Yoshimura
Feature
Trev recently sat down with two passionate voices from Yoshimura R&D America during an event at A1 Accessory Imports, marking Yoshimura’s addition to their growing stable of brands in Australia.
In this chat with Erick “Big E” Bartoldus (Marketing) and Tim Welch (Sales Manager), we dig into the roots and DNA of one of motorcycling’s most iconic names. Yoshimura.
Yoshimura History & Brand DNA
Let’s start with some legacy. Yoshimura is a name that’s become synonymous with performance. For those who may not be familiar with the backstory, what’s the origin story behind the brand?
So honestly, the very humble beginnings were all about Pops Yoshimura. He was a flight engineer in World War II, and that’s where the whole four-stroke thing really comes from. We’ve had a lot of opportunity to do two-stroke things, and it always, the company’s always stayed in its lane doing four-stroke product, all the way back to those roots of Pop working on aeroplane engines.
It just worked out that after the war, Pop was on air bases, and they were actually doing drag races, and they’re like, hey, there’s a guy over there that really knows how to make bikes run really well. So, he just developed a crazy cult following. And that was from 1954 to about 1964. The first Suzuka endurance race happened.
That’s when Yoshimura just basically went on a world stage, and the phone didn’t stop ringing then. Pop brought a team there of basically ragtag riders, and they had been racing up into a point, but up into that endurance park where that race happened, they would be battling Mr. Honda and his factory team back and forth, back and forth.
Mr. Honda would come over because Pop would be beating his factory guys… and say ‘What are you doing to those bikes?’ And Pop’s like,’ open them up, you’ll see. I’m not hiding anything.’ Next week, they’d come back. Pop would beat him again.
Anyway, let’s go back to 1964, when that first endurance race took place after the circuit opened, and Yoshimura won it. That was the start: the 1964 Suzuka 18-Hour. That’s essentially the background and where the performance originated. It was a slingshot. It just went from obscurity in a garage, wrenching for some airmen kind of thing to, holy heck, who is this guy?
The two became Yoshimura riders when they were teenagers.
So why didn’t Soichiro (Honda) recruit him?
Well, I think there are some fables going back and forth that after the Suzuka, it was a little bit harder to get Honda parts. But then I think Honda actually realised it was to their benefit to go racing. Actually, one of the guys who was on the 1964 race team was one of the individuals who spearheaded the start of HRC back in 1968, when the organisation was founded. So it’s kind of a who’s who of racing.
And, you know, there wasn’t a super bike before Pop built one, you know. It’s really neat for us to work for a company with such a legacy of just grassroots racing, performance, and doing things the right way.
You know, we always, even to this day, look at each other at the shop and we’re like, hey, this is the right thing to do. This is the way we need to do it. It might cost more money, but this is the right thing to do: for the customer, to make a product, the way we want it made.
Yeah, with Pop, he was really, he was kind of the Forrest Gump of motorcycle racers. His life and story are so unreal and packed with so much stuff. When you read through, you know, the footnotes for his life and what he’s done, what the company’s done…
Pop Yoshimura’s influence still looms large. How would you describe the ongoing influence of his philosophy on the company today?
It permeates everything we do. From branding to the way we market products, the way we pick race teams, the way we operate with them, our philosophy of building a production product, everything. It just goes back to that philosophy and that ethos of do it the right way and then also treat the customer the way you would want to be treated, right?
That’s easy to say, right? But we actually do it. And I always tell people, like, we are not a perfect company by any means. But when we walk in the door in the morning, that’s the target. We try to do the best job we possibly can.
When it comes to Yoshimira R&D of America, we’re in Chino, California. We have about 95-98 employees. And not every single person is on that bandwagon, but I’ll tell you that when you go around the different departments, you see it.
And when we take tours of the factory, people are like, ‘Wow, they have no idea.’ And then when they leave, they’re like, ‘Wow, this company is really, it has that.’ You can see it. Yeah. It permeates everything we do.
I think there are two ways to describe Yoshimura. One of them, the short form, is our company name, Yoshimura R&D of America. It’s not Yoshimura Exhaust. All of our competitors are X-brand Exhaust. We’re Yoshimura R&D. And it comes from racing. We’re a racing company first. And when you’re racing, you never finish early. You never finish.
You are working up until the gate drops to make that bike faster. The same thing applies to our product. There have been numerous… I’ve been there for 18 years, and I can’t count how many times we’ve carried the project down the field. Okay, looks like we’re there. Okay, we’re going to release next week. Let’s look at it one more time. And then it’s, we can make it better, we start again…
You’ve been around through multiple generations of motorcycles and racing eras. What’s kept Yoshimura relevant through all the changes?
I think it’s the commitment to racing, the commitment to being ahead, ahead of everybody. When we finish something, we win a race. We’re not going, yeah, we won and rest on our laurels. We’re going, they’re coming. We’ve got to keep going. We must keep pushing forward. You know, stay in front. And also, I think, too, to add to that, I think the really neat thing about Yoshimura is that it’s a family-owned company.
Like in the U.S., Yoshimura R&D, Pop’s grandson, Yusaku Yoshimura, is actually our president and CEO. And there’s an open-door policy. When we have an issue with something, we go right to him. There are no layers of management to go through to address the issue. If something needs to be fixed, we fix it, right? That’s always been the case, and I’ve seen it time and time again.
For instance, going back to the point that we’re not a perfect company, I’ve seen situations where something goes wrong or is mishandled during the process. And we stop and we fix it. Before it reaches the customer, not after, where we can restrict phone calls or send a new part out, it’s like, stop it. Let’s fix it before that goes out. So there’s a great customer experience on the other side.
At our facility, anyone can pull the lever to stop the machine. Anybody. However, that being said, everybody respects what that means and the process that makes it happen. So we all do everything we can to avoid having to pull the lever. But when we do, you can do it without reservation or worry that it’s going to cause a negative thing. Because when you’re pulling it, at the end of the day, when it’s turned back on, it’s better.
If you had to pinpoint a few key moments that shaped the company’s global identity, what would they be? I suppose what you touched on was the 1964 Suzuka 18 Hour. And the inaugural Suzuka 8 Hour in 1978, where Graham Crosby and Wes Cooley won on a Yoshimura-backed bike. What else?
Yeah. I think a pivotal point for me was ’71 when Pop basically came to the U.S. with a four-in-one exhaust. Nobody had ever seen something like that. When he did that, it was like, what the heck is this? And he just smoked everybody. I think it was in Bonneville, the Speed Trials. I can’t remember exactly what it was. But like, that was like blowing people’s minds. So that was a big thing, the four-into-one exhaust in ’71.
I think probably the Daytona win, the very first Daytona win. It was a big one. Because that was one of the reasons Pop came to the U.S. He said, ‘I’m going to the U.S. and I’m going to win Daytona.’ Yeah, when he’s in Japan, he’s talking to all these service guys, and they’re all talking and lamenting about all this cool stuff happening at Daytona Beach and how great it is. And he became obsessed.
I mean, you think about it, you’ve got basically a successful business in your home country after going through the trials and tribulations of World War II. And then to risk all that, pack up everything, pack your family, and move to Southern California to go racing.
Within five years, he reached the top and remained there. And I think probably the next thing after that was the ’80s. Kevin Schwantz. That GSX-R just changed everything in ’86. Obviously, Yoshimura was just on the cusp of really making it big. If you had a GSX-R, you had to have a Yoshi on it, and it was just like synonymous… The GSX-R was a lap up on everybody.
Then there was a lanky Australian from Camden that did a bit of winning on a Yoshimura Suzuki…
The absolute pinnacle was the Mladin and Spies years. Yeah, from ’99 to, what was it, ’06? ’07? Just absolutely magical.
What does the Yoshimura name mean to the people working behind the scenes now, the welders, designers, and engineers? Where do each of these parts of the company now work from?
There are actually two operations of the company. So when Pop left Japan, another family member stayed behind, who kept the thing humming a little bit. Then, in the mid-to-early 1980s, Pop went back to Japan and started putting more energy back into Yoshimura, Japan. So there’s a Yoshimura Japan, and there’s also Yoshimura USA.
So one of the neat things about our company is that if you come, and I hope you do, you’ll see that there’s maybe eight people that have been working for the company for over 30 years and that have been there since they were the only one in that department, you know?
And their sons and grandsons. And now the families are working there. And that’s one of the neatest things. It’s like, you know, you’re not getting rich working for Yoshimura. They want to work there because they like the company.
They think we’re a fair company. And it’s just a neat thing to see that they enjoy working for a company that treats them well, you know? I think that’s the big thing, when and if you can get there to see that, it’s not a badge on a muffler, it’s those people that are in the shop making the product every day. That’s Yoshimura, that ethos that wants to be there, that wants to make the product the best they possibly can, and not taking those shortcuts.
Just to add to that, I’ve worked in a few shops in my career, and what is unique about Yoshimura is that, one, when you walk through the shop, you’re going to think that we cleaned the shop for your visit. It always looks pick and span. And it’s just based on the culture.
Two, inevitably, in almost every shop I’ve ever been in, there’s been a rat nest somewhere where people take their mistakes and they hide it and they’re buried and they don’t own up to it.
Every manager, department, and employee takes a great deal of pride in what they do. When there’s a problem, they step up, catch it, stop it, and say something. There are no boxes full of mistakes hidden anywhere. There’s a mistake, iit’s up on top, it gets fixed, and we all move on.
🌐 Modern Market Challenges
Let’s talk about competition; there are many brands now offering performance exhausts. What makes Yoshimura different in today’s crowded marketplace?
One of the things is the people we work with, right? That’s one of the reasons we’re here at A1. I mean, we have earned the right to work with the people we want to work with. It’s not like we have to. And just lining up with those like-minded guys, like the conversations that we’ve had leading up to coming to A1, right? We almost finish each other’s sentences. And I’m like, wow, it’s pretty awesome, right?
So I think when it comes to our competition and what makes us different, I think the way we build a product, our operating procedures, how we build that product, but also the service we provide, which maybe a lot of people don’t know.
There’s aftercare for our product. Our product is built to be serviced. Not a lot of people know that. These guys here at A1 are actually building up a service centre. So, if the customer needs repacking or whatever that thing needs, they’ll be able to do that here.
That was very important for us to make a switch with these guys, not just to sell a product. It’s not just about that. When you buy a Yoshimura product, we want you to be happy for five years, 10 years, and beyond.
Then when you get a new bike or a new, you know, whatever that bike might be, you want to put a Yoshi on it because you’ve had this incredible experience. And I think that’s one of the things that sets us apart from the competition. I know it does in the U.S. And that’s what we strive for: not just making a great product, but standing behind it and servicing it from whatever it might need to be.
I think my view is a little more philosophical. You know, I think from the sales standpoint, I have to worry about what my customers want. I think there’s a short list of categories that customers look for in any product. They’re looking for quality.
They’re looking for security. They want to ensure that they’re covered in case of a problem. They’re looking for a price. They’re looking for availability. And I think what we’ve done is we’ve, I think, prioritised each one of those categories in a way that most aligns with probably the majority of customers out there.
I think that’s why we’re able to cast such a broad net, and we have such a strong following, and we have such depth in our customer base, and that we’re really not sacrificing performance for economy. Number one, we’re a racing company, but we try to work smarter so that we can give our customers that.
We try to stay ahead of the curve. We try to create new technologies. In our shop, we bring in raw materials, and the finished product goes out. We try like heck not to have to buy something from somewhere else.
We strive to be as efficient as possible. And it all sorts back to that racing. That’s what racing is about. And we think and do business like a racer. We’re always thinking of different ways to satisfy our customers.
Do you feel the rise of tuning culture and DIY remapping has shifted how you approach product support or education?
No, I don’t think so. I think that, if anything, it has helped us a lot. Almost validates the product. Yeah, it really does. You know, it’s funny. Biggie manages our social media, and as a result, much of our customer service is now filtered through social media, including posts, DMs, and other interactions.
What’s powerful and significant and humbling for us is that when somebody puts something out there about a user product, I had a problem with this or I have a problem with that, we can almost sit there and watch and the following comment I guarantee is going to be 10 guys going, you’re nuts, this stuff is amazing, you’re doing it wrong. It’s almost like we don’t need to respond. So we don’t need to respond, but we’re always really careful to reach out to that guy.
I don’t know how many are just complete lost causes, people that you think that if they get my address, they’re going to burn my house down – kind of guys. After we talk to them, they’re like, they get back online, ‘Oh my God, that’s the best customer service I’ve ever had.’ And I gave the guy a hat.
At the end of the day, the DIY stuff and the programming and the mapping and stuff like that, it’s a tool, just like any other tool. The computer is only as smart as the guy that’s pushing the buttons. There are guys out there with computers and mapping and tools and stuff, and they think they’re doing good and they’re not, just like there are guys out there with vacuum gauges and screwdrivers adjusting carburettors that think they’re building MotoGP bikes, a lot of them are just building hand grenades.
So it’s not really different. I think just the bigger difference there is now just the bandwidth and the amount of information that’s out there, and staying on top of that. It’s funny, at the shop, in our company, there’s always the racing analogy, right?
So when you’re talking about this new era of tuning and these guys having their own computers and air-fuel ratios and all that stuff, it’s just another clicker when you’re going racing. It’s like, ‘Hey, adjust, adjust the business, adjust this. This needs to be tightened, the spring rate changed, or something else.”
At the end of the day, all of that still has to translate through the rider’s right wrist. If he’s not confident, if he’s not happy, you can make 230 horsepower on a superbike, and he’s still going to be the last guy.
The Yoshimura name is primarily synonymous with exhausts, but Yoshimura has also engineered various mechanical components used inside the engine, such as camshafts and electronic tuning devices. How much focus is dedicated to developments outside of exhaust systems themselves?
I think we’re always looking for the next thing. One of the things we’ll never do is start making something because everybody else is. We’re always looking for something new that will provide a unique Yoshimura experience for the riders.
So are we developing stuff? Are we doing stuff? Yes. But it’s purely conceptual. We’re always, we always have our eye out. A couple of years ago, when the R7 was introduced – the CP2, at that time, the CP2 was the MT-07 and you know, for superbike guys and for supersport riders and professional racers, it was ‘that’s my girlfriend’s bike’. That’s not a real bike.
So the R7 comes out and Yamaha (USA HQ) in Cypress gives us a bike to check out and see if we want to do anything with it. Comes down, Yusaku gets on the bike, and he goes for a ride.
He comes back and he goes, This bike, I think, is fun. I think it could be really fun. And Yusaku calls a meeting with the whole management team and says, ‘Guys, I think we need to do something with this and I think it’ll be really good for the company. It’d be really good for the team. I want the engineering team to put their head together and throw the kitchen sink at this thing. Let’s put our superbike racing hat back on and throw everything at it.
We brought in a couple of superbike racing experts to consult. And in what, nine months, we built a really insane, crazy R7. Out of it, we got a whole bunch of components and a whole bunch of really great airboxes that were free horsepower. This awesome bolt-on subframe we did. All these race kits, all these race kit parts and stuff like that. Camshafts. We developed a comprehensive package that was really impressive.
We’re always looking for that kind of thing. But first and foremost, if and before we do anything, whoever’s driving it has to be passionate about it. You don’t walk into the office in the morning and go, Hey, today you’re assigned to make this.
It’s mostly somebody walks in and says, Guys, I can’t stop thinking about this. I got a million ideas. I’ve done all this research. Let’s go. Okay, we’re going to do it, but you’ve got to drive it and you own it.
Just going back to the Yoshimura Research and Development thing, a long time ago, I came from the bicycle industry, and I’ve been in power sports for almost 25 years now. But Yusaku, we ride mountain bikes for fun, right… And I took Yusaku Yoshimura on a mountain bike ride, and he fell in love with it. Then, like a few months later, he’s like, I want to make bike parts.
I’m like, are you kidding me? He’s like, Oh, no, no, I feel like it’d be fun to do. And let’s just try this and try this. And then all of a sudden, Yoshi Cycling is born. We’re making these pedals and stems for mountain bikes, BMX, and stuff. People are like, ‘What the heck is Yoshimura doing making bike parts?’
We want to make the best pedal. We want to make the best stem. Our philosophy, too, is not just to do what everybody else does in the industry. We want to make a product that enhances your ride. Not just to go, we also make a pedal too, or this product too.
So it’s another kind of offshoot of what Yoshimura is and can be, and that’s something maybe that Yusaku’s son grabs hold of, and he runs down the family tree, you know? So it’s kind of a really neat evolution.
I always tell people, if Yoshimura wanted to make vacuum cleaners, there’d be a line of people lined up for them, because it’d be the best vacuum cleaner. It’s because it’s built with passion and engineering, and there’s a purpose behind it.
It’s always been that way, and it’ll always be that way. I think when Fujio came to America for the announcement that Yusaku was going to be the president of the company, Fujio made a couple of declarations.
He said, ‘We have a vision for this company, ‘ and I forgot what the word is in Japanese (shinise), but in Japan, there’s a very, very short list of businesses that have been in business for 500 years. They’re all family businesses.
His vision for the company is for Yoshimura to evolve for 500 years and be part of that list. I think we joke about it all the time. We always say that if Yoshimura were ever to be bought by a VC company, Japan would have sunk under the ocean. It won’t happen.
And what about electric bikes… Threat, opportunity, or both? How is Yoshimura looking at that shift?
I’ll say this. It’s evolving so fast, it’s insane, right? With battery technology and motor technology. But I always, going back to Fujio, one of the neatest things I heard is the analogy I heard him say: people are like, ‘Electric’s going to take over.’ And there’s the other side of it, too, which obviously we’re an exhaust company or performance company that’s built on four strokes forever.
So his analogy was, the Rolex sits right next to the iWatch, and there’s a customer for both. And yeah, I guess we leave it there. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The reality is likely to be somewhere in the middle. Whatever happens, we’ll be there to do the Yoshimura thing for whoever’s passionate about motorcycling.
🛠️ Craftsmanship & Materials
Where do your materials come from? Are you still sourcing titanium and carbon-fibre from Japan, or has that changed over time? What are the most challenging concerns in the supply chain today?
We source carbon-fibre domestically in the United States. We build our own carbon fibre parts in the U.S.
All of our titanium does come from Japan. And then all other materials are sourced globally, everywhere from the United States, Canada, Korea, and Southeast Asia.
I think for us it’s less important where it comes from, but the quality of the material, because we could indeed find cheaper materials elsewhere. But at the end of the day, it’s not an X-steel company that’s on the muffler, it’s Yoshimura. And if it has a problem, it’s not a steel problem, it’s a Yoshimura problem.
🔬 Innovation & Forward Focus
Without giving away too much, what areas of development are you most excited about right now, anything beyond just exhausts? And finally, what excites you most about the future of Yoshimura? What should we be watching for?
For me, it’s new technologies and manufacturing. There are lots of… 3D printing and stuff? Yeah, and…During the pandemic, there were a lot of government subsidies that went around.
There were many corporations with CEOs who ended up with yachts, boats, vacation homes, and extravagant vacations. We were at work and spending a lot of money on new equipment. We were covering our roof with solar panels.
We were investing in technology and education for our engineers. And through that, coming out of it, we’ve got a much, much more innovative, much better, well-equipped factory and team. And, you know, we’ve got all those new machines and all that stuff up and moving.
But, man, we’re still in first gear. We’ve still got more years to go. The exciting part is to see what we can do with all the resources we have. And I think on my side, just seeing this ground swell here in Oz, to see the excitement of what’s going to happen today and this announcement of this new partnership change here.
We really feel, and that was part of Tim and Yusaku coming here last year, just being boots on the ground here, and then understanding, talking to all these reps, and really feeling it. There’s such an opportunity here.
I feel like there’s so much potential and opportunity for our brand to grow in this country that it’s barely scratched the surface. I feel like we’re ready to shift gears here (Australia), and that’s going to be exciting for us in the U.S. to support what’s happening in this country.
That sounds like a good note to end on, guys. Thanks for your time.
