TECH BMX Pants — The Brand I Built at 15

Written by Bill Ryan · firsthand · hosted on Legend Bike Co

I lost my first company to a letter. I was a kid with a frame brand called Hi-Tech BMX, and somebody with lawyers didn't like the name. The threat was simple — drop "Hi-Tech" or get sued. So I shut it down. But I wasn't about to throw the name in the trash. I cut it in half, kept the back end, and put it on race pants. That's where TECH came from. A teenager who got pushed out of one business and refused to walk away empty-handed.

Where the name came from

Back up a couple of years. I started Hi-Tech BMX at 13. A frame company. Thirteen years old, building frames. That's how deep in this I was before I could even drive. The Hi-Tech name brought the lawsuit threat, and rather than burn money I didn't have fighting it, I closed the doors. The frame design didn't die, though — it carried on as the National Pro. And the name didn't die either. It just got shorter. Hi-Tech became TECH, and TECH went on pants instead of tubing.

People think a brand has to start clean, with a plan and a logo and a runway. Mine started with a problem. I took the part of the old company nobody could take from me and built something new on it. That's the whole origin. No boardroom. A bedroom.

Running a company out of my bedroom

6912 Tahiti Drive, Cypress, California. That was the address. The factory, the office, the shipping department, all of it, was my room. I was 15. I'd cut and sew and pack and figure out the next order, and then I'd go to school. There's a version of this story people like to make sound romantic. It wasn't romantic. It was a lot of late nights and a lot of getting it wrong before I got it right.

But it worked. The pants got good. And once the pants got good, the phone started ringing.

TECH Racing Pants — the product that built it

TECH Racing Pants was the lead. That was the product that put the name on the map. By the mid-'80s I wasn't just making pants for kids at the local track — I was supplying real programs. The Redline factory team wore TECH. Haro came to me. S&M. Cyclecraft. Diamond Back. And plenty of others through the '80s.

Think about that for a second. These were some of the biggest names in the sport, and their riders were racing in pants made by a teenager in a bedroom in Cypress. I didn't have a sales force. I had a product that held up and a price that worked, and word got around. That's it. That's how a 15-year-old ends up supplying half the factory teams in BMX.

It ran like that from 1984 all the way through 1993. Nine years. From sophomore in high school to a grown man with a real business.

Who we actually made gear for

Here is the part of TECH that has never been written down anywhere, and it is the reason this chapter got bigger.

We sold to a lot of shops and a lot of companies. But the part that mattered to me was the work we did with a name on it. Not just pants on a rack — pants and jerseys made for a specific team, or in one case for one guy who needed a pair.

We made the S&M pants and jerseys. We made the S&S pants and jerseys — S&S Bikes, the Sheehans' shop in Texas. We made pants for some of the Peddlepower riders. We made them for Redline and for Haro. We made a pair of pants for Justin Green while he was on Diamond Back. We made pants for Alan Foster and Brian Lopes while they were on Elf. The L&S team. The Boss team. And more — I said "etc." when I listed those off, and I meant it. That is not the whole list. It is the part I can still name.

Which S&S it was — settled

One name on that list needed pinning down, because this library carries two completely unrelated companies called S&S and works hard to keep them apart. Asked which one I meant, I said the Sheehans' shop in Texas.

That is S&S Bikes of Pflugerville, Texas — Michelle and Ryan Sheehan, the shop behind Tiger Teeth. TECH made their pants and their jerseys.

Not to be confused with: S&S Performance — Street & Strip Performance Products — a Southern California outfit that sponsored Pete Loncarevich in 1978. Different company, different state, no connection to TECH. Both chapters carry a note telling readers not to mix the two up, and that note stays where it is.

What is settled is who, not when. Like every other account on this page, the S&S Bikes work is my recollection and nothing more — no invoice, catalog page or advertisement has turned up for it, and I gave no years, no volumes and no terms. If you have a jersey with the label still in it, tell us.

Names here with no chapter yet

Several names on this page have nowhere to link to, so they run in plain text and get flagged rather than invented. Justin Green, who got a pair of TECH pants while he was riding for Diamond Back. Alan Foster, on Elf alongside Brian Lopes. Jon Agnew, one of the three of us on the heat press. The L&S team. And Elf itself.

Elf is the one that stands out. This library already records — from Bill Ryan's own firsthand account of the S&M production chain — that when Elf went out of business, S&M bought all of Elf's manufacturing equipment and moved frame building in house. A brand whose tooling ended up under the S&M shield, with Alan Foster and Brian Lopes on its team, is a chapter waiting to be written. It is named here as a candidate. Nothing has been created for it.

The shop that stocked it, and the heat press

The factory teams are the part people remember. Shops sold TECH too, and this chapter has never named one until now, so here it is. Rob Lynch's Peddlepower over in Orange carried TECH pants — the same Rob Lynch who ran Power Racing Products and the Privateer frame out of that counter, and the same Rob Lynch who was very mad at me for calling my own shop Power Plus Cycles.

TECH had a heat press by then, and it lived at Power Plus. That is where the TECH jerseys got printed, and it did a lot more than jerseys. Billy Griggs, Jon Agnew and I used that press to make T-shirts and jerseys and whatever else the week called for. It was always making something special.

Rob belongs in that story too, and I want it put down more precisely than this page had it before. Rob had his own heat transfers made up for his jerseys, and no way to put them on. So we let him borrow ours and use it at our shop. He brought the artwork; we had the machine. That is how his Power Racing Products jerseys and his Privateer jerseys got printed.

And every time he did it, we'd find Peddlepower decals all over the bathrooms.

One thing I want straight — TECH is not Max

People mix these up, so let me put it plainly. TECH was mine. I built it. Max BMX Pants was a different animal — a Torker brand that ran from 1980 to 1985. Different company, different roots, different story.

Here's the part that's funny if you've followed my path. Both of those pant brands live under my roof today. Max came in through Torker. TECH was always mine. Two separate threads from the early '80s, and somehow they both ended up in my hands all these years later. But don't let anybody tell you they were ever the same thing. They weren't.

TECH today

The thing about TECH is it never really stopped. It runs today as TECH BMX Products, and it's under my guardianship now. Same name I cut out of Hi-Tech when I was a kid, still going. There aren't many BMX brands that can trace a straight line back to a bedroom in 1984 and still be operating. This one can.

One of the proudest jobs came a long way past the bedroom days. When Samantha Cools raced at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — the first time BMX was ever an Olympic sport — she rode in a pair of custom TECH BMX shorts. They were sewn by JMV Dreeswear, the same Velasquez family shop that made AERO and Max pants back in the day, and it turned out to be the last job that shop ever took on. A brand I started in a bedroom at 15 ended up on the start gate at the Olympic Games.

Related Legend Bike Co. chapters

• Hi-Tech BMX — where the TECH name was born
• Max Racing Pants — the separate Torker pant brand, now under the same roof
• Rob Lynch — the Peddlepower owner who stocked TECH pants and borrowed the press to put his own transfers on his jerseys
• Billy Griggs — one of the three men on the TECH heat press
• Redline · Haro · S&M · Diamond Back · Boss Racing · SE Racing
• Brian Lopes · Bill Ryan · Supercross BMX
• The two unrelated S&S companies: S&S Bikes (Pflugerville, Texas) — the one TECH made pants and jerseys for · S&S Performance (Southern California) — no connection to TECH
• The History of BMX (1970-1995)

Sources

The spine of this page is firsthand — Bill Ryan, the founder and owner, telling his own story. Supporting and corroborating references: Supercross BMX official history (supercrossbmx.com), which records TECH as Bill's number-plate and racing-pant company; Torker Racing — Max BMX collection page, noting Ryan launched TECH Racing Pants at 15 in 1984 from his bedroom, supplying Redline, Haro, S&M, and Cyclecraft; bmxultra.com — "Interview with Bill Ryan: 30 Years of Supercross BMX"; FatBMX — "Preserving BMX History, Episode 86: Bill Ryan"; Legend Bike Co. — "How the Former Pro Got Its Name." Period magazine archives at oldschoolmags.com (BMX Action, BMX Plus!, 1986-1988) confirm TECH product in the BMX market of the era. Bill Ryan, firsthand, September 2026 — source for Peddlepower selling TECH pants, and for TECH's heat press living at Power Plus Cycles and printing the TECH jerseys. Bill Ryan, firsthand, September 2026 — source for the client list on this page: that TECH sold to a lot of shops and companies, and made the S&M pants and jerseys, the S&S Bikes pants and jerseys, pants for some of the Peddlepower riders, pants for Redline and Haro, a pair of pants for Justin Green while he was on Diamond Back, pants for Alan Foster and Brian Lopes while they were on Elf, and gear for the L&S team and the Boss team, with his own note that the list is not exhaustive. That list is testimony rather than documented trade record; no period invoice, catalog or advertisement has been located for any of it, and Legend Bike Co. records it under the same evidence standard it applies to any other brand, as set out in How This Library Is Made. Bill Ryan, firsthand, September 2026 — asked which of the library's two unrelated S&S companies he meant, he answered the Sheehans' shop in Texas, identifying S&S Bikes of Pflugerville and not S&S Performance of Southern California. This resolves an open question carried on an earlier version of this page. No dates, volumes or terms were given for that account either, and none have been inferred. Same source, same date, for the heat press: that Billy Griggs, Jon Agnew and Bill Ryan used it to make T-shirts and jerseys and that it was always making something special; and that Rob Lynch had his own heat transfers for his jerseys but no way of putting them on, so Ryan let him borrow the press and use it at the shop, after which Peddlepower decals turned up all over the bathrooms. This corrects an earlier wording on this page and on the Rob Lynch chapter, which had recorded Lynch as simply using or borrowing the press without noting that he brought his own transfers. No dates were given for any of it and none are inferred.