Between the Motos: Milt Reimer

It’s come a long way in design and colors and everything since the early 2000s. I guess that’s like you said, credit to the designers and you letting them just go and kind of have fun.
Absolutely. Most of the guys ride moto here. In the winter snow is so inconsistent, but summer there’s always dirt. So, a lot of our guys test a lot of moto in summer too, just so that you get to ride. So in the DNA of any product and any design, I use everybody’s influence in here to make those decisions. Once you get everybody on the same page you know you’ve got something that probably will get good traction out there. So, that makes it fun for all of them.

Can you tell us a little bit your background and starting FXR and all that?
Started racing moto in 1980 and working in a dealership from ’80 to ’90. I started as a wrench and you’re wrenching, doing parts, sales, service, all of that. Then 1990 I bought the dealership and ran that for six years. I dropped out of high school after grade 10 and I was thinking, “I need to learn a business and a company.” It was a Polaris/Honda dealership and I thought I could maybe get it to break even, but I really wanted an education in how to run the business side and what a dealer wants and needs, and what the customer wants and how all of that works. Then through all of that I started racing snowmobiles as well. I was all of a sudden thinking, “How is snowmobile race gear just so archaic? There’s nothing here that works.” Moto has everything and it’s all detailed and designed for a very functional purpose, but still has the goal of connecting emotionally with the customer with what it looks like. When do you see guys walking around in tight pants and neon colors outside of moto? So we’re thinking, let’s bring some of that over into snow. I started developing product and got really lucky with a local factory right here in Winnipeg and they helped me get it going. Shortly after we made our way into Asia and found some really good vendors there. Ultimately I think it was ’07 or ’08 we started FXR Korea ourselves and we have FXR Korea and FXR Vietnam. So, we’re one of very few. I think Fox has operations over there, as do we. We have an incredible network in Asia that is actually the core backbone because our snow business, even with moto going well right now, I don't know if it’s three percent of our business. So, when you’re in Minneapolis for the supercross or the Toronto supercross and you look in the grand stands and you see all the FXR logos, you know the snow and winter business is what fuels us, but our passion is moto in the same way that it is snow. Our guys just love going year-round. Moto really helps inspire our snow, and then our snow helps inspire our moto.

We’ve now been able to position ourselves with the culture of X Games and the Snocross there and the Snocross American national series, and just a lot of great back-country riding. It’s a ton of fun. Snowmobiling, the profile has risen dramatically in the last 10 years. It just seems like there’s a lot of respect between the athletes. All the Snocross guys follow supercross. A lot of the supercross guys know what’s going on in snow too. So, it’s pretty cool. It’s becoming one big family. We just race and just love to ride. It’s never been about money or anything. It’s just about riding and enjoying what you do, and also developing product and working with great people. It’s all about the people here. That’s the fun in it.

Could you maybe tell some people how big you are in the snow side?
We’re a 50-55-million-dollar company right now, and most of that’s snow. We’ve got distribution across North America and northern Europe. Actually the dirt world is really opening up central Europe and down into Italy, everywhere with what we do in moto and off-road there. Then through Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia into Russia. Global distribution—wherever there’s snowmobiling. Almost all of it is dealer-direct. We’ve got warehouses – there’s ones in Australia and Sweden. There’s one just north of Minneapolis and then there’s a Canadian warehouse. So, we’re able to do all of our global distribution out of those three centers. When we’re dealing with about 45-50 different factories in Asia, along with the network of everything that we do. We’re almost a logistics company, the logistics are one of the larger things that we do. We’re moving trade all over the world. We’ve done a lot of business with Yamaha through the years, globally as well. It’s just an enormous enterprise that is so incredibly complex and deals in so many currencies. It’s a handful, but it’s kind of fun.

A lot of this is Andy White’s job, but I imagine you have your finger on the pulse of it just because of your background and your enthusiasm and all that. Now that you’ve got some big-time motocross riders and supercross guys, what’s it like dealing with them now?
It’s the shared enthusiasm, really. I just love supporting racing. The first 10 Snocross kits we sold were to racers and they were sponsored—discounts, free product, whatever it was. So, the company started with that and that’s constantly what we’re doing, just supporting athletes. I know from experience when you’re on a tight budget, and I grew up like that, when you’re trying to make it work but you also want to look good and feel good. Also it’s just out of respect to the riders. These guys just put it all out there. They’re having fun, but there’s enormous emotional stress in motocross. There’s fear of getting hurt. There’s the results that you’re looking for. There’s so many little things that factor into it. As you get to work with these guys and support them and just be there emotionally for them as well, when you meet them, you learn so much from them and they learn about you. We’re true fans and we’re whole-heartedly behind them and we do whatever we can to improve their spirits. Even some of these cool vests that we’re making, for cool mornings when guys are doing motos and stuff. They just love them. All of that gives guys confidence and it just seems to elevate their performance level. Super cool to be part of that.

Obviously, being a proud Canadian company, you support the Canadian Nationals in terms of sponsorship dollars and retail. The U.S. scene is a foreign country for you. Do you wrestle with or do you always say, “I’m always going to support Canadian moto”? At the core, at the roots, that’s what you are.
We don’t really differentiate between the countries that much. We’re just involved where we can be. We just look at where the opportunities align themselves. A lot of it’s just networking and things just kind of fall into place. As riders and teams fall into place, we work with them and once we’re in with them we do our best to really help them out and present in a professional manner and give the guys great product and use a lot of their feedback in development. They’re testing the new gear at the highest levels. The dollar figure is higher in the U.S. too, to get in the game there. We’ve taken the avenue of really first starting off with a lot of these great local pros and amateurs. The riders in supercross who are making the mains through the LCQs, we get a lot of great TV time out of that. So, we really enjoy supporting that grassroots side of it and really building a strong base of FXR riders. Then out of that, it will start fueling bigger things as well. It’s just a matter of timing.

Is there a moment or two in supercross or motocross with the guys, this climb of FXR the last two or three years, was there a moment that you were sitting on your couch and you were like, “Wow, that’s really cool?”
The first one that pops right into my head is two seasons ago when Jimmy Decotis was riding for MX 101 and they brought him in to ride the 250 and Dylan Wright was the amateur Canadian prospect coming up that was also on the team. We were at the Calgary National, three rounds in, and we’re first and third on the box in the first moto. I was out there cheering the guys on. It was just one of those, “Wow!” moments. And the funny thing was, that was the year, that’s three collections ago, and it had actually been a carry-over from the year before. We’d have a bunch of guys wearing it, but they were running around in 17^th place. Then everyone was all of a sudden saying, “That new FXR gear looks awesome on the podium.” We’re like, it’s not new, it’s a year old already! We were laughing. Boy, does it look a lot better when it’s on the box versus in 17^th. We knew our designs were good, but just what the difference in having a top rider like Jimmy and the results that Dylan was inspired to get.

From there, the sales really started to take off. Jimmy’s got a really strong following. I’m always following him now, with his GEICO ride and everything they do. When a rider switches brands, to me that never matters. If we can help him along when he was in that place with us, we support him 100 percent if he gets a different ride or wherever he goes. We’re just part of your life journey.