TGP18 | Josh Bent is the bomb

Get this.

There’s an old saying about starting a business—find a problem and solve it.

Josh Bent bought a fancy awning for his truck, only to learn they don’t sell mounting brackets because people install those awnings on all kinds of vehicles all over the world. It’s not a cost effective thing for an awning manufacturer to do.

So what do owners do? They fend for themselves.

A lot of people go out and rig something up using angle brackets from the local big box hardware store.

And like a lot of people, that’s what Josh did too. Until he got tired of those 50-cent angle brackets breaking every time the trail got rough.

So what did Josh do? He fended for himself.

He and a buddy designed their own brackets. They turned out pretty good. So good, in fact, people started asking about them. So Josh and his buddy scraped together enough cash to get a batch of five sets made and took them to Overland Expo East to see if they could find buyers.

Everyone thought they were beefy as hell and wanted a set. And, as always, a bunch of tire kickers dismissed them as being “way too expensive.” Maybe, if Josh had just gone with the 75-cent angle brackets, he wouldn’t have been in this situation.

Regardless, they sold out pretty quick—and that gave them the funding to get more made.

That was a couple years ago. Today, Bomber Products is opening their own retail space in Bozeman, Montana, where they sell their favorite, Made In America, adventure and off-road gear.

And he’s not stopping there.

Would you like to know more?

This is The Gearhead Project.

Note: The audio may not reflect the correct episode number or link. Brian lost count of episodes so we had to re-number them.