YETI: Built It. Sold It. Bought It Back.

All right, here we go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of the Sledder Cast Podcast. It's a doggone beautiful morning today. Look at this today. And this is actually the first time these arms have been out of the sleeve.

We call those guns.

And you need a license.

Hey, I appreciate that. Okay. But no, it's been kind of a hit and miss today or this weekend here at Hay Days and this is just a gorgeous day and so we're so happy to have Duncan Lee again as a co-host. He's been on a couple others here at Hay Days. Then we got Kevin Forsyth here from C3 YETI Recoil. We're going to get into a lot of fun good conversation. Personally, like you guys know, I'm pretty selfish with some of the guests we bring on just because out of my own curiosity, I want to learn more about brands and you know, the situations and decisions, you know, hard decisions that they have to make and how they grow.

And so your story specifically with YETI intrigued me because starting it, selling it, buying it back, like that doesn't happen very often, you know?

Yeah, it's definitely been quite the journey. It all started basically with my current partner Jamie Hodgson. He came to me just with an idea is like, he wanted to buy a Timbersled titanium kit, which Allen had built a few for some friends and his brother and stuff like that. And they wouldn't sell him one, they wouldn't build him another one. So, he came to me and I'd been selling some carbon fiber parts.

I'd been making the XP chassis and selling those for a couple years and I'd got to know his brother really well and his brother just kept bugging him was, hey, go see Kevin, man, he can build something cool. I'd never ridden a snow bike, knew nothing about them.

He drove down with a trailer full of them and we went up and tried to ride and it was in May I think end of May and we ended up some wrong road stuck in a creek and with a tiny bit of snow we unloaded the bikes turned the trailer around in the creek unhooked the trailer turned it around in the creek rode across a 100 ft of snow and came out on this big cut block big like highway logging road with not a stitch of snow in sight and it's like okay well that was fun. There we loaded back up, spent the rest of the day trying to see if we could get around and find snow and then that's where it all started and we went home from there and made the plan and

Went to the drawing board.

Yeah. Went to the drawing board. He said, “So you think you can build one of these?” And I was like, “Well, from the ride I just had and what we did, I'll give it my best shot.” And he cut me a big check and said, “Okay, I want nine of them.”

Wow.

Wow. So, maybe I missed this, Kevin, and I apologize if I did. Can we say you're the brains behind like that kit, the YETI kit?

Yeah, 100%.

100%.

Yeah. Between Jamie and I, he'd come up with these harebrained ideas. I had some of my own and mine were more grounded and he'd come up with these harebrained ideas and I'd have to figure out one how to make it simple that we could actually make it and two make it so we could actually sell it and make money doing it. So, we had a lot of fun doing that for the first, well, three years of design and I was, you know, pie in the sky, Jamie, and me trying to figure out how to make it work. And yeah, we did it. We came out with a kit so that was in May.

May of what year? Let's get some years in because we're going to be progressing along here.

Yeah. So that was May of 2013.

Okay.

And so in October we went to this Edmonton sled show with a kit that I hand built, kind of drew it all out, hand built it, built molds for it cuz it was carbon at that time still, the very first one. And then built this kit that you know, some people at the show called it fugly. But anyways, we just put it there and he was a GM dealer, so he had a big GM booth up there and stuff. So we just like dropped it in this GM booth kind of no signs on it, nothing

Underground.

Yeah. Just kind of just dropped it there and just kind of seen what the feedback was on the internet and stuff like that and you know got some good feedback but it was a super light kit. It actually worked really well. We only rode them a couple times. I sold two of them, and we took them back from the customers and once we built today's YETI then we just you know we replaced them for them and stuff like that. But that was kind of the start.

That's an amazing start. Yeah.

Yeah. That's cool. What was the response at that show, with that kit just sneaking around? I'm sure there were people like, “What is this? What's going on?”

Yeah. Yeah. So, like lots of people's like, who built this? You know, what's going on? And he just had some salesman in the booth. So they didn't know anything about it. So they couldn't even tell the story. I don't know. It's the owner showed up. We don't even know what it is.

I don't know what that is. The tractor part.

So it was kind of cool because it just started you know some rumors flying and this and that and yeah we just had fun with it and

That's cool.

But yeah, so to the question, it was just you know, really different kind of plain looking and I just tried to use some geometry to make it really light which worked well, but it just didn't lend to what people are used to for looks of stuff. And at that point there was only Timbersled out with kits and stuff and it was totally different looking and it was carbon fiber. So everybody's right away that's no good right away from the beginning and we've still been dealing with that to this day. So

Yeah. So, that's 2013 kind of when things got off the ground.

So was YETI kind of the precursor to C3, or how did that all play out?

So, in 2006, I started looking at building a lightweight snowmobile, which started from kind of this idea of, hey, could we build an electrified snowmobile? And it's like started adding up the weight of the batteries and all this stuff, and it's like, well, with today's technology, no. But hey, let's start out by taking a bunch of weight out of the sleds. So, at that point I owned a composite company and so I had an M7. We just tore it apart and built a mold off of it and built one of these chassis.

And then that's how I kind of got tied in with Jamie because his brother was heading to the mountains with a bunch of his friends and he opens up a SnowTech magazine and there's a little ad like a 1 in x 1 in square ad there for like a carbon fiber M7 and he's like, “Oh, I'm going to buy one of those.” And so I met his brother and built him the very first one of those. And then he built some crazy 1,200 cc triple in that thing and and just could like go over the top of every mountain and all his buddies were sitting down at the bottom. So then he got together with all his buddies and they decided they just bought the XPS.

That was the year the XPS came out and so they all bought XPS and so I started building chassis for those got in. So that is what I built C3 Powersports around from.

That was in 2006?

That was that would have been probably 2008 once we finally did the XP. And then he was trying to find a belt drive for it. Some guy was supposed to build it. I talked to the guy for like 6 months and he never did anything and I was just like, “Okay, well I'm going to do it.”

Yep.

So that's kind of what started C3 Powersports was the belt drives. I ended up doing them for all the sleds. And then building the carbon fiber parts and chassis and hoods and all that stuff. And yeah, that's what got me to know his brother well and then that's what got Jamie to come talk to me about the

Bikes.

All right, so we're fast forwarding a little bit. We're in 2013, 2014, and YETI is coming to life. How were like those early days? Did you look at C3 as kind of like the mothership of that, and then kind of like got these little, you know, sister companies popping off.

Yeah. Not at that point, you know. Yeah. It was just like really raw. And it was like then it was sort of just a project for somebody else and you know, after I did this initial concept and we took it, we rode them a few times. We doubled them out a couple times and you know, we had all our usual errors that everyone would have. You know, we decided, yeah, it works. And you know, Jamie comes from car racing, drag racing, and you know, he's all about lightweight, the best, titanium, everything like this and that. And you know, he's seen promise in it and it's like he wanted to have the best snow bike kit he could have.

He'd just gotten into it, but he always just everything's always overboard and so he seen promise in it and was like we decided to partner up. So by I guess it was October of 2014, we just formed a partnership and then started C3 Powersports as a kind of its own limited company and I sold off all the belt drive stuff and got out of all that and just focused primarily, 100%, on snow bikes.

So your partnership was C3, but then did you also develop a partnership for YETI and that was an actual business?

Yeah. So, we just decided to like split them. I sold kind of what I did for C3, like the belt drives and stuff. I just sold that off and then we could just go focus on YETI.

Yeah. As a brand.

Yeah. As a brand.

What was the lead-up when you decided to go, okay, we're going to do this YETI brand. We're making snow kits. What type of process or how fast did you come up with a logo and a direction and like we're going to market this way?

Yeah, it happened pretty fast. Like so after that first year once we just decided we were going to do it I don't know how I think it was actually I think my daughter tells me it was like her idea or something like that but she kind of like came up with the idea of YETI and then it's like yeah I like that and started working on that. We worked with actually a designer from Troy Lee that did a lot of their design work. His own design studio in California and he helped us with the logo and the branding and stuff at the beginning and came up with kind of what we have now for the logo. Yeah, and then just kind of rolled it.

We knew that was going to be it and we just, you know, put our head down. I ended up designing three complete kind of builds of what we have now in basically one year.

Yeah. So, it was pretty big.

What are all of the like today, what are all of the brands that you guys have under this umbrella right now?

Yeah. So, after we sold YETI kind of gave us free time on our hands as like, okay, what are we going to do next? And while we had YETI, we just started working on some aftermarket bike products, snow bike products. And as you all know, you know, to make a dirt bike that's meant for, you know, warmer weather function well in cold weather and snow, it needs certain products. So we'd started to work on a few of those while we were at YETI. And then you know seen okay now we got to finish this list and so then that's what exploded C3.

So C3 now became snow bike brand kind of you know tried to grow it in the number one brand and just have you know best value really good products good quality. And then, you know, as we got big into snow bike and started building that and we started having lots of bikes around our shop all the time and riding all the time, it's like, okay, well, we're sick and tired of loading these on decks and up ramps and stuff like that. And there was a guy that was building one of these little kind of winch operated kind of things. A little bit kind of archaic and all steel and stuff like that, but but it kind of he had the concept.

So, we bought one of those and Jamie bought one, put on our shop truck and started using that and after 4 years of kind of making it better and tweaking it and adding things and taking things away, we ended up as like, you know what, we got to build these like everyone needs to enjoy what we enjoy every day of like loading at end of the day, tired loading, moving furniture and stuff. So, we started the brand Recoil, which is a deck company. And it's not just for recreation, but it's great for recreation. The big thing is it's great for work and you can do all your work stuff no matter what trade you're in.

Then you drop that in the garage and you pick up the deck with your toys on it and you're off to the mountains, right? And you know, there's no setup time and all that stuff. So, that's the big one now that we're focusing a lot of time into as well as the other.

So, at that time, you guys took an existing winch deck that just slides off and you went to the chop shop and you cut it up and turned it into... Can you explain what the recoil actually is? Like there's an arm that actually lifts it off and puts it on the ground, right?

Yeah. So, there's not an arm, but like you say, we started with kind of just a winch deck. There was slope built into it. It kind of rolled off fairly easily. And he used a little bit of string, a little bit of springs just to start it kind of thing. But, but yeah, we just kept working with it. There's, you know, there's a lot of things that just didn't do well and we just kind of kept coming up with solutions to those. And then after we had done that, I was like, okay, now I have the picture of how this could look as a finished product. But what it does is it uses one winch. Winch is at the front. The winch basically just pulls the deck on.

That's all it does. When you hit the out button on the winch, there's a recoil system. It's just like the recoil pull on your sled. You pull it, it pulls itself back, right? So, that's all we're doing is we're just we're loading a spring. The winch is pulling that spring in. It picks it up on the kind of way in as it loads in, pulls it in, creates the tension, and that's what pulls it back off.

So, that's pretty slick.

Yeah. So, we have a patent pending on that. And that becomes our tech kind of knowledge technology that we're kind of building around and stuff and we see lots of future applications for it.

I thought it was just a cool name recoil, but it actually is a cool name with a lot of function around that name.

It's all based around that and that's kind of same with YETI, right? And it's just like I have this I got a couple other cool names for future businesses. We'll see if we ever get there or not.

Keep those in your pocket.

That's cool. We'll overlay some video cuz you guys you've done a couple cool videos that I watched of just watching that thing kind of self-deploy and pull back onto the truck bed. So

I seen a real cool one this morning from X Games last year when there was a nice short that someone did of our team, I guess. I don't get on there much, but yeah, that's a really nice produced little

Do you guys have dealers for that deck?

So the deck is just starting. Yeah. So, we have one here in Minnesota. It's up north, and that's a close one around this area, and then we got one in Utah. And just setting new dealers up all the time. We kind of take care of Canada, BC, Alberta right now. And yeah,

How many decks a season are you or a year I guess are you pumping out?

At Hay Days last year, we put the first two decks together. One we brought down to sell to the dealer here. The other one was on our truck. We installed it on the way down and then showed up here.

Pure Hay Days fashion.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So it was perfect. So that was ground zero here last year and now we've sold 50 decks. We had a really good show here. Sold quite a few more at the show. So yeah. Yeah. It's just and so we've spent this kind of last year of we've built all these decks but we've actually made tons of changes like okay every production we like would change a ton of things. Our fabricators and stuff were getting kind of pissed at us because it's like can we just make the same thing for a little bit and like no we're going to keep changing it till it's right. So

You want it better.

Yeah. So now I think we got it locked down and we're kind of ready to kind of really ramp it up now. So

That's awesome.

Sweet.

Yeah, that's cool. Hay Days is a great place to do that. So,

Yeah, it's an amazing event and just the people here and stuff like this is it's awesome. We're grateful for it and being able to kind of make these connections.

Cool. So, that was kind of an overview of kind of the different product lines you guys got into throughout the last 12 13 years. Right.

Exactly.

We're going to take everyone back in time now to YETI time. And you guys ran YETI for how many years before the sale?

Yeah, so it was only three years from inception to sale. So we sold in August of 2017.

Okay.

And we'd only been selling for a year. So 2016 was our first kit. And so we started that in fall of 2015. Sold about half the kits that we built and then decided, you know, there's a few things we need to have better. And so we actually built enough parts to build 500 kits and and then ended up kind of upgrading all those and calling them a 16 and a half and then sold the 17 kit. And you know we were into Snow Check. We'd sold you know 350 kits in Snow Check in 2017. But then Camso took that over and who now became Michelin. But so yeah they took that over from us and at that point

Yes and wow. So the question I think everyone has is what led you to selling YETI?

Yeah. So my partner Jamie basically worked his whole life kind of in one car dealership within kind of the family's kind of structure that they had and they had quite a few businesses. But he worked one dealership, built it up, done a great job at it. They sold it. He basically used his savings, his profit from that 20 years of work and put that all into YETI.

Camso had approached us actually just when we started and tried buying us and we're just like well we haven't done anything and they wanted to pay on EBITDA and you haven't sold anything so where's the EBITDA in that so we said no and then they kept bugging us and at this point you know they approached us again and they were willing to pay a little bit more but they were willing to pay enough that kind of paid Jamie off and you know he seen it as you know we were going to have to work another three or four years at least to you know get out of debt from starting it up, and I understand he kind of worked his whole life for this money and then someone wants to buy it and you know no more risk and stuff so it kind of made sense and and he knew at the time you know I loved it. We were just getting started and I didn't want to sell it I had five six more years of ideas and you know and I'd only just learned about snow biking, I'd never ridden one and you know I was just starting to learn it's like okay I'm ready now like now I've actually learned what we should have designed not just design what seemed to make sense, right?

Yeah, but totally understand. Supported him on that and it, you know, led to where we are now. So, I don't regret it at all.

Yeah. So Camso had it for well that was 6 years 7 years. 17 to 23. We basically bought it back in August of 23.

So you're sitting here on the sidelines watching your baby.

Yeah. Baby just got like sent off.

Yeah.

Right.

Sent off.

Real movie.

Willow.

Willow.

You remember Willow? Like they said put the what is it? Put the baby in the basket in the river. See you.

What are you thinking during this time? Did you have any skin in the game after or were you fully bought out?

Yeah. So it kind of seemed like I would in the beginning. You know, we went and helped with implementation and getting them kind of moved over, but you know, they kind of had their own mindset and really wanted to use their own people and really quickly transitioned out of that, which was fine. You know, right away we started C3 and so my mind was busy and we're designing lots of new parts, so that was all good, but it was sad to see like some of the things they did, you know, you'd hoped they'd done a little bit more, but they did a really good job at reliability.

You know, we'd had a few reliability issues with some titanium, just not good welding and stuff, and we've learned since then. But, you know, instead of embracing that and trying to improve those products, they, you know, went right to like heavy steel and different things. They just kept adding weight, but they did add reliability and that's one thing I was grateful when we got it back is we got back a kit that at least was reliable. We didn't have to worry about that. And we could start with that as kind of our cornerstone and build from it. So

Did you while they owned it, did you have any moments that where you just were absolute cringing on what they were designing or changing?

No, not full-on cringe. It's just, you know, it's just disappointment, I guess. I was like, hey, like, why would you do that or this or that? You know, they had some good things and and you know, they did well for their kind of market, but you know, I think they also seen the writing on the wall and and just, you know, it was again like the OEMs and probably the same as Polaris, it's like an OEM running something that's so small and niche is hard and to make money at is hard, you know, even if you're not that.

But I think the private guys are a little bit better because we can flex quicker and change and stuff like that. So there's more opportunity in it for us than them.

Okay. So you're sitting here watching this. Was there as you look back during those six, you know, years, was there ever a time or a moment or a decision that you can specifically remember as like, no, why'd you do that?

Nah.

Why'd you do that to my baby?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I was more like, why aren't you doing something else? Like why aren't you doing something new?

Progression of it.

Yeah. Just like pushing it a little bit more. Like I said, I had years of ideas kind of still or I just started to formulate those years of ideas and you know, it would have been nice to see them push it or even let me help with them or something like anything for free. I probably would have done it.

Yeah.

But yeah, no, it's just kind of more of that. Probably the biggest thing is when they said they're shutting down like that was like, oh man, like why did why are you guys shutting down? Like

It's got to hurt to watch.

Yeah. Why don't you try to sell it? Why didn't you call us or something like that, right? Instead of just no, we're done and shutting her down. So, that was probably the biggest thing. But, yeah. No, I'm pretty laid-back and kind of just believe in kind of someone else guiding our path and and totally happy with kind of C3 and where we're going with that. And, you know, and we had actually been working on or just started a year before on the recoil deck. So, you know, kind of had that and we did three years of prototyping on it that we built like five decks over three years and each one just lots of new stuff into each one.

So, there's a lot of stuff going on there.

So, you were busy. Your mind was thinking you weren't super caught up in what are they going to do with this. You were like this is cool and I'm good and geez I'm busy with these other projects.

Yeah, I'm good enough. You know, I got to the point where every year I was buying a different kit. I had bought a Timbersled, rode our YETIs out kind of as far as I could and then it's like okay I'm going to start riding the other stuff and started buying the other kits and then it's like oh now we got YETI back can ride YETIs again get new YETIs

Did you see it coming when they said they were shutting down? Have any

No inclination at all it's at first they actually wouldn't even let us be a dealer for them because they thought there was too much resistance or it would be too much feedback from other dealers. But eventually we convinced them is like, look we know the product the best we can support it the best. The first year they let us start buying parts to be an aftermarket kind of you know warranty or whatever helping people out with parts and stuff like that. And then the next year they let us start buying kits and so we only made it through like two or three years that we actually could buy kits from them.

Yeah.

Before we got the news. But yeah,

When you had mentioned, I think you mentioned you guys were making around 500 kits a year when you sold. Was that about right?

Yeah. So, we only did two years. So, we plan to make 500 the first year. But we only sold 300 of them.

Gotcha.

We used the leftovers, turned them into half-year model and gave them some shock upgrades and stuff like that and created a half-year model, but then we also came out with a new model for the next year. And that year we sold just over 300 plus the other 200 of the year before. So we sold 500 that year and then again we were on we're on track to sell over 500 again cuz in Snow Check we did like 350 or something. So

And do you know what they built it up to?

They stayed at about the same building 300 to 400 kits a year.

I'm asking because I'm trying to gauge like how many snow bikers are there?

I do the same thing all the time. And yeah, that's a that's a mystery.

It's a mystery. They're elusive.

If you're on the Facebook group page, it feels like there's a lot, right?

Oh, really?

Yeah. The group on Facebook, the big one Timbersled.

Yeah. So, so anyways, and again, now, you know, we're friends with Allen and we use this track on our kit and stuff, the MtnTop track. So, we're really grateful for that cooperation and it's helped us out a lot and Yeah. So, and it's good we're working together to build the sport up and I'd like to see the sport size like double would be great.

Yeah, I think we all would. Yeah.

YETI's no more.

Yeah.

Who called you first? What was the first person you called? Like, when did you start scheming, you know, like

Yeah, I don't know. I guess I probably talked to Jamie first thing as soon as we heard you know, we got the call from their management and they were nice enough and I'm grateful for it. They actually called us like half an hour before everybody else. They actually told us first, but I still don't understand why they didn't try to sell it to us first thing. But yeah, then I called Jamie, like, oh, who knows what's going on and we'd actually started thinking about our own thing and we're ready to start down our own path again because we hadn't seen anything change and it was time for this new stuff.

We had a non-compete for 5 years. So that had run out, and we would have got back into the game for sure. So yeah, so it kind of wasn't, you know, a big deal and we didn't think about it. It's like, oh, maybe we just keep going and doing our own thing and started thinking back and forth and it was like, well, it might not hurt to just have it back but we weren't too worried about it. Until they called us then after that and said, do you guys want to buy it? So, I was like, all right, we'll share some numbers and we'll look at it and we'll think about it. But we still weren't super excited about it.

And then a few things kind of fell into place that just kind of made it seem like, you know what, maybe it's not a bad thing to buy back.

Okay. So, what is that like? What does that kind of feel like to send Willow away?

Willow and then Madmartigan comes crashing through the castle and saves Willow again.

Like where was your headspace when like you're like, “Oh yeah, let's buy that back.” And like how did that like what was your feeling behind that?

Yeah, actually I remember kind of getting excited feeling like, yeah you know the one thing I really liked is we had a patent on the ski and we call it below surface mount. So the actual pivot of the ski is like well below the surface of the snow where the ski rides. And obviously we'd sold that patent along with it and the thoughts of getting that patent back that they never did anything with was actually my most excitement because it's cool. If you guys ever ride the ski, I don't know if we can apply it to sleds or something else in the future, but on snow bikes, it was the most phenomenal thing.

And I only rode it a few times before we ran out of time. And it's like, you know what? I don't have time to finish developing it. We need a ski in three months. It was July and I was doing my last ride on some prototype skis and stuff and it's like I don't have time to finish developing this. We just got to go with whatever everybody else in the industry is doing. We still used our ski, but we mounted it differently and kind of went more traditional with it. And you know, it still worked really good for a lot of things. But that was actually my most excitement is knowing that now I can finish that ski the way it is.

And actually just before I came here, my engineer showed me like the last kind of drawings. He's just ordering the parts for the first prototypes of now this kind of next version of that ski. So

Awesome.

Yeah, pretty exciting.

So from when they dropped the news, 30 minutes before everybody else, to when it was officially back into your hands. How long was that process?

I believe that was in around March when they actually did it. Around when Snow Check should have happened. So yeah. So then till August. So

So it took a few months.

Few months, and I think they actually didn't approach us till almost a month after. After they said no.

Do you know if they had was there anyone else going after it?

It sounds like they chose to talk to somebody else about it. I don't know who or why. But I guess nothing happened with that, so they just decided they're selling it.

Okay.

When you do that change of hands, how much stuff comes with that? And I'm talking hard parts, like cleaning out the warehouse, everything the business owns.

And there's a lot. And the funniest part of that, it was stuff that we sent to them.

Yeah.

Came back.

Yeah. You're doing the whole swaparoo.

Stuff I didn't want to sell to them. It's like, Jamie, they're not going to use this stuff. They don't need it. Well, it was part of our assets, so they're getting it. It's like they don't even want it. I'm positive they don't want it. No, they're just they're getting it all. It's like toolboxes, all this cool stuff we could have just, you know, had and set up our shop. Awesome. And all these kind of things like that. Even like tracks, some different things that we had as like prototypes and stuff went to them, sat on a shelf somewhere there, and we got it back with an inch of dust on it.

Yeah.

Nice. Lot of work.

Yeah. A lot of work. And then and I don't know if you guys have dealt with any like big companies, but like, at the end Michelin owned it. First it was Camso when we sold it to them. That was hard enough. And then when Michelin owned it, buying it back is like it's unbelievable what you can spend on lawyers and accountants and stuff.

Behind the scenes stuff you have to do sounds like a lot.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Little companies are better.

Call up on the phone, shoot a couple text messages. Hey, well, let's make this work.

Shake a hand. Let's call it good. Exactly.

All right. So, we're now transitioning into now time. What's the future look like for YETI?

Yeah, it's looking pretty good. It was kind of scary the first little bit, right? We bought it back. We bought enough parts to build a couple hundred kits probably. And so that's all we could do the first year, right? Is just like, okay, well, who's going to buy last year's kit again, right? And who needs one? So, we started out that way. Did fairly well, better than I thought, just selling the same kit. And then luckily, you know, MtnTop came on the second year. I don't think we would have sold too many kits that year. But he came on with his track.

We were able to sell quite a few kits again and kind of stay in the game and it gave us the time to get some new stuff developed which we started on right away. And and just barely in time, we kind of came up with this new One suspension that we got in there which uses one shock. It's the One to kind of do everything. It wheelies. You can adjust it so it's planted. You can have it like halfway in between. You can make it a short kit. You can do everything all in one and you don't have to buy a different one for this, different one for that. And

So by make it a short kit, you mean change the track out?

No, actually. So Timbersled had what they called an S kit, which was their short kit. It was 3 inches shorter. So, front and rear, they suck the whole kit down three inches. Okay. Get it closer to ground, you know, easier to ride and stuff like that. And so this we're able to build that all right into the

Really cool. So, it's a pretty much adjustable setup.

Yeah, adjustable setup with the Fox shock in there. We worked with Fox extensively and quite a few tuning sessions. We were just at Fox before we came to Hay Days again, planning next year stuff and the years after. But yeah, working with them was awesome. And we've come up with, you know, something really good. The shock is doing a crazy amount of work. Like, one shock to do what two shocks usually do, right? And do it as well as it's doing is unbelievable. Like, we're so happy about that. But the air, it's a really regressive kind of falling rate suspension.

So, we need a real ramping rate shock to kind of make it all work and the air does that for us. And yeah, we just couldn't be happier the way it turned out. We had a lot of luck in there. We did a lot of changes for things that we thought we could make better, not really knowing what was going to happen, but they all actually just kept working out and just got better and better. And

That's awesome. Fox does a great job with suspension. I run Fox shocks and Fox socks.

Yeah. Awesome.

Say that 10 times fast. That'll get you.

Fox shocks and Fox socks. There you go.

Fox in socks.

So shocks. And socks. There you go.

Yeah. Now, shortly after you guys take it over, Timbersled shuts down.

Yeah. So that was in kind of year three. It was two days before our Snow Check. You know, as sad as I was to hear that happen, I know a bunch of the guys at Timbersled and we've worked with them. They actually became a distributor or they sold all our C3 product in their P&A or whatever and through their stores. You know, so it was sad to hear that, but but you know, it couldn't have been better timing for us. So, I'm very grateful for it as well. And yeah, just we were at Island Park actually. We're just there for the industry ride.

We just done a couple days testing with Fox actually and we're all just sitting around kind of sitting there and Brock was with us, Brock Hoyer and he gets a text and then we get a text and it's like, oh, it all went down, and we're just sitting there on the couch just chilling, right? Then texts start going around. It's like do you believe this?

Did you know this was happening and stuff. Asked Brock, he's like no I didn't have a clue and and so yeah we start kind of getting the stuff going around and it's just like wow like that hit like a ton of bricks it's like wow this is impactful like we're just here we're shooting some video and stuff for Snow Check and about to announce it in two days and stuff like that and then do the industry ride and everything so yeah that was like way more exciting than either selling YETI or getting it back like just hearing that news is like oh what's going to happen now and what are the possibilities and opportunities and stuff like that.

Yeah, speaking of opportunities, like it seems like when Timbersled shuts down, that customer or that athlete or ambassador now is looking at their options and it's probably like, okay, am I going to, you know, switch to YETI or am I going to switch to I mean probably MtnTop, right?

Yeah. Do you guys have any gauge on like okay pre-announcement of Timbersled shutting down to like within weeks after did your like ambassador pool just like were you guys getting like submissions like crazy like does that just blow up or like

It basically happened like that minute cuz it was like the phone was ringing, we'd see it on Instagram. Everyone was just like, yeah. It basically happened right there like from sitting on the couch. It's like, oh well, who do we want to get and who's going to come to us and what's going to happen and that and you know we at that time we didn't have a big budget. We were not sure what we're going to sell. You know based on the last couple years we didn't have much budget for a bunch more ambassadors. You know having Brock is pretty high level and stuff like that. So, yeah.

So, you know, we had to play that kind of just let it play out and see who wanted to come first of all and then, you know, kind of judge, you know, who we could take on and, you know, how much we could do for all of them and stuff. So, you know, if they help us grow it to where we think we can get in the next couple years, then there'll be room for some more and and we'll be grateful to the ones we got and working with them. But, you know, riding with them at the industry days and meeting kind of everybody there was really good and getting to know them and stuff and yeah, it's been great.

We're pretty close to wrapping this up, but there was a question I had way back and I didn't want to forget it. And I hop on a snow bike once or twice a year, mostly a snowmobiler,

And weight on a snowmobile is obviously a really big deal, right? Like you're always trying to cut weight. When you compare the kits out there, YETI to, you know, Timbersled to MtnTop, where does that YETI system come in at?

Yeah, it definitely comes in at the lightest. Not exactly sure how much lighter. Every once in a while, we kind of figure it out and stuff, but yeah, definitely the lightest. And it's going to get lighter.

It's going to get lighter.

It's going to get lighter. We got

What do you got? What do you got to tell?

Well, well, we got lighter this year. Going to one shock, say it's like about 4 lbs or something there. Our chassis this year coming out is about another pound lighter and then it's about 30% stronger as well. We do all sorts of crazy testing. We blew some up with dynamite this year just for fun, just see what would happen.

Are you going to post some of that those?

We actually posted that.

I need to go check that out.

I got to find that. All I can remember Brock taking like a sledgehammer to it just like I just kind of like

Yeah. Cool.

Yeah, we do destructive testing. We've built this whole big jig that we hook them up big hydraulic ram and we bust and we know exactly where they break and we can test any other models and stuff and just kind of know where we're at. So, that's really good. And yeah, just it's going to get lighter. There's little tweaks we make here and there, a little bit more titanium and a little bit more carbon fiber in parts. We want to be the lightest, strongest, most reliable, and then try to just be the best in every category that we can. So

Those are good categories add wheelie time, right?

How much wheelie time? Of course. How much wheelie time does the One bring?

Someone else can figure that out. I'm the worst guy at wheelieing, but and I don't even like to wheelie, but it's getting it's getting better. I started doing some bow ties last year and had some fun with that. But

That's awesome. So you guys you released the One for this season, right? Correct. So now it's available at your dealers. You can go set that sucker up and have the best snow bike kit on the market.

What are you going to do for next year? Well, any One number three?

No, there's going to be more Ones.

More Ones. More Ones. Okay. Just another rendition of it of making it better.

Yeah. More of the first kind of the first in the industry kind of stuff, right? We'll just we'll keep doing that.

Sweet.

Yeah. Eventually, you know, the platform's been around for 13 years almost now, right? So, it's time pretty soon in the future for kind of to revamp the whole platform,

Like a chassis platform revamp. So stay tuned.

Yeah. So, like selfishly, we've got the we had the YETI template, you know, for graphics. We do kits for a handful of YETI athletes. Does the One change at all as far as panels on that thing?

No, it's still the same. It's really been the same kit since 2016.

We've had some people ask and I thought I'm pretty sure it's the same. So

Yeah. No, it's basically all the panels are the same. There's some minor nuances, some radiuses and stuff like that, but your graphic kits are going to fit all the way back to 16.

Love it. I love it. And that's for another...

Another how long? Oh,

Another few years. Anyway,

Stay tuned. You're going to have to stay tuned

Sometime in the future.

Okay, great.

Anytime between now and then. Yeah. And you know what? We'll be able to easily just share flat patterns with you for the next one.

Oh, that'd be great. That'll help us out. Inside line. Well, Kevin, I appreciate you hopping on.

Yeah.

You guys are over here in the shade, so you guys are welcome. Cooking over here.

Wait, you got to get a little tan on those. I know, right? Been cooking, but it's busy today. It's a busy day.

Yeah. It's looking good actually for Sunday. It's looking busier than either past Sunday. So,

For sure. So, appreciate you jumping on Kevin and getting to

Thank you guys.

Getting to learn more about the YETI history and story and I just appreciate being very responsive and doing a great podcast for us. So,

Awesome. I enjoyed it.

Thank you everyone. We'll see you on the next Sledder Cast episode. All right. Thanks for holding that up too.

That was an epic sound bite. I know, right?

Right at the end.