Skip Hess
Founder of BMX Products, Inc. / Mongoose. Inventor of the Motomag wheel. USA BMX Hall of Fame, Industry, 1986.
A Legend Bike Co. founder history page. Sourced primarily from vintagemongoose.com (Skip Hess's own bio + 2007 interview), the USA BMX Hall of Fame entry, Wikipedia, oldschoolmags.com period magazine archives, bmxsociety.com forum threads, and the universityofbmx.com history archive.
From Chicago to the San Fernando Valley
Skip Hess was born February 6, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois. His family moved to San Diego, he served in the U.S. Navy, and he came out of San Diego State University with a mechanical engineering degree in his hand. Then he went to work. Through the 1960s and into the early 1970s he put in his time across southern California aerospace and the bicycle trade, stacking up the kind of hands-on manufacturing know-how that most guys in BMX never had. That background is the whole story of what came next.
1974 — the Motomag, then the company
The product came first. The company came after. In June 1974, working out of his garage and a small Chatsworth shop, Hess built the first version of what became the Motomag — a one-piece, cast-aluminum BMX wheel that did away with the spoked rims kids were forever bending on jumps. He had the wheels cast at the Cragar foundry over in Compton, the same shop that poured Cragar's mag wheels for cars. Every one of them got machined and assembled back in Chatsworth.
The Motomag was a hit from the first race weekend. Hess incorporated BMX Products, Inc. in September 1974 with co-founder Bill Miller, and the company put the Motomag into volume production.
The Mongoose name, late 1975
The Mongoose brand name came from a friend — Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen, the NHRA Funny Car drag racer. McEwen picked up the nickname back in 1964 as the foil to Don "The Snake" Prudhomme. The mongoose kills the cobra. That snake-and-mongoose tour packed drag strips for two decades. Hess trademarked the Mongoose name between 1975 and early 1976, and the first complete Mongoose bike rolled out in late 1975 — a TIG-welded chromoly frame, Motomag wheels, and a hard-anodized aluminum stem and bars.
By the middle of the decade, the complete Mongoose was the BMX bike most kids fell asleep dreaming about. Redline was the engineer's brand. SE was Scot Breithaupt's brand. Mongoose was the one on the cover of the magazine.
1979 — the Mongoose Grand National flashpoint
By 1979 BMX Products was big enough to put its name on a sanction's biggest race of the year. Mongoose title-sponsored the NBA Mongoose Grand National. It started well and it ended badly — one of the public feuds that helped pull the National Bicycle Association apart. Period BMX Action coverage and Wikipedia's NBA entry both lay out the dispute in detail. The NBA folded not long after. What Hess took out of it was simple: BMX Products had to be its own engine, not riding on any one sanction's back.
The international move
Gerrit Does — the Dutch promoter who would go on to co-found the IBMXF — came to the Chatsworth factory in 1978 to study what Hess had built. In 1985 Hess flew the other direction, to Slagharen in the Netherlands, the home of European BMX, to see the continent's biggest BMX park with his own eyes. Mongoose went global partly because the man running it kept showing up where the riders were.
1985 — the sale to American Recreation Group
By 1985 BMX Products had outgrown what one private owner could run. American Recreation Group, a publicly traded leisure company, bought BMX Products in 1985 — the first time a public company had swallowed an original BMX manufacturer. The deal closed late 1985 with the formal handover running into 1986. Hess stayed on as president of BMX Products under the new owners until 1991.
From American Recreation Group, Mongoose passed through Bell Sports, then Brunswick, then Pacific Cycle in 1997, Dorel Industries in 2004, and Pon Holdings in 2021. The brand is still here.
1986 — USA BMX Hall of Fame
The American Bicycle Association put Skip Hess into the National BMX Hall of Fame — now the USA BMX Hall of Fame — in 1986, in the Industry category, the year after the American Recreation Group sale closed. The citation walks the whole thing: the Motomag wheel, the company founding, the Mongoose name, and the brand's first decade of growth.
2019 — BMX Society Lifetime Achievement
On May 18, 2019, the BMX Society community handed Hess its Lifetime Achievement Award at a Southern California heritage event. That appearance is the most recent publicly documented sighting of him in the BMX industry.
What Skip Hess actually built
The riders most tied to the Mongoose factory team — John George, Jeff Kosmala, Eric Rupe, Tinker Juarez, and the rest — carried the brand through the late 1970s and 1980s. The Mongoose Pro Class, Two-Four, Californian, Supergoose, and Kos Kruiser (Jeff Kosmala's signature bike) ended up some of the most-recognized BMX bikes ever sold.
But the deeper thing he built was a manufacturing operation that proved BMX could be a real consumer-products industry. Before BMX Products, the business was small shops welding one frame at a time. After BMX Products, it was a category that could move tens of thousands of units a year through dealer networks. Every brand that came after Mongoose copied that model.
Sources
USA BMX Hall of Fame — Skip Hess (1986, Industry) at usabmx.com/about/hall-of-fame/943. vintagemongoose.com — Skip Hess bio (birth date, SDSU degree, Bill Miller cofounder, 1985 sale, 1991 presidency end). vintagemongoose.com — Mongoose company history and Motomag wheel history. vintagemongoose.com — Mongoose riders factory roster index. 23mag.com — BMX Action 1978 period coverage of Mongoose-titled NBA events. Wikipedia — Mongoose (company): full ownership chain Bell→Brunswick→Pacific→Dorel→Pon. Wikipedia — National Bicycle Association: 1979 Grand National dispute documented from BMX Action sources. universityofbmx.com — 1978-1979 history, including Gerrit Does's visit. universityofbmx.com — "2004 The Skip Hess Mongoose Story" 1985 Slagharen visit reference. oldschoolmags.com — BMX Action / BMX Plus! / Super BMX period coverage of Mongoose factory team. bmxsociety.com — multiple threads referencing the 2019 Lifetime Achievement event.
Skip Hess and Legend Bike Co.
Skip Hess isn't a Legend Bike Co. co-founder, but the company he built defined the consumer-product side of BMX for a generation. The Mongoose name on a frame, the Motomag wheel under it, and the factory team racing it set the bar every other BMX brand had to clear — including SE Racing, where Bill Ryan started in 1981, and the line of brands Bill founded after. The path Hess walked — mechanical engineer with a manufacturing mindset, founder of a single-product company that grew into a category-defining brand — is the same path most of the BMX founders on this site walked behind him.
Related pages
Core: History of BMX · Mongoose (the brand he founded) · SE Racing · Redline · Linn Kastan (Redline founder, peer Hall of Famer).
Mongoose factory riders documented on Legend Bike Co.: Eric Rupe · Darwin Griffin
Peer founders + builders: Scot Breithaupt · Bob Osborn · Bob Haro · Jim Melton · Ernie Alexander
Riders: Scot Breithaupt · Eddie Fiola · Greg Hill · Mike Miranda · Perry Kramer · Pete Loncarevich · R.L. Osborn · Stu Thomsen · Todd Anderson · Tommy Brackens · Denny Davidow · Clint Miller · Jeff Bottema · Damian Fulton · Billy Griggs · Brian Bogi Givens · Todd Steen · Martin Aparijo · Matt Hadan · Eddy King · Byron Friday · Bob Haro · Frank Post · Kevin McNeal · Brian Hernandez · Eric Rupe · Darwin Griffin
Brands: CW Racing · Diamond Back · Centurion Cycles · GT · Haro · Hoffman Bikes · Hutch · JMC · Schwinn · Skyway · S&M Bikes · Torker · Webco · TW BMX · California Racing Designs · Bottema Forks · Hustler Bikes · Voris Dixon Bikes · Hyper Bikes · Hi-Tech BMX · Panda Racing Products · Robinson Racing · Free Agent · White Bear · Rebel Racing · Titan BMX · Brian Scura / BS Bikeworks · LRV · S&S Performance · Bassett Bikes