Industry Players:Matt Phillpott

This entry is part 5 of 19 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #14

Matt Phillpott

Wollongong’s Matt Phillpott, 53, is a quietly spoken and well-presented sort of bloke. He sits at the helm of a company called Rideworx. Does that ring any bells? What if we point out that Rideworx manufactures Barkbusters? Ah. Now there’s a great product everyone knows.

Those with long memories will remember engineer Ted Goddard coming up with the idea for an aluminium hand protector called Barkbusters in the 1980s. Through the ’80s and onwards, Barkbusters became as common as helmets and boots for Australian off-road riders. Ted, a successful engineer with a business to run, produced Barkbusters, virtually by hand, in his spare time with the help of his wife, Ann.

Now, 30 years later, Barkbusters are standard equipment all over the world.

The big leap from a small operation to an international success is largely due to the vision and hard work of Matt Phillpott.

AdvR: What’s your background, Matt? Are you some kind of super-brainbox engineering type?
MP: I started out in a motorcycle shop, pretty well straight out of school, when I was about 18.
I worked at Bill Morris Motorcycles here in Wollongong for about 10 years. I started out in spare parts, accessories, doing pre-delivery and assembly of bikes and worked my way up to manager. In 1989 I had a gap year and travelled the world. When I returned I went to work at City Coast Motorcycles, also here in Wollongong, for about three years.
Then I got a job with the Shell Company as a motorcycle lubricant sales rep for NSW.
I was with Shell for around five years and it gave me a bit of an idea of the wholesale side of the business and how big business works in the motorcycle industry. It was my university (laughs).

AdvR: Were you always a rider?
MP: I rode a few mates’ bikes when I was in my teenage years.
When I was 17 I had my first motorbike here in Wollongong. I had a variety of different bikes, mostly dirt bikes, and started racing enduros in the early 1980s. I competed in many Australian Four Day Enduros and NSW championships as well as two ISDEs.
I was a middle-of-the-road sort of rider. I just enjoyed doing it. I tried the best I could, but I was never at the pointy end of the field.

AdvR: How long have you known Ted Goddard?
MP: Since the early ’80s, when Ted first started making Barkbusters.
I saw them and thought, ‘That’s a great idea! I’d better get some of those.’
I wouldn’t ride without them after that.

AdvR: What about the personal connection with Ted?
MP: I developed a close friendship with Ted after I started using his product. I bought many sets off him over the years, and then he sponsored me as a racer.
Being in the bike shop, occasionally there’d be different models Ted would want to fit the handguards to, and we’d help him out with that. I got to know him very well and developed a good relationship with him.
Other handguard competitors began to come on to the market, and customers especially liked the look of the Acerbis plastic guards. That’s when I approached Ted with the idea to develop the first Barkbusters plastic guard.

AdvR: What did you know about plastics?
MP: I didn’t know anything about plastics, but I knew that Ted needed something, and I figured it’d be good to have something that worked specifically for his product.
We worked on it together and I made up a prototype out of wood and a bit of bog, and came up with a shape we were happy with. We got an injection-moulding tool made, and that was my first involvement in the manufacturing side.
Eventually Ted wanted to retire, and it was obvious that I was the first person to talk to about purchasing the Barkbusters business.

AdvR: Did Ted just pop up and say, “Hey, mate. Gunna retire. What do you think about taking over the business?”
MP: Yeah. That’s pretty much how it happened.

AdvR: Did you kick off on your own? You have a good team here now.
MP: I had a couple of guys helping me out part time in the early days. I started employing one person, then two, and as it got busier we employed more. Now there’s 12 of us.

AdvR: Robotics and automation plays a big part in your manufacturing process, and you designed and built a lot of the machinery yourself. Was that your plan right from the start?
MP: When I bought the business most of the manufacturing was done manually. In one bar there could be four holes, and they were all drilled one at a time and the radiussing – the shaping of the bar end – was done manually.
I thought, “If we want to ramp things up a bit we’ll need to auto-mate some of this”. That’s when I developed a machine that had automatic drills on it. I looked at the way things were working and thought I’d just use similar principles, but I’d automate them.
I also looked at things like the clamp around the handlebar and looked for a way to do that which was simpler and more flexible in the way it mounted.

AdvR: What was your first big breakthrough with the automation?
MP: The bar bending.
That was all done manually as well, and there might’ve been four bends in a bar.
I felt it was time for some-thing new, and that’s when I developed the EGO handguard, and I designed it so it could be done automatically, rather than bending it manually. I used air rams so you could just push a button rather than swing off a lever to put the shape into it. That really transformed the business.

AdvR: You’ve also been diversifying the product range.
MP: It’s come full circle in a way.
Ted had a lot of different models for a lot of different bikes, but I developed the EGO and the new mounting clamp in a way to make it so that the one product can fit all those models. Maybe with just a spacer here and there. It’s become almost universal now. One product does all, and that’s great as far as production goes.
We’re able to make a lot more products without having to retool for different models.
Then I developed the VPS. It’s a bit more open and has more room for longer levers.
The VPS has allowed us to develop many bike-specific handguards where the universal product didn’t fit. The bike-specific range of Barkbusters began with adventure bikes and has now expanded to cover street bikes and many other popular models.

AdvR: Did you chase your first export deal?
MP: I certainly thought, ‘Okay. There’s more sales if we can export’. If we could do in other countries what we were doing here, it was going to help the bottom line.
We started in New Zealand, then looked to Europe and the US. We did a private-label deal on EGO handguards for FMF for quite a few years.
I went looking for more export opportunities so I went to a trade show called Intermot in 1994 in Munich. That was where I met the guys from KTM and we started doing some business with them. It took a little while to get it to work, but it did. Then, as time went on, all the local importers of the Japanese bikes wanted our product on their bikes. Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki use, or have used, our product as OEM fittings. Also KTM uses our product in its Powerparts accessories range.
We private label for SW Motech in Germany as well, and they sell that product all over the world. They’re probably close to one of our biggest customers.
We’re now selling Barkbusters into over 30 countries worldwide.

AdvR: Where’s the business heading?
MP: We’re hoping to get into China.
As that market’s maturing, there’s more and more demand for product like ours. It’s just a matter of getting in there at the right time, and we’re starting some early groundwork.
I think it’s a small motorcycle handguard market, but with the population numbers in China, what’s ‘small’ there would be massive for us.

AdvR: Any hot new product we should know about?
MP: We’ve developed the BBZ for very cold weather conditions, which you guys are familiar with, and it’s been hugely successful, here and overseas. We’re also producing external ’bar-end weights to reduce vibration.
Our latest release are LED indicators and position lights which are an accessory for our plastic guards.
The LEDs are retro-fit only. They’ll fit on the JET, VPS, and STORM guards. They’re supplied with the drilling template, and the owner just drills them in and wires them up.
We’re working on a couple of new off-road handguards, too.One is an evolution of the EGO, our most popular handguard. It’s like nothing else on the market. It’s quite unique and should appeal to quite a broad range of riders.

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