Fox Racing, Inc. CEO Geoff Fox remembers the day he spotted a
motorcycle covered in mud and thought,
”
Gosh, somebody’s having a lot of fun doing that.
”
Morgan Hill – Fox Racing, Inc. CEO Geoff Fox remembers the day he spotted a motorcycle covered in mud and thought, “Gosh, somebody’s having a lot of fun doing that.”
Fox was a graduate student at University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1966 and although he had drag raced cars before he had never considered riding his Honda motorcycle in the dirt.
“So one day I met the guy, and we went out riding in the woods,” said Fox, 66. “And it was so much fun.”
The adventure struck a chord in Fox, who wound up earning his doctoral degree in physics and teaching for three years at Santa Clara University. During the time he was teaching he worked part-time at Grand Prix Cycles on the corner El Camino Real and San Tomas Expressway in San Jose. He soon saw an opportunity to produce a catalog for bike replacement parts, so he and his wife Josie designed the first Grand Prix Cycles parts catalog on their kitchen table. Then, in 1974, as the couple was expecting the birth of their fourth child, Geoff and Josie launched Moto-X Fox on McGlincy Lane in Campbell, a tiny distribution business for European motocross parts and accessories.
In 1977, the new company sponsored its own racing team to go up against pro riders backed by Japanese companies such as Honda and Yamaha. Team Moto-X Fox became an instant hit in the national motocross circuit.
“We sponsored our own team for about three or four years,” Fox said. “Then, as the riders we had got better, Honda, for example, would hire them and pay them more money.”
Fox wasn’t discouraged. By the mid 1980s, he reorganized the company – now called Fox Racing, Inc. – to focus entirely on the sale of specialized motocross gear.
“We decided, let them move up, but keep the clothing contracts with them,” he said.
A period of steady growth followed and by the 1990s the company had outgrown its 1,500-square-foot building in Campbell and had moved to a building on Concord Circle in Morgan Hill with about 40 employees. It carved a bigger niche in the death-defying world of motocross and perfected its complicated boots, jerseys, pants, helmets, gloves and goggles. Fox-sponsored riders continued to win national motocross and supercross championships. Things were going pretty good. Then, in 1995, the X Games exploded.
“A big part of our success has been the coming together of action sports in general,” said John Fox, 32, senior clothing designer for Fox Racing. “All (the extreme sports) used to be inclusive, on their own … But with TV and Internet, and with X Games, kids have grown up skateboarding, riding dirt bikes, doing a combination of things. So a kid who knows Fox might not be a motocross rider but he’s still into it.”
Spotlighting adventurous fringe sports like skateboarding, motocross and BMX on networks such as ABC and ESPN, the X Games powered a lucrative marketing effort aimed at youth culture itself. By the late ’90s, the fox head logo was popping up everywhere, from T-shirts to bumper stickers to MTV. And when rappers like DMX and Method Man started wearing the logo in their videos, the company harnessed the momentum and moved deeper into the youth-lifestyle and casual clothing industry. The move paid off. Today the company turns out $100 million in gross sales every year, with about half of that coming from its lines of everyday apparel. It’s grown to more than 400 employees, with additional offices in Newport Beach and Hong Kong.
Fox remains involved, commuting from the four-bedroom Eichler home in San Jose he and Josie have owned for 39 years. But their four adult children have assumed a larger role in day-to-day operations of the business.
A key to the company’s thriving success has been the opportunity and exposure extreme-sports athletes are enjoying through the X Games, said daughter Anna Fox, 35, who works in purchasing.
“Some of these sports are so new they’re not even your parents’ sports,” she said, alluding to certain X Games events such as freestyle BMX riding. “They’re not baseball, basketball, tennis, you know, these mainstream American sports.”
John and Anna – and their older brothers Greg and Pete – grew up in the close-knit world of motocross racing, but they also enjoyed other so-called fringe sports. Greg, 41, Fox Racing’s vice president of sales, excelled in surfing while John was into wakeboarding and skateboarding.
“The knowledge of all these sports has helped us across the boards,” John said. “You really can’t go from knowing one really in-depth to hoping to know the next.”
Ten years ago, John said, skaters were setting clothing trends and it would take two years for the motocross riders to catch on. Now he thinks the gap has been closed to within a year.
“Now motocross riders are at the same events as the skaters,” he said. “They go to the X Games and there are relationships and vibes through these events.”
In 2003, Fox Racing opened its Newport Beach office to ramp up its surf and casual clothing lines.
“One of the main reasons we did that was to be closer to the industry hub in Southern California,” John said.
“We’re pulling in other people who have been in other industries,” Anna added, “and have experience in other major companies like Eddie Bauer and Adidas and other action-sports companies.”
Today, walking into the headquarters of Fox Racing, now on Sutter Boulevard is like walking into an adrenaline-packed museum. The walls are lined with autographed racing apparel while two off-road motorcycles are parked in the lobby. There’s even a plastic case displaying the typewriter Geoff and Josie used to make their first mail-order catalogs. Music from a stereo can be heard somewhere in the background as casually dressed employees buzz through the offices. Outside a flag ripples in the breeze, displaying the famous fox head logo seen worldwide.
At its roots, the family-owned company still feels like a close-knit operation. It’s a reflection of the motocross world itself, which for decades has revolved around friends and families getting together on weekends for cookouts and all-terrain adventures.
“We were all very involved in motocross from the get-go,” said John. “We were into the sport, and the company’s all about the sport.”
It’s no surprise to the company’s founder the next generation was inspired to continue in the family business.
“What’s been a surprise is how successful they’ve been at it,” said Geoff. “We built the foundation, but this massive super-structure is the next generation. One of the things Josie and I are most proud of is our kids all work together so well and get along so well.”
