Page 4 - PULSE FEBRUARY 2018

PULSE
From the looks of Rusty’s thriving business, you wouldn’t realize that this one time successful IT hotshot was a department leader for a fortune 500 company in a completely unrelated field. Beck, who boasts an MBA from the University of Texas
in Austin never intended to be on this side of the motorcycle businesses. That all changed in the fall of 2002 on a fateful adventure ride in Arkansas.
Rusty ran into long-time friend Randy Staples. Staples who worked in and around motorcycle dealerships in the Midwest for most of his career had transitioned into a role with one of the nation’s largest power sports parts distributors. He relocated to Texas and had found himself on the same ride.
Rusty overheard a conversation Randy was having with a local Arkansas retailer about closeout merchandise. He was lamenting that no one had yet embraced the internet as a sales tool. With Beck’s back ground and current work expertise, the conversation got his wheels spinning. Over the course of 7 weeks and many late nights, www.motorcyclecloseouts.com was born. He opened for business online in early January 2003. At the time his only form of payments accepted was Paypal. By April he added credit card processing, and by July of the same year he quit his lucrative full-time job to focus on his rapidly growing business.
By July of 2003, He rented his first 1500 sqft retail space, on the back side of a shopping center with no traffic. He focused on online sales and was open to the public only Thursday evenings from 5-8pm. He was a 1 man show at this point, but word spread. Within weeks, he had two new employees, and by spring of 2004 he had 8000 sq ft on the front side of the same shopping center. For the next 5 1⁄2 years he continued to grow the business into one of the best places to buy great priced brand name products. Eventually by the summer of 2009, he completed a 12,000 sq ft stand alone retail space on the east side of traffic heavy 169 HWY south of Smithville, MO (on Kansas City’s center North side)
He now has 12 employees and is one of the nicest power sports apparel retail spaces in the US. While he continues to be a global destination for close out merchandise, he also stocks plenty of current model year products. (He boasts a retail space with more than 500 helmets on display)
Motorcycle Closeouts has continued to expand into complimentary product categories, in 2016 becoming an authorized Giant bicycle retailer. In the fall of 2017 Trek bicycles were added. Be sure to stop in and check out the great deals on all types of gear or visit the online store at www.motorcyclecloseouts.com
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THE PULSE • FEBRUARY 2018