Bicycle Advocacy (w/Gary Sjoquist)
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In 2000, our Director of Advocacy, Gary Sjoquist, realized that the industry needed to unite to fight for resources, access, and safer bike laws so we helped create Bikes Belong, now called People for Bikes, and have been members ever since. We have been long time supporters and allies with the International Mountain Bicycling Association. We support and attend the National Bicycle Summit put on by the League of American Bicyclists. More recently we have fallen in love with the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). Our COO, Jerry Pomije, is even joined the board of directors and is now the Chairman of the Board after he saw firsthand how the MN High School Cycling League positively affected his son. We see how NICA fuels the passion for cycling in high school age kids and converts them and their families into customers for our specialty retailers.
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Episode 17 – Bicycle Retail Radio
Tue, 8/18 10:41AM • 41:55
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
bicycle, bikes, people, advocacy, industry, communities, retailers, funding, congress, organizations, advocates, members, involved, realize, dc, ride, places, work, leading, money
SPEAKERS
Morgan Lommele, Rod Judd, Chad Pickard, Gary Sjoquist
Rod Judd 00:10
You are listening to the Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.
Morgan Lommele 00:16
This is a bicycle retail radio. I am Morgan Lommele and the state and local policy director at people for bikes. And today I’m interviewing Gary Sjoquist, who’s the advocacy director at quality bicycle products. Gary, how are you?
Gary Sjoquist 00:30
Good.
Morgan Lommele 00:31
I feel a little bizarre interviewing you today. When I was doing some research for this podcast, I realized I was only nine years old when you were well into your career as an advocacy leader, and passing some of the most significant legislation that would provide funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. So it’s an honor to chat with you today. And I hope that a lot of the folks who listened to this podcast we’ll get a few quick tips and a really in-depth history lesson on that. How to be a good advocate and build better places to ride bikes. So with that, well I give you a chance to introduce yourself and just talk about kind of where your career started and what’s been your path to today. And then I’d love to spend some time asking a few kinds of more in-depth questions around some of the ways that we’ve been able to find better places for bike riding and some of our critical partnerships with government agencies that hopefully get more people riding bikes. So do you want to take some time to introduce yourself and talk about how you got to erect today?
Gary Sjoquist 01:30
Yeah, sure. So I was fortunate because I came to bicycling in 1990. I’m guilty of not being a longtime commuter or a cyclist. I was a motorcycle racer, who had to quit because I got hurt a lot. And what I found was mountain biking, that was 1990. And right away, I got involved in access issues, or mountain biking here in Minnesota, and help sort of over a period of a couple of years I became kind of the voice of mountain biking And eventually started road riding as a way to stay in shape for mountain bike racing, which I continued to do since then. And so I learned all about the problems of riding on the road, and the need for facilities and infrastructure and that kind of thing. And this was in the early 90s. And then conveniently, professionally, I got laid off from my job. I spent almost 15 years doing corporate publications work here in the Twin Cities and I was with a company called Unisys, and they laid me off in June of 1994 gave me a fat severance check. And I like a month later, Randy Neufeld, who’s a longtime bicycle advocate, and works for SRAM these days, came through town and gave a talk about the need for bicycle advocates in states like Minnesota, and he said there is funding available resources but we just need somebody to pick up the ball and run with it. And I thought I can do that. I was kind of tired of the corporate world and I liked bicycling and have done some work here locally. Yeah, I’ll do that. And so in 96, I attended an event, a very pivotal event at the Thunderhead Ranch in the boys Wyoming and met about 10. Other there only about 10 full-time bicycle advocates in those days. And so I met them and sort of learned who was who and what was what. And that’s actually the offshoot of that. The second event, the 97, which is what we now called thunderheads was really where the original bikes belong was launched, which allows people for bikes down the road. But anyway, I was involved in that. And then conveniently in 1998, quality bicycle products, asked me to come in and create a position as the bicycle industry’s first full-time advocate. The employees a kewpie had gone to the flag and just said, we want to support this, this isn’t something we should just contribute to we should actually create a position for a bicycle advocate. And so I came in and got the job in January 98. And I’ve been a full-time vice Go advocate ever since. And I’m kind of unique in the sense that I don’t have anything to do with product or shipping or logistics or anything like that most of my work takes place outside of the building. And so for 21 years now, I’ve been actually 22. And I’m starting, I guess. I’ve been working with retailers and manufacturers and suppliers and doing some political work on behalf of the bicycle industry. And it’s been wonderful because Huey P has continued to grow over those years and become an influential player. And so I’ve had lots of resources to work with, and manage to find some other similarly minded people in the bike industry. And it just continues as the political landscape changes. And as new programs are introduced, I was kind of unique, in a sense, because most advocates I’ve met over the years, they’re either mountain bikers, or they’re, you know, road riders, regular commuters, and road riders. And I was both in so that allowed me to actually Engage in both arenas. And so I’ve been involved with him ever since the early 90s. And then have been fortunate to have quality, basically subsidized kind of work that I wanted to do and have continued to do for, I guess, 22 years now. So,
Morgan Lommele 05:17
well and I guess, stepping back a little bit, one of the reasons, you know, bikes belong now people for bikes was created was because if you think about it, all of the infrastructures that we use to ride our bikes, whether it’s on single track trails, or bike paths, or bike lanes, it’s all managed by government agencies. And so people for bikes or bikes full-on was created to, you know, really leverage and elevate the voice of the industry in these decisions that can be about how much money gets put towards bicycling infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure. And we take that for granted I think now, but, you know, I’d love for you to kind of go back to 1991 I think it was it was the intermodal Surface Transportation efficiency. Yeah. was passed. And one thing we always take for granted also is the amount of work it took to just shift that mindset around moving a lot of funding, you know, from highways and roads to carving out a little bit for bicycles and, you know, a non-car built environment. So what we’re like if you could recall, like in 1990, in early 1991, before the billion dollars was authorized, essentially, what was a lot of the feedback you got from legislators and from agencies around? Why bicycling had a place and needed to be funded?
Gary Sjoquist 06:31
Yeah, you’re right. It really changed everything in 1991. And that’s thanks to really some visionary members of Congress. Jim Oberstar from Minnesota. Patrick Moynihan was a senator from New York, and others, of course, but they were the two really visionary people and they both had been in Congress for many years and they had seen the complete build-out of basically the Eisenhower vision of creating a massive highway Infrastructure all through the United States. And in doing so, building many of those freeways, we ripped apart communities. And we made it really challenging for people to move through the communities except in a car. And so Oberstar and Moynihan saw the chance. With the federal surface transportation. Legislation gets reauthorized every five or six years. And so, in 1991, with ice T, the word intermodal was introduced for the first time in Congress. And it was important because Congress would recognize that travel doesn’t just happen by cars and trucks or buses. It can also happen in transit, in light rail, in bicycles, pedestrians in rail trails and things like that. It also was pivotal because it brought planning into the equation that gave states more flexibility with the money that they had. They could devote money to things like air quality mitigation. To put federal highway funds toward things like refurbishing old train depots that were on abandoned rail trails, or even building rail-trails, those kinds of things. So ICET, really was pivotal and opened up a lot of eyes to possibilities in the idea that through planning, we could have citizens and advocacy organizations, community organizations could have a say in what was going to happen in their communities. And, of course, what we wanted were things like more mountain bike trails, more bike lanes, more sort of integrated, dedicated facilities for bicycling, so we didn’t have to always be in a car. And so it really changed things a great deal. And it also presented the need to use in the bicycle industry that now that we have this funding, we have to fight to protect it, because the road and highway lobby, in a sense Moynahan Oberstar that kind of sleight of hand with iced tea, the thought of those days in the vise look up national vice lattice communities was the federal government needed to put a billion dollars into, basically into creating places for people to ride bicycles robbed us. And Oberstar. And Moynihan knew that if they lead with that, that billion for bikes was going to be broadcast and headlines and people are going to be talking about it, that the road truck lobby would just kill them. I mean, the road and highway lobby would spend like $20 million lobbyings every four or five years to get their share of this federal highway money. And so after it was passed, the road and highway lobby, put out a smear campaign basically, that said, we need to redirect that money back to the necessities of building roads and highways, we can’t be spending federal money on luxuries like bike trails. And so those of us in the industry realized it’s great. We have this but now we have to continue it. We have to in the future iterations of the surface transportation bill. We have to make sure that Legacy of funding for non-motorized transportation and things like air quality mitigation and environmental concern that stay within that those parameters and that there are policy decisions and funding policy or funding decisions made. And so those of us in the bike industry got together. And really, that’s sort of the I hesitate to call it the birth of the modern bicycle movement. Because I’m pretty sure before my time, guys in Schwinn were doing a lot of work politically, Schwinn was such a big deal leading up to the 90s. But in this transition, bikes belong was launched. And it really to your point, it really was focused on building an industry presence in DC on Capitol Hill. And then also leveraging the people like Oberstar and wine a hand who had built this legacy of funding and how can we continue it. And sort of parallel to that was the need to build advocacy organizations in all 50 states. To figure out how do we harness these so that they can work in conjunction with a national organization like real strength, certainty, and the bicycle Federation of American adventure cycling and Amba. And national bicycle Dealers Association, the original steering committee, for the very first issue of bikes belong in 1997. Included Fred Clements from NVDA was on the steering committee. So NVDA has been involved at the very earliest levels of building this political support within the bike industry. So
Morgan Lommele 11:33
do you have any I mean, these are all characters, Randy and Fred, who retailers might or might not know. But any funny stories around, you know, the Thunderhead ranch meeting or, I mean, you get them gals probably weren’t all on the same page. I mean, and we all can acknowledge the role that retailers and industry play and speaking with that voice, but what was the vibe in the room there? No, yeah, I was thinking differently. Some It’s Yeah.
Gary Sjoquist 12:01
First of all, in 1996, it was the very first Thunderhead meeting. I have a picture of everybody who was there. And like I said, unfortunately, some of them are passed away. But first of all, I was very weird because we were in the boys, Wyoming. And we’re actually at a trial lawyers college, there was a guy, a national guy in Jerry spees, who taught trial lawyers out of this remote location in two boys, Wyoming. And I don’t know how we ended up there, but we ended up there. And it was, I mean, this is like the cream of the crop of the national average jurors was sponsored by lamb and Amba, and bicycle Federation America. And then there were seven or eight of us who were leading organizations, full-time bicycle advocacy organizations, small somewhere sophisticated. But I remember the premise of this gathering was what can the national ag organizations do to make the state organizations more effective, and the more we talked about it, the more we realize none of that really matters. We need To continue what I see started, that’s the real need because if there’s no funding or no policy decisions for us, we’re not doing anything. So that’s really when the first bikes belong, was formed. And guys like Andy Clark and lovely Boehm and Chris Cagle and others, began to make the case that the bicycle industry needed to fund these sort of political efforts and needed to have a regular presence in DC, like daily or monthly not just once a year or occasionally. And so that led to we lost the national bike summit to try and at least have an annual gathering there. And then work with members like Oberstar and some of the other people assisting because the current chair of the House Transportation Committee, Peter Defazio, actually goes back to those days. He came in the Congress in 86. And has been on the house Tni committee since 87. And so he’s very much in the Oberstar mold. He wants to make sure that the funding continues in That, that remarkably that, that climate change factors into our surface transportation, policy and funding decisions going forward, which is the battle we’re fighting right now on Capitol Hill, leading into 2020. So, it was a time when you felt that you were helping start something, that there was a tremendous collaborative sense. Guys like Leslie Bohem, Mike Korean, and John Burke were huge, like senior industry, Titans really stepping up to provide funding and leadership. And then when the second Bikes Belong launched in 1998, we decided was going to become an industry-funded and industry-led organization. And then that eventually turned into people for bikes. And a lot of the great work that’s being done now can be traced back to those early origins. So it’s been tremendously fulfilling for me, because number one, QBP just turns me loose. I’ve never had anybody at QBP tell me, we think you should work on this or You should do this. I get to work on whatever I want every single day and it’s been that way for 22 years. And so it’s been great and I know like I like Randy Neufeld, Noah Schramm, and I have a presentation I give called the surprising future promise of bicycling. In 1996, there were basically 10 full-time bicycle advocates. Now there are probably 4040 500 tucked away in different organizations. So it’s been great to see this sort of blossom. And to see the growing presence of women the growing presence in the changing faces retailers, who sort of understand you’re leading businessmen in your community, and you have skills to offer and you’re a successful business person and that counts on Capitol Hill. That’s why we need to build more of a presence in like retailers and manufacturers suppliers. need to understand is not just about a product or the larger technology, lightweight price points. We have friends in Congress who can help us With long term funding long term policy decisions that are going to benefit all of our products. So I think one of the main focuses in those days was let’s not focus on selling bikes so much as using bikes. And if we create more places for people to ride, and that was the original bikes belong tagline more places for people to ride bikes, will also more products. And so it’s in our best interest to work together through organizations like NBDA and people for bikes.
Chad Pickard 16:29
Your NBDA membership helps support Bicycle Retail Radio, go to nba.com to join or renew your membership today.
Morgan Lommele 16:42
That’s a really interesting messaging point because I think a lot about messaging in terms of how to paint the picture that bike infrastructure isn’t a luxury when we’re asking for funding at the federal level. Yeah. How to get you to know, messaging in terms of getting retailers involved, getting them excited about advocacy and showing up to meetings, and a completely different set of messaging and people for bikes. We’ve done a lot of market research around, like, how can we really get drivers to accept bicycle facilities as needed cause needed source of funding. And really, in that respect, it’s painting the picture that more space on the road, it makes everyone safer. And I think a lot about how to motivate all the different stakeholders that need to come to the table and make that argument. What is your kind of life lessons around removing bikes from this category of luxury and motivating different advocates to tell that story?
Gary Sjoquist 17:34
Well, I think a very early lesson that I learned and I and again, I, by the time I came to QBP, and basically started my bicycle advocacy career, I was already 40 some years old, and had been around the block had a lot of corporate experience that has life experiences, so and stuff and so I had a, I guess, a long term perspective. And I quickly realized that advocacy moves glacially slow. You’re working with big bureaucracies, like departments, transportation, and Natural Resources, and Congress and stuff just moves slow. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of involvement. And you have to be in it for the long haul. I meet advocates all the time who just burn with passion. And unfortunately, in many cases, they’re anti-car and my personal experiences you’re not going to get very far in dealing with barbers, transportations, and bureaucracies. If you’re anti-car, cars are one part of the solution, but elevating bicycling to a mode that will probably never have equal footing, but at least is part of the discussion. Always. That’s really what it all started mind a hand required that the State Department of Transportation had a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator as a full-time position within their departments. And so it starts at the planning process. And then we need just to get some more citizen involvement in going to meetings to say I’m a taxpayer Why don’t we have places to ride bicycles here, I literally I can see where I need to go in my suburb, but I can’t get there, except in a car is really life-threatening. So this is where the advocacy organizations can help. And then the retailers can help because they can play a leadership role in their communities to help harness this. The citizens many of these people are in their databases or customers are buying a lot of products. If they can just see those people as a way you can reach out to them and get them involved in whatever kind of an advocacy effort that’s going on in their community, whether it’s building along with bike trailer, or building a rail trail or connecting trails or bike lanes or whatever. I think it’s taken a long time, but I think communities are realizing, especially with the younger voters, millennials and Gen Xers, those kinds of things. They want to live in urban centers and communities where they’re not sentenced to a car. You don’t have to have a car to get around. You can walk to bars or concerts or you can use transit or, or bike shares. You know, that’s A wonderful situation there. And so I always tell communities, you may not realize it, but you’re on the competition with other communities. Because increasingly, these days, people can live wherever they want. You don’t have to necessarily live next to where you get your paycheck or where the driving distance you can choose to where you live. And increasingly, people are choosing, especially millennials, are choosing to live in places where they don’t have to have a car, they can access public transit, and more bicycling. And this plays well into, you know like bicycle-friendly communities have been a very influential force, because it sort of verifies this competitive process, where communities realize, if we’re going to keep the best and brightest, we need to cater to what they want. And what they want are ways to get through the city without having to drive two hours out to a starter castle somewhere. And so I think it’s this ongoing process, and then carrying that message to Congress and being involved in thanking members, keeping them elected. So they can in the office to help us get what we want. And that’s all part of a long process. And it’s a complicated story, it’s not easily told to people who are just starting to sell. And at the retail level, I tell people, you know, I work for QBP. And so my main focus is that you stay in business and profitable, I want you to buy products from us, as well as the other suppliers’ manufacturers. But if you are not profitable, you’re not gonna be in business and you’re not really going to be able to help anything. So number one, you have to stay in business. Number two, if you want to get involved in advocacy, myself, and many others can help with figuring out some kind of a plan or figuring out do you have time? Do you have money? What level Do you want to help a national effort like imba or people for bikes? Or do you want to work more at a local level with a community initiative to get a bike trail or to get a bike lane or to help with an open streets event or a mountain bike trail or whatever? But a lot of this just goes back to education people have to understand sort of the playing field That you’re going to be engaged in. And then I think having that perspective that it’s different in business, you make your own decisions, you can turn. In many cases, if you’re a small business person, you can turn on a dime. That doesn’t happen at the bureaucratic level, big deal keys. And with Congress, it takes a long time. And you have to develop working relationships with members of Congress. And that means you have to be there on a regular basis. And that’s the beauty of what people for bikes can do or has done is provide that liaison. So the industry has some kind of presence in DC. You have about a funny story, I want to do something else. But I want to tell you so the very first time we launched, the National bike summit was in particular 1999, maybe 2000. And we had basically 18 members of the bicycle industry, who came to DC for this inaugural effort to be on the hill and talk to members of Congress. And I remember I think it was Bob. I think his last name was down who lost planted bikes, which is a company that has always dedicated the percentage of their revenue toward advocacy. That is wonderful. Anyway, Bob decided to ride his bike to DC from Wisconsin to sort of making a statement, a passionate statement about this is important enough to me that I’m actually going to ride my bicycle the hallway. So he did that. And so here we are in DC, it’s time to go up to Capitol Hill and you have to dress the dress, you know, you have to have a suit and tie and you have to dress as you belong there because that’s what everybody else wears. And so, unfortunately, Bob’s luggage didn’t make it in time. And so Bob didn’t have any clothes to change into. So he wore his bike shorts to Capitol Hill, as we’re walking around, they’re going to different members of Congress. And it was funny because many of the staffers tried to hand in packages because they thought he was a bike messenger because there are always bike messengers running around filming Max’s back. And so he just wasn’t dressed approach. Really for the activity that was going on there. So yeah. And then another thing I just want to quickly is, you mentioned something funny. So, Congress and Oberstar who was a gifted orator pretty soon at Interbike, and national bike summit and people for bikes events back in the day, those a small group of us would take a bet when Oberstar started to talk the first that was how long would he talk? go on forever, like a lot of politicians. But number two, the second bed was how long before he breaks into French, because he spoke several languages. And he was a big fan of the Tour de France had been there when Armstrong was winning all those titles and stuff. And so he would always break into French at some point in his speech. And then finally, his gift of languages came into play. And I think it was 2002. You could pay for congressional travel in those days, so I could fly overseas around the country and so I brought him to Interbike a couple of different times in Vegas. We go for long bike rides and talk. And then we come back and he gives a very impassioned speech to members, the industry of us supporting advocacy and lifelong was called those days. So anyway I have at Interbike. We’re going to walk around the halls, he’s just like a, he’s a gearhead, he just loves high-end bike products and stuff. So we’re walking through, he’s like a kid in a candy store. And we get to the camp and all of those. And, you know, capitolo has got these, the railers and shifters and things that are in glass cases or it’s like exotic jewelry. And he was just so impressed. And then I introduced him to Vittorio Capitola, who was I think they ate at the time was like the eight-year-old patriarch of the company. And so they broke into Italian and they spoke Italian with each other for about 15 minutes. That was one of the overseer’s languages, and so when he found somebody that he could speak Italian with, he was just thrilled. So that was a remarkable thing to see. And have happened. So I’m sorry I interrupted you. You’re gonna have to Wash into something else, I think.
Morgan Lommele 26:02
No, I love those stories. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall. And I’m sure Victoria was so pleased to find someone who he could just not have to speak English with.
Gary Sjoquist 26:11
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Morgan Lommele 26:13
And I know, this is our retailer podcasts. And so thinking I mean, and we get questions a lot, I mean, feely sometimes from retailers saying, What can I do to build this bike lane? or What can I do in general at the local level, and my hope is that every retailer knows, this is impossible, but every retailer knows how to use a lot of the federal funding that trickles down to state and local communities, and how to work with their city governments and state governments take advantage of that money and be involved up for someone whose expertise is running a business and hopefully doing it well. Advocacy can be really intimidating. And so how do you answer a question when you know, do shop visits or whatnot around the globe? Can you actually do whatever you know, whether you have 10 minutes or 10 hours or whatnot?
Gary Sjoquist 26:59
From the scientists, one of the first things I tell retailers is that just realize it’s not up to you. You don’t have to carry this thing completely. Because you have a shop to run. And so you have to figure out right off the bat. So how much time or money can I put toward this? And if you’re fortunate, I know many retailers over the years, they’ve built their businesses to the point where they really trust the staff. And so they can get out and be involved in their communities to prosper. Like at my seminar, I’m going to have a retailer from Athens, Ohio, Peter Cosas, who’s going to talk about that process, about how, you know the developing business and having staff that you can trust and it’s running and it’s profitable. That gives you the chance to get out into the community and do some things but I think people retailers have to figure out okay, is a time, or is it money, and then realize, probably somewhere in your community. There’ll be a citizens group or in a book club or a chapter of some organization trips for kids or maybe it’s unlikely High School, likely whatever you can help with that effort. Maybe they need you as a board member, maybe they need you as a funder. Somebody write a manual check. Maybe you’re somebody who can bring people into your shop, like the high school team to show them how to fix bikes or something. But you have some expertise. It’s a matter of finding where that will fit into the existing structure. And in some cases, it’s just simply writing a check being a part of people for bikes. I always tell retailers, if you want to get involved in advocacy at the national level, the first thing you should do is go to the national bike summit, because that gives you a context for the playing field. You realize how important it is to be in DC because if we’re not there for our bicycle industry, everybody else is there refrigeration, trucking drop, every kind of anything that gets sold or marketed or transported in the United States has a presence in DC already. You know, the National Rifle Association hasn’t One lobbyist for every member of Congress, share a call all these big organizations. And so that’s what we need from the bicycle industry. So go to the national bike summit, learn what’s going on is inspirational, you’ll find a lot about what’s actually going on. And you’ll get a little peek into what it’s actually like to be walking the halls of Congress and meeting with staffers. And you’ll be doing this with a bunch of other people. So it really can be fun. The next thing I’d say is if your company or the company that you work for is a member of people for bikes, and hopefully, they are, then you can take sort of the next step, which is to go to an industry flying people for bikes organizes these, I think their quarterly or whenever they happen. So the idea is they fly in people from the industry in small groups, and then arrange meetings with members of Congress and there’s always dinners involved and I’ve gone to a couple of these, they’re the most recent one was great because I met five or six other people from the industry we traveled together. people for bikes does an excellent job of grifting you know, the issues and what the ask is the kinds of things you’re going to talk about. And then for Part of it is very simple because it’s you talking about your business or your state, and we call it that. I mean, you’ve been doing that your whole life and your passion for bicycling. And again, nobody has to fake that we all get that that’s part of it. So you just have to open that up to the staff or the people that you’re talking to. And so those flyers are a good way to sort of taking it to the next level. If you want to be involved locally in stuff, I would check and see, is there an AMA club? Or is there a Mumbai group in your area? Is there like an open street organization? Chances are, there’ll be an organization that’s trying to stay engaged and helping planning departments create more areas for people to ride bikes, maybe it’s to connect a rail-trail somewhere, or be involved in some kind of a maybe there’s a local, state-level legislator who could do good things for bicycling. And so it’s a matter of supporting His or her efforts, you really have to do kind of an assessment of what’s out there and how you can have an impact, I think. And in some cases, I think, so matter of how deep Do you want to jump into this, with the realization that you know, you do have a business to run, and if that goes down, and you’re going to be in problem. So that’s your first priority. But I often talk to retailers and say, you know, this is the great thing about QBP. I’m paid to do this. So I’ll come and visit you. I’ll help you lay this out. I’ll find out what you’re interested in. And then we can plug you into, do you want to work with kids? Do you want to work with an established organization? Do you want to help with mom biking? Do you want to be involved in the high school migration aspect of it? Is there a trick for kids after you get involved with it can sort of tailor given the playing field with a retailer’s involvement might be great because if you’re buying from QBP, you’re going to get that’s just part of the deal. So
Morgan Lommele 31:55
I’m always inspired by the amount of well not just the leeway, you have to kind of create your own adventure around advocacy and empowering local shops and communities. But just the way that QBPempowers its own employees to become advocates, I don’t think there’s a day or maybe a week that goes by that I don’t talk to someone new or, you know, it QBP around our sustainability efforts, e-bikes or local advocacy in a place building. So how can we take that and inspire other executives not to discount the countless other suppliers, manufacturers that do have dedicated staff and budget for this? How do we want that corporate culture to live on and all of our panelists and members and retailers are listening to this, but how can they kind of inspire the companies that they buy from to do the same with their team?
Gary Sjoquist 32:41
Yeah, I’ve been very fortunate to be a QBP. But, but I mean, I worked with wonderful people at Trek, that specialized planet by different organizations to have sort of realized many of us feel, you know, bicycling can change the world. Gombrich used to say bicycling is the fix for everything. And in many ways, it is But you have to be able to carry that message and figure out ways to keep it going and to make it effective. And in many cases, that means separating a portion of the funds that companies make or operate on to some kind of an advocacy effort. And if it means only a part-time, person who, you know, we have it at our Lancaster Sileo, a guy named Nick Loftus, who spends eight hours every week focused on advocacy, he runs the DC, the distribution center at our facility. So he’s a really, really busy guy. But we just carve out eight hours for him. And he’s been tremendously effective in the area with like parks and mountain bike trails, and we’re going to be doing a gravel summit out there in October. And so, carving out a little niche of time for an employee who is inclined to do this kind of a thing is really important. In fact, that’s when QBP did this in 1998. Part of it was to show other companies that you can do this You know, the bicycle industry has and will always be the product is king. The bike industry is always focused on the newer, better, lighter product. And that’s what drives many of us were like junkies. I mean, like many people come to work at QBP, because they know they’re going to spend seven or eight grand on bike stuff every year. And you might as well work in the industry. And, you know, but if you all are involved in advocacy, you want to be involved in advocacy. It’s really great if a company can carve out some time and let you get involved. If we have more companies that could do that. It’d be great to take some visionary thinking. But I think there are a lot of people who never get it that if you model the right kind of practices, other companies will do that. Certainly, TREK has done that and Specialized in QBP and many others. So WTB Patrick Seidler like you could just go on and on and on. And I think this is something that’s lost on a lot of new sorts of startup companies. You know, we’ve had a tremendous amount of, especially with the E-bike side, a new startup who don’t really understand the kind of struggle that it takes to change paradigms to get involved in and reconfigure our communities to make bicycling not just okay, but a preferred mode or a way to, you know, one of the things that people for bikes did that was really wonderful as I was part of this, fortunately, is you’re talking to people in bureaucracies or city council people or mayors, whatever, about the value of bicycling their community and they don’t quite get it. And so we would just take them to Amsterdam for a couple of days and a couple of days in Munster Germany. And I remember one year we took the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, and a whole group of people to 2010. And I think after the second day on riding our bikes, on the wonderfully integrated systems in Amsterdam that night to the mayor said, Now I get it now I see what you guys are talking about riding all over the place and it works. wonderfully said. I think we should devote another couple of million dollars a year. Bicycle facilities in Madison, Wisconsin. That kind of paradigm change is hard to get. But taking people to places where bicycling works really well, I do the same thing here. in Minneapolis, I brought a group of 10 people from Central Pennsylvania here last August. And we spent three days on our bike-sharing bikes, looking at bike trails, talking to people figuring out how do we make this work, we have this wonderfully integrated system of pedaling our bikes here. And our streets are safer because there are more bicycles on the streets. And so you can show that to people and then the spark. They sort of get it. And then a challenge is, well, how can I do that in my own community, but there are organizations to help with that, too, like myself and others who can provide resources.
Morgan Lommele 36:45
Wonderful. Yeah, you can talk a lot about I’ve heard you speak about market-based advocacy of using funds to build more places for people to ride and you know, key areas. And then that kind of industry power in terms of funding invoice and so just using the industry funds Then leveraging that for public fun vehicles that are places to ride bikes are really important
Gary Sjoquist 37:05
when bikes belong, essentially the original, not the very first iteration of bikes belong. But the second one in 1998. What a bunch of us just came to the realization that we just have to tax ourselves basically figure out a way to tax how the number of bicycles that we sell, and then create a pool of funding, sustainable annual funding to support these kinds of efforts. And was a hard lesson but it’s something I think is really proven to be beneficial people places very influential organization, doing great, great things. But it is sometimes incumbent upon the industry themselves just to realize we need to do this. And so I think it’s just pretty cool that it did happen. And then transferring that to other people. You know, everything I’ve said here today is not on paper anywhere. And that’s one of the things I’m trying to do is get it down on paper so I can then get it verified for those of us We’re still living, who were involved in those days. That’s just a way to show people like yourself, for example, who probably hope to do this for a long time. And if you can learn and see how we got to where we are, then it’s better for you down the road to get what you will continue to want for the industry and for organizations like people for bikes. So before I forget, I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to do this. Because my knowledge No one’s ever done this before, sort of layout the origins of this and try and put it together. So thank you for doing this. And thank you to NVDA really appreciate the opportunity.
Morgan Lommele 38:35
Certainly, my pleasure, and I don’t mean to sound trite or anything, but I always just learned something new and get new inspiration when I talk to you. So I guess that’s my final question. In moments when you felt down or felt like your advocacy efforts were fruitless. What did you tell yourself or who did you talk to? What did you read to kind of keep going and know that you know, every little bit counts and you just have to keep ongoing
Gary Sjoquist 39:00
Yeah, it’s hard. I think I mentioned earlier about, you know how I got into this, I was a little older, and I had a lot more experience. And that idea of the long view, you know, understanding that just takes time. And in many cases, and I think many advocates around us have learned this when you’re working with DOTS, or Department of Transportation, or Department of Natural Resources, those kinds of things. In some cases, you’re talking with people that you just can’t change, and you just have to just wait until they retire. And the good news is, when we retire, you’re going to get somebody new and younger, who probably rode bikes to college or whatever. And they’ll have a different perspective. I’ve lived many, many instances where that happens. So I think the first lesson is just to be patient because things can turn in a way that suddenly doors will open up in 2010. When Oberstar lost after 34 years of Congress, it was just devastating, I mean, to lose his 34 years of institutional knowledge. But thankfully, there were other members of Congress who worked with him who learned those lessons guys like Peter Defazio, who’s now leading the How to unite committee. And so you just sort of recalibrate and keep going. And I’m so fortunate because has been picking up my tab all these years, they just keep sending me checks. It’s wonderful. maybe it’d be a little harder lesson for me if an organization that I was leading, lost their funding and had to retrench completely. But fortunately for me, I haven’t had to deal with that. But you do have to have the long view and you do have to understand it was glacially slow. But it’s such a great cause. We’re so fortunate to be working. I think about this every time I’m in Congress, walking the halls, I’m so happy to be for something instead of against something, you know, if I was there fighting these pipelines or fighting against whatever, everybody’s eyes always light up. When you start talking about basically, they always have some kind of connection to basically, they may not support it at the federal level or using funding for it. But at least you can talk to them about bicycling, and I think that’s really energizing. I’ve always found that
Morgan Lommele 41:02
Good. Well, I so appreciate your time. And I know you’ve been trying to write all this down and just institutionalize your life lessons and how you got the industry to where we are today. And I know it was a team effort, but we wouldn’t be here today without you. So thank you for your lifelong commitment to the industry and for speaking with me today.
Gary Sjoquist 41:20
Well, thank you, I’m gonna get a lot of this stuff checked out by some people who are there, and so I just want to get it right. And so again, thank you for the opportunity.
Morgan Lommele 41:28
Take care, Gary. Right. Thank you.
Rod Judd 41:31
This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com
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