An interview with J&P Cycle's Zach Parham

John and Jill Parham founded J&P Cycles in 1979 and the company recently celebrated its 41st year in business. John Parham served for many years as the chairman of the board of the non-profit National Motorcycle Museum. He was instrumental in moving the museum to its current location near his hometown of Anamosa, Iowa, greatly expanding the size of the museum's exhibition space, expanding motorcycle and memorabilia collections and striving to put it on solid financial footing. Though John passed away in 2017, his legacy lives on through his wife, Jill, who remains on the museum's board, and their son, Zach, who is president of J&P Cycles. Zach has been with the company for more than 13 years, but he jokes that he’s really been working there his entire life, because he grew up surrounded by everything that is J&P Cycles.

So to learn more about J&P’s family history, I talked with Zach Parham for the upcoming episode of Highside/Lowside Season Two, Episode 11. The following is an excerpt of that discussion, but to catch the full interview when it’s released, type in “RevZilla” on Apple iTunes or your favorite podcast app and subscribe to our Highside/Lowside podcast.

Spurgeon Dunbar: We are currently recording this episode while hunkered down in COVID-19 quarantine. I'm recording this from my Philadelphia basement. Where are you riding out the quarantine, Zach?

Zach Parham: I live in Dallas, Texas, so I'm in my office. That's where I've been hunkered down for the last six weeks now.

SD: How has it been for you in Texas? Has it been challenging for you to get out on a motorcycle?

ZP: I actually just bought a KTM 890 Duke R about three weeks ago. There's only, like, 65 in the United States and my dealer happened to have one. So I bought the 890 Duke R and I've been putting a decent amount of miles on it just trying to get the break-in over with. My wife and I actually took it out last weekend. 

My kids love riding motorcycles with me and I did that with my dad for a long time when I was young so it's been a pretty cool tradition to continue on. Especially with everything going on. It’s been good to have motorcycles to use to spend time together.

SD: Zach, you're going to fit in perfectly with this show. We always get ragged on because Joe and I are always going back and forth on how we love our KTM dirt bikes, so you're in good company.

ZP: I’m OK with getting ragged on. Obviously, I'm a long-time Harley guy. I rode very many Harleys over my life. Nothing against them by any means but I was looking for more of a snappier naked bike and that's why I went with the KTM.

SD: So you mentioned getting started in motorcycling with your dad. How old were you when you got into motorcycling and what was your first bike?

ZP: I grew up riding trail bikes, you know, but my first real street bike was a 2002 Sportster and my dad bought that for me. The Sportster is a fairly good entry-level bike for most people, right? So that's where I started. In 2002, they hadn't converted them over to rubber mount yet so that thing was still like a hardtail. But I rode that to Sturgis on my own that year. I think we did 800 miles in one day to Sturgis that year.

SD: You grew up in such a prominent motorcycling family. Was riding just a foregone conclusion? 

ZP: I rode a lot with my dad when I was little but he never pushed his passion on me. To be honest, it was more of me begging him to let me ride. He just had such a passion and for me being around him and motorcycles, that's really what got me into it.

SD: I remember reading he had a collection of something like over 300 bikes at one point. Is that correct?

ZP: Oh yeah. My mom kept most of them. There are some crazy ones. Like, the 1905 Harley, the 1911 Flying Merkel. He has a Flying Merkel that was actually on the board tracks in 1911, original paint, all of it.

My dad was a huge supporter of the National Motorcycle Museum located in our hometown in eastern Iowa which houses a collection of over 400 motorcycles. Many of those are my parents’ bikes, but there's a lot of other great collections in that museum.

SD: How did your dad get started in motorcycling?

ZP: I would say what got him into motorcycling is that his parents were against it! (Laughter) Obviously, as we all know, when your parents are against something you usually just gravitate right to it, right? So he got his first motorcycle when he was in high school. I think it was a 1972 Honda 750 that he ended up chopping out. He just fell in love with riding motorcycles and it just became a consuming passion for him. And he wanted to try and work in the industry.

SD: When did he get his first Harley?

ZP: His first Harley was a 1955 Panhead. He got that I think in '77, '78 and he ended up selling it in the early '90s for money to pay employees and keep the company afloat. Eventually, he bought it back and it had been painted at that point. So he restored it. He restored that thing like, two or three times and I think he bought and sold it two or three times, but we still have that bike today. It's in the museum and obviously that one's not going anywhere by any means. You know, I wouldn't say it's his best bike in the collection but it's the first, right? And we all remember that first bike and that was his first Harley.

SD: You graduated college in 2007 and then came back to the family business and took over managing J&P’s Iowa store working at the ground level. Did you know at the time that you wanted to make your career out of motorcycles?

ZP: So my dad never pressured me to ride motorcycles and he really never pressured me to join the business, either. But I decided when I came out of college I would go help support him and see how it went. I loved motorcycling but I didn't know if I wanted it to be a career.

So initially I was actually helping with some of the online stuff but then our retail manager happened to leave and he's like, "Hey, do you want to get your start managing this retail store?"

I mean, I grew up sweeping the floors and picking parts. Every summer when I was younger I worked at the shop. My job after school was to tackle all of the paper shredding that needed to be done. I mean, boxes and boxes of shredding.

But yeah, I started at the retail store out of school and then ended up moving into operations of our distribution center and call center after a few years. My dad was adamant that I had to go learn the entire business, right? And so I pretty much worked in every department in our company through the years and so it's been an awesome learning experience that I still use to this day. It helps me relate to the person I’m talking to, no matter where they are in the company.

SD: You mentioned your dad selling his Harley to make payroll. What was J&P like in the early days?

ZP: Really, we were an events company for the most part in the early days. My parents traveled a lot. We either attended or ran 35 different swap meets in those early days. So they were gone a lot. I actually spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was really young and then when I was old enough I got to start going on the trips with my parents, as long as I could be back to school on Monday. Always had to be back for school.

That's how they made their living. They were at every event they could attend and it was all about building relationships from the ground up. And they got to know some of the vendors that would come to all of our events. At one point we were using 250,000 square feet of the McCormick Place in Chicago for a two-day event, you know, bike shows and vendors setting up and all the time trying to sell parts. We'd get 50,000 people through the doors during those two days in the McCormick Place. That's hard work, you know? You're packing up and living out of trucks every weekend.

So my dad basically figured out he had to find a different way to make money. He loved motorcycling but this wasn't going to be the way to do it long-term. So in 1987 he started putting a catalog together. He used the events to get customer names and then he'd start mailing out these catalogs and it became a much larger piece of our business over the years.

SD: Being a kid is one thing, but what was it like choosing to work alongside your dad in the more recent years when the business was a bit more established? 

ZP: I think my dad and I are more alike than we ever knew at the time (Laughter). At times we would butt heads because we both wanted to go run different routes. You know, obviously when I came back to J&P it was right when the financial crisis happened. So we had to figure out how to change our business. What got us there before the crisis wasn't going to get us out.

The Harley market had been booming and we were a successful part of that. But moving past 2007, 2008, we had to figure out how we could reach the customer that didn't go to events every weekend and didn't get our catalogs. Basically, I was pushing more to moving things online. Overall, I think we were able to work well together but we definitely had our moments, as with any father-son business for sure.

SD: Your family suffered the loss of your dad in 2017. Looking back on his career and his influence on you and the industry, he had so many amazing highlights and accomplishments. What do you think he'd be most proud of?

ZP: When he got inducted into the AMA Hall of Fame that was a big deal to him. Most of the people that get into AMA are like motorcycle racers, right? There's very few people in there that are just industry people. That was just such a big honor to him. A lot of why he was inducted was because of what he did with his collection of motorcycles and then showcasing to the world the history of motorcycling. And so I'd say that was probably one of his biggest honors.

SD: You had mentioned at the very beginning of this interview about your kids and your kids getting into motorcycling. You were 12 when your dad took you to Sturgis the first time. How old will your kids be before you take them up there to experience that with you?

ZP: Both my kids like to ride with me. I have a son Kaiden and a daughter Kinlee. My son, who's the oldest, just turned 11 last December. So next year he’ll be the age I would've gone with my dad. I don't know if I'm prepared for that yet, (laughter) but, you know, I think we'll start taking longer trips. It's about 1,400 miles from here to Sturgis taking the good route through Colorado. So while I haven't figured out how soon I’ll be taking him to Sturgis I can definitely see ourselves stretching out some longer trips together.

SD: Does he have a motorcycle of his own yet or is he just riding on the back with you?

ZP: He grew up riding dirt bikes actually. I bought him a Suzuki 50 when he was about two years old. So he actually learned to ride that dirt bike before he learned to ride a bicycle. From there he’s had some KTM dirt bikes, the 50 and the Senior. Recently, he’s been riding some electric bikes. We actually have a Super73. If you've never seen those they are pretty sweet. He rides that all around the neighborhood.

SD: We're coming out of a crazy start to 2020. The pandemic has thrown everybody, but the one thing that has impressed me is the way people are gravitating to motorcycles. What are you most excited about for motorcycling in the remainder of 2020? 

ZP: I think you're right. I mean obviously kids’ sports stopped. All sports have stopped. So things that maybe prevented you from riding your motorcycle as often as you would've in the past, well they’re not happening.

Or maybe your bike has been sitting not running and you finally have the time to get going again. For as bad as COVID-19 has been for the United States and the world as a whole, it got people fixing their motorcycles up and riding. So let's hope that some good comes out of this. So that’s what I’d like to see over the remainder of 2020, more people riding motorcycles.

SD: From building one of the industry's biggest mail-order accessory businesses to developing and supporting the National Motorcycle Museum, your family has been hugely influential in motorcycling over the past 41 years. As an influential person in the industry yourself, if you could offer one piece of advice for a new ride or for someone looking at getting into riding what would that piece of advice be?

ZP: I would say there's a lot of great entry level bikes now. When you and I got started the industry was focused on offering the most CCs and there wasn't a robust selection of low-displacement motorcycles to get started on. Now is a great time to get into motorcycling.

In addition to the bikes improving, the safety gear has gotten better over the years, as well. Helmets and gear are safer and more comfortable than ever before with an abundance of styles to work for any rider’s aesthetic. There is still the perceived notion that motorcycling can be dangerous, but you have the ability to get educated and ride a lower displacement bike easier than ever before.