Industry Insights - Pete Drew

In our latest series MoreDirt is giving you an insight into the MTB industry and asking the all important questions to some of the faces that make it tick! First up we meet Pete Drew of Silverfish UK.

Who is Pete Drew?
Pete is the marketing manager for Silverfish UK a distribution company based in the South West of England.

What bike do you ride?
I ride a Yeti SB 66 Carbon.

Give us an interesting fact about yourself?
I've been on the cover of MBUK magazine!

Whats your role at Silverfish and what does it consist of?
I’m the marketing manager so I handle all of our internal and external marketing. That's everything from print advertising to looking after our supported riders to organising the magazine/online product reviews and just about everything else in between.

How long have you been doing your job and how has it changed over the years?
I’ve been at Silverfish for 9 years, I’ve been doing this roll for 5. Recently in the last 12 months Silverfish has expanded massively so everything’s just got a lot more busy generally! Social media, demo days and getting to events are starting to take a much more important roll now though.

You are stuck in a lift for the next 3 hours, you can pick 3 people to be stuck with you, who would it be and why?
I’d have to make sure they’re interesting people really as 3 hours is a long time!
It would have to be a mountain bike legend like Shaun Palmer but then that would probably get a little bit lairy, George Clooney because I reckon he’s got some pretty good stories and I should probably pick a female… I would pick Jennifer Aniston from back in the early Friends days when I was a little younger!
That’s a tough question for only the 5th one in!

Don't worry they only get harder from now on!

26, 650b or 29?
I’ve got 26” at the moment obviously with my Yeti SB-66C but I think into the future it will be probably end up being 650B as thats the way development is heading.

Tubes or Tubeless?
Tubes. The super lightweight Eclipse ones!

Clips or Flats?
Clips. Without doubt.

Whats the best thing about working in the cycle industry?
I get to work with a lot of cool bikes and meet lots of cool people.

And the worst thing?
A wet boggy field getting trench foot for the weekend at a Demo day isn’t one of my highlights. At the end of the day I’m still playing with bikes so that’s cool.

What’s the best mountain bike product of all time?
Probably SPD pedals.

And the worst product of all time?
For me its gotta be something like that Claw that went into your cassette while you were riding back in the 90’s. It was supposed to clean your cassette and stop the mud getting stuck, but I never saw the point in it really! I'm glad it never took off as it was a right pain.

Whats the best piece of advice anyone’s ever given you?
Probably Andrew Titley in one of those old riding films… It was either Sprung or Chainspotting I can’t remember but he says "Whatever your doing just, really go for it!"

And the Worst?
"It’ll be alright, You’ll land it." That one normally always precedes a massive crash!

Who’s the most famous or influential person you’ve ever had dealings with during your time in the Mountain Bike Industry?
Quite a lot of people I guess really! From here at Silverfish at some point we’ve had dealings with most top riders in the UK and even internationally. We’ve got Peaty at the moment but we had strong links with Fabien Barel when he was on Mondraker. Those 2 are pretty famous.

What will be the next big innovation to take off in the mountain bike industry?
Obviously we’ve got the wheelsize thing picking up steam and i'm almost certain we’ll see bigger wheels on downhill bikes in the very near future.  Theres a lot of noise coming from the suspension guys with electronic shocks and things like that... I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the future though.

Have you got any sneak previews of something new that’s coming from any of your brands at Silverfish in the near future?
NO! haha!
We’ve got some narrow wide chainrings coming from both Race Face and eThirteen that you’ll be able to run on 9, 10 and even 11 speed. In the next few weeks the Race Face ones will be in and ready to go in 104BCD so now you’ll be able to convert to single ring on the front even without a guide!

Whats your best seller out of the products you look after?
I don’t know what it would be actually, but we get through a whole load of grips and other small products. That said, some of the bikes, Evoc bike bags and even handlebars go pretty well!

And finally…

In 10 years time what will the average trail centre warriors bike look like?
Probably more like a current what we would call a modern day downhill bike!
If you thinkback,  not so long ago 150mm was pretty much about as much travel as anyone had at there disposal much like back in the days when I was racing downhill on my Giant ATX 1. We’d call 150mm travel a trail or enduro bike nowadays.

I guess people will either be running super slack and bouncy trail bikes or they'll swing back completely the other way and return to shorter travel bikes or hardtails... Who knows!

Cheers Pete!

You can check out all the products that Silverfish stock on their website Here!