Classic,sports,racing car industry. Product sales?

[Edmundo2]

As the title suggests I wondered if anyone had experience of selling products into the classic, sports, or race car industry? I imagine it's a fairly sizeable industry and that it could prove to be a nice environment in which to work if you were employed by a successful company and you were the right individual etc..

No doubt the majority of top positions are held by those with many years experience in that arena and with the right knowledge/specialisms etc. However, would it be fair to assume that someone with a good track record in technical sales /product development/account management etc from another industry, and with a motor qualification and a good depth of knowledge + owner/club racer background, could transition across?

I'm talking products such as specialist parts, lubricants, refinshers supplies, tools, etc..

Any thoughts or experiences welcome + any advice on best agencies/trade press to seek out

Cheers,

Ed

[Edmundo2]

Bump

[Skylinecrazy]

I'd post this in the 'yesterday's heroes' bit mate, few classic racers over there.

[NightDriver]

Edmundo2 said:

As the title suggests I wondered if anyone had experience of selling products into the classic, sports, or race car industry? I imagine it's a fairly sizeable industry and that it could prove to be a nice environment in which to work if you were employed by a successful company and you were the right individual etc..

No doubt the majority of top positions are held by those with many years experience in that arena and with the right knowledge/specialisms etc. However, would it be fair to assume that someone with a good track record in technical sales /product development/account management etc from another industry, and with a motor qualification and a good depth of knowledge + owner/club racer background, could transition across?

I'm talking products such as specialist parts, lubricants, refinshers supplies, tools, etc..

Any thoughts or experiences welcome + any advice on best agencies/trade press to seek out

Cheers,

Ed

It's a funny industry because whilst there is a lot of money floating around, their aren't a huge amount of products or companies which sell massively across all sectors.

When you think of a race car, most of the big budget teams go out and design/make most things themselves. You get a few specialists who manage to supply most sectors (ATL, Goodrich etc) but you will find most teams go directly to them because their the best and the volumes are spread across many different customers.. most only buying a handful per year.

I run a design consultancy working mainly in this industry and we take on various bits of work from component design to full vehicle work and, to be honest, I can count on my hands the amount of times we have had sales guys getting in contact with us. And when we have, its generally been from the product company owner themselves. Considering we spec many standard parts in our designs you would think we would get more, but its a mixture of most people not knowing we exist and the ones that do have no idea who we're working for!

In my opinion, the biggest sales side of these industries is with the manufacturing guys. CNC machines, tooling, test machines etc. And to most of these suppliers the motorsport side is only a tiny fraction of their business.

Your best bet for motor sport specific would be electronics (ECUs and data acquistion) suppliers, power train suppliers (Cosworth etc) and transmissions (X trac, Hewland Ricardo). Sorry, probably not much help.. But good luck!