Giant Loop

“Giant Loop was born during the Great Recession. My buddy lost all of his work and couldn’t make mortgage payments on the dream house he’d built just before the crash. To save his farm, I offered to use my life savings of $5000 to pay for our first sewing run of Giant Loop Saddlebags, and build a website to sell and promote those products. We formed Giant Loop LLC in August 2008, and the first Giant Loop Saddlebags shipped to customers that fall.” – Harold Olaf Cecil

Harold hails from Bend, Oregon in the USA. “I was born here, and my children are the fourth generation of a motorcycling family. “My father, uncle, and grandfather all rode motorcycles. My Uncle Bob Cecil gave my brother, sister and I a used Kawasaki Coyote, a mini bike with a pull handle to start and a rigid frame, and we’d ride it on a little oval dirt track on our neighbors’ property when we were around age five or six.” It was this early start that had Harold on two wheels even before he was old enough to ride on the road legally. “It has always been my ticket to freedom, exploration, and adventure. At Giant Loop, we like to say adventure is a mindset, not a motorcycle type. I was a motorcycle commuter throughout university, and when I worked in the San Francisco Bay Area after college, I never owned a car until I got married. I sometimes joke that my first ‘adventure ride’ was sneaking into Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness on single track trail on my Honda Z50 when I was nine years old. Several miles up a steep, rocky switchbacked trail I encountered a horse packing outfitter who soundly scolded me and told me to turn around and never do it again. I followed his advice!”

“When I moved back to Bend in 1995 I had no motorcycle because I’d sold my street bike before my wife and I backpacked through Mexico and Central America in 1992. So a street legal dirt bike was the obvious choice for me since the pavement ends a mile from my home. I can easily access thousands of miles of Forest Service and BLM roads along with single-track OHV trails. I ended up purchasing a Honda XR600R with a Baja Designs light kit to make it street legal. It opened up a new world of possibility for me.” It was during this time that Harold’s adventurous spirit led him to see the need for practical and robust luggage solutions that could be carried on a dual purpose motorcycle without the need for specially fabricated and cumbersome luggage racks. “Giant Loop represents a strange, unplanned culmination of my varied work life and travels. The first part of my career was focused on journalism, and I wrote for a pioneering adventure travel magazine called EcoTraveler that sent me on several trips and made me gear review editor. Writing gear reviews immersed me in the outdoor products world, and I eventually hopped the fence into marketing for outdoor companies when the magazine folded. I worked for a couple of small advertising agencies, and at the time I started Giant Loop I owned a small marketing firm called Ad HOC.”

“Originally, Giant Loop was going to be a dual sport touring company, offering ‘giant loop’ tours that began and ended here in Bend. But the financial realities of the start-up costs were beyond our reach at the time.” Then Harold got introduced to a friend of friends who worked at a local climbing gear company. “We started by sewing up small ballistic bags that bolted to the side panels and rear fender of our bikes. Back then we were not satisfied with the available luggage options, and we wanted to apply our outdoor and adventure travel mindset to packing and traveling on motorcycles. Lighter, more durable, more stable and fewer parts to fail was and is the goal. Then when got our hands on a KTM 525 EXC with its single piece of rear plastic, both side panels and rear fender are one connected piece, and that’s when we had our ‘light bulb’ moment. Instead of three separate bags, why not connect them into a single horseshoe shape? This led to our original Giant Loop Saddlebag design in 2006, and the first production batch when we officially launched the company in 2008 with the pioneering design.”

“By early 2009, we had been contacted by Adventure Spec in the UK and Adventure Moto in Australia about importing and selling our products. And things took off from there. From the beginning, we viewed Giant Loop as a global business, and this perspective helped us get the company up and running despite the dismal economic conditions in the USA, and especially in motorcycling when 30% off US motorcycle shops had to close their doors. Fast forward to the time the recession was ending, and Giant Loop should have been hitting full stride. However, the implosion of my business partnership nearly ended the whole ride. Forced into a position of buying my partner out or walking away from four years of blood, sweat, and tears, I was able to find a banker who believed in Giant Loop and saw the potential in our business. With an SBA loan, I sent my former partner packing with check in hand, and the past six years have been all about moving forward and growing organically. We have incrementally pushed forward, step by step, and last year was our best yet! I’m just too stubborn and too in love with what I do to quit.”

“Ideally, we want at least two bikes in the shed: a dual sport and adventuring touring motorcycle. With these bikes, we cover most of our bases for the kind of riding that is our focus. At the moment though our KTM 1090 Adventure R is my rider since our dual sport still has a snow bike kit on it from the winter. We get our motorcycles just like most everyone else. We put a deposit down and wait for delivery, then make the monthly loan payments. We don’t get any special breaks or deals. We are also brand agnostic at Giant Loop, we love to ride, and we will ride it all. We choose bikes based on how they fit our mission as a company, and we get zero help or support from any motorcycle manufacturers. If it has two wheels and motor, count us in.” Harold’s stable currently parks a 2013 KTM 500 EXC and a 2017 KTM 1090 Adventure R with a wide range of aftermarket accessories and upgrades fitted. And as expected they also do the GL brand proud. “On the EXC, my day riding kit consists of the MoJavi Saddlebag, Diablo Pro Tank Bag, Fender Bag, and Zigzag Handlebar Bag. For overnight or longer trips, I go with the Coyote Saddlebag, a couple of Possibles Pouches, exterior pockets for tire kit and tools, a Diablo Pro Tank Bag plus Pannier Pockets and Zigzag Handlebar Bag.”

“Since we got the 2017 KTM 1090 Adventure R, I’ve been riding it with rack-mounted MotoTrekk Panniers and Round The World Panniers with lockable, quick-release Pannier Mounts. I also leave the Possibles Pouches on the engine guards and ride with the Fandango Pro Tank Bag plus Pannier Pockets. I never really remove these bags because they’re never in the way. Then I add various bags, depending on the riding. For example, two-up with Mrs. Giant Loop, we add a double-ended Columbia Dry Bag behind her, or maybe even a Klamath Tail Rack Pack for shorter rides.”

And as for finding the roads and tracks to use all this gear on: “I like maps and a compass, and I always carry them. They don’t fail, and my Viking ancestors successfully navigated the globe with them centuries ago. That is why I only began using GPS when we started hosting our annual ride eight years ago to record tracks to share with customers. GPS units are great for giving your present location, for following a track or recording one. But GPS units, however, are not so great for creating routes. Although, increasingly, I’m using my smartphone mounted to my bars for much of my GPS navigation and mapping. Last season, I made up all of my routes every day as I rode using the Avenza maps application with Benchmark Maps of the areas where I rode pre-loaded into the phone.”

Harold also reports that there is a lot to look forward to for Giant Loop this coming riding season; “We’re super excited about 2019, with several new and updated products in the works. Currently, we’re pre-selling a new Tail Rack that provides secure anchor points on plastic rear fenders, as well as an updated version of our award-winning, quick-connect, lockable Pannier Mounts, which we introduced last year but repeatedly sold out of because our production couldn’t keep up with demand. This spring, we will roll out new Tracker Packer holsters for the SPOT Gen3 and Garmin inReach Mini. Also on the sewing table, a major redesign of our smallest Buckin’ Roll Tank Bag. For us, great ideas are the easy part. The hard part for us has always been figuring out how to pay for upfront start-up costs. So we will also be pursuing capital investment this year to help us accelerate the pace and get the backlog of new solutions for motorcycle riders to production.”

“I worry more about other riders, my friends and customers, more then I do about myself. So, one of my most difficult moments was getting a call that a friend had crashed badly in the eastern Oregon desert at our annual ride. Bikes can be fixed or replaced. People are more fragile and totally irreplaceable. The worry and stress of getting a downed rider out of a remote location and safely transported to medical care presented the biggest emotional challenge in a lifetime of riding for me. This story had a happy ending though, with our friend making a full recovery. But life is short and precious so ride while you can because there are no guarantees or refunds at the end of life’s journey.”

Find out more on Giant Loop products on their website or follow along on their Instagram page.

All images copyright of the individual photographer. Images supplied in order of appearance by Two Wheeled Nomad, Giant Loop, Donni Reddington, Two Wheeled Nomad, Brad Tawzer, Giant Loop, Amsoil Inc, WLF Enduro and Juan Brown.