Super73, which builds electric bikes that look like off-road motorcycles, appears to be recuperating from a near-death experience.
After years of rapid growth, it hit potholes in 2024.
Problems with customer service and inventories struck. Its workforce shrank from 200 to 30. It had to abandon its 70,000-square-foot facility in Irvine and relocate to a smaller building in San Clemente.
“We were moving so fast, we were missing fundamental building within the business, so that when the hard times hit, there was no foundation for us to hunker down onto,” Co-founder Michael Cannavo told the Business Journal.
“I loved it too much to just accept defeat.”
Previously, Super73 had ridden the boom in electric bikes, an industry that quadrupled in size to an estimated 1 million units in the U.S. in 2022.
It’s also a fragmented market where numerous companies have tried to enter, resulting in several high-profile bankruptcies. Last October, Costa Mesa-based Electric Bicycle Co. filed for Chapter 7 liquidation, citing the rising tariffs.
Lost Footing
The electric bike maker was founded in 2016 by Cannavo, Aaron Wong and LeGrand Crewse. They named the company Super73 in recognition of the 1973 gas crisis that “forced people to get out of their cars and rethink transportation.”
They began fundraising with a Kickstarter campaign for 25 bikes and quickly built annual production to the thousands.
The company’s growth was “fast and attractive but dramatic,” Cannavo said.
Their electric bicycles became famous through customized orders from celebrities like Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg, as well as brand collaborations with Red Bull Racing and HALO. It even made an appearance in the hit movie “Barbie.”
Chief Executive Crewse aimed to turn Super73 into a technology company – eyeing a motorcycle dubbed C1X and other projects.
The company was also on the cusp of launching into brick-and-mortar, but by 2023, e-bike demand was sliding back to pre-pandemic levels.
Cannavo said the uptick in e-bike demand created by the pandemic had given the industry false expectations for future growth.
Worse, customer reactions soured in 2024, the first red flag, he added.
Quality control was down, issues were overflowing and the staff was dwindling. Unanswered complaints were piling up every day, Cannavo said.
Consumers would call about repairs, but Super73 bikes lacked a key component – interchangeable spare parts.
“Our old stuff, we would design it by what we thought was cool. So, when it comes down to spare parts, every bike needed a different spare part,” Cannavo explained, adding that Super73 was “carrying thousands of SKUs for spares.”
Many times, the solution was to replace the entire bike, Cannavo said, with profit taking a major hit.
Cannavo said the missteps led to “throwing things overboard,” such as extra inventory, as the company needed cash.
Super73 had to move out of its Irvine headquarters, started selling excess inventory to improve cash flow, and parted ways with Crewse.
It was around this time that bicycle manufacturing veteran Travis Erwin came on board.
The company convinced investors to stay the course. Its latest fundraising was for $25 million in 2023.
The New Coach
Last year, Erwin was promoted to CEO, which Cannavo described as “getting a new head coach.”
By the end of 2025, Super73 said sales were growing again and it was profitable with a team of only 42 employees.
In mid-March, Super73 launched the new A-Series motorbikes, the company’s first line of new bikes since 2020 with new seat heights and secondary battery technology.
“The team is itching to run because we’ve been walking for so long,” Cannavo said.
Now, the company is planning to relocate its headquarters and retail showroom back to Irvine at the Intersect office campus by June.
“We’re in an incredible position for growth, which we have not been in years,” Cannavo said.
A CEO Found on LinkedIn
Travis Erwin was a semi-retired bicycle expert who enjoyed posting about his 20-year career in manufacturing and specialty retail on LinkedIn, where Super73 executives spotted him.
His retail career started at Pivot Cycles in Phoenix, where he learned about manufacturing, prototyping, supply chain management, international sales and distribution.
“I acted like a sponge there,” Erwin said. “It was like being on the inside.”
He later held several leadership roles at Reynolds Cycling in Sandy, Utah, before moving to Colorado to work as the chief revenue officer at The Pro’s Closet.
Erwin had not heard of Super73 before he was approached about a job at the manufacturer. He decided to join after meeting co-founders Michael Cannavo and Aaron Wong, who were co-CEOs at the time.
Diagnosis and Treatment
Erwin started as chief operating officer in August 2024, declining an initial offer to become CEO.
“He challenged us,” Cannavo said. “Travis said, ‘I’m not going to take the role from you until you feel like you’ve learned everything you can learn in the role and then give it to me.’”
Erwin said Cannavo and Wong “needed to feel this pain for a bit.”
When he arrived at Super73, Erwin saw that the company “was in much more dire straits” than he expected.
Erwin said his strategy to keep Super73 alive was “focusing on the 80/20” — “what is the 20% of products that is doing 80% of our revenue? What are the 20% of complaints that are flooding 80% of our resources?”
“It was almost like how an emergency room looks at triage,” he told the Business Journal, adding that customer service was drowning. “I took time dissecting and listening to customers, dealers and sales representatives.”
Erwin focused on fixing pain points in the customer service division and rebuilding a sustainable spare parts inventory before growing sales.
“I wanted to make sure that operationally, we could support the customers that we had already gained,” he said.
He became CEO in October when Super73 had stabilized.
