Industry Insights | Ft. Benny Tozzi

In this week's Industry Insights we talk to the Marketing Manager at Bell Powersports Benny Tozzi about working for Bell for over a decade, what his roles are, and the development of the Moto 10 Spherical.

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.

Jamie Guida – Vital MX: Great to meet you, Benny. Tell us a bit about your background and where you’re from.

Benny Tozzi: I moved around a little bit as a kid. I was born in Canada but didn't live there very long. I actually grew up in Indiana until I was about 13 or 14, and that's where my mom's from. So, that side of my family is in Indiana. Then I moved to Colorado, which I considered home, and that's where my family is now. I lived there for 14 years or something before moving to California and joining the industry.

Vital MX: Speaking of the industry, as a child, were you aware of the sport of motocross and into two-wheeled racing? Was that something your family enjoyed?

Benny: Yeah, absolutely. My dad is Italian and moved from Italy when he was in his early 30s. That is a huge part of the culture. I remember being a kid and my dad waking up at five in the morning to watch Formula One and motorcycle stuff. He did a lot of four-wheel stuff. So, I was kind of rebellious by being in the two-wheel stuff.

Vital MX: How'd your family feel about that? Do they think it was cool, or when you say being rebellious, were they somewhat against it?

Benny: A little rebellious because when I was young my dad wanted me to race go-karts and stuff like that, and I just wasn't into it. I wanted a dirt bike, so I got my first dirt bike when I was seven, and it’s part of the culture in Europe and Italy. Motorcycles and racing motorcycles are very cool. So, it wasn't like twisting his arm or anything, but I definitely was going against what he could teach me, and what he knew well.

Vital MX: What kind of bike was it and what type of riding were you doing?

Benny: This would have been when I was living in Indiana, we had a two-acre property that backed up to a field and wooded area. I got a little XR50 with a white metal gas tank. I'd love to get another one, actually, if I could ever find one. I had that little Honda 50 and I just cruised that around all over the place.

Vital MX: Did you race or were you competitive?

Benny: No. I did jump up a couple of bike sizes, but I never rode a motocross track. I did race BMX for a long time.

Vital MX: How many years did you do that? Jeremy McGrath rode BMX before he went pro. So, that's a good segue into racing motocross.

Benny: I probably road BMX all the way up until I was 16 or 17 years old.

Vital MX: You said you didn't race motocross, but I saw on your Instagram some off-road pictures, and I saw a picture of you absolutely bottoming out a supermoto bike. So, it looks like you've had a little bit of time on some dirt bikes.

Benny: Yeah, I kind of did it all backward. When I was 16, I got into cars a bit, and I did some autocross and track days. I quickly shifted back to two-wheel stuff with sport bikes. In my early 20s, I started road racing for a bunch of years, but that got too expensive. So, I started doing Supermoto and I loved that. To get better at the dirt sections I got a CRF250 and rode with a bunch of friends. I've always loved and watched moto, and you mentioned Jeremy McGrath earlier. He was a huge hero of mine. I had his GT bicycle. I always thought it was really cool, so I wanted to get better at the dirt sections, and I had a bunch of buddies that were riding moto. So, I started riding moto, but that wasn't until I was 23 or 24. 

Vital MX: Let's talk about working in the industry. You've been at Bell Powersports since 2011. Was that your first industry job?

Benny: I had always worked at motorcycle dealerships since I was 16 or something. I was trying to go to school, but yeah, I guess that would be my first actual industry job. 

Vital MX: Most of our listeners know of Bell Helmets and the Bell company. They created the first known, full-face motocross helmet in 1975. So, there's a lot of history with Bell. Tell us about the process of going to work there.

Benny: It started out as a contracted position doing race support for the domestic road race series. At that time, it was owned by the DMG, but it was the AMA road race series like Superbike, Supersport, and all that kind of stuff. I looked after the Bell athletes during the race weekend for that domestic series, and I did that for about four years. Then around that four-year mark, a position opened up as the athlete manager, but it required me to be based in Southern California because it really looked after the off-road side. I relocated to Southern California and took on that athlete manager role. That saw me going to 17 rounds of Supercross, 12 rounds outdoors, and 4 or 5 amateur nationals such as Loretta's, Mini-O's, and all those. From there I started climbing the ranks. I was ambitious and leaned into it. I love the brand and working with Bell, and I wanted to take every opportunity I could. So, I went from athlete manager to sports marketing manager to associate marketing manager to marketing manager, and I just keep trying to work my way up, I guess.

Vital MX: As you're going through these roles and taking on different responsibilities, what are a couple of important things that you learned that help you where you are now?

Benny: I think working in a motorcycle dealership gave me a lot of valuable skills such as working with different personalities, interacting with customers, and basic problem-solving. Especially when you're working with customers. That really helped me and has been valuable in knowing the landscape as far as other products. To have that boots-on-the-ground experience was great. Through the roles I've learned to work in high-pressure situations. Racing gets serious and they're spending a bunch of money, and you're working with top-tier athletes that rely on you to provide them with excellent service and to support them in their effort to win.

Vital MX: How was it dealing with the athletes as an athlete manager, but also being a fan? 

Benny: It's a delicate balance there, you know? You have to have enough respect and admiration for these guys to take it seriously, but you can't be asking Eli (Tomac) for an autographed jersey. I think it comes naturally, and there's still part of me that can't ever put together that the Jeremy that I watched as a kid racing Supercross is the same Jeremy that calls me up and we shoot the shit about what's going on in his life, going riding, or a photo shoot that's coming up. It's still hard for my brain to process. You gain a working relationship with these guys, and I think that becomes easier to manage that balance, you know? Being able to maintain and build relationships with people, finding common ground, and being able to communicate are all skills needed for these kinds of jobs. 

Vital MX: What are your day-to-day roles as Marketing Manager at Bell Powersports?

Benny: In simplest terms, I'm managing how Bell communicates to consumers. Whether we're communicating about a new product, promotion of the Bell brand, something that aligns with the Bell brand, or something that internally we're excited about, you know? I look at it in that lens. It's a very creative job at times and then it's monotonous at other times, I think. It's multifaceted, and you're doing everything from looking at spreadsheets and trying to manage budgets to coming up with creative ideas to tell the story of Dylan Ferrandis' new replica helmet.

Vital MX: Speaking of the helmets, Bell Helmets are legendary products. The Moto series has been around for a long, long time. The newest model, the Moto 10 Spherical, is a high-end state-of-the-art protection helmet that was six years in development. Discuss that product a bit and what is special about that helmet. 

Benny: It’s the accumulation of our experience and drive to create the highest-performing motocross helmet. What makes this one special is that we approached it from a very different point of view, and that point of view was, “How can we make this helmet a performance advantage for the athletes beyond just the safety?” Now, of course, as a helmet manufacturer, safety is at the highest of priorities. We had a technology that we thought fit that need, but we wanted to dive into understanding what are the challenges that our riders have and how we possibly benefit them so that they had a performance advantage by wearing the Moto 10 Spherical. I'll give you a couple of examples of what those are, and what those problems were that we were trying to find solutions for. One that stands out is our Sweat Management System. So, we coined the term ‘sweat management’ and we knew ventilation was important to the helmet. So, “How much air can you move through the helmet?” We had developed this split shell design that allowed us to maximize airflow. Even the shape of Spherical is basically two shells or two impact liners that can move independently of each other inside the helmet which works for mitigating rotational impacts. We also shaped it in a way that would direct airflow through the helmet. Moving air through the helmet is great and that makes the rider feel cool, but more importantly, it cools the rider down, right? How else could we benefit from it? How could we make this more functional? For a rider like Cooper Webb, and this came from Cooper himself, he sweats a lot. So, this is a big challenge for him. He saturates the foam inside the helmet and on his goggles. Then he has that issue where once that foam is saturated in the goggles, when he hits a bump that moisture gets on the inside of his lense and he pulls all his tear-offs thinking that it's on the outside. Now his vision is impaired for the rest of the race, which can affect the outcome of the race for him. We worked hard to develop sweat management, which basically directs the airflow right into the brow area. Cooper said when he was riding by himself on a test track, he could feel the sweat being pushed away from his brow and behind his ears while he was riding away from his goggles, making his goggles last longer. So, that's a performance benefit. The other example I'll give you is our NMR bumpers. We call them the NMR bumpers because it meant ‘No Missed Races’. The idea here is that they protected the collarbone. It’s not a life-threatening injury to a motocross rider to break a collarbone, but that is the injury that takes these guys out of the championship. It takes six weeks or whatever to heal a collarbone and that would mean multiple rounds missed. We tried to develop that collarbone bumper to protect their collarbone in a way that when they do take a spill maybe they can get up and remount and keep going potentially saving their championship. Those were two little things that we did that ended up making a big impact on the performance of the helmet for those guys. Then we did all kinds of other little stuff like Eli wanted more pressure of the goggles on the face. So, we tapered the sides of the helmet right where the goggle strap meets the eye-port to allow more pressure on the goggles. Comfort was a big thing for Jeremy McGrath and Axel Hodges. We worked a lot on the liner, making it more comfortable than the last one. Also increasing the surface area in the forehead area to absorb that sweat. Every piece and detail on this helmet was geared towards adding safety or adding performance. 

Vital MX: What sets Bell apart internally as a company from other companies?

Benny: It’s the fact that we only do helmets. Excluding a couple of other brands, we have the sole focus of building helmets and that safety. You mentioned our history, and in 1954 when the brand was really started, we created the first fiberglass with expanded polystyrene impact liner. The EPS you find now in modern helmets is still being made with these two materials. We've always been about pioneering and developing lasting technologies, pushing the envelope, and doing it unapologetically.