In this episode, host Jonathan Maus talks with Billy Sinkford, a bicycle industry insider and VP of PR and marketing firm, Echos Communications. Billy lives in Portland and is the man behind MADE, a major bike show coming to Zidell Yards in the South Waterfront August 24th-27th that will feature over 200 custom bike builders and other companies in what he calls the largest handmade bike show North America has ever seen.

I've known Billy for years, but have never been able to sit down and have a chat with him, so I was really excited he was able to swing by The Shed for this interview. We talk about his interesting past, how he got into the bike industry, the work he does with Echos, why he's such a big fan of handmade bikes, and more.

Oh, and he was also nice enough to share the strange — and I'll just say, very personal, story — of how he got his nickname, "Souphorse" - the name many people know him by and the name that's tattooed across his neck.

Links:

• MADE Bike Show
• Echos Communications
• Full text transcription

Billy Sinkford, welcome into the Shed.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Something I like to ask everybody that comes back here, if you can just share with us what is your relationship to cycling past and present? So did you ride a lot as a kid? Did you come into it late in life? How has cycling kind of been a part of your life up until now?

Definitely rode an awful lot as a child growing up. And then in my mid-teens, I definitely left it for a little while and then I came back all in 17, bought a bike messenger company in Boston, Massachusetts, and went all in. I was working midnight to eight security at Faneuil Hall in Boston and then riding as a bike messenger during the day, moonlighting at the juggling store that I managed in Faneuil Hall and did that for quite a while.

Wait, wait, wait, sorry. You were a security guy?

Yes.

Who had a side hustle being a bike messenger and you were-

Whether or not that was the side hustle or the security guard was the side hustle, I'm not sure, but there was a hustle going on nonetheless.

But you're also a bike messenger and also a juggling as in circus juggling.

Correct. I was a professional magician and a juggler, and I used to perform in Faneuil Hall and street perform in Boston at the same time.

There you go. Okay. I did not-

I used the bike to get around to all of those things and it became my catalyst on top of work. It became my mode of transportation. And slowly over the course of decades it has, I mean, only morphed into more and more of my life. And the bike is certainly my greatest joy. There's no doubt about it.

Awesome. And I guess it's fitting that you ended up in Portland as a bike messenger, juggle store owner person, although I've never seen you do any of that around here. Might fit in really well.

I don't want to take anything away from our flame throwing. Exactly. There's a lot of people that have already got that market covered, but no, I'm thrilled. It's been almost well over a decade in Portland and it's fantastic.

So I want to go back a little bit. So you were a bike messenger in Boston and in San Francisco?

I started in Boston and after that I did a short stint in the military and then I moved to San Francisco and became a bike messenger there. And that is how I slowly weaved my way into the actual bicycle industry itself.

Yes. Okay. So bike messenger, San Francisco, tell me how you morphed yourself from bike messenger person to into the marketing side of things, or were they happening at the same time? I'm curious how you got that first job in the bike industry. I understand the being a bike messenger in the bike industry too, but I'm curious how you got into the marketing side of things.

Well, the messenger side of things was fantastic. I did it for almost 10 years. At that point, you start to call yourself a career instead of a messenger.

Never heard that. I like that.

And I think I did the best that I possibly could in that environment. And I got burnt out. I had been doing a little bit of product design work with Timbuk2, also based in San Francisco and then I linked up with Chrome Industries. And Chrome, I guess they saw an opportunity in me. I certainly saw an opportunity in them. And I weaseled my way into their marketing department and started as a social media coordinator and left pretty much as the VP of marketing. And as Chrome was sold to KEEN, I don't know how deep we want to go into this backstory, but also a local Portland company. There was a little bit of a non-compete agreement between the people that were involved with Chrome. And at the same time, Mission Workshop, which is another messenger bag and apparel company was starting. And we used Mission Workshop, myself and my business partner, to start ECHOS, our PR firm, and they were our first client. So it was definitely got into all of this throughout the messenger and the urban cycling vibe and culture.

And like you said, you were in social media for Chrome, but this is pretty early in the social media world, isn't this like late-

We had left MySpace, but definitely there was no Instagram. There was none of this stuff. This was rudimentary just brand building on social and through that started doing PR.

Why is your nickname Souphorse? What's the story about that again? Does that came in Portland, right? Or no, before?

No, that was a Boston.

Long before. Boston.

Yeah, that was deep Boston. I don't normally tell this, but I'll tell it because we're on the podcast. I'll give it a go. Very, very cold winter day in Boston. Start of the morning, full day as a messenger. And we're talking six to eight inches of snow on the ground, freshly fallen. And one of the first deliveries that I pulled up to as I tried to get off my bike, my seat post snapped in half and I sat down, my body fell onto that and was a real rough day with a lot of borrowing tissues from some of our receptionists in places that we don't really need to talk about on the podcast.

And we were so busy that I didn't have time to stop by the bike post and get a new seat post. So I just rode all day on a fixed gear bike without a saddle. And at the end of the day at the bar, seat post turned into Souphorse and I guess you can call the rest history. It certainly was not a nickname that I chose for myself. It's not a nickname that I'm happy that I have, but it is now how I am known throughout a lot of the bike world.

Yeah. Fun. Thanks for sharing that. Okay. So what the heck do you do now? ECHOS Communications is something that you started or... You joined, right? Or you were hired onto after having a few different jobs in the bike industry. Tell me about the genesis of ECHOS.

So I'm the VP at ECHOS. Okay. My business partner, Rob, is the founder. We started it together and I manage our cycling portfolio of clients, which is generally around 20 brands that we manage. And we do public relations and marketing, pretty much anything that doesn't involve actual sales of stuff, that's what we do. So we're making sure that brand messages get out to the cycling media and then also out to the greater audience as well.

Okay. So flesh that out a little bit. Brand messages, meaning you're helping these companies get the right kind of stories in the magazines and doing maybe event tie-ins, like making sure stuff gets in reviewers. Tell folks that aren't exactly sure what that is. What does that actually mean?

There's some of that, but I mean, there's so many different ways to get your message out there now. I mean, eight, 10 years ago it was we want to be in Bicycling magazine, and that's pretty much it right now. Nowadays are so many different ways to get your message out there. So it's helping people guide and navigate through the different channels, but PR and making sure, I mean, even though the industry has seen a bit of a slump as far as the media's concerned, we've seen a lot of outlets come and go. It's awesome by the way, to see BikePortland still kicking and going strong.

Still kicking, yeah.

Not still kicking, going strong, but they're getting involved in the actual cycling media is important. But also as we've had the bike boom, getting the message out to people that don't know that much about bikes, especially now that there are so many more options out there with e-bikes and other things. So there's media components to it. And then just also, there's so many different ways to talk about your brand and making sure that the brand is getting represented well.

You mentioned maybe new people coming in to cycling after the COVID boom, which assume you're talking about the COVID boom, the recent boom. What do you see as your role being someone who can pull so many levers in bike marketing? Do you see your role and how do you actually implement that? This idea of getting new people into this, because it'd be easy for you, right? I'm sure you've heard this before and maybe talked about it, thought about it of a lot of bike marketing can be pretty insular. It can talk to the same crowd versus trying to reach new types of writers. So is that something that you're actively doing and how are you approaching that?

Well, I'd say that's probably a two part thing. So from a personal level, I feel extremely fortunate to be able to work doing what I'm doing, and I feel absolute sense of obligation and duty to try to get as many people on bikes as possible. So that supersedes any media relationship I have or any relationship that I have with a brand. So I kind of try to look through everything with that lens, and that's how we guide our conversations with the brands that we work with and the media that we work with. But yes, the ultimate goal is less marketing jargon and more people on bikes. And I think right now it's a golden time for that to be taking place where for many years there were a lot of brands that they didn't even have to market themselves. The product was flying off the shelves, and now that is ceased to happen.

You can buy that product on eBay for half of what you can get it from at a store. So what does that look like now and how do we engage the people that bought a bike and may or may not want to stay on it now that they can actually go do anything other than ride a bike? I mean, during the COVID time, it was real easy to do my job because it was legally mandated that the only thing you could go do was ride a bicycle. When that's it, that's easy. But then how do you keep those people engaged, keep all the riders engaged after, now they can go back to their normal lives and what they did prior to that. So I don't know. I think that the ultimate goal is to keep more people on bikes, the more people on bikes the better. And that's the overarching vibe.

Do you have some idea from where you sit on how to go about that? Does that mean how to go about retaining some of these folks that were riding a lot during COVID who may be more likely to just hang the bike back up now? Does that mean that you're trying to reach out to new different types of magazines that maybe aren't some that we would think would be related to cycling? Or is it going into new different kinds of events, getting your brands in front of those? Or is there some specific ways that you're seeing that the industry and the stuff that you're doing can get those kind of folks to stay excited about cycling?

Well, I think we already were in conversation with all, if somebody's talking about bikes within the media landscape, I would hope that I'm in conversation with them. We do a pretty good job of doing that. So it's less about that, I think it's more about the actual individual and the person and nailing that down and getting them excited. And ultimately that comes back to a sense of community. Without that, it doesn't exist. If you look at e-bikes right now, they're growing in popularity, but there's no sense of community around the e-bike. There's a sense of community around the tall bike, there's a sense of community around the recumbent tandem.

Or when mountain biking took off, obviously there was this huge community. It started in community, right?

And fixed gear, messenger culture, road racing. Each of them has a tribe that's attached to it. And you associate yourself with that tribe. You're not necessarily associating that with the e-bike. So I think right now it's about educating people so that they can hopefully attach themselves and feel comfortable attaching themselves to one of whatever, wherever they exist in the cycling ecosphere. They're like, "Oh, I fit in here. This makes sense." So that it's a sense of welcoming and just trying to keep people engaged on the bike. That really is it. Because if they're not engaged, if they can't go out and do that with their friend, if they can't go out and go to an event that that's associated with, then they're not going to stick around.

So a lot of what you do and have been involved in Portland and all the promotion that you've done has helped foster this immense sense of community in Portland. You're tremendously responsible for a lot of the amazing things that have happened in the Portland cycling community. We need to foster that and keep that going and be welcoming to new people. And I actually have to stop myself on a pretty regular basis where I'm like, "Your saddle's too low. If you just pedaled this way," then it's like, no, we need to let everybody experience cycling and learn in their own way, and hopefully they stick around.

And do you see a lot of that with e-bikes? I mean, I'd love to hear what do you think about this just massive adoption of e-bikes and the fact that unlike maybe some of the other categories, a lot of folks that are buying e-bikes are not coming from existing tribes, so to speak. These aren't N+1 people. These are just a lot of them, brand new people who either haven't ridden since they were kids and they're older now or for whatever reason. What are you thinking about this e-bike boom? Is this something that you're excited for, you think is giving some amount of challenge to the industry? You think the industry's meeting the moment? Where are you at with how e-bikes have changed the landscape?

There's a lot of challenge. There's also an awful lot of opportunity, and every time I see somebody on an e-bike that doesn't appear to be a cyclist to me, it warms my heart a little bit. Even if sometimes they're a little bit dangerous and maybe we need to educate them a little bit better on how to be on the road, I think it's absolutely phenomenal. We're pulling people into our world of bikes that would never ever have been in our world of bikes. There's going to be issues that come up that we're all going to have to work together and solve, but I think ultimately that's one less car that's on the road, and that's one happier individual in their daily life.

I mean, I know when I go ride my bike in the morning, I'm set all day. I've got nothing but a smile on my face. So if that's the way you're starting and ending your day, kudos to you no matter which form it happens in. So it's just a question of education, commitment to bringing people into our tribe, and we're there. There's still more work to do. So it's a tricky topic where there's a lot of feelings on all sides of the pond, but I think ultimately I would much rather have that person sitting in the saddle next to me than sitting inside of a car.

Cool. And speaking of pulling people in, let's get to the real main reason that we had you over today, which was pulling people into this huge bike show that you are organizing four days of a bike show down in Zidell Yards in South Waterfront in Portland. Tell me about the show. What the heck is going to happen down there?

Well, this is the MADE bike show. So this is the largest handmade bike show that's ever taken place on North American shores. I don't even have the words. I'm so humbled and I'm so honored to be the steward of this fantastic effort that's taking place. This is not about anything that we're doing. This is the builders themselves that had wanted this to take place. And as the market has boomed, there's been a lack of a show to have this happen. And there had been one prior, and we were put in a position where we're able to actually make this take place.

So we took the leap of faith and went ahead and did it. And I live in Portland. I travel all year to trade shows, and I get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of all those different things. In Portland, there could not be a better place to throw this. So we have over 140 frame builders that are coming to the show and over 200 vendors that are going to be there total. And that keeps growing daily to the point where I am maxing out yet again my second venue, and people want to come see this. So we're pretty pumped.

For folks who don't know, Zidell Yards is like a shipbuilding facility or a former shipbuilding facility. Massive, massive, I think it says on the website a hundred thousand square feet. And you said you're maxing that out. Okay. So is this something where, I mean, I almost feel like it's going to be so big, overwhelmingly big. Are you feeling like people will get two days of tickets to give this thing justice?

I would certainly hope so. I mean it depends on what your level of involvement is and how you want to be there. We'll have stuff for the kids, we'll have stuff for everybody. We'll have food carts and coffee and beer and all that stuff. But if you're truly interested in bikes in the way that I am or in the way that I would imagine a lot of your listeners are, there's a lot to take out of this show. So you can either do a quick breeze through or you can do a sailor dive depending upon what you want to do. And we have builders coming from everywhere, all four corners of the globe. So I mean, we've got people coming from Namibia and people coming from France and people coming from the UK and not attendees, these are builders that are coming to bring their bikes and show them.

So the list of builders that's going to be there, we have a lot of wonderful builders here in Portland. All of them are going to be represented. But then this is a global show, and then the brands that support that, so the Paul components and the Industry Nines and all of the brands that make products that you would see on a custom bike are all going to be present. So this is as close as, I mean, not as close. You can touch and feel and get as deep into this as you absolutely want to, but this is the cycling industry brought to Portland through the lens of the handmade world.

Okay. I got to ask you about one of those builders in particular. How did you connect with this? I think I'm saying, is this some Onguza from Namibia?

Yeah. Yeah.

How did you could make that connection?

So I have known Dan through the internet for a little while. What he does caught my eye for sure. And we just spoke back and forth, and the commitment that he has, the culture that he is bringing and the product that he is bringing to market just always struck me as amazing and he reached out. We have done zero outreach to get anybody to come to MADE. Everybody that's coming is coming because they reached out to us and wanted to come to the show. And he was one of the first people that reached out and was like, "Hey, I'm really interested in what you guys are doing."

And made sure that they were going to have some space to show what they're doing and bring their culture and bring a little taste of what they've got going on. I think there's this myth of the 55-year-old, middle-aged to upper middle-aged white man that works maybe, I mean, I hate to say it, but lawyer, doctor, and that's your custom enthusiast. There are builders out there that are doing amazing things that don't check any of those boxes. And Dan and what he's got going on is one of them. So having them come over and making sure that they were present made an awful lot of sense.

Okay. I know that you're based here, you live here, you ride here, you know all the builders here. Tell me something about why you feel this is something that is right for Portland right now.

Well, we have always kept it weird. There is no doubt about that. I have data points to show all this stuff because I run a PR firm and we get to look at numbers all the time. By capita, we have one of the largest numbers of custom frame builders in the United States. And actually, the city of Portland and the number of builders that we have here, and then you pour that to another country, sometimes we beat the other countries. So we really have got an awful lot going on here in Portland.

That's our community, that's our vibe. And it just makes perfect sense to host a show here where the people that are engaged in that can enjoy it. And not everybody is going to come to this show to buy a custom bike. A lot of people just want to come to the show to see the bikes and to hang out and to be part of the community. But our community supports this culture in a way that other cities don't, and I live here in Portland, so for me to host a trade show where I get to sleep in my own bed is I'm never going to get that again. We're also not going anywhere. This is going to stay in Portland indefinitely, but there are cities that just don't support it in the way that Portland does. So for us to do this here, it just made sense.

Any idea why that might be? Why does Portland support this kind of thing?

We're not looking for the easiest answer. We're looking for the best answer for ourselves. I think collectively as a community, you're not looking to go get the bike that you can get today that's going to check two out of the three boxes off. You're willing to go the extra mile and buy something once, have it last a lifetime and have it check off all the boxes, which is when you get a custom bike, it should check off every box that you want.

And it's interesting to me because it feels like a little bit of a, what's the word? Not misnomer. It feels a little bit strange to me in a way that Portland does support so many custom frame builders and has historically. I mean, I've been covering it since, I don't know, ever since the start of BikePortland, the bike builder scene here has always been so strong. But it's interesting because this isn't really like the people who support it here aren't necessarily like you mentioned before, it's not necessarily just doctors and lawyers. I think Portland, maybe more so than a lot of other cities, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you have just less rich people that say buying custom bikes. It's like this deeper appreciation, right?

The demographic is skewed way down. So Portland, I was just hanging out with somebody the other day, a 28-year-old that bought a custom bike from somebody in Minneapolis, not even from Portland, they live here in Portland, but they bought this bike so they could cart their dog around, and they were super stoked to have this bike, and it checked off every single box for them. So for them, they don't need a car. So the car payment goes away. There's so many things that you can cut financially when you don't have that in the way. And then you look at it as an investment in the future and it really is.

Yeah. I wonder if it's also the longevity aspect of it where Portland has that ethic of buy one, just keep something for a long time instead of disposable products that are going to come and go. So maybe it fits into that too, where people are like, "Look, I'm going to buy this one bike and I'm going to have it forever." Maybe that's really appealing to Portlanders more than other places.

And also it's an identity thing, right? Portland, when you walk around, you're going to see a lot of Danner hats. You're going to see a lot of Patagonia jackets, but you're also going to see a lot of people that have removed the branding from those. And a lot of people that are just wandering around doing their own thing. And that's part of what the custom bike movement is. I don't want to be tied to one of three things.

I want to be able to make my own decision, an educated decision, but make my own decision about it. And that's what handmade gives you the ability to do. You get to decide the branding, you get to decide. It's not just about whether the bike fits you, it's about how the bike looks and how it integrates into your life. And you don't need somebody else to tell you how to do that if you already know what you want. So if you know what you want, go get what you want. And guess what? We have 140 builders that can fight for your money to decide whether or not they're the one to build that for you.

Yeah, I was just going to say that's probably why the show you're putting, the MADE show is going to be so popular and these shows have been popular is because the kind of people that are buying these bikes, they do want to go talk to the builder. They want to check out those different little nuances and differences between one builder to the next and be able to get all their questions answered. And like you said, make sure they're going to check off all those boxes. That's a uniquely cool thing about a handmade builder show is you can do all that in one place, get a bunch of shopping done at one time.

Honestly, there are folks that are going to come to the show for eye candy and they're going to bring their family and they're going to hang out, and that's awesome. And maybe 5, 6, 10 years from now, they'll decide that they want a custom bike. And then we're going to have folks that are going to show up with a short list of people that they want to talk to, and they're actually going to say, "Hey, what is your ethos on this? What does this dropout look like?" Whether they're a technical thing or a cultural thing, they'll find their fit. And ultimately part of the custom process is you've got a vibe with the builder that's making your bike because they are making something with input from you, your riding style.

It's not just your geometry and the numbers themselves. It's how are you going to use this bike? What do you want it to look like? Are you going to lock it up outside all the time? There's so many different questions that they're going to ask you to figure out what that bike should be for you. And then vice versa, on the customer side, you're looking at these folks and being like, "What does this person believe in? What other bikes have they built?" So you're going to have some meeting points there and people are going to be interviewing each other.

I was going to say it feels like if I was a builder coming to a show like this, I would feel a little bit of pressure. I don't know. It must be a little bit nerve-wracking for these builders to when you roll up those doors and all these people come through, are they going to like my booth? Obviously these are people who don't really look for outward endorsement a lot from the builders I know are just solid people who they are. They're not looking for looking to be popular, let's say. But there's a sense that these folks have to make a living and they got to sell bikes. So it must be a little nerve-wracking to have everybody come walk through your booth and are they going to like how it's set up, you know what I mean? That kind of thing. This is a neat balance at these shows, I think, sometimes where it's just putting out what you've got versus hoping that people like it. It's an interesting mix.

Well, I think we're doing something cool to hopefully tackle that, but in previous iterations of the Handmade show, which we've been involved in for a long time, the Handmade show, we'll just leave it at that.

Gotcha.

But I have thrown seminars of how to talk to the media, done things like that. And we have two days prior to the consumer facing days that are just for the builders and for the media, because we're a PR firm. So one of our superpowers is we're bringing the media to this so the people that come through the door are going to get to see all of this in person and experience it, but what can we do to bring this message to the global community and to get this in places that it would not normally be. And that's really what we're trying to do. So for those two days, not only are they going to be meeting with the media, but we'll actually be educating the builders on, "Hey, you're a little bit of a recluse."

Yes, there are some of those.

Here's how you talk to the media. Come stand in the front of your booth. Come do these things. So just giving basic guidelines on all that stuff so that hopefully they're able to present themselves in a way that they're excited about, and the consumers then get excited about. Everybody walking through the doors gets to find out as much about them as humanly possible.

And that's cool. So you're actually doing the professional development of the builders thing.

And these builders at other shows and when we get together, we're always getting together in front of the public and in front of the people that are trying to purchase the bikes. There's no industry moment surrounding it. So for builder X and builder Y, neither of them gets to go over and be like, "Oh, that's how you laid down that weld," or" How did you fit that extra water bottle boss on there?" We have two days where everybody's going to be able to wander around. And again, we're talking about Portland in the sense of community builders and their own sense of community is also equally important. And when whenever we show up, that is often lost in translation. So making intentional space for that to take place is important.

I love that. So the idea of builders themselves going around and trading notes, and from what I've seen over the years ago into these shows, they love doing that. Most of them are very-

We're all nerds.

Yeah. It doesn't feel very competitive and secretive.

That's the way we elevate the craft as a whole and anybody that is super deep into the cycling world that whether or not they know that much about the custom world or not, if you're riding enough that you at least understand that there are builders out there and multiple of them, you're nerding out on this stuff and you want to find out more about it and making space for the builders and the brands and the media to get to spend that time together. And then also then by the time that we open the doors and the public come in, you have a bunch of folks that are super fired up to talk about what they're doing. It should make for a really great atmosphere.

Awesome. Okay. One of the last things here, I want to know from you personally. Obviously you're a huge fan of these bikes and about people making bikes one at a time like this, handmade bikes. What comes to mind when you think about that? What is it to you? Is it the artisan craftsmanship? Is it just having something unique that only Billy has? What piece of it is the top thing for you?

I have a very strangely proportioned body where I have very, very long legs and a very, very short torso. So my fit has always been the issue. I think I also found a sense of community with the frame building world that I had longed for, and I love it. And there's just something about having something that's made just for you by someone that you know, and I'm fortunate that I get to call a lot of these folks friends. So my custom bikes are made by people that I've known for years and have watched me ride.

So there's the added benefit of them knowing he's going to be in the big ring when he goes up this climb, so it needs to be this stiff or we need to change these different things as far as the tubing goes. But it's all community driven for me and passion driven. And I cannot always find that passion in the larger brand that I can find in someone that's building something specifically for an individual. And it's much easier for me to feel excited about what they're doing than a larger brand that is bringing it to the overarching masses.

Is there anything else that you want folks to know about the show? Anything else that we didn't talk about?

I think we covered down on everything other than, I mean, tickets are now for sale, so if you're in Portland and you want to come out to the show, get them now. The ticket prices will gradually increase as we get closer, so they're not expensive. Zidell Yard is awesome. It's going to be really fun, and we hope to see everybody out there. But yeah, no, just thank you for the opportunity to chat and I'm stoked about the show.

You're welcome. Thanks for coming in, Billy.

Yeah. Thank you, Jonathan.