 Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada for the Inner Bike Show, which is happening down the street at the Convention Center. But we're actually at a side event put on by Royal Dutch Gazelle Bikes, a 125-year-old bike company who is all in on electric bikes. We wanted to come in, see what's going on, really how the e-bike phenomenon is kind of intermingling with all these alternative scooters and all these alternative ways of getting around cities especially and get a feel for it. So we're excited to have a retailer who's been in the business for a long time. He's Davey Oil. He is the founder and co-owner of G&O Family Cyclery. Davey, great to see you. Thanks, it's really happy to be here. Yeah, so first off, just impressions of this event tonight. Gazelle's rolling, I think there's six or seven new bikes out here tonight. What do you think? It's very exciting. Gazelle's an extremely high quality brand of electric bicycle. And like you said, they have a very long history in bicycle design. And what they're doing now is they're riding this wave of new technology that's coming through e-bikes and it's phenomenal. It's so funny, because on so many of these things I was talking about earlier, you know, so many kick starters, right? That have started. And actually a lot of the companies have been pretty successful on a kick starter basis. But this is an old line company. They've been making these things. I think I heard earlier they're still making them at the same factory that they've been making them for 125 years. And surprisingly to me, a third of this year's bike sales will be e-bikes. So clearly there's something going on here. Yeah, there is. Now what do you think in terms of the adoption in Seattle? What I've heard as well is that the US is about 10 years behind Europe in kind of e-bike adoption. I think that's probably the case. In Seattle, we're very fortunate that there are a lot of factors at play that are driving e-bike adoption happening a little bit faster than it is in some other parts of the country. But I think that all around the country in cities and suburbs and also in rural areas, I think people are going to find that adding electric mobility to your bicycle, it takes away the barriers to cycling that so many people experience that are totally rational. Like when I arrive at my destination, I don't want to be sweaty or I want to be able to use a bicycle, but I want to be able to carry more things or my children. And when you add e-mobility to your bicycle, those kind of barriers are just eliminated. You're still getting exercise, but you can choose to make the bicycle ride more of what you'd expect from other forms of transportation, which is convenient and not sweaty and difficult. So how many of your customers aren't really bicyclists? That they're coming at this as kind of a new opportunity, maybe they cycled before, but they're not kind of hardcore cyclists. See this as the right, what's amazing to me is you have all these form factors, but this is a form factor that people are very familiar with. And that's where I think there's a real opportunity to e-bike that's not the same as scooters and some of these other things. Yeah, that's a really good question. What we experience is that probably two thirds of our customers don't previously identify themselves as bicyclists. They're probably somewhat friendly with the idea of bicycles or they wouldn't have walked into a bicycle store, but what we see is that transformation that happens to people when they adopt cycling as a major part of their life and a major part of their transportation, that still occurs, but it occurs all at once when they leapfrog over so many of these barriers and just have the opportunity to use a bicycle so much more than they would have otherwise. And the same thing happens to people who are already interested in cycling. People who only ride recreationally often find that with the addition of an e-bike into their life, they can use a bicycle for many or most of their transportation needs over the course of their life. And that's profound, it transforms people. So there's a lot of special kind of characteristics of Seattle. Obviously the weather is not great, of course it's not great in Holland either and they got a lot of bikes there. Got hills and bridges and some nasty traffic. Not that everybody else doesn't have nasty traffic, but Seattle's got some crazy traffic. So you guys are seeing down only the adoption of the e-bikes for commuting and for fun and all those things, but you saw a lot of cargo bikes for commercial purposes in this tight urban center. So I wonder if you can give us a little bit more color on how you're seeing the penetration in cargo bikes. Sure, well I think that cargo bikes when used for freight purposes and delivery purposes and enterprise purposes in general, they benefit from the same things that bicyclists benefit from in urban environments in general, which is just greater mobility, freedom from the restrictions of traffic. I'm not trying to say that bicycles aren't on the road and that they don't sometimes find themselves behind a long line of stopped cars, but we have so much more flexibility in those situations and we can park safely and reasonably on a sidewalk. And so so many things that happen that people suffer through due to congestion are alleviated when they're riding a bicycle in general and businesses experience that when they use them for freight for sure. And it's not just a cargo bike, it's an e-cargo bike. So now I got the super human skills so I can carry that load. And I can replace a truck. I mean, we have bicycles in operation in Seattle for some of our customers use that are daily carrying 400, 500 pounds of weight and they're traveling 60, 70 miles in a day. Right, so how are you seeing the integration of the e-bikes with the regular bikes, the hardcore bikers, the recreational bikers and then of course you got these slow moving pedestrians, right? And the danger stuff occurs when you've got all these disparity in velocity. And it's going to be interesting to see kind of how the regs kind of catch up and eventually probably discriminate. So these paths are for 20 miles or more these paths are for 10 miles an hour or less. So how are you seeing that kind of work itself out in the streets of the city? I can get a little rough sometimes out there. I think it has the potential to get a little rough. I think that honestly the situation, the opportunities for conflict between pedestrians and electric bicyclists are not any more significant than the opportunities for conflict between pedestrians and conventional bicyclists. I think that while an electric bicycle can travel up to 20 miles an hour or in some cases faster, they don't ordinarily travel that fast. That's a peak speed. And so I don't really think that sidewalks are being menaced by electric bicyclists. I don't think that's really occurring, although I do think that the kind of regulations that you're talking about, that classify e-bikes into types so that we can then empower people who have jurisdiction over different pieces of infrastructure to determine for themselves and for their users what bikes are allowed and which ones are forbidden or restricted. I think that's really positive. I think it's extremely important that we define what these vehicle types are because of course there are some vehicles which are more appropriate for some environments than others. But I think the real thing is that bicyclists and e-bicyclists are not the enemy of pedestrians. I think that together we're all making smart choices and we're in the safe spot. And I think that if it feels like there's too many bicyclists on the sidewalk in your town, it's probably because you haven't made any room for bicyclists in the streets of your town. And I think we all need to work together to make cycling a safe and viable option across all of our communities. That will help congestion. When we remove people from cars, we improve traffic for everybody. Right, right. And bikes should not be on sidewalks period, right? That's not really not the bike place unless the street is just so treacherous, right? I think that if you're talking about it in a situational like daily life situation, I think there are a lot of conditions where bicycles are going to be on the sidewalk. And there are many of them that I think are reasonable. I think it's totally reasonable to decide as a city, we don't want bicycles to primarily ride on sidewalks. Or when bicycles are on sidewalks, I don't think there's any city in the country that allows bicycles on sidewalks that doesn't also stipulate as long as they're traveling safely. So if somebody has a problem with how somebody's behaving, that's still a problem either way. Right, right, right. So I'm just curious to get your take as you've seen this market evolved. Again, we've got big players involved, Bosch is doing all the electronics on these bikes. Capacities got bigger on the battery, speeds have gotten better, dependability. So how are you seeing kind of the evolution of the e-bikes impacting the total market for bikes? Again, I can't believe that Gils out guys said they're going to sell a third of their bikes or e-bikes. You seeing the same thing in your business? Yeah, well, I mean, my business is focused on e-bikes. But what I will say is that I think that one of the challenges for bicycle advocacy and bicycle marketing and retail has always been how to appeal to people who are somewhat friendly towards bicycling but aren't doing it. They're called interested but concerned. And it, I think it turns out that e-bikes are the key here. That we can help transform people from someone who is friendly towards bicycling to somebody who uses a bicycle as a big part of their life. Simply by making bicycles easier. And as you identified, right now, finally we're at a point in the development of this technology where the bikes really are reliable as a vehicle. And that's significant. It's not just a hobbyist activity at this point. These are legitimate reliable vehicles. And transportation, I mean, legitimate transportation. It's not just your last mile vehicle anymore. Yeah, absolutely. At our shop, at least, we're talking about people who have given up a car. Almost every one of our customers who's getting an electric cargo bike is doing this as part of their family transportation budget. And that includes driving less or removing a car from their life. And that could only work if the e-bike was at least as reliable as driving was. And so maybe a flat tire is still a pretty annoying problem, but that should be the worst problem. And I think we're finally there in terms of the quality of the technology that's out. And now it's only upward. We're like at year zero now. Right, amazing, even with the weather and the hills and everything else. It's profound, man. It's really, and then it's a culture shift. So it just spreads across our community. One person inspires somebody else and they inspire somebody else. Well, Davey, thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story. I really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. He's Davey. I'm Jeff. We're at Innerbike Reno, but we're actually at the Gazelle event looking at their e-bikes and they're really, really cool. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.