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Kenny Price at Samson got into the aftermarket exhaust business out of
necessity…there wasn’t anything on the market that suited him. “By 1991,”
Kenny says, “styles had stagnated. There wasn’t any excitement in the
exhaust aftermarket. Nothing was new, nothing was different.” Kenny, who
many people have come to know as Kenny Samson, knew he could do better. A
Journeyman machinist, he bought some old tube bending equipment from a
company going out of business and, with a scrapbook spilling over with fresh
ideas, Samson Exhaust was born.
It didn’t take long before people realized Kenny was right. His pipes had
style, they had sound, they had attitude. It was a one-man operation in the
beginning, too. Besides designing and manufacturing those new exhausts Kenny
made up all the flyers for his new business and mailed them out. By March of
1992 he had his first industry customer, Freedom Harley-Davidson in Denver,
Colorado. “They bought my pipes for the new Dyna,” Kenny remembers. “It was
a Harley model no one had yet done anything for. I’ll never forget it.” A
lot has changed in the following 13 years.
Samson Exhaust has grown to become a dominant force in the motorcycle
exhaust aftermarket. Samson is one of the biggest names in the Drag
Specialties and Parts Unlimited catalogs, and Samson’s own catalogs list
more than 400 different pipes and mufflers. The one-man operation is now
home to a staff of 130, and they work in a brand-new 80,000 square foot
plant with a separate 40,000 square foot chrome-plating facility, both in
Anaheim, California. Samson Motorcycle Products now offers more styles of
exhaust systems, with more applications, than anyone else in the business,
and the business has expanded from those original Harley-Davidson pipes to
include the metric cruiser market with the Shogun line and the V-twin
performance market with the Caliber brand. Drag Specialties and Parts
Unlimited carries it all.
Drag Specialties and Parts Unlimited, in fact, are Samson’s biggest and best
customers. Kenny explains his company’s growth and success in simple terms.
“What riders want,” he says, “is exactly what I wanted back in ’91. Quality,
style, a great sound, performance and pipes and mufflers that fit like
they’re supposed to.” He makes it sound easy, but before any new
Samson/Shogun/Caliber part is released, Kenny and his crew have spent untold
hours on R&D refining the look, the sound and the style. They’ve made sure
the new design perfectly fits the bike it’s meant for and will install and
perform flawlessly. Test bikes are on the lifts all the time, “And we’re
always planning and developing for the future,” Kenny says. Every
Samson/Shogun/Caliber design comes from the mind of one man, too, the guy
who started it all, Kenny. To fuel his imagination and keep things fresh
Kenny travels the country extensively, talking to riders, dealers and
distributors everywhere. He’ll ask what they think, what they want, what
they’re missing and what Samson can do for them. And then he’ll give it to
them. Kenny makes it all sound like fun, and to him it is. “Motorcycles are
my life,” he says, “and they will be forever.”
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