The Business - Mojo Suspension.

In a brand new feature to MoreDirt we take you behind the scenes at some of the companies that make UK Mountain biking tick. Next up... Mojo Suspension in South Wales!

Who are Mojo?

Mojo are the UK’s only distributor of FOX suspension and offer the most comprehensive tuning and servicing for fox suspension in the UK.

They are based in South Wales just a stones throw away from Cwm Carn and have a workforce of just under 30 who pretty much all of them are avid mountain bikers and have a special thing for pushing the limits of what’s physically possible on mountain bikes of today.

What actually happens at Mojo?

Mojo offer tuning, servicing, warranties and distribution of anything and everything Fox related. Whether that be from the online Mojo Store to the entire workflow of servicing and upgrades that they offer, if you run Fox suspension and you have any questions or queries, these are the guys to talk to!

The Workshop and servicing.

We sent Angus to Mojo to meet the guys behind the name and learn a little bit about suspension and find out how servicing goes down behind those large shutter doors in the valleys!

Mojo Employee, one half of Eyesdown films and friendliest man in mountain biking Tom Wheeler showed Angus the entire process from arrival to dispatch and just about everything in between!

The whole process begins online at home when the customer books in their fork or shock in for service or tuning and decides what they want doing. Everything is left entirely in the customers hands and they have full control of what they want doing.

The booking in process is now fully online but is hasn’t always been this way. Back in the early days Ash and Tom (who used to work on the packing bench himself) were in charge of both booking products in and returning them to customers but with demands rising and the amount of services coming through the doors increasing the workforce has expanded and now Rachel is incharge of booking every product in after its arrival via courier and just that alone!

On an average early summer day Mojo expect to see somewhere in the region of 120 forks or shocks both booked in and mailed back out so its important they run a pretty tight ship!

A sticker is applied that corresponds to the required service that was booked in online and if you tick the right boxes when booking in online you can get updates on at what point your service is via email or even text message a little bit like ordering pizzas from Dominoes.

After booking in the forks and shocks are picked up for review by Robbie or Aimee who are the senior technicians. They are the guys who look at the job and see what its going to entail before updating the computer system and passing it on to one of the other technicians out in the workshop to carry out the work and it enters the main “workflow”.

Doing things in this way having 2 senior technicians who are responsible for looking over every product and those 2 technicians alone being the only guys who contact customers has enabled all the other technicians to just crack on with the job at hand.

The technicians are left to do what they do best and that’s service and tune all aspects of Fox suspension. The guys on average have to get through about 7 forks or shocks per day to make sure that they can keep up with demand. So much so that in busy periods like at the start of the summer, technicians are sometimes asked to work an extra hour in the morning to deal with the backlog and make sure that they can get you can be back on your bike as fast as possible.

They have all the tools on site that they could ever possibly need from a huge library of spares to a Dyno for testing and even lathes, grinders and drills for when slightly more drastic customisations are required.

Mojo is also the place for warranty’s on any Fox products… Warranties are treated as high priority at Mojo as these are seen as issues that shouldn’t of gone wrong in the first place. They receive slightly preferential treatment and get to jump the queue infront of forks and shocks in for services. In the winter warranty products are usually dealt with within 2 days but at the moment things are very busy and it could be more in the region of 3/4.

The last thing Mojo want is people off their bikes with their forks away for servicing or warranty… The faster the turn around, the better.

After they have finished with the technicians, the girls up stairs will give the customer a ring to sort out payment before they get sent back to the packing bench where they receive a final check and are then carefully packaged for return to the customer with a receipt and detailed breakdown of what’s happened to their forks or shock!

The whole process is slick, efficient and pretty damn impressive! Everyone knows what they are doing and because of that Mojo can deal with such a high volume while maintaining incredibly high standards!

The Mojo Online store…

Mojo actively encourage people to maintain and service their own forks and shocks and pride themselves on the customer service that you can receive after market on fox products.

About 12 months ago Mojo opened their online store that took out the middle man when it came to ordering the small parts, fluids and other oddities that the public require for servicing and maintenance and over the last 12 months it has become a hugely important part of their business.

The web store is an entirely different entity from the servicing that goes on downstairs and is looked over by Ross who is also Mojo’s in house graphic designer.

The best thing for the consumer is that Mojo understand that if they like to push people to take responsibility to undertake there own maintenance they have to make things as easy as possible.

From the store you can purchase all the tools you will need to carry out home servicing from damper removers, shaft clamps, flat sockets and seal presses to pre made “packs” that contain everything you’ll need to do your maintenance at home such as the appropriate seals, float fluid and suspension fluid along with online guides, tech tips videos to guide you and if you still have a question you can drop the guys an email and they will try and help you out as best they can!

An example of the kind of Tech tips you can find on Mojo's website...

There's plenty more where this came from that you can find here...

The Distribution side of things…

Mojo have stock on pretty much every small part from every Fox product that there has ever been through out the years. The depth and range of stock and spares that they carry is absolutely unbelievable.

Its pretty re-assuring as a consumer as there’s no longer any need to worry when the rebound knob gets knocked of your 2009 forks as 99 times out of 100 Mojo will have the spare to get you back on the road again!

Talking with Tom and Ash (from the packing bench whose also in charge of stock control) they said it even amazes them quite how many spares they have in house. You name it we’ve got it!

“It sometimes gets to the point where if somebody wants a fork and we don’t have any in stock on occasions we’ve built entire products from the spares store.”

In the past Fox themselves have contacted Mojo to see if they have stock on small parts that themselves didn't have.

It's like they are the most organised hoarders on the planet!

The Mojo Lifestyle...

Working at Mojo isn’t a job as such. It’s a bit more of a lifestyle. The atmosphere is relaxed and the guys know how to have a good time but at the same time they are all very skilled and it’s all about getting the job done showing the same care to every product as you would treat your own.

Upstairs there’s showers, toilets and a drying room complete with washing machine to make it easier for if you want to ride in to work or nip out at lunch and go for a blast around the local trails. They have a gym and bouldering wall for training and blowing off some steam and there’s even a full barista style coffee machine that you can use all day. It’s all about making it as nice place to be in and around as possible.

It’s almost like you are actively encouraged to try things and push the development of what can be done on bikes in terms of suspension to gain a greater personal understanding of how things work. You can see this is clearly in action just by looking at the staff bike rack.

All graphic design is undertaken inhouse and they even have printers on site to knock up custom stickers for the staff bikes and everything else that needs a sticker on in Mojo. The whole place is clean tidy and runs with millitary precision.

We ran a feature on Joe Taylor’s Orange Alpine 27.5” wheeled custom machine the other day which you can check out here! But there’s loads of other mad machines from the guys including Tim’s 27.5” wheeled Trek to some of Chris Porters insane Mondraker creations.

My visit to Mojo really opened my eyes to quite how slick the operation that they run is. What these guys don’t know or can’t tell you about Fox suspension honestly isn’t worth knowing!

You can find out more about Mojo on there website here… or even book your fox forks or shock in for service here…

A big thanks to Tom for giving up his time to show me around and everyone else for being so friendly!

You can check out a full gallery of photos from Angus' trip here...

Full Gallery