Founder & CEO
Hank Desjardins
35+ years of building, leading, and scaling powersports brands.
Walnut Creek, California
35+ years of building, leading, and scaling powersports brands.
Walnut Creek, California
Hank Desjardins founded Eight Foot Brands on a simple conviction: the powersports aftermarket deserves partners who have actually built the brands, run the retailers, and navigated the distribution maze firsthand — not consultants with a slide deck.
Over 35 years in the industry, Hank has helped architect the only successful national retail roll-out in powersports history, led marketing and brand strategy for a $485M aftermarket distributor, and built his own brand and content ventures from scratch. He's worked every side of the table — retail, distribution, brand, DTC, and venture — and knows where the leverage points are.
Eight Foot Brands is the studio he built to put all of that experience to work for the next generation of powersports and adventure lifestyle brands. Partnership-first. Operator-led. Built to win.
A career spanning retail, distribution, brand, and venture — built on authentic relationships and real-world operational experience.
Eight Foot Brands
Founded Eight Foot Brands as a brand acceleration studio for the powersports and adventure lifestyle space. Services span digital transformation, DTC solutions, B2B e-commerce, M&A, and IP management and development — with flexible engagement models from retainer to equity to revenue-share.
Chrome Asylum Productions / MotoCola
Built a powersports and active lifestyle studio specializing in brand identity, omni-channel marketing, product launches, packaging design, category naming, and social content strategy. Focused on real-world operators — not agency theory.
Tucker Rocky / Biker's Choice
Led marketing, merchandising, and product strategy for one of the largest aftermarket distributors in powersports — $485M company, 500+ brands. Principle architect of TR/BC's internal advertising agency model. Increased own-brand penetration from 17% to over 30% of sales. Led the B2B e-commerce platform roll-out (EpiServer) and content digitization (Agility DAM).
Cycle Gear (21 years)
One of the key architects of the only successful national retail roll-out in powersports history. Scaled from 5 stores in Northern California to 100+ locations across the country. Built Cycle Gear Direct e-commerce, led own-brand development, and ran every direct mail campaign including six stand-alone catalogs. Final role: CMO & GM of Direct (Cyclegear.com), responsible for 40% of corporate staff.
American Federation of Motorcyclists
Board-level service to the riding community — giving back to the sport that shaped his career.
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
San Francisco State University
Four decades of rides, routes, rallies, and the people that make the sport what it is. This is the authentic version — not a stock library.
These are leaders, founders, and operators Hank has worked alongside across four decades of powersports. Their words — unedited.
I had the pleasure of working with and learning from Hank as I entered into the exciting motorcycle industry. Hank is an industry expert and extremely forward thinking in understanding where the industry is going. He was very helpful in helping me build brands and how to market them to the correct target markets.
Hank revitalized the Bikers Choice and Twin Power Brands while at Tucker Rocky. Leading the branding, marketing strategies and awareness campaigns he was critical to the success and growth of these brands!
In the 35+ years I've known Hank he's proven to be a solid industry leader and brand builder.
Hank is a visionary and effective leader in branding, sales, marketing and retail. He understands how to connect products, services, employees and consumers very effectively. Hank also knows how to improve the performance of both people and products.
I was fortunate to work with Hank on many successful projects for over 10 years. Initially with our collaboration at Cycle Gear and then later with the development of the Speed and Strength brand at Tucker Rocky. His creative value add came with high motor energy, financial accountabilities, and unique go to market vision. Better yet, he's an authentic motorcyclist who wears his life long passion for the motorcycle industry in his throttle hand.
Ten plus years working with Hank taught me one thing; when he's focused on your brand, great things happen. He has the rare ability to cut through the noise — while building positioning that sticks, marketing that moves people, and leading teams that actually execute. Starting his own company is the natural next step for someone with his talent and drive. Back him without hesitation.
Hank is personally taking inbound during the launch phase. If you have a brand at a crossroads — whether you're looking to relaunch, level up, or exit — let's talk.
Let's Ride