Get to Know Biltwell

All right, today I've got Davin out here from Builtwell. Thanks for coming up from Tula; I see you got to ride here and everything. Real quick, I want to get into a little bit about the story of the company and how Builtwell came to be.

Well, the co-founders were a couple of BMX nerds who got a little bit chopper curious, I guess. They got kind of sick of the daily grind with their other jobs—they were doing agency work, design work, and working in the BMX industry, just doing a little bit of everything. They got a bit bored and wanted to check out some other avenues. Like I said, they got a little chopper curious, bought some motorcycles, rode them to Mexico, and invited a bunch of friends. They thought it was a good time, so they bought bikes, started doing stuff, and began some product development with people they had known before. That’s how Builtwell was birthed. It’s a really cool story and so reminiscent of many other companies. They saw a need in the market for something, did it for themselves, and then realized that everybody else wanted it too, so they started making these products. Look at where you guys are today!

Exactly. So yeah, there's definitely a hole in the market for us, and we kind of fill that hole nicely, which worked out well.

I love your product here in the shop. It flies off the shelf all the time, so you guys are obviously making a great product at an affordable price, and people love it.

Yeah, that’s the big thing. We just try to be the best product for a good price. You know, a lot of blue-collar folks are our customers. I grew up in Michigan, so it’s like work, work, work. My whole life was about working hard and trying to make good products that weren’t $500 or super expensive. That’s where we found our space and where we tend to exist.

Very cool. All right, so let’s dive right into this. I know that you’re one of the only companies out there that makes both helmets and hard parts. How did that come to be?

We started out as a hard parts company, making seat hinges for choppers, different handlebars, that kind of stuff. Then someone had the idea to make a novelty 3/4 helmet, put that on the market, and sold out nearly immediately. So, we kept developing that helmet, and it eventually turned into a full helmet. Then we added the Gringos, which is the retro helmet with the chin bar on it, and then moved up to the Lane Splitters. We’re working on some really cool stuff in the background—bigger and better things that I can’t talk about yet. It all started with a novelty helmet and evolved from there.

As for the hard parts, it’s the same thing. You buy one bike, then another, and you always want to keep adding parts. We still have stuff for the old choppers—like the handlebars that were cool when we were building old iron heads in our garage—and we also sell parts for modern bikes, all the way up to the new M8 Softails. The quality is great; the paint is nice and flat, the clear coat lays down without ridges. I’ve tried these on a few times, and they’re nice and comfortable. You guys have done a really great job designing the product.

Yep, and as you know, these are our new 22.6 helmets. They meet the newest standard for Europe specifically. That’s why we sell the same helmet all over the world. A big part of that is because we have a lot of vets in our office. Legally, if you’re in the military here in California and you buy this helmet and get shipped over to Japan or Germany, you can legally take and wear it there. If you have just a DOT helmet, it’s technically not legal to wear over there, and bases are pretty stringent on their rules. You’d have to buy a new helmet with the ECE standard once you get there. It’s a global standard for helmets, so you can wear it everywhere.

Updating to the new standard for 20206 this year, the helmets have gotten a bit better. Now they come in three shell sizes instead of two, the shields are tested for shatter resistance and light transmission, and we’ve improved the fit. The old 22.05 helmets had a medium that was a bit tight, and the 2X wasn’t really a true 2X. With these new improved fit schemes, there should be much better fit for these helmets.

Very cool. Glad to see that you guys are putting in the time to make a great product. The end user—the customer—is the one who wins out.

Exactly, and there’s so much that goes on in the development side of things that nobody ever thinks about. You see a helmet on the shelf, try it on, and if it fits, cool; if it doesn’t, you move on. But there are so many moving parts in the background that I deal with every day. It’s quite the machine. It’s crazy that we have a small team based over in Tula—only 20 of us, including the warehouse. We’re cranking away, making cool stuff for people.

That’s awesome. Glad to hear that you guys are kicking ass.

All right, so what can you tell me about the founders of the company?

Yeah, Bill and Meo created this place out of a bit of boredom and a search for new inspiration. Meo has been in the BMX industry for years, starting in the early '80s. He moved from Florida to Southern California, where he was a team manager for various people and worked for companies like GT. A lot of old BMX guys will know who Meo is, as he was one of the three guys who wrote every article for BMX Plus and other magazines back then. That was his claim to fame—an old BMX kid from Florida who made it big in California.

Bill, on the other hand, went to art school, was a designer, and did that whole deal. After 9/11, he was a Marine vet. After 9/11, he signed back up for the Army and went back to the sand to fight for his country for a few more years. When he was gone, and Meo was here trying to figure out what the next step was, that’s when the idea for Builtwell came up. Bill and Meo started making stuff and getting their product moving when Bill got back, and that’s when it really took off. We’ve been around since 2006 and continue to grow. Recently, we’ve been focusing more on the wearable side of things. We’ve got helmets, cut-and-sew apparel, screen-printed T-shirts, hats, and nice, affordable luggage. We have lots of options, from bar bags to saddle bags. I saw that on the bike you rode in today; pretty good-looking stuff. We’ll check that out here in a little bit too.

Excellent. All right, now that we’ve gotten a little bit of the background, I think it’s really great that it is a veteran-owned company and that you take care of veterans. That’s something important to me—veterans taking care of veterans.

One of the owners is a veteran, and our ops manager is retired from the Marine Corps. He put in a lot of time, and we have other former military staff as well. Without those guys, we wouldn’t be here, so we try to keep that train running.

Absolutely. I totally agree with you on that. Davin, I’m really glad that you came out today.

Thanks! Can’t wait to get you back out here so you can tell me about the stuff you can’t talk about right now.

Absolutely. We’ll be here.

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