The Business of Cycling

I sat down with Chris Sugai, General Manager of Gates Corporation's Mobility Unit — and the founder of Niner Bikes, where he championed 29" wheels back when they were less than 1% of the market. Now he's doing it again, this time with belt drives.

We talked about:
The uncanny parallel between the resistance he faced pushing 29ers in the early 2000s and the skepticism belt drives face today — almost all of it from people who've never actually ridden
What it's like being an "ingredient brand" inside OEM partnerships, and why the real work happens in the trenches with frame and drivetrain manufacturers, not in front of the end consumer
Selling Niner after 20 years, the capital strain of growing a company at double-digit rates, and what it taught him
The transition from 40 years as an entrepreneur to being an employee at a 115-year-old, $3.5B public company — and why he actually prefers it
There's something great about hearing a founder talk candidly about giving up control, and what he gained in return.

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If you've ridden a mountain bike in the last 25 years, chances are you've rolled on Kenda — whether you knew it or not. The Taiwanese tire maker produces close to 70% of the aftermarket tubes sold in the US.

This week I'm joined by Eric Yang, VP of Business Development at Kenda USA and grandson of the company's founder. Born and raised in Ohio after his father moved to open Kenda's US headquarters, Eric spent five years in the family business before walking away for a decade — Silicon Valley startups, a Wharton MBA, and angel investing — until he decided it was time to come home.

We dig into Kenda's 64-year history, the humility baked into Taiwanese manufacturing culture, the tightrope walk between being a B2B powerhouse and a consumer brand, and what it really means to step into a company with nine board members, a global footprint, and a DNA rooted firmly in the factory floor.

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Nikki Hawyes is one of the most private-equity-experienced executives in cycling. Across three PE-backed businesses—Fisher, Zyro Fisher, and now Whyte Bikes—she's lived through every phase of the cycle: rapid growth, near-administration crisis, secondary buyouts, and exits. In this episode she shares a refreshingly candid view of what actually works when private equity meets the bike business: why realistic growth beats hockey-stick projections, how focus drives turnarounds, and why she set the terms before signing on.

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Joe Benedict, Vice President of Category Management at Quality Bicycle Products (QBP), pulls back the curtain on America's largest cycling distributor.

With 5,500 retailers served nationwide and over 45,000 products in their portfolio, QBP sits at the center of the US cycling supply chain — yet remains largely invisible to the outside world. 

Joe breaks down how QBP actually operates, from their category-based business model to their four-warehouse logistics network, and explains why landing a distribution deal with QBP is just the starting line, not the finish.

For European brands eyeing the US market, this one is essential listening. We also get into the current state of the aftermarket parts business, what the industry looks like post-pandemic inventory crisis, and why QBP sees 2026 as a year to take control and move forward.

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Recorded live at Performance Days 2026 in Munich, this panel brought together three of the most influential ingredient brands in performance apparel — Polartec (Eric Yung), Elastic Interface (Gianluca Pellicciari), and Polygiene (Eva Doll) — alongside the design leads at Albion (Graham Raeburn) and Santini (Fergus Niland) to unpack a relationship the cycling industry rarely talks about openly: the strategic relationship between ingredient partners and brands. The conversation moved past the hangtag.

The panel dug into what real co-development looks like (hint: it starts with trust and a shared problem, not a logo), why so many brands fail to communicate the value their ingredient partners create, and how cycling still lags behind the outdoor industry in maturing this conversation.

The throughline: ingredient brands are an under-leveraged R&D arm sitting right there, waiting to be used better.

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