The Hardest Part About Running Our Business From Our RV

When we set out on our RV adventure, the main purpose was to build our business, Bison. Bison is a custom motorcycle racing gear business we started in September 2018. We provide motorcycle riders and racers with bespoke suits and gloves. We also sell several ancillary items, including undersuits, knee pucks, and apparel. We started the business on a part-time basis while we were working our full-time, corporate-level jobs. We started the business to meet a need (high-quality, custom leather suits at affordable prices) and to make an extra buck.

The business grew much quicker than we expected and by August 2019, we were faced with the decision to hire someone to handle the business or quit our jobs and do it ourselves. After what now seems like a divine course of events, Rob and I both ended up quitting our jobs and going all-in on Bison. When we sat down to have conversations about how we wanted to market the company in 2020, we were faced with a decision to either grow by adding dealerships in the area or by expanding our reach geographically without adding dealerships. We developed a grassroots marketing campaign centered around the MotoAmerica racing schedule. We decided to load the family up in the RV, follow the MotoAmerica racing schedule, and hit up club-level events along the way.

We started our adventure in February 2020 by attending the season's first CMRA event in Houston, Texas. The next stop was originally Dayton Beach, Florida for MotoAmerica pre-season testing but we opted to forego that event since our sponsored team decided not to go. It simply wasn't worth the cost at that point. Instead of Daytona Beach, we headed to New Orleans, Louisiana for the second CMRA round. This is when all hell broke loose with COVID-19. The CMRA event was canceled on the first day as the Governor of Louisiana implemented a limitation on the number of people that could gather for a public event. Meanwhile, the Daytona Beach event we originally planned to attend was also canceled. Thank goodness we didn't decide all that way and spend all that money just to have the event canceled on the first day!

Over the next two months, we quarantined, re-grouped, and questioned everything in life as our huge business investment seemed to crumble before our eyes. After wallowing in our sorrows for the first few weeks of quarantine, we decided to gather ourselves back up and re-focus. We spent the next few weeks, re-planning our trip, investing in new product development, improving process efficiencies, and re-designing our website. When it was time to get back on the road in May, we were structured much better for growth. We hired a part-time virtual assistant to handle all of our daily processes and used the SBA loan funds to order inventory to sell on the road. After a HUGE outpouring of support for our products at the first event at Hallett Motor Racing Circuit in Jennings, Oklahoma, we knew we made some wise investments.

The growth since that event has been big. We went from selling an average of five suits per month in the first four months of the year to eleven suits per month in the last three months. Revenue increased by 81 percent over the same time frame. We released a new glove design that is unlike anything on the market and we invested in a large SEO and PPC marketing campaign to increase our reach beyond where we will physically reach over the remainder of 2020.

​The great news about all of this growth is that we are much closer to being able to sustain our full-time RV lifestyle than we were when we started this journey 13 months ago. The bad news is that we have new challenges to deal with on the road. When we first hit the road, we had very little product that we carried with us. Since all of our suits and gloves are custom, we only carried a couple of each with us. After selling out of our gloves and undersuits at our first event in May, we quickly realized the demand for these products trackside was high. Since we are focused on becoming the best custom motorcycle racing gear business in the industry, we designed our first colorway, The Roots design. This was a custom Thor.1 glove design that we would offer for a limited time until we created the next colorway design. We placed a fairly large order of both The Roots colorway and men's and women's one-piece and two-piece undersuits.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally received our stock products near the end of July. Now we were faced with a new problem. What would we do with all of these items in our small space? If I'm honest, we haven't quite figured it out yet (as you can see from these pictures) but we do have a plan to reduce some of our undercarriage cargo (personal items) to make room for the business stock. We also have a longer-term plan to order additional stock, have it all shipped to our centralized shipping and receiving location, and have a limited number of items shipped to us periodically from that location. Unfortunately, ordering that much stock is very costly so we have to work up to that point. Here's the other issue - that's just one of our businesses. We are getting ready to launch products for both our Lackeys Be Trippin' brand and our Edie Kate children's clothing brand. We have designs being developed for both now. The plan for those two brands is mixed. We will probably stock most of the items at our centralized shipping and receiving location while carrying a few Lackeys Be Trippin' items with us on the road in case anyone wants to buy them when we meet up. We also have a future brand in its infancy stage that will be geared towards the RV lifestyle and will require much more storage space than we will have to offer on the road. We will have to come up with a creative solution for that as well!

So what's the hardest part about running our business(es) from our RV? Storage! Living in an RV full-time is already like playing a daily game of Tetris - try adding the need for product storage! Now I know why most full-timers look for service-based work on the road. The good news is that I've realized we don't need nearly the stuff we originally thought while on the road. We've purged our personal items twice in the past year and it seems we'll need to do it at least once more before we can reach the optimal personal/business balance. If anyone has any storage tips, we would appreciate it if you would share them with us! Leave them in the comments below. Until next time - go fast, be safe! (That's our motto for Bison if you didn't already know!)