Mountain Racing Products is a partner of Networks Unlimited. As a Managed Services customer of ours, we oversee this growing company’s IT needs. We will begin to feature a new partner each month that have made great accomplishments as individuals and as a business. Mountain Racing Products produces popular parts for bicycles such as Trek, Giant, Salsa, and more. This is the story of Mountain Racing Products:
Tim Fry was sitting in a bar in a high-rise building enjoying his vacation with his wife Christy when he received a call from his law firm. A client wanted to speak with him and was not happy that he was not in his office. As a complex litigation lawyer, a lot was asked of Fry, but getting to his office while on vacation was something he simply could not do. In this moment, he realized that he needed a change. After 6 years of working on extremely challenging and complex litigation cases, Fry started to seek a new path. “As a lawyer, I was tearing things down; I wanted to build something up.”
He and his wife, also a lawyer, began searching for businesses that fit a certain criteria. They wanted to find a business that involved manufacturing, had products that were proprietary, and that had export potential. In 2000, he purchased a biking parts business in Grand Junction, CO.
Coming from Ohio, he had only ever skied in Colorado and was not familiar with Grand Junction. Certainly, Colorado had appeal, but it wasn’t until after two years in Grand Junction that he and his wife knew that they were here to stay. Over dinner one evening, Christy told him, “You realize we’re not leaving, right?” Fry said he knew then that he had to make it work.
Fast forward to 2013 and Mountain Racing Products is found in over 35 countries around the globe. Professional bike-riders and enthusiasts around the world have parts from pedals to chain guards to suspension on their bicycles made right here in Grand Junction. Fry says that it is exciting to visit other parts of the world and see his product on shelves and in use. They have found a lot of success in niche products and Fry told us about a time he saw a police officer riding a bike with his pedals in an airport. The pedals, Power Grips, are a product that has become increasingly popular with law enforcement because the grips secure a shoe but are comfortable enough to attach to normal footwear. In an airport in Columbus, Fry spotted his pedals on a police officer’s bike and caught up with the office for a photo-op.
Mountain Racing Products are well-known and very popular in the biking industry with their brands White Brothers, Kreitler Rollers, Tamer, and Power Grips. Though Western Colorado is a Mountain Biking Mecca, Fry says, “We have to remember that only about 3% of our total sales are done in Colorado.” With supplying to a global market, the Mountain Racing Products team must always consider, implement and develop new products that appeal to riders of all types of terrain and conditions.
As much as 40% of the company’s products are made right here in the Grand Junction. The remaining products are created where their business partners’, such as Trek, Giant and Salsa Cycles, manufacturing facilities are located. These huge biking brands have parts made from Mountain Racing Products directly on their bikes such as Salsa Cycles’s Horsetheif 2 bicycle (pictured below) . Mountain Racing Products also makes specialty parts for Trek, Giant, and others, when needed.
Fry and his wife jokingly refer to themselves as “recovering lawyers.” They are very happy with the business they have built but admit that owning and operating their own business consumes far more time than being lawyers. Fry laughs and adds that people in the biking industry are generally happy and are definitely happier than the people he dealt with in his previous profession.
Recently, Mountain Racing Products was awarded as one of “Colorado’s Companies To Watch.” To receive this award, companies must be privately held in Colorado, experiencing growth, have 6 to 99 full-time employees and have $750,000 to $50 million in sales. We congratulate
