- November 23, 2024
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Baxters’ QuickStand could bring city ‘new’ money
Brothers Danny and Mason Baxter never set out to revolutionize the world of off-road biking. When they launched BT Motorsports with the design of their new QuickStand bike support, however, that became a possibility.
Currently under renovation at 15 Hargrove Grade, the new BT Motorsports facility will manufacture a new kind off-road motorcycle stand with aims to export the product all over the world.
Unlike street motorcycles, off-road bikes don’t use traditional kickstands. Outlawed for safety by the American Motorcycle Association, they were replaced with pedestal-like stands onto which bikers hoist their rigs.
Weighing in at upward of 250 pounds, though, lifting a bike after racing isn’t easy.
“You really come in completely depleted (after a race),” Mason said, “like you got back from a marathon … You just want to come in and get your gear off.”
Plus, some newer bikes, like the Kawasaki KX85, he added, have uneven bottom-frame rails. This means they can’t be used on traditional flat stands without being tied down.
Danny Baxter had the idea to lean the racing bike against something, rather than lift the bike off the ground. He created a wood prototype of an angled stand, and his teenage sons found it worked great. Danny and Mason then made aluminum prototypes of an adjustable-height stand that could be angled or flat to work with just about any racing bike. They added a tray to store tools.
“It’s so obvious,” Mason Baxter said. “(People see it and say), ‘Why didn’t I think about it?’”
With an almost $500,000 investment at stake, the investors and the Baxters remain confident that bikers will respond to the “dual-purpose effect” of their invention. A meeting with Parts United, the largest parts distributor in the world, is being scheduled.
Set for grand opening in May, BT Motorsports will be hiring 12 to 15 employees, with hopes to produce 350 to 400 Quickstands per month.
“Big or small, export jobs are key,” Enterprise Flagler Executive Director Greg Rawls said of BT Motorsports’ potential to bring “new” money to the community.
BT Motorsports will also fill an empty building. Information packets about the 22,500-square-foot Hargrove Grade property were sent to at least 25 prospective businesses before the Baxters claimed 10,200 square feet of the space, with hopes of future expansion.
The Baxters will be attending Bike Week this year to plan their marketing approach there in 2012.
Once BT Motosports is operational, the brothers will be looking for salesmen and technicians to take over their day-to-day roles in Baxter Technologies, Mason and Danny’s seven-year-old audio/video installation company.
QuickStands will retail for $130 each.
