Today, I’m joined by Mike Taylor, co-founder of BeaverFit North America, a manufacturer of outdoor gym equipment.
BeaverFit designs, manufactures, and distributes functional training and tactical/operational training equipment, transforming trailers, shelters, and shipping containers into complete gyms while constructing all of its rigs, racks, and accessories in the US. Optimizing human performance, it supplies the military, first responders, CrossFit boxes, universities and schools, athletic clubs, and more.
In this episode, we talk about manufacturing for the toughest training environments, both commercial and military. Mike explains how his time in the Navy and experience at TRX led to starting BeaverFit, and we explore untapped opportunities in outdoor fitness, from community gyms to boutique studios and more.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How BeaverFit went from offering only one product to building $5M facilities
- Key business lessons Mike and his team learned from the COVID pandemic
- How BeaverFit avoids the problem of excess product inventory
Links & Resources
- Subscribe to the Fitt Insider newsletter
- Visit the Fitt Insider jobs board
- View current Fitt Insider investment and get in touch
Mike’s Links
- BeaverFit’s website
- Follow BeaverFit on Twitter
- BeaverFit is on Instagram
- Connect with BeaverFit on Facebook
- Check out BeaverFit on YouTube
- TRX Training’s website
Episode Transcript
This is a machine-generated transcript. Please excuse any errors.
[00:00:00] Mike:
When we first started we had a single product, it was the container gym. Now our product line is as diverse as everything from a $40 kettlebell, all the way up to a five million dollar facility.
For us the most important thing has been having deep relationships with our customers, really focusing on serving them, and having a talented team behind us that allows us to bring their ideas to life.
[00:00:35] Joe:
Welcome back to the Fitt Insider podcast. I’m your host, Joe Vennare.
Today I’m joined by Mike Taylor, Co Founder of BeaverFit North America.
In this episode we talk about manufacturing fitness equipment for commercial and military customers. Mike explains how his time in the Navy and experience at TRX led to starting BeaverFit, and we explore untapped opportunities in outdoor fitness from community gyms to boutique studios, and more.
Let’s get into it.
Hi, Mike, welcome to Fitt Insider. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:59] Mike:
What’s happening, Joe. Thanks for having me today.
[00:01:01] Joe:
Yeah, man, I’m excited about this conversation.
I think from connecting offline and keeping up on social media, and just in general, I’m a big fan of everything that you have going on. I’m excited to learn more about it and bring some other folks into that conversation today.
To kick things off can you introduce yourself and tell us about BeaverFit?
[00:01:20] Mike:
Awesome, Joe. Thanks. I’m also a huge fan of your content, and thanks for everything you do for the industry.
My quick background, I came up an athlete. I played every sport under the sun. Grew up in a locker room, and really appreciated team sports—all aspects of team sports.
I ended up at the Naval Academy and played soccer there. I got my commission and did eight years active duty in the Navy, and six in the reserves. Most of the time it was in the small boat community. I’ll probably get into that a little bit later, but we established the first riverine unit since the Vietnam war with our other BeaverFit Co Founder, Alex Roodhouse. That’s where he and I met.
After coming out of the Navy, my first job was at TRX, the suspension training company. So I. feel like that’s where I. kind of learned the industry. I was always into, you know, training and, and athletics and the, the combination of the two and, was lucky enough that, you know, Alex other befit co-founder, was at TRX already and pulled me along.
So kind of cut my teeth there. And then, in 2014, you know, we left, TRX started BeaverFit. And establish our headquarters in, Reno, Nevada. And I personally live with my, my wife and two boys, in lake Tahoe. We’re kind of ski bumps at heart. So, we’ve got built the team around, you know, the atmosphere here in Reno, Tahoe love the outdoors and, Reno has been a great, you know, kind of home for us.
[00:02:51] Joe:
Yeah, it’s awesome to hear like the, the background of obviously like the military performance, sports athletics, all coming. They’re getting to work in the fitness industry. I feel like it’s a story so often, like a lot of times folks reach out to us and they’re like, Hey, you know, I love fitness. I was in the military.
Like I did, I was an athlete in college, high school. Like how do I break into the industry? It’s like, you manage to line some of those things up pretty well. And then, you know, also parlay that into like entrepreneurship and starting and running a company as well. when it comes to.
The day to day now at BeaverFit, you, you mentioned like, starting in 2014, what has that kind of journey been like? What’s the, the scale the operation look like today and, and how has everything evolved?
[00:03:38] Mike:
So when we first started, we had a single product that was the container gym, and we knew we had a good product market fit just from our experience in the industry and, and people wanting to, train functionally in these austere environments. We’re like, cool. We got the product for that.
So we started there. Honestly really small. We were outsourcing everything, and just kind of, we’re really kidding everything together. and we, we landed a few early contracts and our focus was on the military, and you know, fast forward now, our product line is diverse is, everything from a $40 kettlebell, under our green man gear line of accessories.
All the way up to a 5 million facility, that we build from the ground up and act as the prime contractor, do the excavation, build a dome like structure and then outfit, the entire facility with everything from a strength equipment to recovery, the flooring, you know, the, the full scope. So, I know I jumped way ahead, but, for us, you know, the most important thing has been, having deep relationships with our customers in.
Really focusing on serving them, in their ideas. We, we were not the type of company that would sit on our whiteboards in, in conference rooms and try to come up with the next best idea. we were out there talking to the folks, using our equipment, and have a talented team behind us that allows us to bring their ideas to life.
And help them win, has really been our focus. And you know, now we’ve got, that product line I described and, you know, we’ve got, in-house manufacturing with a, a team of 80 plus people here in the us, based in Reno, Nevada, that are mainly veterans, about 80% of those 80 people are veteran or spouses and, really pride ourselves in that.
And, you know, domestic manufacturing, trying to make as many things here as possible. And then, you know, the company actually started in the UK in 2010. So we have still have a strong entity with 30 plus team in the UK and European.
[00:05:38] Joe:
Yeah, it’s awesome. When you look at, you know, I think a lot of times I find myself looking at like the different photos of the, the container gyms and like the setups that you guys have made and just like, kind of fantasizing about like putting some, you know, I I’m fortunate enough to have like a full.
We just renovated the basement and moved my garage gym into the basement. but thinking about having like a little compound and putting a container gym out there and having the full setup outside, is pretty incredible. And there’s like this natural fit with like the military, right. It’s like, okay.
Yeah, we need to have some of this stuff on location needs to be super durable.
Was that the immediate, like, Hey yeah, we found this product market fit there. And then just happened to kind of expand into the broader fitness or, you know, community facilities or sports performance facilities. How did that kind of evolution take place beyond just like the military market?
[00:06:29] Mike:
As you said, it started that we were creating this, product for people to use in osteo environments. And, the, the military, they adopted it in a way that initially we didn’t think they would. so they started putting it outside of their office buildings. So instead of only taking it on deployment now, where those, service members were working back at home, They were putting it right outside their office building.
So instead of taking, 15 minutes to go to the gym on base or the gym off base, they had the ability to work out right in their workspaces. and eventually we just took that value proposition that our customers told us in the military and started sharing that ideas with corporations. So now Google has this micro gym concept based on our product that they’re putting these container gyms.
We also have a shred shed that. A similar functionality of a container gym, but more aesthetically pleasing. Some people don’t look like the industrial corrugated look of a container. So we adopted that product and they’re dropping these in different places where people can come together as a community workout outside, and expand beyond the walls of just the fitness center, because sometimes, on these different corporate campuses or universities, it takes 15 to 20 minutes for people to get from their workspace to the.
And let’s cut down on that time so we can be more efficient. So I think that was the first adaptation. And then now it’s expanded into mobile trailers and all sorts of different stuff, but the idea is, let’s think beyond the walls of that fitness center. and where else can we, create environments for people to come together and train?
[00:08:06] Joe:
Yeah, it’s really cool to see that when you mentioned, you know, part of that, not being a team or someone who’s like kind of sitting back and trying to maybe brainstorm and like work things out, you’re just like, Hey, let’s talk to people and see what the problem is. And, you know, Bring them solutions to the problem that already exists with Google.
You mentioned like, Hey, well maybe, and even the military, it’s like, it’s just way more convenient to have it here. what was some of the other feedback that you got, and maybe you’re still getting that have led to, you know, can you connect a piece of feedback you got with like the end product and kind of take us through like how that was beneficial and how it.
[00:08:44] Mike:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we’re always trying to expand the capabilities of these little container gyms and, what we’re realizing is all of a sudden, now people wanna train outside, but oh, it’s not great to always be in the hot sun. so we’ve come up with a lot of upgrades to. The container gyms or the shred sheds where now, we have the ability to connect two container gyms that are 40 feet apart with a shade structure.
So we started doing that and then also to customers like, oh yeah, it’s great being protected from the sun. but can you enclose it and, and have it be climatized. Okay. Sure. we were just, love saying yes to things. and we, go ahead and did that and we call those our beaver Dom. So now, we just built one for the university of health and performance in Arkansas.
That is, a 10,000 square foot, fully ENCO structure. That’s climatized. And we use the containers as the anchor of the structure, but they also turn into locker rooms and classrooms. and now. We can convert underutilized space that maybe would’ve been an old tennis court or a basketball court. That’s not being used anymore.
We drop this on there. We get around some permitting issues. and we quickly create, this Fieldhouse style training environment that looks like a D one strength and conditioning facility, in the manner of six to nine months, instead of. Two to three years that it would take for a typical brick and mortar construction project.
So I think that’s one. And then Joe, the other thing that’s interesting about BeaverFit is we also have, a whole line of tactical training solutions. so I know this is focused on, fitness, but in the military, it’s important to connect, human performance and fitness with, what the service members need to do to accomplish their mission.
So we’ve done a lot of things in. government space where we’ll combine the two. So for example, we’ll put a breaching door, on the other side of the shipping container. So one side will have a squat rack. the other one will have a breaching door. and for folks in the the fitness industry, a breaching door means you’re gonna, take a device, whether it be a Ram tool or even a sledge hammer.
And you’re going to break that door. and the reason we do that in the military is because, we try to create the most realistic scenario possible. So you train the fitness side, get yourself in a high heart rate environment and then go to the other side of the locker and immediately bridge that door.
So we do a lot of those different things in the military where we combine human performance and fitness with the mission essential tasks they need to do in the tactical environment to accomplish the mission.
[00:11:15] Joe:
As you’re walking through that, it’s, it’s so much like, it, it jumps out to me just how much it is about solving those problems. Because you know, when you think about manufacturing, fitness equipment, there’s, there’s really only so many ways you can make a bar. There’s only so many ways you can make a kettlebell or a dumbbell.
And like there’s. Because of that reason, there’s like no shortage of companies who are doing that are trying to come up with a different white label solution or branding, you know, to make it customized to a different fitness center. But when it comes down to like, Hey, how do we take in the case of like a breaching door, like, and practice and drill somewhere and put this to, to use.
It’s like, who’s gonna make that. Where do we get something like that? so it’s very natural. Like then you stand out as someone who can solve that problem, but even from the perspective, , you know, one of my questions was gonna be kind of as just like a leading question. It’s when you talk about building the climate controlled or putting a roof on it’s like, well, why not just build a gym?
And it’s like, you answered that with like, well, it’s just gonna take forever in terms of construction and it’s, it’s still not gonna provide the same kind of look the same access, the same feel as like building these container gyms. when you think about kind of walking both of those lines, right? With like, Is it a military division that goes out and services, these folks and the
Team is split up and then the, the fitness division, do you have a ton of inbound? That’s like, Hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Because I just imagine that if you are saying yes to a bunch of things, which, you know, just as an entrepreneur is someone who likes to makes it happen. It’s like you’re inclined to do that. Does ever get to the point where it’s just like way too much inbound and you have to be like, we, we can’t actually do that.
[00:12:55] Mike:
Now, we’re trying to get better at that And you know, as you state in, in.the early days as entrepreneurs, that’s how we build the business, right? We gotta say yes to almost everything, just to get, product out there and establish relationships with partners. And, and now, we try to be a bit more strategic about it.
So we have our two sales team set up. So we have a commercial, sales team and a government sales team. We expect them to have, a mile wide and an inch deep, level of knowledge on our product lines. And then we have a product team that sits behind them. And that product team. is really in. Four groups. So we have our, our tactical group. We call, special operations equipment. we have facilities And shelter. Those are the ones that are building, you know, these 10,000 square foot structures out of accommodation between containers and tension fabric. Structures. and then we have achievement performance.
So those product groups sit behind the sales team. If a sales team member gets someone on the hook and say, Hey, I need a rappel tower for my military unit, so, okay, great. Here’s your product engineer. And they’re gonna sit side by side with the sales rep and the customer to go through those requirements or on the commercial side.
Okay. I’ve got somebody that wants to build an outdoor training complex. Great. that sales rep facilitates a call with our product team. we have a question here that go through all the requirements and then. Our engineers produce a rendering and then a proposal for that sales rep. And they’d run it through the procurement process, but it is challenging for our sales reps because we have this growing product line.
And then we’re always trying to do new stuff as well. So we finally establish a go to market process about 18 months ago, where all these new ideas come into a process, we attempt to prioritize. I ops folks would tell me that I’m not very good at prioritizing them. but we attempt to prioritize them and strategically make decisions about which ones we’re gonna, expand resources towards to, to bring to the market and scale.
But that is very new process for us. we’re getting better. but lots of repro improvement about how we prioritize and say yes to the right things, instead of always saying yes to everything.
[00:14:58] Joe:
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a good problem to have, right? That you have folks coming to you. They wanna work together. You’re, you’re having to figure out if you can, or how the best way is to put some of these things into production. and I’m. Sure. making a transition a little bit here, changing gears, like that has something to do with, COVID where you couldn’t work out inside.
Obviously, a lot of places and people were shifting to, exercise or creating at home gyms and even studios and fitness centers like setting up outdoor gyms that were super successful. Opening people’s eyes to like, what was very obvious, like, Hey, we can do a ton of this outdoors already. and then kind of complicating things.
You potentially run into supply chain issues with raw materials and manufacturing, and certainly shipping, delivering some of these things. So maybe can you just walk us through what that, that last two years were like good and bad and kind of how that has impacted where you are.
[00:15:55] Mike:
No a hundred percent. I think, you know, on the COVID stuff, in the commercial market or, you know, outside the government, a couple years ago, pre COVID, we printed our flag. We said, Hey, we wanna focus on outdoor fitness, commercially, in the military. We try to beat everything to everybody because we’ve got some contract vehicles and whatnot that enable that, but, we knew it wasn’t necessarily scalable, in. the commercial market.
So we say, Hey, we don’t outdoor fitness, And everyone was kind of skeptical in the beginning and then COVID happens. It’s like, whoa, okay. we need this stuff quickly. What’s different stuff like that. So, it definitely helped our us grow commercially, but, the other thing that’s really helped us in I don’t wanna say it’s been, more. Substantial than the outdoor fitness side. but it’s been the supply chain. So with a lot of these, boutique fitness franchises, they were relying on manufacturing from overseas. COVID and the supply chain issues that happened as result of it, really cut that off. and we saw always done in a ton of people come into us, cuz they’re like, oh, beaver, if it makes stuff here in the us, maybe they can help us solve our, our challenges that we have with supply chain, cuz everything was coming from overseas.
And. We started developing relationships with some of these folks and were able to quickly prototype and manufacture their products that we’re getting from overseas. make them, at scale, to the design specs they want right here in the states and, alleviate some of the challenges they had from a supply chain perspective overseas.
So, we have this growing arm of. Partners, where we’re making all this stuff for their boutique fitness studios right here in the us. and they can come and see it, give us immediate feedback, and then we make the next prototype. and then all of a sudden raw materials went up 300 and that was kind of the last, that was certainly a negative. I’ve been telling people. I think that we learned more in the last nine months, to 12 months of doing business than we did in the previous, you know, five to six years because we’ve never been entrepreneurs and business leaders in an inflationary period. and we were not quick enough to adjust. sometimes because our contracts with the government were firm fixed price and we didn’t have a choice.
But other times, like it was just, things were happening so fast and we didn’t have the right key performance indicators to say like, holy smokes. Like, you know, that what we just produced in our manufacturing line costs three times more than what, when we quoted it, how can we mitigate some of that stuff?
So we finally have got things back on track and you know, this year’s off to a good start, but, last year I think for a lot of folks in the industry was a bit of a blood bath. As you know, those raw materials were, were just spiking, like crazy.
[00:18:32] Joe:
Yeah, it’s, it’s also kind of cool to see, you know, you talk about the commercial, you talk about the government, but then getting into some of the group fitness stuff. Like within that commercial segment where you’re producing like super slick branded really customized. Like the one that stands out to me is like the rumble bench, which that compared to a shipping container with like the breaching door or like the repelling tower is like, how is that able to be done by the same folks at one place? what was that like, just thinking about.
Oh, yeah. Like bringing the team together and saying like, Hey, we, we can actually solve this problem. And like, nobody else can do it right now. Just from like a manufacturing raw material standpoint point.
[00:19:13] Mike:
No. I mean, I mean, I think you hit on it. It’s bringing the team together and you know what Alex and, and Tom and I have done from the very beginning and, and our focus has been building the best team ever. when we focus on that and these challenges come in front of us, It’s not that they’re easy, but you know, you have people that are way smarter than you in the room to help you solve it.
So, you know, our, our operations team led by our COO and the engineers that stand behind them and the folks that lead our procurement and planning, departments, do an incredible job of a very difficult task, which is, to your point, running a, mass manufacturing. Line at the same time is we’re in a custom line.
That is a huge challenge. Most companies are either custom or they’re mass produced and, you know, we’ve built out our team and our facility. So, we can shift back and forth between producing, you know, 250 rumble benches at a time to then shifting and building a custom repel tower or range solution for the military.
So. It’s painful, at times, but you know, our focus has been on building that incredible team that can, take on those challenges.
[00:20:20] Joe:
Yeah, it’s, it’s super important that the team building perspective down. Athen, maybe like a two part question. with that and the, the ups and downs, you see companies, especially in like the fitness tech space who are like, you know, pushing all in with the demand at peaks and maybe overreaching or not executing, certainly to the forecasts and now making a bunch of cuts at the same time.
Especially from like a manufacturing, like manual labor side.
It’s like you hear everyone, it’s, it’s crazy difficult to find folks to work, to do some of these jobs. How have you been able to navigate like the up and down demand by saying like, Hey, we wanna be able to meet this demand where it is now, but also where is it going?
And then being able to hire, to keep pace with that.
[00:21:05] Mike:
No for sure. we are lucky because a lot of our stuff is made to order. so when it comes to the risk of inventory that some other folks have, struggled with in having excess inventory, We are able to educate our customers that if you want something custom it’s made to order and lead times are long.
No one likes it long lead time. but what that has been able to do for us is mitigate our risk of inventory. So, that’s been really nice is we don’t have to carry a lot of inventory, cuz most of the stuff going down our line is already sold. When it comes to, the team, you know, we have this strategy where we know what our internal capacity is and we are continuing to kind.
Step up that internal capacity. but we try not to have it spike. So, we know we can do it internally and then we have an incredible network of partners, that can make certain components of us. And that’s where, how we scale. So when we reach our internal capacity, we’ve got this network of partners.
Hey, great. I need you to make these 50 parts for us. so we kinda account for the. Via those partners until we know that’s the new normal, and then we’ll build capacity for that new normal, when it’s time. So, it, it’s almost like building the team. Not only do we have a great internal team, we have an incredible network of partners on the manufacturing space, that allow us to outsource things when we reach our capacity.
[00:22:26] Joe:
Yeah, super smart. maybe one more question. This path of like, when you think about the, pre kind of COVID and now where things are heading it’s. The the out the idea of like the outdoor exercise and building some of these facilities is like really attractive to people. It’s like consumers really enjoy it.
They like the idea of being able to mix up their training. They like the idea of obviously like being in the sun while doing some of this. And it just gives a level of flexibility for some of the locations that like they previously didn’t have before. Like we talked about. but then pre COVID. It was like this, the outdoor fitness, at least when it relates to like some of the equipment, it was, you saw like different communities or municipalities, like putting in these gyms that like, people don’t really use them, or it doesn’t seem like they’re getting used, but at the same time, there’s this missed opportunity to like bring exercise and equipment and physical activity to the masses.
Do you look at that and think like, is there a solution for that? Is it just a matter of like at the end of the day, there’s nobody to pay for it from like a community local perspective? Or is it like, is there a world where we could just have a bunch of container gyms basically like, or do we need like a billionaire, right.
Elon Musk mark hub and somebody like that to like fund, Hey, let’s put these everywhere. Let’s teach people how to use. ‘em give ‘em access to the gyms and physical activity, or maybe.
Maybe it’s just like a passion project or idea of mine. That’s not like super realistic.
[00:23:50] Mike:
No, it’s, it’s interesting in, you know, being out there hoping, the south beach, Miami, parks and rec, they’ve been an early adopter of this model and they took a chance and and they put two, well, I started with one and now there’s two container gyms, at Loomis park in south beach. and actually IA was just there.
You know, I was able to go work out and I’m just standing there in at seven 30 in the morning, the lifeguards come and unlock that, those two container gyms. And, I think we might have posted a video on it. People just come out of the woodwork and they’re coming there to train. And there’s personal trainers using it, with their clients.
There’s this one guy train outside, is his Instagram profile. He’s coming up with such unique ways to train on our products, and bring it to life. So I’m talking to people, I’m like, Hey, like what’s going on here? the guys, this is the community. These, these container gyms that the, the parks and rec department provided has really established a community here. And they even tell stories. When tourists are coming by, you know, and just the regular beach clothes they’ll double take. And then they’ll run back to the room and grab their workout gear and come out and train. and I don’t know how to scale it, but it’s interesting. seeing the impact that, that has had on the community in south beach and how it’s brought people together.
We at BFI are always focusing on, the usership of our products. You know, the last thing you want to, to your point, is somebody investing in it and not sitting in an open field and no one using it. So we’re, we’re, have some new team members, gentleman named Chris Frankel, that is great at bringing products to life, you know, through simple, education.
So we’re, we’re working on some content, We’re gonna combine with our products because, you know, we want people to use it and get value and build community. It’s great that it happened organically in south beach, but we can’t depend on it happened organically. We gotta be a little bit of a forcing function around it, but, it’s a great case study down there for sure.
[00:25:46] Joe:
Yeah, it is. It’s, it’s really interesting to have that and like, to be able to point to that and say like, this is what. Looks like the potential when it’s executed super well. Yeah, I guess I’m just, like I said, like personally hopeful that someone can figure that out in a way where it’s like you have, in some ways the Y M C a who’s done a phenomenal job of like cultivating physical activity, but also like community and health and different locations around the world.
But, you know, when it comes to. Somebody with a, a barbell or a kettlebell is in dumbbell and learning the basics of like compound movements. It’s like, where can you go to do that? If you’re not going to like a CrossFit or, or some other place like that?
[00:26:23] Mike:
It’s it’s access, you know, we gotta figure out the access and, you know, I, I think to steal some other people’s words, there’s fitness deserts out there. And that’s what we think is unique about our product is it can go in these places that, you know, could be considered these fitness deserts, where there’s not, you know, Equinox and rumble and would never think to open something up there and.
You know, train the folks. Well, yeah, we can drop something there and, you know, there’s networks of trainers that we could tap into, to, to provide that sort of instruction. So we’ve always had that idea. It’s just about, you know, get into the execution of it or finding the right partner, would probably be, the idea to execute something like that.
But we, we do feel like our product is unique where we can, put it in, in some crazy places.
[00:27:05] Joe:
Huge potential and maybe something we can keep jamming on offline. It’s like I said, something I’d like to, to be a part of bringing to life. yeah, zooming out as we get towards the end of the conversation. I would just be curious to hear your, your general thoughts. There was the ups and downs of COVID.
There was, you know, gyms are dead and now everything’s gonna be at home or digital. And obviously there’s a correction happening. Now. You kind of sit maybe outside of this direct kind of trends and impact and, maybe like headline reading about what is or isn’t happening. But do you have a sense of where things are going and, and what that means for the broader industry?
Or do you just sit back and think like, Hey, we have to execute. It doesn’t matter what happens. Like we need to do our.
[00:27:47] Mike:
No we do. And, and just to kind of separate the two markets in, in the government space, I think is a really interesting time in the industry. because, I mean, we’re passionate about this idea that the individual service members are being designated as weapon systems. And I know that sounds pretty aggressive to some folks, but the exciting thing is. we spend a lot of time and energy maintaining our weapon systems. and now that same focus is being, put into the individual service member as that human weapon system. And how can we build facilities? that facilitates, Increased readiness and lethality for that service member.
And that’s where I think the rest of the industry, can really come together and support that because, with all of the, the biometrics that can be collected via different wearables and technology and how you can analyze that data for commanders to make decisions, is really exciting. And. You know, just to give a quick plug, we’re doing an event for the Army at a trade show called the association of the us Army, where we’re trying to bring people together from the human performance industry to speak to one voice to the Army and say, Hey, we can help you figure this out in the same way.
You have strategic partners that maintain your aircraft and your tactical vehicles. You can have those same. Partnerships with folks in the human performance industry. So I think in the government space, it’s really exciting to see the focus, being put towards the service members as weapon systems and the, the same resources that we use to train professional athletes at the highest level being brought to bear, you know, outside of that, We understand why people train the way they did in COVID. But, from my personal experience, what I loved about training and it probably comes from the team sports side of it is the community like a workout by yourself is okay. But let’s be honest with ourselves. we don’t necessarily push ourselves as hard as we could, even when the instructors, you know, on the screen, yelling and screaming at everybody to pick it up the pace and do this or that.
It’s about, you know, your workout buddy or, the expanded group of folks that you see when you go to the. so to us, It’s about community building, in, in bringing people together. And we feel like naturally, folks are gonna come back together to work out and train because that’s the only way you can get better is to challenge each other.
So, we foresee, you know, that community always being, the baseline of the industry and how can we bring people together in different ways, in different spaces. It’s kind of how we view it.
[00:30:08] Joe:
Yeah, I think that’s really well said and Regardless of how things play out. You guys are uniquely positioned to serve a diversified customer base. So back to the original point, it’s about listening to problems, solving them for customers. and, and, just continuing to do that at scale, which it sounds like, you know, the biggest problem right now, it, to some extent is keeping up with demand and all the different kind of asks that you get. you mentioned the Army event coming up, Wrapping up here there, is there anything else that we should look out for? Any, whether it’s events or kind of, launches products, developments that are coming down the pipeline. You want people to keep an eye out for?
[00:30:47] Mike:
Oh, it’s interesting. I think the Army, event’s a key one. you know, we’re gonna be putting a lot of effort in that because, you know, we’re, we’re passionate about that project, to support them, you know, other than that, you know, with our, our new line of these trailers. So the container gyms are awesome, but they’re not as portable as they seem because you need a forklift And a flatbed to move around a shipping container. we recently launched a, a line of trailers, that is the same. Features as the container gyms, but all you need is a vehicle to tow it around and, and you can go to your customers, whether that’s a corporate site, a high school or a park, and, and bring that capability to them. we’re gonna be launching a smaller version of that later this year that I’m really excited about because the ones we have right now can be a bit intimidating.
You need F-150 to tell it. And everyone loves a big truck, but, not everyone has that. So we’re coming out with a smaller version of that. Later this year, they were really excited about that. To your point, I think is gonna give us. Access to a more diversified customer base and, and help people, really accomplish their goals of, you know, training, in places they never thought possible.
[00:31:48] Joe:
Yeah, very cool. We’ll definitely keep an eye out for that. Maybe get one to tow behind the truck when those come out.
[00:31:55] Mike:
I like it.
[00:31:55] Joe:
For folks that have been listening and they’re interested, they enjoyed the conversation and want to learn more, where would you point them?
[00:32:05] Mike:
Yeah, I think Instagram is always good. These days it’s almost like an online product portfolio. So check out our Instagram account. We’re trying to highlight our team and our customers on there. So check out BeaverFit USA, and BeaverFit on Instagram.
We also just did an update to our website, so BeaverFitUsa.com has some exciting content that the marketing team has brought to life there.
So that’s a couple of good ideas, Joe.
[00:32:29] Joe:
Yeah, I hope folks check that out. I’m following on Instagram, like I said, and always looking at the different products and thinking about how I could build the compound home gym of my dreams.
So, very cool to follow along, Mike. I’m really glad we had a chance to chat today.
[00:32:44] Mike:
Joe, this was awesome. Thank you.