Industry Insights | Ft. Jeff Weil

In this week's Industry Insights we talk to the Marketing Manager for Arai Helmet Americas Jeff Weil. Jeff discusses where is passion for two-wheels came from, how he got started at Arai, and more.

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: First, tell me a little about yourself.

Jeff Weil: I grew up in Pennsylvania, not far from our offices for Arai in the US. Out of this office, we handle North and South America. So, that's a pretty big territory. I did six years in the Marine Corps, and it's actually where my love of motorcycles came from. We would all go riding together, which was awesome. We always had a good time. There were a bunch of guys in the shop that I worked in, and we all had bikes. After leaving the Marine Corps, I started road racing for a while until I ran out of money, and then I needed a job.

Vital MX: Running out of money in road racing probably didn't take too long.

Jeff: No. It was right when the gas prices started to go up, and it was more expensive to get to the track than ride on the track, which didn't make much sense.

Vital MX: When in the Marine Corps, where were you stationed?

Jeff: At that time, I was in Quantico, Virginia.

Vital MX: I guess you guys would get some leave, ride for the day, hang out, and check the scenery around the base. 

Jeff: Actually, they used to have these nice long lunch breaks, and there was just one road right outside the base that we would just rip up and down, doing the absolute speed limit. (laughs) We would go ride at lunch. 

Vital MX: To go from that to racing is a quick learning curve. 

Jeff: I became close friends with the Himmelsbachs. Bill Himmelsbach worked in motorcycle shops all over the area and raced the AMA 250 series back in the day. His kid raced for the factory Aprilia team. This was in the late 90s and early 2000s. He was a close friend, and I went up and did a few track days with him. Back then, there weren't a lot of schools. There are many more schools nowadays, which is nice to have an opportunity to work at your skill and become quicker and quicker and quicker until you build up enough speed to actually go racing. As I said, there wasn't much of that in those days, so I just entered a race. I showed up at the local track, Summit Point, West Virginia, and entered a race and had a blast.

Vital MX: How far do you take it? How good did you get?

Jeff: I was really good for a while. I won a couple of races. I raced the Daytona Race of Champions and could have received my expert license in my first year, but I declined it. That's when I started running out of money, and it all went quickly to the heck in a hand cart.

Vital MX: I'm just very impressed by road racing because I've never done it

Jeff: Yeah. I wish I had started off in off-road because it is a lot less expensive. You go through three or four sets of tires a weekend at $400 a pop in road racing. At the time, my girlfriend and I used to put everything in terms of how much things cost by how many race tires they would cost. So, "There's a washer and dryer. That's four sets of tires."

Vital MX: I love that. That's great. Do you ride now?

Jeff: Yes, I still do. I haven't done a track day since our Corsair X press launch. I get to ride a lot on the street and do a lot of off-road riding now. I've picked up off-road riding in my latter years. I did three hare scrambles last year and had an absolute blast.

Vital MX: You talked about running out of money, so you must figure out how to start making some. How do you find your way to Arai?  

Jeff: I was working at a motorcycle shop here in Pennsylvania, and Mike Himmelsbach was working with me. At the time, Arai supported him, and he mentioned my name. I came in for an interview and was very lucky to get hired immediately.

Vital MX: What position did you start at?

Jeff: I did all the repairs. If you've ever had a trim repaired on your helmet back in the day when we had a little issue, I did that repair.

Vital MX: OK, so you started as a technician.

Jeff: Yes. Absolutely. I started as a technician, and because of my ties to road racing, I once asked, "Can I help out in the road race program?" I worked with a guy doing all the road race stuff at the time and worked my way up.

Vital MX: Now you are the Marketing Manager. Do you have any education behind that, or did you learn as you go?

Jeff: I learned as I went. I had some great teachers. The cool thing about Arai is we're such a family company. Roger Weston started Arai U.S. His son Brian Weston now runs it. Funny enough, his son Bo Weston is taking over the Superbike program last year and doing all the road race stuff. These guys are great at giving everybody knowledge and working together. Even in Japan, I would go over and work the Suzuka Eight Hour with Japan doing racing services, and I learned a ton from Endo, Toru, Kase Kay, and all these guys around me. They've been so helpful in helping me get better at what I'm doing.

Vital MX: Over the last few years, there have been significant changes in helmet technology. Arai seems to have stuck with what they do best.

Jeff: We do what we do best because we've done it for 50 to 60 years. We've seen what the helmets can do, not just in a testing lab. Half my job is racing, and doing all the racing stuff, I can sit back and look at crashes. I analyze the crash and report back to Japan on what happened in the crash. Here's the helmet. Here are the pictures. Here's the video clip of what happened, and they study that stuff. They look at the real-world data, not just the testing lab data. They don't just drop a helmet from a jig to see what kind of energy is pushed through the helmet. They look at what happened to the rider and how the rider fared after the crash. What were his injuries after the crash? How did it all happen? In my opinion, that is more important than just looking at lab data. I think one of the greatest advantages of Arai is that Mr. Arai controls the company. The buck stops at him, and he pushes forth protection more than he puts forth making money or marketing or anything else. It's the world's best helmet, and we're getting better at our marketing, but we're a manufacturer. We know how to make helmets. We don't know how to be cool.

Vital MX: It appears as though all the manufacturing is done in-house by your own company. It's not outsourced. You have your own equipment, and it's equipment that Arai developed, I believe.

Jeff: Yeah, it's interesting. I was in Japan recently with a European press launch, and we walked through the factory. They just got these new performa machines, which make the helmet's base. In the old days, it was a mechanical machine. It would cut strands of fiberglass at a certain length. This new machine's all digital, and they're all very, very excited about it because it lays a better performa. It makes them one that's more consistent. It looks a lot better, and it performs better. The cool part of it being digital is that if we see an advantage somewhere, we can easily go in and change the programming and make it happen. The really interesting part was that we used to have four of these performa machines, which was all we needed for production. Now we have five because the new machine is actually slower. We had to spend extra money on an extra machine and an extra person to run it to have the same production capacity, but Mr. Arai didn't care. It's not about saving money. It's about making a better product. So, he spends the extra money to make a better product. I don't know many other companies that would do that.

Vital MX: Most would want more production at less cost if possible. What does that mean for the way it's laying the fiberglass? What does that mean for quality?

Jeff: It's more about consistency. The fibers lay a lot better, and they lay a lot more consistently every single time. So, we don't have thin spots or anything like that. We might have to throw out one or two of the performas with the old machine because they weren't as consistent as we like.

Vital Mx: When it comes to marketing, how do you decide where to put your focus? You're involved in motocross, MotoGP, MotoAmerica, American Flat Track, NASCAR, and more. 

Jeff: Motorcycles. We sell a lot of motorcycle helmets in the US, but auto helmets are becoming a bit more important. I'm spending more time there myself. I went to the Rolex 24, the Daytona 500, and the Indy 500 this year alone. I went to every US motorsport in the entire country this year. The auto product is very interesting because you don't need to wear it. Nobody needs to wear a helmet in their car every day. You need to wear a helmet when riding your motorcycle, no matter what. Or you should be, at least. So, it's a little bit of a different thing. We spend most of our marketing dollars on the motorcycle side because it's who we are. We're just motorcycle people. Interestingly enough, we have an auto racing helmet because Mr. Arai was a development driver with Nissan back in the day in the Nismo program. He was talking about it just last week when we were in Japan. I will try to do my best to paraphrase what he said. He said, "I was quick, but I didn't have that glint in my eye, and I didn't have that next thing that the other guys I watched who were really fast had."

Vital MX: What decisions go into deciding where your marketing focus goes? There are the racers and the 'weekend warriors.' How do you reach everyone? 

Jeff: We have seen the marketing change. Back when I first started, there were pretty pictures in a magazine of the product. There wasn't much talking around it. At the time, we were talking, and people told us we had too many words in our ads. Now, with the advent of social media and videos and all that kind of stuff, people are more in tune. They're more educated about their decision, or at least they think they're more educated. So, many people are out there throwing out different marketing ideas and all that stuff. It's one of the things that we're trying to improve our game and figure out how to talk to the consumers better. We do a lot of it with social media right now, but we do it with ads, too. We try to put some information in the ad no matter what. Our newest ad is the Priority for Protection, and it's Mr. Arai's statement. It's really powerful. It basically says, "We're helmet people. We have a bunch of people who work in our factory making helmets that are motorcycle people, and we all ride and try to make the best product we can."

Vital MX: Let's discuss the Vx-Pro4, Arai's off-road helmet. It's designed to minimize impact resistance in a crash. Arai's helmets have a specific curvature and lack edges to optimize safety on impact.

Jeff: Yes, exactly. It's a round, smooth shell. Yes. There you go. It's the most important thing we believe in. Again, I will use Mr. Arai's words. He had a great quote on it. He says, "If you're going to have someone breaking into your house depending on your local state laws, would you rather deal with that problem on the outside of your house, or let the intruder into your house and try to deal with it on the inside in the confines of your own house?" You would want to deal with them outside the house, and that's how we look at a helmet. We want to deal with the impact energy on the outside of the helmet. So, if there are no hard edges or anything like that for the helmet to catch on, we avoid the impact or the rotational energy, and the helmet glances off the ground. It makes it an easier process and allows us to make a softer liner. You want the first thing your head comes into contact with to be soft, right? So, if we make a softer impact liner, it makes for, as Brian likes to say, a better crash. We try to scrub that impact and rotational energy off.

Vital MX: Arai also offers multiple interior fit sizes. Everyone's head is a different shape. They are not just small, medium, and large. There are different shapes as well.

Jeff: We have liners that can do all kinds of things. We have little fit pads in the liners that you can take off and make it fit more comfortably. Especially regarding the VX-Pro4 because hare scrambles are two hours long. It's a long day in a helmet. I figured it out quickly when I did my first scramble. I couldn't believe it lasted that long, and you want the helmet to be comfortable. You want the helmet to be enjoyable to ride in. You don't want to think about the helmet. You don't want to have the helmet impeding your riding. You don't want to sit there with a hot spot or something uncomfortable on your head. You don't want to think about that half the time you're riding and half the time you're thinking about where the next tree is in front of you or the next big jump. We do a lot of studying. We did it two years ago with our auto stuff. I took metric measurements of all of our drivers in IndyCar and NASCAR, and we used calipers to pinpoint how long and how wide their head is. Then, we average that up and come up with their interior packages. 

Vital MX: Let's wrap this up with this. What are some cool experiences or memories you have that have come because of your involvement with Arai?

Jeff: Standing on the box the second year Justin Barcia won A1 was pretty cool. I have so many interesting memories. Suzuka is one of my favorite places to go, and I think I'm still the only non-Japanese to ever work in racing services for Arai at the Suzuka eight-hour. I got invited to do it and thought, "They're just going to use me to talk to the people that speak English. It's all I'm really there for." I walked in the door, and they had a little space set up for me and my little work ring with a toolbox, and they said, "Get to work," and I did. There were five of us working on helmets. I think there were 60 racers for that race, and it is just the most intense eight hours of your life. It is an eight-hour endurance race, and it's unreal. The fans in Japan are absolutely incredible.