Staring down a trade war that will affect his business selling electric bikes to his American customers, Ben Taylor braced for the worst.
“All the work we did to sell in the U.S. and then it was 30 days after we were like, ‘OK, we’re good, let’s start selling in the U.S.,’ boom tariffs,” said the co-founder of Beachman, a Toronto-based electric bike maker.
“There was definitely a night of existential threat of, ‘Am I going to lose my company that I spent all this time on?’”
Taylor said he had an idea in 2016 to create a cool-looking and vintage-style e-bike. Three years later, a chance encounter with his neighbour and eventual company co-founder Steve Payne at a coffee shop led to the pair beginning work on the project.
Taylor, who handles sales, marketing, finance and design for Beachman, and Payne, the engineer who sources the bike parts, started out of the latter’s garage where he built motorcycles in his spare time.
“It’s very different from what you normally see with electrics,” Taylor said. “Let’s package up a really awesome, fun bike that’s affordable and makes sense for living in the city. But most importantly, let’s make it look beautiful and let’s make it electric.”
Taylor said the result was an e-bike that harkens back to the 1960s but everything about it is brand new.
“We just felt that bike is something people would love and thankfully we were right,” he said.
At first the business venture could only manufacture its first bikes overseas due to cost restraints. Eventually, their finances allowed them to follow their original plan to import the parts and bring the manufacturing process to Toronto.
They initially rented out a coffee shop basement for their retail space in The Junction area before moving into an industrial warehouse space just north in The Stockyards.
Taylor said while most of the company’s bikes are bought in Canada, Beachman began shifting its focus over the last year to the U.S. market, specifically California, Florida, Texas, Arizona.
He was initially unsure what would happen when Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian goods entering the U.S.
“Like everyone in North America, you never know what Donald Trump is thinking and what he’s just saying because it sounded good to him to write it on (social media),” Taylor said.
The company tried to get ahead of the initial U.S. tariffs imposed by President Trump when it recently transported four e-bikes to Florida, but his shipping company received a $3,000 US bill after the customs documents didn’t clear on time.
“Do you want to pay this?” Taylor recalled the shipper asking him. “Of course our answer is hell no. ‘Send them back to us,’” he said in response.
Taylor said the company decided to cancel the order from one of their Florida dealers.
Despite the lost sales, there was some good news. Trump temporarily lifted tariffs on products protected under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement until April 2.
That will allow the company to ramp up production of the 2025 model that arrived in the warehouse on Tuesday.
“The guys are literally unloading the shipping crate under my feet,” he said.
He hopes to get finished products to his dealers south of the border before the tariffs on all Canadian goods come into effect.
“It’s really caused our business to be in this weird period of sprinting and then just waiting, which is very frustrating.”
Taylor said the economic upheaval has forced his company to pivot hard to the Canadian market, pointing out that Beachman charges the same amount for e-bikes here as it does for the U.S. market despite the lower dollar on this side of the border.
“It’s a big hit to our margins but we believe in protecting Canadians and allowing them to have a great product even though the currency is so damaged right now,” he said.
However, interprovincial trade barriers has made it difficult to certify the e-bikes in Quebec and British Columbia, Taylor said.
“There’s no consistency whatsoever when it comes to e-bikes, mopeds and motorcycles across each province,” he said, adding B.C. is the largest motorcycle market due to its warmer climate.
Beachman is also opening up sales to Caribbean countries and Indonesia, and by next year the company will have headquarters in France and their e-bikes will be available across the Europe Union.
“The European market seems to be growing and we’re going to invest heavily in Europe,” Taylor said.