Today we’re excited to be connecting with Brian Hoffman again. If you haven’t already, we suggest you check out our prior conversation with them here.
Brian, thanks for joining us again. Just to level set a bit for folks who may have missed our last interview together, can you briefly introduce yourself?
Hello again Voyager! My name is Brian Hoffman, I am an inventor and social impact entrepreneur in San Diego.
My team and I are currently working on scaling two projects:
At Doghook we make heavy duty dog hitches for use in home, businesses pet care and hospitality. We have been selling Doghooks for 10 years now and have become the top choice for pet professionals around the world. In 2025 our goal is to sustain our vigorous growth and to land an account with a major US retailer. Our mission remains to make the world a safer and more inviting place for dogs and dog lovers.
Last year was pretty rough in all honesty. Last winter I was forced to completely rebuild the Doghook team from the bottom up. With Chris and Coleman aboard we reimagined the product, packaging and brand in ways that have been transformational. This allowed us to really figure out what was important and what we needed to work on. We made the time to get manufacturing and supply chain dialed in, our packaging updated and our website and Amazon presences up to speed. 2024 was a building year and 2025 looks like the year that Doghook will really scale, excited!
At Ebike Cargo we design and manufacture locking, aluminum (panniers) cargo cases for bicycles. Velockers will be used widely for personal mobility and logistics in the very near future. In 2025 we will be launching our generation 2 “Velocker” cargo systems and a new front mounted case. If all goes to plan we will be doing several pilot programs with bike manufacturers and delivery providers in 2025 to demonstrate what truly sustainable last mile logistics looks like. We will also continue our core mission of helping people use bicycles and e-bikes for their daily mobility needs.
Awesome, so we reached out because we wanted to hear all about what you have been up to since we last connected.
Running small, bootstrapped, independent businesses in this day and age is not easy, even if you have really good ideas, a great team and a solid plan. The existence of well meaning investors out in the world looking for worthy causes to invest in and contribute to seems like an ancient fairy tale about a far away land. The only way that we can afford to grow and innovate independently is because I have some generational wealth and 3 very diversified businesses.
In 2024 our team brought an event called the “Disaster Relief Trials” to San Diego. In sponsoring and organizing DRT we brought together the San Diego cargo bike community for a day in August for a 15 mile race carrying incredible amounts of emergency supplies around town by bike. The idea of DRT is to demonstrate the usefulness of cargo bikes while building a core team of capable, prepared volunteers to deploy in the event of an emergency.
We also have begun recording a new podcast and youtube channel about bike transportation, sustainability and preparedness. Look for “The Alley of Death” coming soon to youtube and your favorite podcatcher.
In 2024 we again tried to attract green investors, applied for a few IRA grants and did a lot of outreach to supposed impact organizations. I can say that the current capitalist system that the “impact” business community is built upon has many internal contradictions and is generally not helping to build a more sustainable world. Generating vast amounts of data about how unsustainable the modern consumer lifestyle is, then selling carbon offset credits is not a solution. It is a malicious and dangerous distraction.
If anyone who reads this article has resources and wants to nurture and support real sustainability solutions, we would love to talk.
We have now arrived at one of our favorite parts of the interview – the lightning round. We’ll ask you a few quick questions to give us all some fun insights about you.
- Favorite Movie: Don’t Look Up
- Favorite Book: The Deluge
- Favorite TV Show: The Great Simplification
- Favorite Band or Artist: Bambu
- Sweet or Savory: Savory and sweet
- Mountains or Beach: Beach
- Favorite Sport (to watch): Football
- Favorite Sport (to play): Surfing, cycling
- Did you play sports growing up (if so which ones): soccer, baseball tennis
- As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up: retired
- French Fries or Onion Rings: french fries
- Chuck Rhodes or Bobby Axelrod: both greedy douche bags
- Favorite Cartoon growing up: Captain Caveman
- Favorite Childhood movie: Goonies
- Favorite Breakfast Food: waffles
Life is often about tough choices – can you talk to us about your thought process, strategy or philosophy when it comes to making difficult choices or tradeoffs.
In life and business I think that it is important to think long term. When making major decisions I usually consider the short, medium and long term consequences with special weight given to the latter. In 2024 I endured an incredible amount of short term pain while rebuilding my team. Now that we are on the other side and through the pain, our team is much stronger than ever before. Now we are facing the future with confidence and cohesion that simply did not exist before. Thinking longer term successfully does however require a grasp of history and an understanding of our trajectory into
coming decades. The future will be what we make it, hellscape or utopia, it is up to us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ebikecargo.com and https://www.doghook.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doghook
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doghook.inc
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-hoffman-40b07764/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EbikeCargo
Image Credits
Brian Hoffman, photos
Lucie Rice, Doghook Illustration
David Cuzick, DRT Image
