HARO Bikes 25 years. But what exactly happened over those years? Here's an interview with the person who started it all and the current president of the company. Welcome to Bob Haro and Jim Ford.

- What products did you make when you started HARO as a company?

Bob: The first things we made were obviously number plates followed by brake levers, decals, visors, jerseys, pads, pretty low-tech kind of items.

- Everything was made in America?

Bob: Yes, everything was made in the States at that time. But those were easy to make and didn’t come with huge tooling costs or things like that. It was easy to start.

Jim: And also some of them had their green cards….

Bob: Exactly!

- When was this?

Bob: I started probably in ’77 making things at home and then in ’79 had a little shop in Torrance and we were actually manufacturing things. We had things die-cut and we were stamping out some of the plastic plates there. Around 1980 we started making a plastic brake lever. I met a guy who had an idea for that and we put that together and put our name on it. It kinda was all little baby steps.

- So the company officially was established in 1978 to make it the 25 year anniversary in 2003?

Bob: It might have started a few years before we incorporated.

Jim: It was incorporated in 1980.

Bob: I was just doing it at my house for a couple of years before that when I moved to Los Angeles to start working at BMX Action magazine and was just doing it on the side. When it started becoming busy enough and I started making some money I chose to do that full time. And I had a big fall-out with Bob Osborn which helped out as well.

- How did you meet each other?

Bob: I met Jimmy through a mutual friend when Jim was in the skateboard business. We had a mutual friend named D David Morgan. Dave could see that I was struggling being the business owner, the designer and managing production. He said: “Why don’t you give my friend a call, he works in the skateboard business.” Jim was working at a skateboard wheel company called Kryptonics at the time, based out of Colorado. I gave him a call and got him an airline ticket to LAX. Basically we went out and had some drinks and we had fun and we thought that this sounded like a good thing to do so we got together from that point forward.

- What was your plan Jim, move out to California as quick as possible?

Jim: Not really. I did some stuff for Bob when I was still back in Colorado, like maybe an ad or two and a catalog or something like that. Then I came out here and Bob picked me up at the airport and he had the big hair and the little Toyota pick-up with the big tires and the big stereo. It was an interesting first meeting but it went well.

I didn’t know how long it would last. Actually it was a really small company at the time so I didn’t even sell the house that I had in Colorado for probably a year or two. Once we got together and started bouncing ideas of each other and started working on stuff it went really well. It was really fun.

- The first HARO Freestyler bikes were made at Torker, right?

Bob: I used to ride for Torker. They were one of my sponsors. Haro Design, as the company was called back then, was growing. We were making different things. Freestyle was a novelty back then. I basically had a Torker BMX bike and I asked them to modify it to a bike for freestyle riding. It needed thicker drop-outs, a steeper head angle and the double top tube made sense for the type of riding at that time. I had a good relationship with the guys at Torker at the time and I basically went in one day and told him I wanted to have my own frame and my own brand. I think I told them I could either do it with, or without you, and then they worked with me. We ordered really small numbers at the time because it was so novel. Torker gave me a big start, they really helped out. They had the fixtures and things like that. We bought the frames of my design from them, put our graphics on them and sold them. It was very expensive at the time because the numbers were very small but that got us started. That was the beginning.

- Were you happy to see pegs added to bikes?

Bob: I think it was just a natural evolution. When I was riding it was the beginning. There were no prerequisites. It was not even established. It was completely the beginning. The thing that we did was brand new. It wasn’t like you were learning from somebody else who was already doing it. The next generation of riders like Dominguez or whatever the names are, they basically took things that we started and took it farther. It still keeps evolving to tricks that Ryan Nyquist and Dave Mirra do nowadays. But there’s still some fundamentals that if you look at it, they’re still riding ramp style events, halfpipes, we did that, we did spines, we did all of that stuff. It’s like the fundamentals are still the same, it’s just like everything nowadays is pushed a little harder and farther and the stakes are higher. I don’t think I want to ride nowadays (laughter).

- Jim, what was your task at the company when you started after that first meeting?

Jim: It probably was I guess, more of an operational manager. Bob still was in control of the product, what it was all about, how we marketed it. I just kind of brought some order to the whole thing. It was a young entrepreneurial company with a bunch of young people and the demand for the product was getting ahead of the infrastructure of the company. It was not that I was any wizard at it but I was more experienced than the other people. It was not quite the position of a general manager because Bob still had a hand in a lot of things that were going on, but most of the day to day things that didn’t have to do with graphics and that type of stuff, I probably took over. I had a lot of experience with distribution, international distribution, those kind of things so we pretty quickly set that up with the experience that I had. We started to expand the product line quite a bit more. Bob obviously spent all his time on design instead of running the company.

- When did you start working for HARO?

Jim: I think it was February of 1982. That’s when I moved to California.

Bob: That was a big move for Jim. I think he didn’t sell his Colorado house for a while.

Jim: No I didn’t.

Bob: He wasn’t sure how things were going to go.

Jim: I didn’t know how long this BMX-thing was going to last.

- How did the company grow, personnel and building-wise?

Jim: When I joined the company in ’82 and Bob moved from Torrance to Carlsbad, the number of employees went down. I think you might have had 20 people or maybe even more on the payroll…

Bob: We were manufacturing everything in-house. We did assembling, packaging and all that stuff. What Jim brought to the table is that he figured that we can out-source all that stuff so we didn’t have people sit here and build the stuff but we would find companies to make the stuff for us. That’s where we actually improved our productivity because we were not managing the people making the stuff but now we were just marketing the product and do the design.

- Who picked up the team riders back in the day?

Bob: I think in the beginning it was me but we all kind of collectively got involved in it. Again, I was probably more involved and in touch with it because I was traveling at the time. I was traveling to a lot of BMX races. I was going mostly to BMX races because at that time there was no freestyle. That was the way to promote the company. Actually the freestyle thing was more of a novelty. It wasn’t like it was a discipline in the sport. I was a better freestyler than I was a racer and we sold BMX racing products so we were following the racing circuit. One example was, I think it was in ’81, we were out on tour for three and a half months and followed the NBL circuit and I think we also did some ABA races, and every weekend we did shows and during the week we did bike shops, or county fairs, you name it. It is so funny for me, I am watching TV today and GT or those guys, all that stuff is the same exact stuff we did back 20 years ago, it’s no different, just 20 years later. It’s super grass roots and I think that really, really helped us. We were super in touch with the market, we found riders like Dennis McCoy, people like that. We rolled into a town and there’s always the local hot kids that would show up, the Rick Moliterno’s, these guys would hear the HARO team is in town and wanted to see you ride but at the same time when you were done doing the show, you find out that this guy was the local hot guy and we do a sponsorship thing with him. Like a frame-fork set or a bike deal or whatever. We had a lot of grass roots local hot riders under our banner. That really helped us as well as on the product development side. You’re hanging out at that many events and you can see what’s working and what’s not. We were developing all kind of products left and right back then.

- Till what time did you actively ride a BMX bike?

Bob: I think I stopped riding in 1985 because I kept injuring my knee. I had like 4 knee surgeries. I would practice and would feel pretty good and then I’d do something real simple like put out my leg to catch myself and then my knee would blow out. Then I practiced to get back in shape and then I’d get hurt again. And then at the same time, the business was growing and guys like Mike Dominguez got on the team that were 15 years old and you’re 25. It doesn’t seem like a big difference but 10 years is 10 years of life. You got a 15 years old guy and his warm up air on a ramp is 9 feet out of the ramp and your best air is, not that. You know you’re a little hurt so now you’re a little more leery. It was like a business decision. I can struggle, or I can concentrate on business.

And then the other deal for me was that I think I had quite a good image in the scene as a decent innovative rider. I’ve seen other BMX riders do it, they don’t stop in time and they keep trying to come back and all they do is they lose their good image that they’d built and established because people remember the last impression of you. That’s what I thought so I said: “I’m done, I have to stop” and that’s what I did.

Part 2

- You were the sole owner of the company at that time. What made you decide to sell the company?

Bob: It was a natural evolution of the business. We were growing but we were still a small company. When I had it we were a little over $ 7 million dollars per year which is not a bad size but in the scope of business it’s not a very big business. And you kind of get to that point of if we want to grow the same, we need help. We need distribution, we need money. Business requires money in order to make it to the next level. An opportunity came up with a company called West Coast Cycles at that time, they approached us, and it seemed like the right thing to do. We had been on a roll and it was an opportunity to cash in on the hard work that you have created and that’s what we put together. It did help the company get to the next level but it comes with a prize too. When you sell to a bigger company you inherit a lot of the politics and bureaucracy that comes with a big company and as an entrepreneur that’s not very fun.

- Did you stay on for another year or so?

Bob: No I stayed on for 5 years and two years after that I had a non-compete. When I was done, I was done. I had run my course.

The big thing for me was, while I enjoyed being a bike rider and stuff like that, my first thing is that I’m a designer. Being a bike rider was part of my life, not all of my life. I enjoy the stuff we do now, we work in a different market.

- You basically took over after that Jim?

Jim: It became part of a big company and HARO was one of several brands. What I took over after the sale was really brand management of HARO as it became part of West Coast Cycles. We were fortunate enough when the whole thing went down is that they wanted it fairly badly so we got to work the way we wanted. We didn’t physically move into a new building with them, we kept our own place down here. There was a fair amount of autonomy. For the most part it was still fun. Like Bob said, after a while more and more bureaucracy crept in and then the company that bought us got bought by an even bigger company and that wasn’t as cool. Just the people and their strategy. HARO didn’t get anywhere near enough attention as it did during the first acquisition when they were excited about it and they knew what the potential was. I think that’s the part that totally burnt Bob out because it was tough to keep your enthusiasm up and do all the things that you had to do being part of a big company.

- How was the market at that time?

Jim: The market took a nose dive.

Bob: For us it looked like we did the right thing. We had a couple of good years and then it faded out. We had people coming to us asking: “How did you know?” We didn’t know, we were riding the wave. It was just the natural evolution of business, peaks and valleys.

Jim: It was a fun trip up until maybe the last 2 years of that 5 year deal. It was still a small company and we obviously did good things in terms of growing the company and making money and those kind of things. We still had a great time doing it.

- What’s the current situation?

Bob: I’ve had HARO Design incorporated for a long time but when I just got out of HARO bikes I took about six months off and was trying to think what I wanted to do. I was used to working so hanging out for a while is fun but you go crazy a little bit.

I started a company called GearBox. We were doing kart racing stuff. We made driving apparel, shoes, gloves and all that stuff. A buddy of mine was into the racing 125cc shifter go-carts and he got me into it. Then I went over to Europe to some of the World Championships cart races, which in Europe as you know is very big, and I thought this was a cool sport. So I came back and started working on some designs and we came up with a line of gear and a couple of years after that we started working on doing our own karts. We were making 125cc shifter karts and bought motors from Yamaha and Honda and stuff. It was a very, very nitch business. We were selling high-end expensive toys for kind of rich guys. $ 8000, = USD go-karts when they were finished. You don’t sell a lot of them but they were very cool. We did a lot of cool things in that sport too. We got a lot of press in that business for the market. I did it for about five years and got burnt out due to the fact that the people within the market are kind of backwards. You’re trying to do some very cool and trick stuff and you get a lot of resistance and I wasn’t used to that. At the same time I was doing that I had started my design business and through GearBox and through the karting thing we got in touch with different racing teams. We started doing stuff for Penske motorsports and one thing lead to an other. We started doing stuff in the motor cycle industry and now primarily, almost 90% of my customers are from the motorcycle industry. We do a lot of print and collateral, branding and packaging and video work now. It’s cool, we still do some stuff in NASCAR and not too much in Indy Car any more because it’s not that big any more but we still have some good relationships with the guys. We work with Raush Racing, they make all these die-cast cars and collectables and stuff like that, we do a bunch of things for them. It’s been good. We basically do the same things we did for HARO Bikes, we’re just doing it for somebody else now. It’s exactly the same. Instead of HARO’s logo, it’s their logo. You try to come up with a look and an image and try to figure out the position and what to do with their brand and things like that. That’s what we do now. It’s a nice little business and it keeps us busy, it’s fun and has a lot of deadlines (laughter).

I’m starting a new venture too now, a little backpack thing that I’m working on that will be out pretty soon. It’s pretty cool, I’ll show you that in a little bit, I can’t leave things alone.

- What’s the situation at HARO Bikes at the moment?

Jim: We need to go back a little further, the things that frustrated Bob and caused his departure from the company which was probably in the very early nineties, basically had the same effect on everybody else. It took longer to make a change. I was frustrated because the company was part of a big company, we were not getting the attention and the brand wasn’t being looked after so I wanted out of there and I put together a deal where some new investors came in and the existing ones were willing to sell the brand name. We put that together and left the big company which was back then the same company that sold Raleigh bicycles worldwide, in 1993. The idea was to get HARO back to being a small, it wasn’t rider owned anymore because Bob wasn’t part of the ownership mix at the time, but it was that feeling of a small company that was in touch with the market and not filtered through by a couple of different layers of corporate VP’s who you had to report to and that kind of thing.

That’s what put a lot of enthusiasm back into the brand by the people who had stuck around and there were probably about 4 of us that had stuck it out and made that transition. We had a couple of tough years out of the gate to get things back up to speed but I’d say probably during the fourth year we had everything clicking and the brand really started to grow again, the market was reasonably healthy and even though we’ve grown a lot since then the company is still a fun place to work and it’s reasonably casual. It’s still professional but the people there like what they’re doing and there are really about 30 of us right now.