesson and the process which we went through with you guys and with Delve at the time was profoundly impactful to just the way we think about design and the overall user experience today. Because, you know, we knew nothing. We didn't know, like how you started, how you think. We just knew as the operator, "OK, this was a pain point. This was an opportunity. Let's gather all those details and let's put those into writing and get up on the drawing board." And so, I think the lesson we learned early on in the design process with you guys was just looking at stuff from, you know, starting on a very macro level to start and then slowly week by week, narrowing that down and getting towards a refined concept, recognizing, you know -- and this was told to us by many folks on your team -- that, like, you know, what you deliver us is the final package is not going to be the exact vehicle format we're going to have on the road. We're going to go through iterations of that and we're going to go through refinement on that product. And we do that still to this day. And there's so many parallels in the exercise we did on the pedicab design to like literally, you know, the project we're working on with Amazon right now and the way we're designing for them like currently today. And so, we take a lot of that experience, you know, and look, there were lessons learned and there are things that we could do better and that we could improve upon. And so, yeah, it was it was a great experience.

[00:08:49] And, you know, but it is something like when you don't know, you kind of live and learn. Like, let's go try things out and see what works and what doesn't work. And it's not just design. It’s tooling. It's procurement and sourcing. It's supply chain. I mean, there's a ton of different aspects that go into it. And, you know, I feel like we learned a lot in those very early days.

Dave Franchino [00:09:15] Aside from the product -- and I think we'll get back to certain aspects of it in a second -- one of the things that I found personally fascinating is the business model for pedicabs. You know, it's not exactly what I expected. Maybe tell our listeners a little bit about your business model or the business model behind this particular business.

Ben Morris [00:09:34] Yeah, so interesting. Like another part of this, it has changed over the years. You know, very early on, the model in the most simplistic way that I can describe it is it runs in parallel of exactly of the taxi business. And interestingly enough, like that's who we were competing against in these early days, right? There wasn't Uber. There wasn't Lyft. There wasn't scooter companies or bike companies, just us and the taxi companies.

[00:09:57] And so we, the fleet owners, own and operate these fleets of pedicabs. They leased those bikes to drivers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. And in return, those owners, they store those bikes, they maintain those bikes, they insure those bikes, and they own the advertising rights that go onto those bikes.

[00:10:18] And so that was it. So, the fleet owners would buy the bikes and they'd lease to the drivers and collect those rents. But it's also the reason why the design and the form and function of the pedicab itself was sort of instrumental into the success of the fleet owner. Because they had to make sure that there was maximum uptime, the bikes weren't breaking. They were getting the best visibility and exposure on the bike. So now that business is in a change right there. We've seen it kind of move from less of a traditional taxi service, point A to point B, to now more of an event-based service. So, conventions, sporting events, and music festivals. That's been a big shift in kind of the marketplace right now. And so, now it's shifted into cargo capacity, motor design, weight capacity, and things like that. And that's, I think, just kind of the continuing evolution of the industry.

Dave Franchino [00:11:21] One thing that I think probably a lot of people would have said was crazy for you to undertake and maybe even the you know, the people who is sort of are specialists at the business school might say is "Why in the world would you manufacture this your product yourself?" I think conventional wisdom would have been, say, take your pedicab designed to China or some other part in the world and have it made, as most or many companies have. But you made a strategic decision to keep it here in the United States. And then, interestingly enough, to actually manufacturer yourself, which ironically, I think it looks like you are ahead of the curve in terms of the way a lot of people are going.

[00:12:00] But maybe tell us a little bit about what drove those decisions, how that went down, and what have been the advantages or even the learnings from that particular process?

Ben Morris [00:12:10] So I have to give a plug to one particular person here. So, early on when we kind of hit this point of like, "OK, we've got this bike. We've got this team over at Pacific Cycles. One of their product managers, Joe, who you guys may or may not know, we still, you know, stay close with Joe today. We kind of had a heart to heart with him and said, "You know, Joe, like you've seen the product. You know what our goals here are. Do you think we're better to go to manufacturers overseas or to do it here domestically?" And, you know, his advice was, "I think given the complexity of what you're doing and the minimum volume and what you're doing it in, it certainly doesn't make sense to start overseas and you're going to be better suited to succeed at your manufacturing stateside."

[00:12:58] And so that was that was a critical point, you know, for us in terms of saying, OK, we're going to do this here because we worked exploring overseas and there was concerns around travel and communication and tooling and speed to market and all those items." And frankly, and I can give a variety of different examples, but manufacturing in the US, I think, has actually been one of our most strategic assets right now. And one of the reasons why we are able to work with some of the customers that we're working with is surely by the fact that we can go and innovate and we can iterate and we can bring stuff to market faster than we ever could if we were manufacturing overseas. Now, there's always a point where it could make sense to go overseas, right? When we get to a mass market scenario where we're building tens of thousands of a specific model, where that does make sense. But I don't know, there's use cases right now that we've modeled out that says that's not even the case. And so, yeah, we ultimately decided here was the place for us. And we still to this day and given, you know, and how we ended up in Montana, there's a story around that. But, you know, we continue to like, say it's just different. It's been a phenomenal place for us to do business. And we get tremendous support on the state level, but also on like the city and county level as well. And so, we have had zero regrets on, you know, being able to say we manufacture in the US.

Dave Franchino: [00:14:26] Do you mind sharing with our listeners the story of how you guys ended up in Montana? I think it's a fascinating one.

Ben Morris: [00:14:32] Yeah. So like after that conversation with Joe came back to the Bay Area and I sort of throughout the process had been consulting with, you know, sort of a mentor of mine, Ross Evans, who's the CEO of Extra Cycle, and Ross, who is sort of the pioneer of the two-wheeled cargo space, like the Long Tails. And Ross told me that there was a group up in Montana that was working on a three-wheel product for the Asian Development Bank. And this might be an idea for you guys to go check out. So, I've never been in Montana. I mean I knew where Montana was on the map and that was about it. Got up there in February through like right after a major snowstorm hit and went to the town of Darby, Montana, population of definitely under a thousand -- between 500 and 1,000. So, we said, "OK, this is an idea, let's try this out." And did that and did sort of our original prototyping with the team there and kind of hit this this this junction point where we had outgrown that team and we'd outgrown that facility. And Justin and I were sort of at a brewery where many of our decisions are made up in Missoula and saying, "OK, do we take the product back to the East Coast? Do we take the product back to the Bay Area?"

[00:15:48] And ultimately, we decided based on an opportunity that was presented us with the bank to do and a revitalized lumber mill that we were best suited to succeed and stay in Montana. And that's where we stayed. And actually, that was five years ago, because we're just getting ready to renew our lease, take our second option. And so, yeah, Montana is our home, and we love calling it our home. And we continue to this day to get tremendous support from the people and the folks in the community. And it's a wonderful place to do business.

Dave Franchino [00:16:20] So obviously, Ben, the traditional pedicab business is tourism based and Covid, I'm sure, has had a tremendous impact on that, which we'll talk about. But even before Covid, from what I understand, you'd started an R&D arm that you called the innovation lab and you were using that to explore different emphasis, last mile mobility, cargo, different applications. Tell us a little bit about the innovation lab and how that came to be and how you've used that as a weapon for your organization.

Ben Morris [00:16:54] The innovation lab, I think, correlates directly towards our desire to manufacture stateside in the sense that, you know, ultimately we are getting these companies that were coming to us and say we want this type of product and we want this type of product based on your platform that you that you guys are building out. And so that lab basically spawned this design philosophy and sort of thinking process around that. We've got other customers and we've got other verticals beyond just the passenger format that are ripe for opportunity that basically nobody is exploring right now. And, you know, we've done that in the form of Starbucks and creating all of their coffee bikes. We've done that in the form of beer bikes for Aramark that are rolling into professional sports stadiums. We've done that for U.P.S. with delivery bikes. We've done that for the U.S. Coast Guard, moving equipment on military bases. We've got bikes in Tesla's factories, moving product on the floors. You know, we've worked with pretty much all the micro mobility companies helping move scooters and bikes and with rebalancing and the wheel mechanics. And then with Door Dash and delivering food and Amazon delivering parcel.

[00:18:14] And so that lab, in essence, kind of created like essentially all these new verticals and opportunities that we were thinking about but really didn't want to press on officially in any one of them. And so, it's actually given us an opportunity to come present day and having worked in each of those different verticals, really start to hone and identify the marketplace that we want to go post-Covid, right? And where we think the greatest opportunity exists. And so, yeah, there's a lot. And we still continue to do that kind of work in that lab, if you will. And like design and come up with new ideas.

Dave Franchino [00:18:54] So we talked a little bit about last-mile market and how that has been growing for you. First off, for those our listeners who might not be familiar with the phrase, I'm going to ask you to define last-mile market or last-mile transportation and then talk about how that might be changing your business, and how you've worked to capitalize on that more profound change in the way goods and services or goods are delivered here in the United States.

Ben Morris [00:19:19] Sure. So, last-mile delivery is well, in most simplistic terms, is the actual last mile of any delivery, whether it's food or parcel or grocery.

[00:19:31] And when you look at densely populated cities and markets, it's actually one of the biggest pain points for many of your carriers and more importantly, it's actually the most expensive part of the delivery is getting that product to your last mile. And it's an industry and sector. It's a part of the business that I've actually been most bullish about for the past five years and have felt that it presented the largest opportunity for us. But the market wasn't quite up to speed yet with that. And we weren't seeing enough buy-in from the private sector with the actual transportation and delivery companies. And we weren't seeing enough buying on the municipal level as well with the cities. And this is interesting because Covid has essentially exacerbated that with everybody home.

[00:20:22] Everybody's buying stuff online. And the people that we're never buying stuff online, like my parents who never bought groceries online, are buying groceries online. And the people who didn't do takeout are doing takeout. And the people who, you know, maybe ordered a little bit of product online are now buying a lot on it online.

[00:20:42] And so what we're seeing now is there's this mass sort of adoption of you know, e-commerce beyond what it was before. And it's becoming a major pain point for a lot of carriers. And so, this notion and this challenge around how do we consolidate freight in cities from larger vehicles into smaller vehicles, then it's not just bikes, it's vans. It's two-wheel bikes. It's three-wheel bikes. It's walkers. It's a lot of vehicles. I mean, it's a number of different models for this, but we believe the format that we have can be a real asset for these carriers, not only from an environmental impact, where with many of these instances, we're doing a one for one vehicle swap, one bike on the road, one vehicle off the street. But we're also, in many cases, able to show cost reductions in terms of efficiencies gained by their ability to operate and bike lanes and not travel around looking for parking and things of that nature. So, I'm really bullish on this space. I think it's got tremendous opportunity. I think Coaster is like really well poised to succeed in the last mile and across many different companies operating in that space.

Dave Franchino [00:22:03] So Ben, a big component of your business traditionally has been advertising. And as we were looking through, kind of learning a little bit more about what Coaster has been up to lately, we were super interested to see that there's someone in the organization who has the title for experience marketing. And I was kind of curious if you could tell us a little bit more about that and your approach to using your products as a marketing vehicle for, no pun intended, for your various customers.

Ben Morris [00:22:31] So good industry right now. that is a good example of an industry being decimated by Covid. You know, the success of experiential marketing campaigns is predicated on groups, right? Social outings, conventions, sporting events, music concerts. And we kind of found this niche in that marketplace where, you know, the mobility aspect of a bike is a great way to engage with people at these different events. And then these different cities, because you literally could take your experience, which is more traditionally has been done in the format of like a big build out in an RV or tents in which are they're beautiful and they're big and they're eye-catching. But you can't move those, right? Once they're set up, they're set up. And so, you know, we kind of went towards this this notion around, you know, we feel that we could take this live experience and make it mobile and start engaging with groups in all different areas. You know, at a particular area of a city or at a particular sporting event or venue or convention center. And we've done that in all formats. That can be giving out, you know, ice cream or a product or food sampling, giving out coffee to convention attendees, giving out just general information or doing some PSA type work and really just utilizing our vehicle format that we have in footprint that exists and just, you know, tailoring it to what the specific client's needs are.

[00:24:09] And so we've done a lot of really fun and really interesting campaigns on that front all over the country. And just, you know, it's been it's been a lot of fun. And I think once we get sort of out of this, you know, post-Covid environment, we think that's certainly a part of the business that's ripe for opportunity. And we'll continue to thrive in the years to come.

Dave Franchino [00:24:35] Sure. And why don't we address that for a bit? A little bit. The elephant in the room clearly, the pandemic has had a profound effect on so many businesses and yours in particular because it was so dependent on groups, mobility, transportation, things that to your world had been decimated. You did something pretty remarkable at the beginning of the pandemic. You pivoted and began making face shields based on an open-source design. Tell me a little bit about how that came to be and the impact on your business.

Ben Morris [00:25:06] Sure, yeah. I mean, that was actually mid-March after, you know, we had got some early signs about Covid from one of our advertisers who was based in China. And we are starting to think about this in February say, you know, like what's going to happen? What's going to happen if ad campaigns start canceling? Like, what do we do? And, you know, like, what's our four-week, eight-week plan? That's what we're thinking, what everyone was thinking, that it was three or four weeks at the most, right? We were like four weeks and these programs are back on, this convention's back on, you know.

[00:25:42] Boy, did we, like, grossly underestimate that. And so, you know, we kind of hit this inflection point after speaking every day to say, "We're going to survive through this. We're going to have to make some pretty drastic reductions in staffing and personnel. And so, we had done that through the week of mid-March and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And that was difficult. That was probably the most difficult week, you know, mentally and emotionally for Justin and me. You know, we had been doing this for 15 years. We've never laid people off throughout the course of the company. And it was hard. It was really tough. And after a difficult week on a Friday afternoon scrolling through LinkedIn and I saw, you know, your’ s truly, Jesse Darley's open-source face shield design. And I immediately sent that over to Justin. And I was like, "Justin, this is like something we can do, right? We've got the space. We understand plastic." And so, we use those in our bike and bike designs already in seating and paneling. And there's people here that need jobs and people who we just laid off. And there's a whole bunch of medical personnel out there who can't get this PPE and now it's just like that just blew my mind, like, how are we supposed to stay safe if the people who are protecting us aren't safe. And so, you know, we moved really, really fast. I was like getting some samples from your guys and some of the design partners out of the Makerspace there at the University of Wisconsin. And we signed up Providence Hospital Group right away. And they said, "Well, you know, we'll take a half million of these." And we're like, mind you, we haven't actually built a face shield yet. So, like, just trying to think of, like, OK, here, what's the supply chain? What’s this going to look like and how are we going to do this? How are we going to keep everybody safe and set up? And that was like two weeks of just crazy, you know, 16-, 18-hour days, seven days a week. I mean, it didn't stop. But we figured it out. And, you know, we had you know, I give a lot of credit to Justin on this. I mean, it was not an easy feat, but it was interesting.

[00:28:07] One of things I told Justin, we've had this conversation. It's like, “Look, if we can figure out how to build this pedicab or these cargo delivery bikes, we can figure out how to setup our space to build a face shield with these four components in it. Like, it's just it's not that difficult."

[00:28:22] And so that's what sort of, you know, was our "aha" moment and sort of spawned our PPE journey, which still continues on to this day.

Dave Franchino [00:28:33] So that had to be pretty emotional, I would think. You were able to rehire some staff after laying them off and you were even able to partner with local businesses and take kind of more of a community approach to this. I'm just kind of curious what role community, in sort of a shared purpose, played in the success of CC Face Shields?

Ben Morris [00:28:52] Probably the most important role. I mean, you know, we got to a point where we realized we weren't able to build in our facility and with our team and meet the demand that we had right at the time for the face shields. And so, we kind of went out and like Justin was like, "Well, what if we just go to, you know, some of the other local businesses that are in town?" And we thought, OK, let's give it a try. Let's see, you know, if there's any interest there. And so, it started off naturally with his favorite businesses he likes, you know, restaurants and breweries and catering companies who we work with. And like, instantaneously, people were like, "Yes, let's do this, you know." And for them, it was a way to, like, earn some money to continue to pay the folks working for them.

[00:29:42] And so I think in the height of when we were running, we had 115 people building the face shields. We were doing about 50,000 a day. A quarter million a week. And we're doing that with about 55 of those 115 were with us and the others were in the community and spread across about five or six different businesses. And to this day, though we're not working with them, and the opportunity does arise there they are like ready to go and ready to jump right back in the swing of things and go back to making face shields.

Stefanie Norvaisas [00:30:20] That is such an inspiring story. And it's so amazing how quickly a group of people can come together and act and make a huge difference. What part of that experience, if any, do you feel you're going to take forward? What have you learned from it or what do you see sort of being part of the new world order, if you will?

Ben Morris [00:30:44] So, I mean, this is one of the things going back to why we're in Missoula. Like, that's just the way the city is. It's such a community-driven city. And I would say there's probably a lot of parallels to Madison also. And the way you guys operate as a business and who your customer and what your network is like. And so, you know, we think there's a way for us to continue to engage with these businesses and with the community. One example is, and I don't know if you guys saw this, one of our partners was a brewery -- Imagination Brewing. And so, like, they did a collaboration beer with us that they went and brewed. They're actually just brewing their second batch of it right now. And it was just an amazing project to do with them. But we also are working with a number of different local Missoula non-profits with whom for each beer we sell, we're donating face shields to those different organizations. And so, you know, I think that's just another example of like how, you know, the community effort kind of like really is super strong there. And everybody wants to help one another out and support each other in any way possible. And we know going forward that, you know, we get into position again where we're going to need more people, you know, these folks in these businesses are standing by like ready to help and jump in like any time we need. And so, it's really been it's been a good learning experience for me, Not only as like a CEO of a company, but also just personally as well.

Dave Franchino [00:32:16] Ben, I hope our listeners are as inspired and excited by sort of your nimbleness as I have been. Lots of companies right now are realizing their business models and plans are going need to adjust for new behaviors, new experiences, new realities, and that that's going to mean change to their existing products, the way they go to market, the way they distribute. I'm just kind of curious as you look forward, what type of future changes do you think are in store for you and for the various firms and the way in which you go to market? What do you think the future is likely to hold?

Ben Morris [00:32:51] Well, in the most odd and obscure type way Covid actually taught us one of the best lessons that we've learned in the past 15 years and how we think about business and growth in the face shield specifically. Pre-Covid, and I talked about a lot of the different things that we were doing, delivery bikes and ice cream bikes and coffee bikes. We were doing a lot of things well, but we weren't doing any one thing great. And when we saw the face shield design and we went through that process like we were doing one thing great in the manufacturing of the face shields. And I think part of that is that we got really laser focused on one particular item and, you know, really figured out how to scale that and do it really effectively.

[00:33:39] And when we think about sort of Coaster 2.0 or 3.0, we're thinking about Coaster in the same way we think about face shields. Do fewer products, do them really, really well and do them in scale. And so, while we are thinking about retooling, kind of like how we come out of this in the post-Covid world, you know, we're starting to put those pieces in place right now. Fewer vehicles and overall models in the lineup. You know, more cross-functional design and things that can work between multiple applications and less focus on some of the mundane things that ultimately took us down a road like was not necessarily profitable and sometimes a distraction.

[00:34:30] So, you know, it's something we talked about this in the last mile, this particular project we're working on with Amazon right now, that has been a really key sort of attribute here. One is like we can do one thing amazing if we really kind of focus in on that, just like as we did in the face shields. And so that's sort of like, I think the big lesson and takeaway that we've learned and sort of the Covid environment right now and what the face shields taught us sort of by accident.

Dave Franchino [00:34:57] Very fascinating and applicable to a lot of businesses, a lot of our listeners as well. As we work to bring this great interview home, certainly a lot to be concerned about, worried about for the future. But I'm just kind of curious. You know, you're clearly an optimist. What excites you about the future?

Ben Morris [00:35:19] Well, you know, it’s kind of goes back to this notion around community, right? I think that we see a lot of people and we've been very fortunate. And I say my blessings every night, right? Like, in many cases we got lucky with what we did. But we're optimistic. I mean, we think that as a country we're going to get through this. You know, we've seen the resiliency in the American worker. This also speaks to this notion about American manufacturing. And I tie this back to you have this this global sort of reliance on PPE that mostly happens overseas. And like you look at just American ingenuity and manufacturing ingenuity in the US, like how fast companies and people were able to adapt and pivot to this new sort of need. And we can do it and we've proven we can do it.

[00:36:16] And, you know, I'm just I am optimistic about the future. I'm optimistic about, you know, working with new people and new groups and investing in our people. And like we as a company, we have to continue to invest in our community and our employees because, you know, people need that right now. Like in ways that we've never seen before. And for us it's not even directly, you know, it's through our supply chain. It's through our partners. It's through other organizations we're working with.

[00:36:45] However, we all sort of have a role to play in this. And so, you know, I am often optimistic about it, but I am generally an optimist. And I'm looking forward to, you know, what 2021 holds and beyond. And, you know, I look forward to building some great bikes and continue to help those, you know, on the front as they need it in the years to come.

Ben Morris [00:37:09] Fantastic. Stephanie, last questions for Ben?

Stefanie Norvaisas [00:37:13] No, I really appreciate getting your perspective and learning about how you managed the PPE. I think that that type of flexibility and creativity really is a hallmark of what it means to be successful in the future. And you're just such a great case study of what it looks like when it's done right. So, thank you.

Ben Morris [00:37:36] Thank you.

Dave Franchino [00:37:36] Ben, I'll echo Stef's comments. This has been a delight. It's been great to reconnect and to catch up with your current success and the way in which you manage your business. The creativity and innovation that you show in managing your business continues to be a huge inspiration to all of us. So, we'll be cheering hard for you as you go forward in whatever endeavor, I'm sure you'll continue to be very successful. Once again, thank you very much to our guests, Ben Morris, the CEO of Coaster Cycles, of Coaster Outdoor, and CC Face Shields. Once again, Coaster Cycles develops innovative, eco- friendly transportation solutions for passenger, last mile, and cargo needs Coaster Outdoor is focusing on pedicab-based marketing solutions and CC Face Shields is focusing on PPE to respond to the pandemic. Ben, thank you so very much for your time and for the great feedback.

Ben Morris [00:38:28] Wonderful. Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it.