We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Russ Willacker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Russ, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the toughest parts of scaling a business is maintaining quality as you grow. How have you managed to maintain quality? Any stories or advice?

Before I started Switzerland Trail, I worked for many years as a Quality Engineer in aerospace. Quality is one of these terms that gets thrown around a lot, often without a whole lot of definition. To me, Quality is the firm belief that what you have offered as a company is authentic and real, with actual data to back that quality up. Likewise, on the customer side, Quality is the assurance that what they are purchasing has tangible value, and the trust in a brand to provide a product that performs as advertised, even if those attributes are not visible to the end user.

A friend of mine once purchased a carbon bike wheel second-hand. It was a wheel known manufacturer, with a “built by” sticker from an extremely reputable wheel building operation. In fact, before he purchased the wheel, he consulted with me first to ensure it was a good buy. Knowing the company shown on the “built by” label, I advised that the wheel was of high quality and an excellent purchase.

My friend put only a handful of miles on the wheel before spokes started breaking, one after another. He reached out to the company who’d reportedly built the wheel. They maintained a quality control log, with all the relevant statistics of the that serialized build, and were able to determine that the wheel in my friend’s hand had been rebuilt — and poorly — by another builder. This quality control log was the only reason they were able to save their reputation in this instance.

On account of this story, I maintain extremely detailed QC logs on every wheel I build, and I provide them to my customers, in the event their wheels ever need a rebuild and they choose another builder. As I stated before, quality is only perceived until there is actual data to back up the claims, and I provide both perceived and verified quality with my QC records.

A brand’s reputation lies almost entirely on the back of its delivered quality. Growth can never compromise quality, ever. There is a reason a brand grows in the first place, and it’s almost always at the hand of a quality product that is referred among a certain inner community. Compromise that quality, and that growth and reputation can disappear in an instant.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I first entered the bike industry through a test lab, called Microbac, in Boulder. We ran a bike testing laboratory, testing frames, forks, seatposts, handlebars, cranks — you name it — in a controlled lab environment. Through a deep working knowledge of the bike industry, I was able to set my sights on a couple specific niches, bikepacking and wheel building. I spent some time with Velocity USA in Michigan, where I learned to build high quality bike wheels for every purpose imaginable.

Over the years, I continued to build bike wheels for friends and acquaintances just for fun, before deciding to give it a real push and make something of it. I have a long background in mechanical engineering, as well as materials and failure analysis from my time at the lab. I think that what sets me apart from other wheelbuilders is my depth of understanding of the physics of a bike wheel, as well as my thorough investigation attributes when rebuilding a previously failed wheel. Even just recently, I took on what was expected to be a basic wheel rebuild, only to find cracking in the rim when inspected under magnification. I don’t find that higher volume general shops take to this level of detail in a wheel rebuild.

In addition to building bike wheels, I also love everything about bikepacking. I sell high quality bikepacking products, and love to be a resource for folks venturing out on their first or their fiftieth bikepacking trip, always trying to optimize their loads in the best ways possible. To me, everything on a bike can be customized to the rider; be it their wheels, or their bags, the loads they carry, or the routes they ride. I love to talk about it all.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think reputation goes back to the discussion about quality. Your reputation falls apart pretty fast if your quality doesn’t hold up. In that same light, nothing ever goes entirely perfectly, and it’s how you respond in those moments that further solidify a reputation.

My reputation has been sold mainly through word of mouth. It started with my immediate friend group, whose trust I already had; I had to provide a product (custom wheels and knowledge therein) that could be showcased tangibly. As the miles wore on and on and the bike wheels continued to perform as advertised maintenance free, those friends told their friends, and suddenly I was building and repairing wheels for people I didn’t know — and who had no working trust of who I was.

I stayed true to what I knew — how to deliver a high quality product in an honest fashion, backed by warranty and actual data in a delivered QC sheet, and the word of mouth reputation just continued to expand more and more. The key is to identifying your strength, and performing that strength to the highest level, never straying from that fundamental baseline.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

As mentioned above, word-of-mouth has been my biggest means of client growth. The key is all in consistency, and delivering a product that measures up to what your inner circle “sold” to someone on the outside of that circle.

When a new customer contacts me for a wheel build or repair, coming to me recommended from a mutual friend, I don’t change a thing; I know exactly what that person expects me to deliver, because someone already told him or her what I could do for them.

Maintaining consistent quality checks and data is the undisputed best way to drive that consistent product that people talk about beyond your reach, and builds a common expectation between you and customer in all scenarios.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.switzerlandtrail.com
• Instagram: @switzerlandtrail