BMX UNION

Well, here’s some interesting news… Dan’s Comp team manager, Scott Towne, has apparently been let go from his job according to an Instagram post. Also, according to a post over on Ride BMX, it sounds like the entire Pro Team has also been cut and Dan’s Comp may be filing for bankruptcy at some point. The team, which consists of Terry Adams, Mark Burnett, Stevie Churchill, Chase DeHart, Tony Hamlin, Van Homan, Trey Jones, Chad Kerley, Morgan Long, Corey Martinez, Tony Neyer, Broc Raiford, Dakota Roche, Devon Smillie, Nathan Sykes, Colin Varanyak, Shane Weston, Matt Wilhelm, Nathan Williams and Grant Castelluzzo, was mostly formed by Scott during his time with Dan’s Comp as the team manager.

We’ve been hearing rumors and bits and pieces about Dan’s Comp’s “financial situation” for the past year from a few brands, riders and industry people, but didn’t really know what to think of it. This would be an indicator they’re making some big changes to reconcile whatever it is they have going on. Below is the Instagram post from Scott that doesn’t get too specific, but leaves plenty of bits to piece together.

"You can't be what you were, so you better start being just what you are…." This Fugazi lyric has been on continuous play in my mind lately, pondering what my life will be like after my days at Dan's Competition are over. Well, I'm about to find out. After seven years with the company, I'm officially done. My mission was to make Dan's human, and I feel I was able to accomplish that goal, and much more. It was a good run. I want to thank Steve at Dans for letting me create my own job and run with it, Ernesto for being my "foot in the door" and everyone I've worked with, inside the walls and out. Additionally, I wish my remaining co-workers the best of luck?. To all the team dudes, it's been awesome. I'm proud to have assembled a line-up of some of the best riders in BMX. So yeah, that's that. On to the next one.

A post shared by Scott Towne (@scotttowne) on Sep 22, 2017 at 10:01am PDT

I guess if we had to speculate what is going on, I think it’s just that times have been changing very hard for the business side of BMX with a transition to pretty much every brand (except a few) and virtually every single BMX bike shop making the move to sell online in some capacity, creating greater competition for Dan’s in the online mail-order space that they have dominated for so many years. Does this mean it’s the end of Dan’s Comp? I highly doubt it. We’ll probably see a huge cutback in marketing (beyond the removal of the team) and a shift in how much product they stock and the number of brands they carry, which we have noticed that has been happening already. There has been a number of products on backorder or completely out of stock for a little while now. Obviously this is all speculation, but we’ve been hearing a lot of these things for a while now.

We haven’t seen anything from Dan’s Comp and we don’t really expect to see any sort of press release or anything. But, we’ll keep you updated when and if we hear something.