Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio alone there on the highway.
Speaker 1: All right, I don't even think I can introduce this one.
Speaker 1: I think this is all yours, buddy.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So, Matt Chambers is a guy who became famous, or
Speaker 3: at least well known to me, when he made Confederate motorcycles.
Speaker 3: They were, you know, big displacement twins cruisers, and at
Speaker 3: one point he kind of made this really cool pivot
Speaker 3: to electric bikes and also changed the name to Curtis.
Speaker 3: And I was following along this whole saga on social media.
Speaker 3: I just thought it was so cool and the motorcycles
Speaker 3: are beautiful. And then one day I was sitting on
Speaker 3: my couch in Berlin and I saw that they were
Speaker 3: actually offering shares for sale to the public, not through
Speaker 3: like a Wall Street IPO, but kind of like a
Speaker 3: power to the people way to invest.
Speaker 1: And you did said.
Speaker 3: Yes and clicked in bought shares and Curtis. So now
Speaker 3: I am full disclosure.
Speaker 1: Yes a shareholder, Matthew, come on in and tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about the business, and to one of
Speaker 1: your shareholders into our audience if you will.
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's great to hear. Thanks for having me on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We spent twenty five years in this what I would
Speaker 2: call kind of the AMG, aification of Harley wanting to
Speaker 2: if Harley was the Mercedes and motorcycles, and we would
Speaker 2: soup them up a little bit. We did a really
Speaker 2: good job with that. We learned a lot. It was
Speaker 2: like an apprenticeship and we kind of hit the end
Speaker 2: of the road in terms of being able to make
Speaker 2: a better IC. And on June twenty ninth of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: we made a firm pivot, got rid of everything to
Speaker 2: do with IC, cleansed our minds, and went one hundred
Speaker 2: percent into the dream of making the best motorcycle in
Speaker 2: the world and and it would just happen to be electric,
Speaker 2: and and we were. We did. We did a lot
Speaker 2: of work on our own, with our own, with the
Speaker 2: team we had at the time. Then I got this
Speaker 2: gentleman JT to come back, who had done a bike.
Speaker 2: Matt you probably know that bike the Rate. It was
Speaker 2: a pretty interesting motorcycle that we conjured it. It was
Speaker 2: very aircrafty. Then we did the Fighter. It had all
Speaker 2: this machine stuff going on and it's a very precise,
Speaker 2: a more precise way to make a bike. And then
Speaker 2: JT invented this patented idea, this idea of tapping the axle,
Speaker 2: the shaft through the motor some actually making a motorcycle symmetrical,
Speaker 2: the dream of an inside out made organic machine. It
Speaker 2: just all came together. So now it's about two years
Speaker 2: later than I thought. But we're very close, Matt, and
Speaker 2: thank you for being a shareholder. And I believe we're
Speaker 2: going to do really, really really well. Well.
Speaker 3: One thing, I one day I would like to ride
Speaker 3: one of the bikes, because in so many ways you
Speaker 3: challenge the norms of you know, the peril twin parallel forks,
Speaker 3: and the way a swing arm works and the drive
Speaker 3: shaft as you say, and how does it handle when
Speaker 3: you get out and ride this bike, or what is
Speaker 3: the feedback that you get from people who are testing
Speaker 3: these out?
Speaker 2: Matt? If you, if you had the experience of being
Speaker 2: in the business for a long time like me, one
Speaker 2: of the things you one of the things that would
Speaker 2: be troublesome is all of the shunt from the first
Speaker 2: time I saw one of our bikes, and our bikes
Speaker 2: were packaged better than than the others. I mean, we
Speaker 2: we invented our own packaging with with the ice and
Speaker 2: the V twin, it was better. We turned it into
Speaker 2: a monocoque. It was a far better way to make
Speaker 2: a motorcycle. But man, when you would when you would
Speaker 2: run that thing on a dino, it was it was
Speaker 2: shunty and violent. And what we've with JG's invention and
Speaker 2: the symmetry, the bike is a little more balanced, it's
Speaker 2: a little more beautiful. But even more importantly, I believe,
Speaker 2: is it has it. The way you access the power
Speaker 2: is just so sublime, and it gives the bike a
Speaker 2: little more fidelity, It gives you more confidence. So the
Speaker 2: experience of riding it is I believe, the best that
Speaker 2: I've ever encountered on a motorcycle. I'm very confident that
Speaker 2: this is the best motor So.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to ask you some business questions. I mean,
Speaker 1: how much have you how many are you selling, what's
Speaker 1: the growth rate that you're seeing, and what do they cost?
Speaker 2: Well, the bike, the bike is a hyper luxury item
Speaker 2: and that plays into our deck. We have about thirteen
Speaker 2: hundred customers and those are pretty much all Ultra hid network,
Speaker 2: So we and we have enough to break even the
Speaker 2: first year. I believe it's about twenty five firm, and
Speaker 2: we have another one hundred and five to sell. We're
Speaker 2: thinking really small, so we believe we will ultimately be
Speaker 2: the most valuable American motorcycle company by say, twenty thirty,
Speaker 2: more valuable than Live Wire, I mean electric motorcycle company.
Speaker 2: And the way we're going to do that is by
Speaker 2: doing by hitting a bogie of fifty million of sales
Speaker 2: around twenty seven to twenty eight, but bringing in a
Speaker 2: thirty but a thirty percent even doe fifty percent gross margins.
Speaker 2: So we're right now we're hitting about one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: of net revenue per unit, and our costs will be
Speaker 2: will be south of fifty thousands. We have a good margin,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of a Tesla coming at hyper luxury.
Speaker 2: Our next product will be sixty. We're very comfortable we
Speaker 2: can hit the thirty thousand dollars cost of good sold
Speaker 2: on that product in twenty twenty seven. But the first
Speaker 2: thing is these one hundred and thirty initial customers.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: We feel like we've got them already. We do have
Speaker 2: two thousand qualified expressions of interest along with our deck
Speaker 2: of owners, numerous of whom have said they will be
Speaker 2: buying a bike. But as Matt, you probably would agree
Speaker 2: that the transfer from ice to electric is it's something
Speaker 2: that an individual has to come up with in his
Speaker 2: own time. I worked with a guy named Treblanche for
Speaker 2: for years, and he pounded me out and he used
Speaker 2: to just beat me to death about we got to
Speaker 2: go electric, and I was like, shut up, dude, I
Speaker 2: hate him. And then then one day a light went off,
Speaker 2: you know, I finally you know, he was right the
Speaker 2: whole time. But it's not it's it's funny.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. Yeah, it takes I think it
Speaker 3: takes a long time, but then when it happens, it's
Speaker 3: like a switch is flipped and then all of a
Speaker 3: sudden you kind of realize the benefits.
Speaker 1: Not to say that.
Speaker 3: You, you know, throw away all of your love for the
Speaker 3: bikes you've ridden in the past. The internal combustion engines,
Speaker 3: but it's just a whole new experience, and I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy that you guys are doing this, and
Speaker 3: I'm so glad we could have had you on.
Speaker 2: Matt, thank you so much. We really appreciate it so Ippeciate.
Speaker 1: Wait, so just because folks in our control are wondering,
Speaker 1: so how much does it? Say? How much does one cost?
Speaker 1: I know you said hyper luxury. You just got about
Speaker 1: thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: It's one hundred and twenty thousand. That's where it starts
Speaker 2: and it can certainly go up from there. But if
Speaker 2: you see the bike, Carol, it's worth it's worth it.
Speaker 2: I say it. It's lovely.
Speaker 1: I said to Matt before we get started. I was
Speaker 1: on your website. They are gorgeous and they are unlike
Speaker 1: anything else you see when it comes to if you're
Speaker 1: looking at bikes and.
Speaker 3: The engineering is revolutionary and the machining is so precise,
Speaker 3: it's just that it will last you for all of
Speaker 3: a turn.
Speaker 1: I was asking for our community. Matt, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Come back soon. Matt Chambers. He's chief executive Officer, Chairman
Speaker 1: of the board of Curtis Motorcycle. Ticker is CMOT and
Speaker 1: he's joining us from Leeds, Alabama via zoom. Carol, Matthew Miller,
Speaker 1: Matt's got a smile. This is Bloomberg