A homegrown British business success story, with a founder who’s lived the life as a recreational athlete, whilst working 2 jobs, and, at times, 7 days a week.
Clinton Butcher is grit personified. A determination that any business owner will recognise, just as any athlete would. Here we sit down to hear about the journey from home-based business to a team of 13 and world-class athletes using EZ Gains products.
Clint, thanks for making time to chat with us. Let’s start with a bit of background on your own endurance sport journey.
My journey into endurance sports began around 2014. I cycled from Land’s End to John o’Groats, with the route selected so I could also climb the three highest peaks in the UK, on foot. A total distance of 1300 miles, with the bike navigation all done using Google maps!
Before this, I’d not ridden a bike since school days and BMX.
I took on the challenge to show that a major, positive change in my life was happening. I wanted to prove my mental endurance and will not to give up, not just fitness. It didn’t stop there. Despite initially not being able to swim well, in 2015, I booked a half Iron Man and a full Iron Man.
I found my ‘thing’ with ultra endurance, with Ironman, and haven’t looked back.
How does EZ Gains come about? How do you find yourself founding a business?
I started EZ Gains while working a secure full-time job as a national account manager for a building supplies company. It was, and still is, driven by a passion for triathlon and identifying a gap in the market for cost-effective, high-watt gains.
The first product, the EZ Disc, was conceptualised after I bought and tried a stick-on cover – intended to mimic a disk rear wheel – which failed, and caused me to crash. I knew I could do much better.
Developing the EZ Disc took about a year or two of extensive testing with different materials, sizes, and soft moulds – anyone who’s been down this road knows the costs. For me, that was a high-risk cash investment of about £30k – the UK and European patent alone was £15k. When you are the business and the money comes out of your own pocket, you know what the ‘cost’ really feels like to live with.
So you go through a product development and validation process, and begin making sales.
Yeah. The EZ Disc product began selling around 2019/2020, but people were initially sceptical. That scepticism didn’t last. In April 2021, testing confirmed the EZ Disc was as fast as a top-end disc wheel. Our product development is data-driven and verified through wind tunnel testing. Sharing our data means people can see the gains in the Watts saved.
That initial EZ Disc success led me to transition from working full-time and managing the business from my living room, with my daughter, to negotiating a deal with my boss to work four days at their job and three days on EZ Disc. My boss was (is) an entrepreneur, so he completely understood my circumstances and was extremely encouraging and supportive.
When do you get to a point where it’s clear you need to transition to Full-Time EZ Gains and drive the expansion?
By Christmas, I put in my notice and went full-time with EZ Gains. We moved into a small, basic office in November 2021. Within six months, EZ Gains had expanded, eventually taking over the original building and prompting a move to a new office. In addition to the EZ Disc, we’ve also released the Chainring Guard and the Front Derailleur Guard, securing UK and European patents for them.
We have a core Ironman and TT customer base who now look to us for gains, for innovation, for performance and value. Professionals – age-groupers to everyone who just wants to make some gains.
And it’s around this time that the business grows further, adding ‘distributor’ to ‘designer and manufacturer’?
That’s right. With that Ironman and TT customer, we are really well connected. Add specialist bike fitters, and we have a really strong customer base. With that in mind, we’ve also become UK Distributor for both Tri-Rig and Velotoze.
These make for a strong “umbrella of products” under the EZ Gains name that align with our ethos. When I saw a gap in the market, we moved fast. Within three months, we became Tri-Rig’s number one distributor in Europe.
Fair to say EZ Gains is now a name attracting a lot of aero attention, from the triathlon and TT community.
We’ve developed partnerships with Brownlee Fitness and Precision Hydration – that comes about because we are known in the community. Matt Bottrill is a bike fitter we work with extensively. He’s in contact with athletes from across the spectrum, from recreational to world-class.
What are the next steps for EZ Gains? Will you be working with retailers? Do you see an opportunity in-store?
We’ve been considering moving into business-to-business (B2B) sales through specialist retailers, as the company now has proper SKUs and product listings. All that said, we believe that only specialists – with a deep understanding of the triathlon and time trial markets – would be suitable, ensuring we and any retail partner avoid stock issues.
What we do see and hear: Customer demand is now driving retailer interest. Retailers and bike fitters are now seeing customers request EZ Gains products, which is leading to B2B interest.
A key retailer we’ve worked with is David Hunt of Velo Presto – based in the UAE – and I mentioned that we regularly receive orders from Matt Bottrill for our Hydro Gains.
The sport has evolved such that embracing aerodynamics, nutrition, and all aspects of training is crucial for winning, even for elite athletes. That we are cost-effective is a bonus on top of the Watt savings we deliver.
Today, we work directly with Casper Stornes, Jelle Geenes, James Teugal, Joe Skipper, Harry Palmer, Caroline Livsey and many others.
And the team has expanded to service the need to find more gains, as well as supporting a growing international customer base?
It has. We have an aerodynamic engineer and provide an optimisation service to close collaborators. The company has grown to 13 staff members, including five full-time employees, engineers, CAD drawers, part-time assemblers, and my niece, Tilly, who runs Velotoze. It’s a really caring community in EZ Gains with Chris and I and my sister all working FT, my daughter and my 3 nieces. We all work hard and pull together at our HQ, but have lots of fun too.
