Features

July 3, 2006 – High-profile additions

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Distributor Tucker Rocky showed off a slew of new suppliers at its June 2-4 sales meeting, including a European helmet giant and a transfer from Global Motorsport Group.
More than 85 vendors appeared at the three-day event, including Shark helmets, a big player in the European market that is now making a concentrated push into the United States, and Teknic, which recently changed its major distributor from Global to Tucker Rocky.
“We are thrilled to be having another record year,” said Bill Carter, Tucker Rocky’s vice president of marketing. “A lot of it has to do with the aggressiveness that we’ve had for several years now of adding new products, new vendors. … It continues with some pretty dramatic, well-known lines in significant segments.”
In fact, Tucker Rocky has added 19 new vendors since this year’s Dealer Expo show.
Tucker Rocky had so many new vendors this spring that the company changed how it introduces its off-road line. Traditionally, the new vendors are announced at the June show. This year, Tucker Rocky announced the additional suppliers early and started the summer sales process by providing new product information to sales reps on May 1.
“I knew that some of the product was going to come in earlier than it ever has,” said Glenn Urquhart, Tucker Rocky’s director of ATV segment. “I wanted to go ahead and turn the rep community loose.”
The early results have been extremely positive, Urquhart said.
“I’m staggered by the amount of back orders and preorders that they’ve already written,” he said.
Urquhart also announced that about two-thirds of the new vendors are already in stock and available for shipping. “The rest of them are en route and this time next week all of these new vendors will be in stock,” he said on June 2.
The additions include a host of new ATV-related accessories, an area of continued growth for the Texas-based distributor. The company’s new ATV catalog — more than 950 pages long — is as big, company executives estimate, as the entire Tucker Rocky catalog was five years ago.
“I’m expecting our entire ATV segment to benefit from these dozen, dozen and a half new vendors that we brought in,” Urquhart said. “Dealers that may have gone somewhere else to get these items will now come to us to get these items as well as their helmet needs and tire needs.”
Here’s a look at some of those new Tucker Rocky vendors and news about other brands:
Teknic
The manufacturer known for its street bike apparel line switched its major distribution company in hopes of reaching a broader consumer base.
“We believed to move Teknic forward in terms of market penetration, market share and increased distribution the brand needs and requires that we needed to be with an organization that could provide that service,” said Chris Hayes, CEO of Specialty Sports Limited, the company that manufactures the Teknic line.
“Global has had some challenging times over the past few years,” Hayes said of the company’s change in major distributors. “We wish them the best. We enjoyed working with them. But obviously their challenges have made it hard to achieve the goals that we wanted to achieve.”
Hayes said there are “a lot of markets where we didn’t have active road reps for the past few years.” That will change with the move to Tucker Rocky, he said.
The company, Hayes said, is ready to increase production if the need arises. Specialty Sports, based out of Rockford, Mich., manufactures in different sites overseas, including in China, Italy and Vietnam.
Besides its street apparel line, Teknic also features casual wear, a women’s line and other accessories, like luggage and armor.
Teknic will continue to be distributed by Marshall Distributing.
Shark helmets
The France-based company is one of the top, if the not top, selling helmets sold under one brand name in Europe, said Christophe Miravalls, Shark’s export director.
With Tucker Rocky, the company will make its first concentrated effort at reaching the U.S. consumer base. Shark originally came to the North American market in 2001 primarily in Canada with Kimpex. The Canadian distributor brought limited quantities of Shark helmets into the United States, but nothing like what Shark is doing now.
Why the delay in coming in a more concentrated effort to the U.S. market?
“We were struggling to supply enough for our existing European markets and now that we have developed (additional) capacity, we can approach the U.S. market,” Miravalls said.
Shark has two manufacturing sites, one in Thailand and one in Portugal. The latter started producing helmets in 2002. Overall, the company manufactures 400,000 helmets per year.
When it came time to pick a U.S. distributor, Robin Cartau, director of the North American market for Shark, said the company had a clear-cut decision.
“Since the very beginning it was clear in our mind, even though we approached some other distributors, we wanted to work with Tucker,” Cartau said. “We felt they were close to us in terms of the passion they have for this industry.”
The units sold in the United States, which are DOT-approved, will be the same as the ones selling in Europe. The U.S. product will be distributed solely through Tucker Rocky.
“Shark helmets is a good fit for us in that mid-premium range,” Tucker Rocky’s Carter said.
Shark hopes to lure U.S. dealers with its training options and its merchandising and point-of-purchase tools. “We want it to be a self-selling area,” Miravalls said of the Shark merchandising area.
Shark, which will be available to U.S. dealers this month, also features a Web site consumers can visit. The Web site features educational hints, including how to clean a helmet and its liner.
H-Bomb Films, Division 4
The Fallbrook, Calif.-based company grew out of a former professional racer’s desire to show his motorcycle racing buddies that he could do just as much or better on a quad.
“I’m going to make a movie to show you what quads can do,” Wes Miller told his friends.
Miller wound up making a series of DVDs that Fox Racing distributed. He later incorporated a clothing line, called Division 4, and a freestyle team, named The Bomb Squad, with his H-Bomb Films.
Until recently signing with Tucker Rocky, Miller said he distributed his clothing directly to about 100 dealers and to consumers through his Web site. Miller’s lines and his films gained exposure through his sponsorship of ATV racing.
“They’re a fast-paced, action film that will appeal to a Gen X market more so than (an older consumer) who has a utility quad,” Miller said, adding that his DVDs are family oriented. “We try to make it a dad that rides can buy it and still watch it with his kids.”
Miller’s company has about four full-time employees and employs up to eight during his busy seasons.
Rain Riders Industries
A group of investors is trying to break into the competitive ATV accessory market with an easily removable quad top. The patented product, as the name suggests, allows quad riders to be shielded from the rain. It features waterproof polyester and tent-like poles that help keep the top in place.
“Lot of the tops out there are (permanent) hard-framed tops,” said John Jones, one of the investors of the Charleston, W.Va., company. The Rain Rider top can be placed on any ATV with either a front wrack or rear wrack in less than five minutes without any tools, the investors said.
“It’s on there when you need it and it’s off when you don’t,” Jones said.
Jones is one of a handful of investors that started the company in November 2005 after buying the convertible top concept. The quad tops, which are manufactured in China, also are distributed through Parts Unlimited.
Rain Riders Industries, which advertised the product with an Outdoor Channel TV ad, has sold about 2,000 of the tops so far. “We would like to (sell) 10,000 units this year and at least double that next year,” Jones said.
Tucker Rocky’s Urquhart said he has used the cab on his father’s ATV for the past six months and has been impressed with it. “The product is great,” he said, Rain Riders investors “just didn’t have their pricing right to where our dealers can sell it.
“We worked with (them) for quite some time, probably over a year,” Urquhart said, noting that price has been a stumbling block for other cabs the distributor has carried. “And they finally realized that we were right on the pricing issue, and they lowered their price to us so that the retail will be $299, instead of $450.”
The cab comes in different color options, including camouflage, and includes a gun pouch.
Blingstar Industries
The Riverside, Calif.-based company known in the quad racing industry for its Nerf Bars and racing bumpers has previously sold dealer direct. “And they’ve been very successful at it,” said Urquhart. “So it’s not a new brand. It’s just new to us.”
Blingstar has been so successful that the company is adding a new facility in July. The company, owned by partners Freddie Sheppard and Clint Roberts, will move its sales and distribution force into an 18,000 square foot facility in Carson, which is not far from its Riverside manufacturing facilities.
The company currently has 25 manufacturing employees and 17 in sales and distribution. That number could be growing as the company expands its California offices.
Kenda
Tucker Rocky picked up Kenda’s “sticky” line this year, according to John Leale, Kenda’s sales manager for North America.
Sticky is a rubber compound that grips cement and conforms to a trail or race track instead of slipping or bouncing, according to a Kenda catalog.
“It’s been a really good seller for us,” Leale said of the sticky line, which Kenda introduced more than a year ago. “It’s a knobby tire, so it works in the dirt. And now it’s got the sticky compound so now it works in the two or three corners (of a race track) that get really hard.” psb

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