A Turnaround Story with ENVE CEO Michael Stimola

The following is my conversation with NVSEO, Michael Stimula. Michael's a long time entrepreneur. He started out in the early 80s founding carbonite, R&D materials company supplied carbon fiber tubes for use in manufacturing, healthcare and aerospace. Michael then went on to found Sandvik design build, a general contracting company that designed and build storefronts in the greater New York City area. In addition, Michael was a board member from 1997 to 2003 of Kennedale Bicycle Corporation. And we were able to dive into some aspects of that, which is very interesting. This was the time when Kennedale was a privately held company. He also started a franchise and licensed food concept store called Sandelas. He grew that from 0 to 150 stores. And he eventually exited in 2016. He then went on to take over as the chief executive officer. The title was actually turn around chief executive officer in 2023 for NVSEO. This is where we really get to see some insight into how he was able to come in, really get his hands dirty and help NVSEO pull out of some of the turmoil that they were facing in the post-COVID environment. This is the business of cycling podcast. Mike, thank you for coming on today. This is exciting. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your story in the business, out of the business, NVSEO, wonderful company. A lot's happening right now with NVSEO. So I'm really glad you were able to make some time for us. People are curious about what's going on with the company and everything. So very excited to be able to talk. So yeah, thank you again for coming on. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it very much. Yeah, so I guess maybe just to get started, maybe tell us a little bit about where you're from, kind of your early life, and we'll talk about your early businesses, but for people that don't know you're the CEO of NVSEO. And maybe just tell us a little bit about your background, where you're from, where you studied. All right. All right. I am born and raised in New York City. And I was born there. I lived in New York for maybe my first six years of my life. Then I, my parent, my father was one of those early moved to the suburb companies, leave in New York City. So we went to New Jersey, northern New Jersey. And I spent most of my childhood through high school in New Jersey. And then I went to school up in Connecticut, a small school called Quinnipiac University. And I stayed in Connecticut really after school for most of my life. My wife and I met my wife in high school or 16. We ended up getting married and living in Connecticut, raising our family there. And we lived there for, gosh, 40 years probably as a family. So yeah, that's my early, that's my early, that's where I, my early childhood. Now I live in, now I live in my home is in outside of the Phoenix, Arizona. So I spend most of my time outside of MBS offices. I live outside of Ogden in Utah, my place that I live there too. So what did you study in college, Mike? I was a business, I started out with a marketing degree and then I went and got my MBA, same place and I got an MBA in marketing and finance. And then I went to work, it's interesting that, because out of school is where I kind of really started my first exposure to what ended up getting me to MBS, I think. When I got out of school, I worked for a company that's no longer in existence anymore called Union Carbide. It was top 50 companies in the world at the time. Huge company. And I worked in a little group there that made carbon fiber. It's a rework, it was called the Carbon Products Division and I was a marketing and product manager for carbon fiber in the sporting goods industry. I sold carbon fiber to fishing rods, deep holes, tennis rackets. That was the early days of carbon fiber in the outside of the aerospace business. So you did sales, you were more on the sales side of things? More on the, I guess I would say I was more on the marketing side. I was in the office, I didn't make a lot of sales calls. I went on sales visits, I'd say, as the young kid in marketing person in the company at the time. So, yeah, I got exposed to some really interesting things though in that early job. That was my first exposure to carbon fiber and we were selling product to mostly aerospace companies. So you go into Boeing and Martin Fyre call at the time and some of these guys making rockets and parts for the space shuttle, things like that. We're made out of carbon fiber. And there was this kind of where you sent the garbage e-carbon fiber to and to the sporting goods industry, the lesser product went in there. And I got exposed to a lot of the guys. It was very entrepreneurial business. The sporting goods guys making carbon fiber products were garage-based startup kind of guys, a lot of them. So, kind of where I got my first exposure to carbon fiber. So you were working with cycling in some way when you were working with carbon fiber then? Yeah, it's interesting. I worked for Union Carbide and I had this itch for carbon fiber. I also had an entrepreneurial drive at the time and I still do. But I went and I started my own business making carbon fiber tubes. And I had seen them making these large huge tubes for like space shuttle, the rockets that fell back to earth in the old space shuttle today. Those were made on a big filament winding machine. And I remember seeing that and thinking to myself, all right, I could do that on a little way, you know, make little tubes. So anyway, I started a business. I was wildly under capitalized. I was very enthusiastic, but wildly under capitalized. And I started that business making tubes. And I was in Connecticut. And so was Cannondale bicycle at the time. They had just they had just introduced the aluminum bike frame. And that's how I got first introduced to bikes is that started working with Cannondale, a local Connecticut company to me and doing our D work making carbon fiber frames. And that was back in the day when the bikes were made with aluminum lugs. You know, it wasn't a one monolithic piece. It was made with lugs. So I made the tubes. They made the lugs when we built bikes and tested them back in the day. So you always had this kind of entrepreneurial itch. It sounds like I do. I have a feeling like when I was an employee for years, I remember that I would always kind of have my eye out. You know, that'd be a good idea and that'd be a good idea. It's sort of, I don't know if that's the feeling, but it's like you're always like trying to like, you're bucking in a sense, like you're bucking what you're doing. Yeah. And I see that you're, you started a company called Sandela's. Can you tell me about that? Yeah. So that's a, that has a bike edge to it too. So I had the carbon fiber tube business and as I said, it was wildly under capitalized and I ended up selling that business and to an aerospace company that wanted to make tubes. And I then got into the construction business, believe it or not. And I was building houses with a friend of mine who was a civil engineer. And as during that time, I had, had been working with Canada, I kind of got my first intro to riding, right, cycling in a, in a bigger way. And while I was in the construction business, I went down to visit my sister and brother-in-law and my nephew and my nephew and my brother-in-law and I went on a bike ride. They lived out, they had a house on a Chesapeake Bay. We took our, took our bikes, my canondale bike and, and rode down to Annapolis, downtown Annapolis where the, where the military academy there is. And Naval Academy. And we went into this little shop to get a cup of coffee and, and I was sitting there holding this $5 cup of coffee and this is one of those entrepreneurial things you're talking about. I'm sitting there holding this $5 cup of coffee and I'm like, this has got to be a good business. I never paid $5 for a cup of coffee in my life. I happened to meet the owner of that store and I asked him about it. I said, gosh, this is great. You know, you've got to be thinking and make it, build more of these, right? And he said to me, I'll never open another store in my life. And I said, really, how come? And he said, building this store is the, it was the biggest heartache nightmare in my entire life. I'll never do anything construction wise. And now having been in the construction business and I'm still young. Now you've got, look around and I thought, this is the easiest construction job in the world compared to what we were building elsewhere. And then we sat itch to me, gave me that thing and I can remember from then on, I went home and I started thinking about building one of these little shops and I was in the construction business building houses had access to do that. Six months later, we opened a little store in a mall in Connecticut and then we named it Sandell and we started out selling hanging coffee and we evolved into really more of the food business than the coffee business. So I got that, I mean, I, it's funny how I go back and I look at this thread of cycling in my life. You know, if I hadn't ridden my can and dealt bike down to, down to, down to, down to, down to, andapolis to go to this little place I probably wouldn't have started sand dollars. So it's weird how things happen. And sand dollars can you give people an idea of like what sand dollars initially you said it was a coffee initially coffee but then it develops into food like can you give people some ideas about you know what the what the journey was there just so people can understand. Yeah I open a store in a mall and my first store in mall in Connecticut and does it a license or was it just an idea that you had? No it was an idea I had my wife and I you know designed the shop had it built. I was in that business at the time so I knew carpenters and electricians and also it was kind of a side gig we did built this little shop and we got into how to make espresso drinks and we it was kind of our side passion and so we started doing that we opened that store and we opened it like in a fall and it was as it came into the Christmas season the malls were back then at least were crazy busy and business was unbelievably good it was amazing and I thought wow this is this is like that shop it's easy you just open up the doors and people come in well in the mall come January February there's nobody in the mall back then so I realized I really don't I don't I need to go someplace where there's people all the time so having come from New York I went and researched it and we ended up renting a store in New York City downtown near the World Trade Center outside the World Trade Center and we opened a little shop down there and I quickly realized with the rents I was paying down there I couldn't sell just coffee I had to sell something else because it was it was crazy expensive and so my wife actually developed a line of sandwiches that we could sell in the store and that's kind of got us into the food side we started selling sandwiches and then we evolved over time into making thing making all of our food products out of flatbread and at the time flatbread was not very well known and we started making all of our sandwiches out of flatbread we started making pizzas and the business quickly grew into the food side of the business driving what we did and coffee was had always always stayed as a as part of our business but we became much more secondary so that's how we got into the food side and how many are you building more more stores how many stores are we talking about it you know at the peak so at the peak of when I owned my own stores we had about 10 or 12 stores some some in Connecticut malls and half a dozen or so in New York City so I had I had one on the on Wall Street next to the New York Stock Exchange we were downtown at the outside the World Trade Center we had them all over and spread across Manhattan and and that was going great and I thought I was still running the construction business at the time so I had the two businesses going and but then 9/11 happened and 9/11 really hurt that business badly obviously it we lost our stores in downtown Manhattan with World Trade Center soar outside was gone and the store on Wall Street was gone and like the one in the World Trade Center was destroyed I presume my store was outside the World Trade Center so when the tower came down it just annihilated the the space and that store was you know basically destroyed clothes for months and months and months imagine yeah never reopened right and then the one in Wall Street just was a matter of traffic close no so then the city of New York took over all the buildings around the New York Stock Exchange by eminent domain they went in it took control of all the buildings and they because they needed to have all the they wanted power they needed power for the New York Stock Exchange to reopen so they just wouldn't allow power into any other buildings around the area so plus New York City became death alert at that time after 9/11 people didn't go to work I mean people worked from home and they people are afraid to go to work so the I lost basically within about six months we lot all those stores in New York closed and we were teetering on the edge of I remember my attorney called me at the time while you should file bankruptcy you know we just this isn't your fault but you got to use your file bankruptcy and just we recover and I wouldn't and looking back on it I'm not so sure that was a good or bad idea but we didn't we say we'll figure it out and we did we we it's kind of ties back to other things that I've done we set down and it said you know what we got a great product it's not our fault that 9/11 happened and what we did is we reformulated the company to be a franchise company so we didn't have any capital but we had a great product a great idea and we started selling franchise stores to people and again I got lucky my first store franchise story ever opened to was at on LSU's campus and it it opened in a like a student union kind of building on campus and I was shocked that that store did almost the same volume as we did in New York City in Wall Street in that but you know there's 40,000 kids when right university right plus probably 20,000 faculty and staff so there was this enormous every day every day and it opened my eyes that wow we we could do this right so we we ended up we kept growing that business we ultimately had about 250 stores around the US and franchising franchising them and a lot of them were on college campuses some in airports but they were in more kind of non-traditional kind of locations and we ended up even selling so I ended up selling stores into the Middle East I had stores in Dubai in Saudi Arabia so yeah we ended up to being a cool little business to be in but you know it's not people look at it in the beginning and the end and they say oh wow what you know what a great idea what a great experience is straight line to working no it was full of ups and downs and left and right to to get to the end so no no business goes in this straight line no no if I look like it on paper but there's always some heartache along the way I saw a video on TikTok the other day where a guy was like yeah it really does take 10 years to do anything he's like yeah and sometimes you think it doesn't take you know you can do it a little bit faster but no it takes 10 years it really takes 10 years and I thought that was so true because you know you think you can do these things you think you can build a business or learn something or or start something but you know it's a long long long long long road to make anything worth doing you know viable make it work but but but once what I've learned and maybe you can attest to this too is but once you do get that flywheel going you know it starts moving on its own which is a beautiful thing is a beautiful thing it's also a little scary too because that's when you have to let go you know you have to let it spin on its own and it's a little it's a little unnerving sometimes especially if you're the starter of it you know it's but no it it it it is it takes a long time you know when I started those most of my businesses in the past it was kind of during that early tech era and tech companies did go from nothing to this these big companies pretty quickly they were they were the anomaly right so you would compare yourself to a guy who was in a garage last year and now he's got 10,000 employees in your house how did they do that but that's not reality no it is not reality no no not at all and like yeah these these tech companies used to not do layoffs and look how that changed in the last few months so but so I see so you then you became what I noticed on your profile when I was reading up on your your history is you were the board member at canadale you were a board member at canadale bicycle from 97 to 2003 can you tell us a little bit about that yeah so when I was making tubes for canadale back in my early my first business I became friends with Joe Montgomery who was the founder of canadale and even though I I sold that business might come my carbon fiber tube business to somebody else he and I stayed friends afterwards so and he was kind of he Joe was Joe's alive he's probably 19 years older than me 18 19 years older me and he was kind of this interesting mix of friend mentor kind of person in my life that was you know really had a big impact on what I did and so I but I stayed friends with him and then and and I had been working with canadale in canadale we decided to go public they put a they needed a board of directors and they I was I at the time had my construction business and I would just started the sandales business too so they reached out to me and said hey we want some young entrepreneurial person on our board which you consider being on it you know I was young and honored at the time to do that so I quickly accepted that and I was on the board canadale became a public company and I kind of I've got another great experience for me because I kind of wrote the good times and the bad times of canadale during that period of time being on the board but it was a great experience I got exposed to the financing side of a bigger business. And I saw Cannadale go from, gosh, Cannadale was this tiny little company in Connecticut manufacturing bikes and other products down in Pennsylvania. And they grew to, you think at the time, $150, $180 million business. And it was fun to kind of partake in that and see that process. And then they'd ended up badly. And then when Cannadale ended up getting diverted over into making motor cycles at the time. And that ultimately took the business down and ended up, the company ended up flying bankruptcy. And being bought by its lender. And the company survived bad, bad business decisions. It survived and you know, Cannadale's probably three times that size today. So good experience for me. So what's a board member? What's a board seat? What are you seeing on a regular basis at a company like Cannadale? Are you talking about distribution strategy, product strategy? Like what is it? Like what are some of the, and I know that's a really open question. But like what are some of the big pieces that you're looking at that you're seeing? Because like today, brands have, you know, you have, you have availability. Cash flow, of course, having to make big orders bets on new products, new lines, distribution, own, own stores, or I don't know if that was the thing back then. But like what were, what were some of the big, big things that you guys were gnawing on on a regular basis in terms of strategy or in these board, in these boardrooms? Yeah. At the time, well, there's some mundane jobs as a board member. They're on the audit committee or the compensation committee. So, you know, you're, they're working with the auditors and, and, and that's, you know, that all that involved other than that you're selecting who the auditors are going to be and, and maybe reviewing what they do, compensation committee would be the same top management, salary, and compensation packages. But the real, the ability on that, on a board like that is, yeah, it's, it's talking about the next, you know, you go over the normal course of business, how are we doing now? What's going on now? And then it's the strategy of going forward and what are you, what are you going to do when you down the road? And I think when Canada, Canada went from an extremely entrepreneurial company to a public company. And that, one of the things I learned in that process was, you know, it became very quarterly focused on earnings rather than long term focus on, on innovation. And Canada had been a hugely innovative company, women and mountain bikes, all the different things that they did at the time. I mean, they were really, really innovative company. And I think being public kind of took, took some focus off of that, more, it's more focused on, on, on going earnings. But we would strategize and there were a lot of conversations about distribution. You know, we were in US, we were in Europe, we were in Japan, those were our big markets at the time. And, you know, this is a flip flop today. We were making everything in the US. We were making all of our bike frames in Bedford, Pennsylvania. You know, we had a crew of young welders down there making frames, painting. It was, it was, it was a totally different environment than today in the cycling business. And so distribution was going the other way. We were shipping product to Europe, shipping product to Japan. And also what we're going to do next and how much money we're going to spend on R&D. And, and, and again, Canada had, had a history of being really innovative and plowing money back into the business. And then when the decision was made to start looking at other products, there was a big disagreement on the board about the direction to go. And the ultimate decision was to work on a motorcycle product. And a lot of R&D money got diverted into into that product. And kind of diluted it a little bit from a bike company. And, but then it did, after it went through the bankruptcy process, it did obviously refocus and research into, into cycling. But that experience as a board member there, I was a young guy. And I was, you know, I was a sponge. I learned a lot and it, it, I learned a lot of, a lot of really useful things in that process. And, and, you know, not everything you learn is something good or what you should emulate or do. Some things you learn are things you, you, you, you, in hindsight, you should never do or, or would do differently. So I think I learned a lot of those things in that experience early on. That I use today. I mean, I, I think people ask me about my job today. And I say, you know, my job today is all based on experience. That's, that's what it is. It's, it's not, well, some class I took in school or, or some program I took in, in, in, in, along the way, it's, it's experienced. So I got, I, I, I highly value that experience that I had at that time with Canada. I got exposed to something as a young guy that a lot of people didn't get exposed to do. So then you, in, in 2023, you started, you came to work at envy. And can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be? Yeah. So I sold my, I sold sand dollars in, end of 2016. And I kind of quasi retired in, in 2017. And I didn't like that very much. I didn't like doing, I went from, yeah, it's really hard. I learned another lesson here though. You can't go from doing crazy work all day. And then the next day you do nothing, it, it just doesn't work. It, it, it, it's not, I'm not made that way. And I don't think most people are. So I, I started to kind of dabble in other things. And what I ended up doing was I started doing some consulting work. And what I found during, during different consulting jobs was, I liked turning things around. I liked going someplace, it was a total mess and fixing it. And I found that really rewarding. And, and it drove me to get up every day and go work hard. So I liked that. So I, I started doing those consulting jobs. And I, I actually ended up with a, I had a consulting job that got, got me to move to Australia. I moved to Australia for, I mean, my wife and I moved there were in, and a 17 early 18 we're going to go there for five years. And COVID came and kind of broke that up. So we didn't stay full five years. But I started doing consulting gigs around the, around different places in the world actually. And I really like doing turn arounds. And when I came back after COVID or during COVID, I came back to the US. And over time, I started putting feelers out for more and more, they know different turn around jobs. And actually, you had a network that was, I guess, people are curious, like, I understand that you were, you had a lot of experience, but how do you get into the consulting side of things? Was it just a network thing like how do you, how do those jobs go about? It's like everything else has happened to me in my life. It's hard work and then lot of luck, right? You get lucky. And my dad used to say to me, you know what, success is working really hard, hanging around long enough to get lucky, right? Because you got to stay in the game. But something else has to happen. And that's what happened in this case. I had a good friend who did this type of turn around work. And he kind of advised me on some things to do. I actually hired a firm that did my LinkedIn profile. And you paid someone a firm to do your LinkedIn profile. And what did they do? It's amazing because, yeah, that's a, that, that reaction was exactly what I had with my friend, telling me you should hire these guys to do this. Well, I have a friend who, I have a friend who does this. And she, but she does it for, it's, it's a little different. Like, so she does it for CEOs of like fortune 1000 companies. Yeah. Which they have the budgets to do it, you know, because personal branding is super important. But for an entrepreneur to do that, or for just like someone that's looking for consulting work, you know, it's, it's a, you know, you're investing your own money into it. Where in this other case, that was why I was surprised because in other cases, it's like, well, you know, just have, we have our marketing budget and to have a personal brand dimension to the CEO makes a lot of sense. But for you to do that on your own, you know, dip into your own, you know, pocket and make that happen. That's, you know, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, it kind of came from both ends because I heard that from a friend of mine that was doing similar to what I wanted to do. And also my youngest daughter works as a recruiter in a tech company and she told me how, she was explaining to me one day how they, how they hire people. Right. And they, they basically mine the data in LinkedIn. Absolutely. Yep. And, you know, I learned from her, you know, it's all about key words. It's all about, you know, the algorithms that they use and how they search LinkedIn and these recruiters have a methodology of recruiting out of LinkedIn. So this company that I used did that. They took my resume. They took my, they didn't make anything up. They didn't, you know, they didn't create anything that I did. All they did was take, take what he did. They found some common threads and they found, again, key words, I guess you can say. It's positioning. On the end of the day, isn't it? Yeah. It is. It's positioning. a carbon fiber job in the bicycle business, right? - Oh, no. - If you Google, if you put, if you're a recruiter, which is who found me for this MB job, if you put in their carbon fiber, cycling industry, you know, different things, I make the short list or I make the big list, whatever it is. And then they, but at least they make, you make that cut, right? And then, so that's how I got this job. I was contacted by a recruiter in Europe. Armor sports is based in Europe and they were looking for somebody to come on board with MB. And they heard this recruiting firm, the recruiting firm found me, interviewed me, and then I was interviewed by the guys in Europe that oversaw envy at the time. And that's how I got the job. So it was kind of a, again, it's a odd way sometimes whiny road that you end up in a spot. But yeah, but it took work too. I mean, I did invest in take time and doing the LinkedIn piece and it does take time to network. - It goes back to the 10 years, right? It goes back to the 10 year rule. - Yeah, it goes back to the 10 years. It totally does. Totally does. And especially in these jobs, like the job I have today, because it does require a fair amount of contacts elsewhere because you're reliant, you gotta have friends and people that you pick up the phone and talk to and ask them about issues and problems and get other advice, right? So you have to have built this network over time. And yeah, so I think it wasn't a straight line again to getting this job at MPU. But when I had looked at a lot of different jobs, whether they be in the hospitality business or there were people that owned hundreds of Airbnb's that were looking for somebody come in and organize that business. And I looked at a lot of different things and nothing intrigued me. And then I got this first text through LinkedIn and it said they were looking for somebody in the cycling carbon fiber cycling business and it was envy. And I was like, wow, I want this job. This is the job I want. So yeah. - Well, at the risk of getting into areas that maybe are privy or more sensitive topics. But I got to ask, like, what was the mandate because I'm looking at your profile in LinkedIn and it says turn around chief executive officer. What were you turning around? - Yeah, well, it's no, it's no, it's no, it's no surprising, but the cycling business went through a really hard time during COVID. Massive boom, massive fall in the cycling businesses is in a bad place these days. So, and we didn't avoid that. - Overstocks, cash flow, what was the emergency? - Emergency was negative cash flow. Right, you know, cat, and a lot of it was built inventories, massive inventories bigger than required. - So all the money was my, was it all, - It was money tied up in inventory. You didn't throttle back fast enough production, purchasing to respond to the industry. So I had another wave of product coming in. Your overheads were too high. The business hadn't been readjusted to the times. And so I was brought in with a mandate of stabilize the business, put a business plan together to grow it and then help us decide whether we should sell the business or we can grow the business to be meaningful in our portfolio of other companies, which are sports as huge businesses that the own, our tariffs, Wilson, Solomon, you know, they're big companies to try to catch up to with a little bike company. But yeah, so that was the mandate. Cut the bleed, stop the cash, you know, stabilize the business, put a business model together that makes sense and then help us decide whether we should sell it or grow it or keep it and grow it. And so you get in there, I imagine, you know, operating a room, everybody's running around, well, not running around. But you're applying, you know, your experience to this business to try and improve the situation. And then earlier this year, the news comes out that Envy was purchased by a local family office. Yeah, well, family office, yep. Yeah, they're private investors. They're not private equity guys, you know, they're not looking to buy it, build it and flip it. They're this a long-term buyer. But yeah, so yeah, that was that was process. I started at the end of January in 23. And then we closed on selling the business at last day of April, first of May. So it was a process. - Sure. And so now you are working with the new ownership to continue to build the business. And how does the, how does the market look right now? - Yeah. - Putting you in the hot seat. - No, no, it's good. It's interesting. When I first got to Envy, it was, I took, it's not easy walking into one of those jobs because basically, usually in these jobs, they're eliminating some jobs and then putting you into that slot. And it was the smaller the business, the harder that is because people are friends, you know, so they basically just fired somebody's friend and now who's this guy coming in here and running this thing? But what I noticed right away with Envy as a company is that they have amazing products, amazing products. And they have amazing people. It was just poorly run business. And so it was just business 101 to fix it. So it really, if it had a bad, if the product was bad or we had, we didn't have any good employees, that would have been a nightmare. But it was actually, it was just fixed in the business side of it. And it takes time. - Like operations, I mean, or we just sound like just, sound operation. - Yeah, and fundamentals, like, hey, we got, we got twice as much inventory as we need guys. Right, we got to get rid of this inventory. We're making twice as much product as we can sell. So we got to cut back on what we make. And, you know, we do have some key seats that we need to fill. I mean, Envy's always been a very product oriented, innovative product oriented company. But we brought in a season, CFO, we brought in a season supply chain guy, a sales guy. - Oh, yeah. - So we had the product and we had the, we had all of that. We just didn't have the business piece. We just didn't have, you know what I'm saying, the operational side of running the business. So, you know, we went through, initially, we went through a head count cut. And, you know, I've learned this the hard way. So, you know, don't do it little by little. Go in, figure out what you need to do, and do it, get it over with, and then go forward. Because it's a lot easier that way than drip, drip, drip, right? And so, I went in, I read, I figured out, you know, not hard, but figure out the right size of the business. And we made the people changes, which were tough. But we did them, we moved. And then I got everybody again, said, okay, we're done. Right? This is it. We're right size business. We're done. Don't worry about your job. Like, we're done. We're going to grow from here, but we got to figure it out. We got a lot of work to do. And so, we did that. And we did change the business model in that envy, envy had come out with a custom road bike. And they had some production frames that they had come out with. And so, they were selling frames like they did other components. So, just like they sold wheels, just like they sold handlebars, they sold frames. And one of the things we did is we changed and said, well, let's start selling a whole bike, right? We have all the parts we're unique in the bike business in some ways that we have all the components that we make ourselves. So, we started making full bikes and selling full bikes, little by little into the channels to essentially drive revenue for every sale. So, instead of selling a set of wheels, we're selling a full bike. So, it just changed the revenue per sale. And again, we got lucky in that a couple of things. One, they don't even do in the frames. I didn't invent that. I just came along and changed the package, right? So, these guys, they didn't innovate in these frames. Over the last many years, they just had, I just happened to walk in when they were there. So, they already had done that. We got lucky too, in that we were approached and offered the opportunity to sponsor, be the wheel provider and sponsor of the UAE cycling team. And so, we got great exposure and notoriety on our wheels and components. They started using our handlebars, bar extensions. So, we got great notoriety on the component side of our business. And then, later last year, we were approached to do the same as a full bike with total energies, the French racing team. So, we got to highlight our components and a full bike. So, it quickly got people to understand how MV also sells, has a full bike. They're not just a component company anymore. So, those two things happened and they really, really did help solidify the business and the new strategy going in that direction of full bikes. That's a whole, that's a whole another business though, Mike. Like, are you guys, or are you still kind of at the, at the beginning of that journey? Because to get distribution and to get, you know, that's, I mean, it sounds like you're off to a really good start. but to have like to get to muscle your way into the into the bike categories is not an easy task. It's not easy, but it's interesting. This little little company based in Ogden, Utah has global distribution. We sell product in. We sell product in Australia, with all New Zealand. You're not building it from the outside. We have it. Our customer is that really, really high end enthusiast. That customer wants the best product and they're willing to pay for it and they're willing to seek it out. What we have found with our product is the highest end, those high end customers want our product. They'll go into their local bike shop and say, "Hey, can I get an MD-Mail? I want to get an MD-Mail." I don't know. I have these other bike brands. They'll show you these and the guy will say, "No, I want an MD-Mailer." We're pulling that sale through the dealer. We're not pushing it into the dealer. We're pulling it through. The customer goes and wants the MD product and is pulling it through. Has it been easy? No. But I think we have established a base of us being a full bike business. Our business is still based upon having the best wheels in the world. We continue to focus our little company. We don't have unlimited money. We focus on our R&D and all of us focused on the best wheels in the world. We continue to do that and then we make a full bike. That's a better business model for MD to sell a full bike. We have gotten that product out there. I will say our sales this year are up considerably versus last year and we're profitable. I'm proud to say that. The people in the building should be super proud of what they've done. Congratulations. Yeah. It's pretty amazing what we've been able to do. But it's because the product is so great and the people behind it are so great that it just took a little realignment to push the business into the right direction. I think the future is really bright for MD in spite of the market. I think the market is still really tough right now. So I have to ask you and if you don't want to talk about this, I totally understand. But what I'm seeing, since you're at the helm of this company and you're very, very near to what's happening in the market, what I'm seeing from my vantage point in Europe was that the biggest players have the most inventory still. And that they are devastating the market with price, with the price policies, that they are forced to do because they have cash flow issues. Right. Well, I think yes, I would say the industry is still in bad shape and this industry still has a lot of inventory. I think that it's starting to work its way through and it's starting to get better. I see some signs of that. But that's not the market we play in. And so our customer is not going to buy another set of wheels or a different bite because it's 40% off. They're going to buy it because they're looking for the highest performance, the best product they can. And they have the ability to pay for it. So they're not price-driven, they're performance-driven. You may only suffer for it. We're unique in that regard. But there's not a lot of us in the bike business today that are in that area, but we're lucky to be in there. But you're not exempt from the cash flow issues that maybe the dealers might have. Because of us. So I think the bike business has changed. In some ways, the bike business hasn't changed at all since I was at Canningdale. But it's amazing how it hasn't changed. But in some ways, it has changed in that in the old days, up until many, a few years ago, people used to place a stocking order and then they take delivery of that product over the year to fill inventory or to fill demands. Today, dealers don't have the money to do that. So what they're doing, we get, our business is more of a rolling order business. So you have to make the investment. You have to risk. We have to, but we've changed our business model. We don't do that anymore. We don't stock a big inventory and then hope to sell it. We're making and supplying product on a continuous basis. So it's more of a rolling business and peaks and valleys. And once we could fix our inventory, and once we could rearrange our whole model to operate that way, we were fine. But we had to get rid of our inventory. We had to get rid of things like that too to be able to get into that new model. And so we're past that bad stage and we are into the stage of where we can have, and actually, the business runs better, I think, as a continuity. You know, you can produce at a flat level and you build inventory, reduce, you build, you reduce, but if you run the factory, you run everything else at a steady state. It's a lot easier to do. But we were fortunate too with having armor as our owner because they wanted to fix the business and they were willing to invest in it. So one of the things that we did last year that took armor's willingness to fund it, but also help the businesses. At the end of last year, we looked, we got a lot of inventory. We're trying to get full bikes out there. Dealers aren't going to buy bikes for the floor. We put together 1,500 demo bikes. We basically sold them at, you know, cost plus a little. And we got thousands of bikes out into the shops worldwide that people could go in now and ride an MB bike. Where in the past they had to go in, they'd go into the deal. There's no bike to ride. You got to buy it on the, on hoping a prayer, right? But now we've had bikes out there so people can go into a shop and ride an MB bike. And I've heard from people that have said, hey, you know, I never really conserved buying an MB bike. And I went into my shop and they had a melee sitting there. They had a mox sitting there and I took it for a ride and I bought an MB bike. And so that has had a huge impact on our business. And I wouldn't have been able to do that if it wasn't armor, willing to fund us to do that. But that brought our inventory way down into a normal range. And it gave us a marketing edge and that we had product out there. What are you seeing my in terms of channel strategy in cycling? I know that brands that that had like a big kind of size and color pressure distribution, you know, were really kind of, we'll say like eroded away out of the bike shops because bike shops did work like we'll talk about clothing or shoes or helmets where the bike shops were just sick of seeing it on sale on Amazon. So they just said, look, we're just going to stock bikes and wheels because you know, those are the kind of things that give us good margin and that probably help. I'm sure that helped you guys because the dealer sort of shifted away from that those products. But I guess in terms of channel strategy, what are you seeing currently and in the future about, you know, dealer online, we'll say online marketplace or online sales and then direct to consumer. Can you talk about that just a bit? Yeah. So there's been a lot of talk about that. There's a lot of back and forth in the cycling businesses a little unique versus let's say where we where our past ownership armor was a soft goods company, you know, it's the different strategy there too. So for us, it's a it's a high-end customer with a highly technical product and you got to buy it from a dealer. You got to buy it from somebody you could take it back and have it maintained. You can have it serviced. Service services is the key here. Yeah, I mean a lot of our customers, you know, they they pride themselves on being able to maintain their own bike and their own garage and that's that's great. But there's always an issue somewhere along the line where they have me at a spare part or they need something and so we really believe in the dealer network. And prior to this whole mess in the bicycle business, envy had really done a great job of identifying that they considered the best bike shops in the country in the US and in Europe. And they and they considered them what we call ERCs envy ride centers. So they have a little little merchandising display in their store where they have our wheels and components and all. And you that we would they would be highly focused and we would help and support those guys to the best of our ability. And so people would go to an ERC to buy envy products. And we we we are continuing on that model where we we sell through the dealer network. And oh, typically in the bike business components have a higher margin than bikes out of lower margin just because the dollars are different, right? And so $10,000 bike and they can get a lower margin. We have a consistent margin. So we give the dealer the same margin on product across across the board. So we're we're trying to you're trying to be trying to work with the dealers too in terms of their their needs on that from a financial standpoint. But even on it. So you from from our strategy right now is we spell through reps to dealers in the US. And we try to stay as close to the consumers we possibly can in that model here at home. And we have the saying we win at home, right? We want to win at home. We want to we want to win in the United States. That's our that's our primary market. And that's our model here. we do have D to C but what we find is people will buy spare parts, they'll buy handlebar, maybe a wheel set or something online. But what we do, and as we go over time, we're trying to push those sales to the dealer, so that over time you'll see our website will say, "Hey, when you go to check out, they'll tell you who the ERC is within a certain distance of your house, so you could go buy it from them." But there are customers that won't go in a shop and they want to buy product online, so you have to accommodate them too. It's a small part of our business, so it's not our core. And then outside of the United States, we're really focused on finding really strong distribution partners. So like in Europe, last year we consolidated all of our distribution through one distributor in France and Mohawks, and we rolled all of our reps up under Mohawks. So we now have a central, we have like a mini envy in France that we stock inventory. Do you own that? Do you own that business? No, we don't own it, but we are close partners. We operate them as kind of like a mini envy. They have inventory, they have the ability to build wheels. They have a lot of capabilities there that allow us then to service that customer in Europe a lot better than we were trying to ship product from the US. And we have seen a huge growth in our European business come partially because of our sponsorships of these teams of driving awareness of envy products, but also we actually can deliver products quickly. We have it in stock and we have a, we service the dealer network over there way better than we did. The customer always wanted our product there, but we didn't do a good job of getting product into the dealerships. And now we are. So our business in Europe is growing a lot in the last six, eight months. Yeah, it's, it's funny because I felt, so I've been in this business for, I don't know, about 12 years. And I felt this kind of momentum was just pushing everyone towards D to C. And you know, that was true for products that, you know, clothing helmets, shoes, it's, it's true. There was a, there was a pretty much a conversion to D to C, you know, shops will keep clothing and they'll keep shoes and it'll sell, but, but there was a big shift to D to C. In bikes, it's, it's sort of hit and mess. Right. It's sort of hit and mess. I mean, our bike sell for more than what my first car is bought. I car first car bought as a kid, right? You know, I mean, they're expensive and they're high tech. And I really, what, what do we buy online like that? I mean, I go back to be right. So I'm old enough to go back to the dot com days when, you know, you can buy everything on, it was, it was going to take over the world, you know, you could buy everything online, everything, anything dot com, you could raise a ton of money back in the day, right? But that's change. I know people don't, our product is, our high end bike product is not something that is readily purchased online because our customer, for us to be able to do that successfully, we have to decide what you want. Right. We have to say, this is our bike. This is the bar on it. This is the, this is a drive train on it. These are the wheels. That's not our envy customer. Our envy customer wants to build a semi custom bike even when it's off the shelf. They want to pick, okay, I want to mail it, but what wheels you want on it, what drive train do you want on it? What bars do you want on it? What's saddled you want on it? And so by buying a bike from us at a dealer, you can do that. You go in and pick and choose everything that you that you want. The dealer puts the bike together and delivers it to you. If we're going to ship D to C, it's coming in a box. I can't send you a box of components. You can't put it together. So I got to, I have to kind of pre-select what you're going to get. And that's not really the envy customer today. The envy customer today is the person that first bought our custom road bikes where everything was customized to now our production bikes, which are really semi, semi custom. So it's not really a strong, it will never eclipse our dealer type business. Right, right. No, the dealer, I think long story short is, you know, the dealers here to stay for anyone that thought that, okay, everything's going to go online. We're not seeing that. We're really not seeing that. It's the dealer. But I do think, I do think the dealers though, the only the best dealers are going to make it. I mean, it's a tough business, right? And they have to, the bigger guys, not just the bigger guys, the guys that run their business like a business as a cycle shop, you know, they're not in it just because they like to ride bikes. It's a business and they have to be able to manage your inventory and cash flow. They have to provide high end service. They have to do all of that. So I think that the dealer model is here to stay. But I think the game has been, the bar has been raised on being a good dealer. Sure. So you mentioned you'll be in Italy for the tour or for the Giro. We don't want to jinx Mr. Mr. Project Carbett. It looks like he'll he should be coming across the line with with envy wheels, winning the Giro fingers crossed. They're hoping fingers crossed. Yeah. So, yeah, with that, I guess I won't be in Rome to see you, but potentially we'll see each other at the tour. But thank you so much for coming on today. Mike, it was super great. You've been candid. I think people are going to take a lot of value to be able to see inside of your journey with envy and whatnot. So thank you very much for that. If people want to reach out to you, get in touch with you guys. Where's the best way to reach you? You can find me on LinkedIn. It's a good place to find me. It's probably the easiest way. All my contact information, email and all is on there. It's probably the easiest way to find me. It's just find me on LinkedIn. Okay. Great. Well, thank you so much, Mike. It was wonderful talking. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.