At practically any underground biker brodown you can think of, Tyler Malinky is easy to spot. Just look for the 7-foot blonde cat with the neck tats and piercing blue eyes bobbing through a sea of greasy trucker hats and black T-shirts. As the founder of Lowbrow Customs, it’s Tyler’s job to make an impression at these events. If this brainy entrepreneur from Ohio were the average chopper hooligan, that might mean tackling one of his customers to the ground or lighting his hair on fire. Fortunately, Tyler is smarter than that. Instead of making a scene, Tyler works hard to make a difference. That difference is apparent to the thousands of garage builders the lanky bikerider’s young company numbers among its happy customers. Join us as two old ball swingers in the modern chopper scene give you an inside peek at Lowbrow Customs.
Hey Tyler, tell me how Lowbrow got started.
I started Lowbrow Customs in 2004 and ran it as a one-man operation until early 2009. That’s when my brother Kyle returned to Ohio from the West Coast and started working with me full-time.
What was Lowbrow like in the early days?
I was running a sign making shop as a teenager in ’99, and Lowbrow was strictly an evenings and weekend side job to help me earn extra money for motorcycles and tattoos. I designed the Lowbrow Customs logo and bought the web domain at least a year before I ever did anything with it. Eventually I started printing stickers and T-shirts with my sign shop equipment for Triumph chopper guys. I liked Triumphs, so I assumed everyone else did, too. I remember being totally stoked when I got my first $15 order. I bootstrapped the company from the beginning, rolling the small amounts of money I made into more and better products, and some advertising. Time and dedication are the two things that have always made Lowbrow work. When my friends were out drinking and having fun I was doing web design or filling orders. The addition of Kyle full-time allowed us to start growing quickly, with everyone focusing on his individual strengths. When Kyle came on board we gave ourselves a year full-time to make Lowbrow sink or swim. When did you transition full-line into retailing and wholesaling for the custom scene?
At almost exactly the one-year mark of our full-time plan, I phased out sign making completely. It was never my dream job, but it paid the bills for 10 years. By then Lowbrow demanded all our attention, so we hired Katy to handle shipping and receiving so I could focus on marketing, product development, and things of that nature.
You just moved into a new 11,000-square-foot building 30 miles south of Cleveland. Tell as about your previous setups.
I started Lowbrow in the spare bedroom of my duplex apartment in Parma, Ohio. A few years later I moved to Hinckley and ran the business out of a 2,000-square-foot shop behind my house. In February of 2011, we moved into our current place in Medina, Ohio. I can’t even believe how much inventory we jammed into that shed behind my house. Before our latest move we crammed inventory everywhere: the box van, the race trailer, everyone’s trunk, the spare bedroom, you name it.