Bicycle Salesman Uses Guerilla Marketing At NBA Summer League To Peddle Big Bikes For Tall Pedaling Hoopsters
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The six-foot, six-inch guy in dark blue gym shorts and a white, long-sleeve business shirt was in front of Thomas & Mack Center Saturday around mid-day looking for tall guys because he had a product that could come in handy for them.
David Folch was with his tall, oversized orange demo bicycle, the one with the giant 36-inch wheels. And Folch was chatting with any tall dude willing to give him the time of day and an ear to hear all about the bicycle dubbed the “DirtySixer.” (There is no connection to the 76ers. It’s named after the 36-inch wheels. Typical bikes have wheels that are 26, 27.5 or 29 inches tall.)
Folch, who lives in San Francisco, was on site at the NBA Summer League here on the UNLV campus because his target demo is tall guys.
And the NBA Summer League is crawling with those.
“I need to go where the tall people are,” Folch said.
The 43-year-old Frenchman said he was deploying what he called “Gonzo” marketing at the NBA Summer League, and that word works just as well as “guerilla” marketing because he would eye tall guys and ask them if they like biking.
“Everything is oversized on the bike,” Folch said.
Folch created his DirtySixer bicycle company is 2013 and began selling the big bicycles to big men like seven-foot, one-inch Shaquille O’Neal; seven-foot, four-inch Mark Eaton; six-foot, 11-inch Kevin Durant; seven-foot, one-inch Rudy Gobert; and seven-foot, three-inch Rik Smits.
In fact, here’s O’Neal on a DirtySixer bike in an American Express TV commercial.
Folch designs the aluminum frames with the proper geometry to accommodate the torque, leverage and weight of the tall man. The bicycles retail from $5,600 to $10,000 depending on the quality of the bike parts and about 25-50 hand-fabricated, 30-pound DirtySixers are produced in Sacramento a year. (This story will not refer to the bikes as “giant bikes” because there’s actually a bike manufacturer called, “Giant.”)
The bikes come in four sizes — 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, and 5XL. The 5XL DirtySixer is used by men in the seven-foot, one-inch to seven-foot, four-inch range.
“I talked with bicycle makers to dial in on the right geometry for the bike frame,” Folch said.
Folch markets the tall bicycles by visiting places where groups of tall men congregate. For example, before coming to Las Vegas Saturday, Folch attended a convention for tall men in Newark, NJ put on by Tall Club International. He did a bike demo during the Tall Club convention at Coney Island, which hosted a convention event.
Former NBA sharpshooter Reggie Miller, who stands six feet, seven inches, was trying out the DirtySixer bike for the past three months but decided not to buy the big two-wheeler for $6,800. Folch keeps a demo bike on the West Coast for tall guys to try out and a demo bike on the East Coast at a friend’s photo studio in New York City.
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One of the most well-known bicycling big men is Bill Walton, the bike man and former talented hoopster known for bicycling in San Diego and supporting bicycle advocacy.
While Walton enjoys cycling a road bike and doesn’t pedal the DirtySixer, the former UCLA basketball star did hook up Folch with the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA). Folch said he met former LSU coach Dale Brown at the retired players organization, and then Brown got Folch in touch with O’Neal, who played for Brown at LSU.
“Bill Walton was super helpful. He connected me with the NBRPA,” Folch said.
Folch also is trying to reach out to hoops star LeBron James, who just signed with the Los Angeles Lakers and is a bicyclist. Folch saw an old photo of James pedaling a bike when the superstar played for the Miami Heat and noted the bicycle was way too small for the six-foot, eight-inch James.
“He was riding a Cannondale and it was the wrong size,” Folch observed. “I want to help him get the bike he deserves.”
Folch relies on guerilla marketing at tall guy sports events like volleyball gatherings instead of attending bicycle trade show like Interbike, which is moving from Las Vegas to Reno this year, because the people in the bicycle industry thought his bike was an oddity when he attended a previous Interbike trade show show and they didn’t take the product seriously.
His DirtySixer bikes also come with electrical-driven motors because e-bikes are growing in popularity. Folch’s website is dirtysixer.com
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