Industry Insights | Ft. Ryan Amoils

In this edition of Industry Insights, MX Locker creator discusses the origins of the online motocross marketplace and why he believes it has been successful. He tells Vital MX about the difficulties he ran into and how they are always trying to improve the consumer's experience.

For the full interview, check out the Vital MX podcast right here. If you're interested in the condensed written version, scroll down just a bit further.

Michael Lindsay – Vital MX: What's up, Ryan?

Ryan Amoils: What's up, Michael? Thanks for having me.

Vital MX: Before we get into how you started MX Locker or your background in moto, can you explain what MX Locker is?

Ryan: MX Locker is a peer-to-peer marketplace for the dirt bike community. It lets users buy and sell riding gear, bike parts, and dirt bikes from a website or mobile app. We make it easy to power the circular economy in the dirt bike industry.

Vital MX: I used to buy and sell stuff, and I'd put it on forums, Craigslist, or eBay. What would you compare your platform to for somebody who's never seen it? 

Ryan: I would say it's most similar to Etsy, Bring a Trailer, or those niche marketplaces that specialize in one thing. If you look at Grailed for streetwear, they've done a great job taking a vertical marketplace and saying, "Hey, we're catering to a streetwear consumer. Instead of going to eBay, you could go to Grailed and find exactly what you're looking for with stock X." It's the same thing with sneakers. They go there because it's a trusted place. eBay wasn't trusted anymore. They weren't building for the consumer. I'm a rider myself, and I grew up around the dirt bike industry. I wanted to build MX Locker so you could go and buy and sell new and used gear to a trustworthy community. That's what we're trying to build.

Vital MX: When did the idea first come around, and what's your background in dirt bikes? How'd you get from riding dirt bikes to wanting to start a business? 

Ryan: The story goes way back to high school. My mom bought me my first two pairs of sneakers, and many of my friends were getting into the sneaker resale industry before it blew up. While in high school, we would go to the sneaker resell shows. That's when I got super familiar with eBay, PayPal, etc. Before I was even 18, I got kicked off PayPal and eBay because I was underage selling products. So, I learned quickly this is ecom, this is how to sell online, and these are the good things to do and bad things to do. Sneakers then led me to hats. We were importing hats from China, selling them at sneaker events, etc. I started my own website. That was my first ecom experience. Then, in high school, my parents said, "You have to focus on getting into college. You're going to college. You can't do this anymore." So, I was done with sneakers and hat resale. Then, I went to college and realized I was not learning that much. I would find myself between classes thinking, "How can I make extra money?" I took my passion for dirt bike riding and my passion for reselling and thought, I can't sit still during class, I can't get into this partying thing, and I need something to do. Believe it or not, I was in Gainesville at the University of Florida and didn't know I was near Gatorback or MTF (Millsap's Training Facility), etc. I wasn't in the dirt bike industry. So, I always wanted Tech 10s but couldn't find them for a good price. My dad never bought them for me because they were $600, and he'd say, "You're an average moto guy. You're not going to buy Tech 10s. I'll get you a pair of Tech 3s that are 200 bucks." So, I went on eBay and found all these pro riders selling their old gear, and I would go to them on eBay and say, "I'll buy these in bulk from you." Then I created an Instagram, which was the birth of MX Locker. It was an Instagram posting, "Used gear for sale." I could sell five sets and then keep one set for free.

Vital MX: So, it was a make money/get yourself cool stuff kind of thing. At first, when you were doing IG, were you just doing it strictly in DMs, using PayPal, getting people's addresses, and then shipping them the stuff? 

Ryan: Yeah. That was the birth of MX Locker. I think it was my sophomore or junior year of college, and I planned to grow hack this. I'd follow a ton of people who would follow Vital MX, Vurb, etc. Those were our first customers. If we followed them on Instagram, they would come and check out our Instagram page, and I would post 100% goggles for ten bucks, a set of gear for 20 bucks, and everyone's like, "Shit, I could find a good deal." 

Vital MX: So, whenever you get a product, you take a photo and post it on Instagram. Your Instagram feed was your for-sale list. 

Ryan: Yeah. If you go back to our Instagram, you can probably see those first posts. They would say, "100% goggles for sale. Used. Worn three times. 40 bucks. DM to order." 

Vital MX: Pro riders might get 50 pairs of pants and jerseys, and they're switching teams or something. They have a bunch of leftovers that, to them, are hagged out. They say, "F these things." They think they're hammered, but for most Joe Blow's, some of their stuff's pretty clean. So, did it just start with you buying stuff in bulk from pros?

Ryan: Yeah. I've tried to DM a lot of the pro riders on Instagram, and none of them would respond because they're like, "Who's this moto company out of Miami? Why am I going to respond to this?" They didn't want to get in trouble with all their sponsors. The way to hack it is that I used to go to all the events I could, like Gatorback and all the Gold Cup races, and I'd take photos. I realized all these amateur kids want photos of themselves, so I'd take photos. Then they would actually answer my DM, and I could say, "By the way, we're buying and selling gear." That was the slow transition to getting products from some of the pro riders and kids who got a lot of stuff for free. At the same time, they're switching sponsors every year and usually throw all this stuff out. So for us, we're keeping the recommerce industry and taking all this stuff that would end up in a garbage can and giving it to a kid who can't afford a pair of Instincts for $100 to $200.

Vital MX: These guys, especially if it's somebody switching bike brands for the year, have a lot of stuff lying around. They could go to eBay or Craigslist and list it all themselves, then deal with tons of emails and try to figure it out. Most of them would rather just go, "Oh, you'll give me X amount of money just straight up and take it off my hands? Yes. I don't want to deal with this."

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. We still have riders who do that with us. They just want to drop stuff off, and we'll resell it on the platform. For a majority, they have so much stuff, and they would just come by and drop it off. It's extra cash for them.

Vital MX: It starts as a side hustle. At what point did you say, "I can make a marketplace out of this. I can let other people utilize it." When did you decide this will be a platform that people can use?

Ryan: In college I never wanted to go to a job fair because MX Locker started gaining traction my senior year, and we had an office in Gainesville. I'd go between classes straight to the office and was shipping out packages. I realized that's not scalable. Everyone would email us, "Hey, can you post this for sale? Can you list this for me?" I knew right out of college I wanted to create a marketplace. Still, it was super difficult not having a technical background to go from a normal Shopify website to a marketplace that allows users to buy and sell products. So, as soon as I graduated, I hired an overseas team to try to build MX Locker and wasted a good amount of money there. I kind of had 10K worth of product down the drain. I'm like, "All right, this is my last shot. I have one more shot with a developer to get MX Locker off the ground and get it to where I want to take it. I found a developer off of Upwork. He said, "Yeah, I could build a marketplace," but no one really knew what a marketplace was back then. This was like 2021. That was still a super early stage. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I convinced all these sellers to come and sell their products on our platform. We took a small fee, and they said, "I don't want to sell because you're taking this small fee." I'm explaining, "I'm opening up our website to you. We have thousands of customers now, and you'll get more sales than on your normal website." So, I hired this developer, with my last money in the bank, and grew that to about 7000 users. That did about six figures in sales one month, and I'm like, "Holy shit. This thing has traction. I don't know how big the dirt bike industry is, but six figures in sales on this janky platform, let's take this thing and run with it." I convinced one of my friends I went to college with, who did all of our technical work, "Let's build our own marketplace." He's said, "That's kind of a crazy idea, but let's do it." He was working to build what MX Locker is today. I hired him as a sidekick, and he's like, "Yeah, I could build it super easy." Two months down the road, he said, "Shit, this is a super hard project. We're building an e-commerce store for thousands of users to post their products and get paid while trying to make it as seamless as possible. We're basically building an eBay." Two months in, he's like, "All right, I'll join you full-time. Give me a salary." I didn't know how I was going to pay him. I just said, "All right, let's do this." We put our heads down, and in three months, we built a mobile app and website and launched them as MX Locker.

Vital MX: It's always funny to hear somebody go through the whole, 'This was the last shot. It's either sink or swim.' How much of a business plan did you put together? Had you thought ahead of time about what it was scalable to, or was it just totally a passion project? Did you think, "I just want to see if this will work? I have a gut feeling?"

Ryan: It was kind of a passion project. It's tough because my dad asked, "How will you make moto your living?" We grew up in Miami, not around the moto industry. No one knows how big it is. As a matter of fact, my mom has never been to a dirt bike track to this day. Everyone has this outside look at the industry. I'm like, "It's a big industry. I have a passion for it. Let's go and do this." So, when we built it, I didn't know how big it could get or where it was going. I'm just like, "We have traction. We have product market fit on this janky ass platform. Let's build something and see where it goes." My dad always said, "You have to make this much a month, and then I'll let you go and do it on your own." Then I hit that, and now I'm doing MX Locker full-time.

Vital MX: It's been over two years since you launched the original 'janky' version. How much has the platform changed? What were some of the initial struggles you ran into?

Ryan: There's so much to building a marketplace. We're building this platform, and you're not going to have sellers post products on the platform if you don't have any buyers, and then buyers aren't coming to the platform if you don't have any sellers. It's similar to the Uber situation where you won't take an Uber if there are no drivers, and then drivers won't drive if there are no customers. It's the chicken and the egg. It's solving that thing for marketplaces. There's been a lot of struggles growing it, but I was close to a couple of our big sellers in the beginning. They posted a lot of inventory and got lucky with our strategy. They invested it into SCO (Search Channel Optimization) early. We had sellers on eBay who are still on eBay, and that platform is for more experienced sellers. We're building our experience for the average consumer and the dirt bike industry. "Hey, I'm posting boots. I want to do it quickly." You select 'Riding Gear,' 'Boots,' 'Alpinestars,' 'Tech 10s', and 'Size.' We want to make that process even easier down the road by using AI technology. You could post a picture of Tech 10s, and it automatically knows those are used Tech 10s. Here's the price you should sell them at. Boom, they're listed, and it goes out to 170,000 users. So, it's grown like crazy. With that comes growing pains. In the beginning, we found out a lot of users didn't know how to ship, so we let them set shipping prices. We launched a new product two months ago, attempting to make shipping as easy as possible. Now, when you post something, there are suggested weights and dimensions. When that product sells, you get a label. That's kind of one of the growing pains. Also, just to educate sellers. We hold money in escrow. So, when you sell a product, we want to ensure the buyer is satisfied with our product and that you're not a scammer sending an empty box. We're protecting you against fraud and all these things on the internet. You're also going to get paid if you deliver that product.

Vital MX: We've had a problem with somebody on our forum who makes new accounts and tries to DM people, which is hard to regulate on a standard message board. People use technology for the best and worst reasons. How much time and investment does it take to properly protect people? 

Ryan: You put out this product to the world, and then somehow these scammers who do it for a living want to create fraud. They want to try and break your systems.

Vital MX: They're probably pretty decent if they make a living at it.

Ryan: Yeah, they're pretty good. All these big tech companies pay these hackers to find stuff in their products, and they make hundreds of thousands of dollars. We try and make it as strict and good as possible. A ton of verification goes in when you create an account. We actually have a new update releasing next week, so you can verify your account with a government ID. It's verified by one of our partners. They verify that it's you, and you get a verified badge on your profile. That's one thing. We also do bank account verification. So, if you're transferring money, we ensure the bank account is in your name. If you're going over a certain number of sales, we also need to verify your account to ensure it's not a fraudster who will steal it. There's just a ton of security around, like people being unable to log in.

Vital MX: How quickly do you feel people adopted selling? Was it what you expected? You start the platform and have inventory, so you can at least put up some. You knew a couple of resellers who you could get involved to populate the site and show there's stuff here that's worth buying. Did it seem people would come in and buy stuff and eventually become sellers? Or was it just word of mouth with people figuring out you can sell here? With the way you track, can you tell people who came in and bought stuff and later thought, "Oh, I can go back and sell something here?" 

Ryan: That's the whole thing. We're still educating buyers as well. It's like, "All right, you are buying something. You could also sell something." I think many users are coming to sell something on our platform. We've marketed that well. When you sell something, it goes to your MX Locker balance. So, now we're educating users that if you sold something on our platform, you could take that balance and buy something else. It's this rewarding factor. We have a lot of sellers who just leave money on their balance, and if they need new stuff, they just buy it straight from our platform.

Vital MX: If somebody wants to go on there and sell or buy something, what does it cost them?

Ryan: Right now, to sellers, it's 8%, which is the MX Locker fee plus a processing fee of 3%. So, call it 11%. I tell sellers we have a calculator at 'Create a Listing' that shows your net earnings. If you want to earn something for this product, enter it into the list price, play with that calculator, and see what you want to earn. Obviously, people don't like fees, but that's how we make the website possible. That's how we get you guys discounted shipping rates. That's us taking your products and marketing them to thousands of users per day and month. It's reinvesting into the platform and creating this community online. We make it easy to sell something, and you're not dealing with hagglers on eBay or Facebook. There's no "Is this still available?" When your product sells, the money is in your account. You ship it, and you're getting paid. It's super easy. Offers are binding. If you get an offer on your product and accept it, you don't wait for payment. The payments are collected right when you accept that offer. 

Vital MX: What are the most popular items you see sold? What is the most common thing that gets listed on your site? You mentioned the Tech 10s earlier, and I feel boots are the most common thing I see. LE boots float around a lot.

Ryan: LE boots float around. That's probably our biggest category because boots are so expensive, and you will wear them no matter what. A lot of users buy boots on our platform. It's definitely the biggest category.

Vital MX: Recently, you even have people listing full bikes, right? 

Ryan: Yeah. We have the 'Dirt Bikes For Sale' section. We're working on a ton of products to be able to ship bikes around the country. A lot of logistics go into it, but for now, we're a marketplace, and we want to make it easy to find anything moto-related. We have an entire bike section, and you could filter by state or make, and that's gained significant traction. That section is completely free at the moment.

Vital MX: I noticed you have an in-house account with cool stuff you guys get through relationships you have. There's a big effort to bring big-ticket items that draw people in, such as trick kit suspension and cool parts from race teams. You hunt down things like that, which I imagine catches people's eyes through social media. They then end up on your platform and realize there's a lot of stuff for sale.

Ryan: With the connections we have in the industry, we still get offers to buy a ton of bulk stuff. We've moved away from it, but when I was in college, I'd take anything on because I wanted to build a connection with someone, even if it was a bad deal. I would buy this from you because I want you to hit me up in three or four months when you have good stuff. It's funny because when we launched the platform, we were doing 90% of revenue, then 70%, and then it tailed off. Now, we have a lot of stuff, but we only do about 1% of total revenue on the platform. It's pretty cool to see. Even though people think we're a huge seller, we're not compared to the entire community. I believe we're the only place to get 'A' kit, which is kind of cool. You can't go to Motosport or Rocky Mountain and get 'A' kit and all these trick parts that sometimes come from race teams and pro riders. 

Vital MX: I remember I bought and sold a few sets of 'A' kits when I worked at a suspension shop and had a good connection. I was going on Craigslist and would search cities that moto was popular in and keep typing in every version of 'A' kit that might pop up in a keyword. It took a lot of time, and I only did a couple of sets that way. You'll see sets on eBay every once in awhile, but it's usually destroyed, and they want eight or nine grand.

Ryan: Exactly. To get started with MX Locker, I would go to eBay for whatever I was looking for and filter by 'Recently Added.' So, as soon as they posted it, I'd DM them and say, "Yo, I want to buy this from you." It's the same thing I did with sneakers, and we found good deals.

Vital MX: What does the future of MX Locker look like? What are your one-, two-, and three-year goals? Do you have anything you want to talk about? 

Ryan: It's cool just to see where it's grown year after year, coming from being a kid in Miami and not in the moto industry. In college, I was driving back and forth from MTF, and kids said, "This kid who goes to the University at Gainesville is coming to buy gear. Do you guys have stuff?" We now have close to 200,000 users on our platform and allow users to make money off stuff that would sit in their garage. The sport's expensive, allowing kids to be like, "All right, my parents are spending a ton of money at Loretta's. Now I can take my boots and gear, make money with it, and give it to a kid who can't afford that or is looking for it." That's been cool to see. Moving forward, making the app the best process possible. We're working with a lot of dealers as well. There are a lot of local mom-and-pop shops that have been left out in this e-commerce phase. They have hundreds of thousands in inventory just sitting in a random South Carolina store that would never have access to this online realm of customers. We're building connections with them so they can sell through our platform. We don't want to flood our platform with a ton of new products, but I think it's cool to support these local dealers. We're gonna have personalization dialed. When you onboard on our platform, we ask you for your gear size, what bikes you ride, and what your favorite brands are. We're striving to make it a super personal experience. Also, working with the local dealers to eliminate local inventory and make it seamless. For example, when you're listing a pair of Tech 10 boots, we want to use technology where they should be listed for this price so the sell-through rate increases. Most people in the industry don't know what a used pair of Tech 10s goes for, and we have all that data now. We want to pass that over to the user so they can seamlessly sell something.

Vital MX: Have you noticed that the prices are more stable with that 'passed on data'? You don't have as many crazy high and low prices?

Ryan: Yeah, I mean, there's stuff that fluctuates. An unreleased pair of Tech 10s that comes in is going to fluctuate in price. Since we have so many data points now, it's seamless and transparent. We want to be like StockX. So, you could see a pair of Tech 10s and see the average selling price. Or what's the average selling price for Fox Instinct? Or any product in the industry. That way, you know the market value. We do it with bikes now. Every time a bike sells, we have the used market value of a 2019 KTM. 250SXF. We're listening to our customers. We get a ton of customer feedback every week. We ask, "What products do you want us to build?" We're open to building that for you guys.

Vital MX: I've noticed that there are a couple of brands you have become a dealer for, right? There is some new product you can buy directly, correct?

Ryan: Yeah. That's pretty cool because a lot of brands are hitting us up now because they just want to go DTC (Direct to Consumer) through our platform. We want to build tools for those smaller brands in the industry who want to sell through us and reach a new customer base. We have the only mobile app in the industry, and 85% of our purchases come directly via our mobile app. We just finished a Shopify integration. So, any user who's using Shopify could directly sync their inventory with MX Locker. 

Vital MX: Have you noticed an influx of brands that are too small or don't have the margins capable of being on Motoport.com or Rocky Mountain? A brand that can't get into E-retail through a large brand. Do you end up with people like that?

Ryan: Definitely. Even bigger brands have started to reach out to us and want to sell on our platform. I think we have a unique audience, and users are just looking for deals. So, the bigger brands want to get rid of old inventory in the space and don't want to diminish their brand by running a sale. If anybody wants to check it out, go to MXLocker.com or your app store to search MX Locker. If you need to reach out to us, you can go to the support page on our website. We have text messaging, and you can open a ticket directly via our website mobile app. We usually respond within 24 hours. You can also use email.