ONE on ONE with SSC
Behind the Scenes at SSC with Joe Ramos
Photos: Go Racing
Go Racing: Give us a little rundown here on the background of SSC. You’ve been around for about the same time frame as Go Racing Magazine.
SSC: We started in 1995 and we started in Seattle. That’s where the company was formed initially. It was actually started by a group of employees at the Cycle Barn which is one of our retail stores up there. Paul Zalud who is now President of Stars was one of those guys and these guys started racing 4-cycle karts in the parking lot at night after the placed was closed. I think it was Paul or someone else started reading in the magazine about shifter karts and we at the retail store had several used CR 125 motorcycles that we could use the engines off of so they asked permission to buy a chassis and get one of the engines and that is how the whole thing started. As they built that kart somebody wanted to buy it, they started building another and somebody wanted to buy that one and then we realized there might be a market for a turn key ready to go shifter kart at the time. Jim Boltz, the owner of the company and SSC called me at that time. I was doing some consulting work for other motorsport companies that I used to work for which was Yamaha Motor Company and Bombardier. My areas were in distribution primarily and in marketing and so Jim says what do you know about karting? Nothing. I said I know they exist and I know that they are kind of a cousin to the motorsport industry I said but outside of that I really don’t know much about it.
Go: You know a little more now though.
SSC: I know a little bit more now. It’s been a little bit over 10-12 years now I guess and learned through the road of hard knocks you know in this industry. So that’s how the whole thing started. After about a year of doing consultation with SSC I suggested to Jim that you know it was ready for it to fly on its own and I could just stay down here in Palm Springs because that’s where I was living and he suggested that maybe the company needed to be moved down there because karting is more popular down in the southern sunny parts.
Go: Were you guys selling CRGs or were you just a dealer for somebody or randomly buying go-karts?
SSC: No actually when we got into it we had enough connections in the motorsports industry that we chased down as to where we can go to import a chassis and we ended up initially importing Top Kart but there was already a Top Kart importer here and how the thing was manipulated not by us but by Top Kart was that they would sell the ship loads of Top Karts to their Australian distributor and drop ship them to us. So we did that for a while but of course Grand Products found out about it and he put the kibosh to it, which I don’t blame him and I didn’t know Grand Products at the time. I wouldn’t have done that to begin with anyway but from there, Grand Products, I think it was Zalud I think that actually that went to Italy and met with Grand Products and they presented another chassis which was called a “Wheel” chassis. So we became the importers for the wheel chassis but we were looking for a - we got to know who the quality guys were in the industry which was at the time Tony Kart. Every kart out there I thought was green.
Go: Even today, I mean you know off the top of your head if you know nothing about karting you’re going to come up with CRG, you’re going to come up with Birel, Tony Kart and Top Kart.
SSC: Exactly.
Go: Those are the big players and if you know nothing about it you’re going to. That’s just a fact. There is a reason there are so many world championships between them. They build a good product and have for a long time.
SSC: You’re absolutely right. At the time we were trying to figure those things out and they were identified to us so we took a look and said we gotta get the best product. When you have the best product there’s a lot of things you can do wrong and it gets you out of trouble sometimes. So we looked at Tony Kart and of course Jean Marcioni (JM Racing) was involved and he was doing an incredible job with Tony Karts everywhere. We looked at Birel and that was Chavetti out of Ontario, Canada. He is Italian and he was part of that Italian culture and family so we thought we probably didn’t have much of a chance there. The only weak link at the time of the three big ones was CRG. Unfortunately Mike Manning had it and Manning was just basically being a dealer not much of a distributor so we elected to approach CRG. My first meeting with CRG was in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was there for the North American Championship, CIK Championship and we presented our position to CRG and being from the motorsport industry I think we overwhelmed him in terms of our forecast and how we were going to run things. So through three days of meetings there in Charlotte I came home with an empty basket. He did not commit to me. What he wanted to do was to keep Manning, he was going to put in Jacobsen in Chicago and then a third distributor out of Buffalo, New York, I can’t remember the name now, for the 100cc and he would award us shifter karts only for the country. I let him know that that wouldn’t be acceptable to us because if we went out there and did a bang up job of marketing that everybody else is going to benefit because you market the brand, right. So we didn’t do a deal but when I got back I put together what I felt was another presentation that would be more acceptable to him and I caught an airplane, went over there to CRG, presented this particular presentation and he bought it, he went for it and we became the North American distributor.
Go: That was what ’97?
SSC: Yes. That was about 1997. So we started our marriage with CRG at that time and it has been a great ride ever since in my opinion and they have a quality product, we were happy to have been able to do that. Then from there we started a spec kart program called Pro Karts and they were Kawasaki engines. We were the importer and distributor of Kawasaki 2-stroke engines. We began to try to promote a spec program at that time which in karting at that time – you know – it was accepted but it wasn’t very interesting to a lot of people. They wanted to do whatever to the engines and word got out I guess where Rotax heard what we were doing and they came into the U.S., right here to Palm Springs to visit with us, wanted to know what we were doing, we were at the time had our Pro Karts and they were all with Gearbox bodywork.
So we presented all that to them and showed them and they bought a bunch of stuff and shipped it back because they were very interested in changing the appearance of European of karts which was the old box style. But then they unveiled their Rotax program to us and showed us what they were doing and they hadn’t yet started with the World Finals but it was already in the plans. The first one was in Puerto Rico and we were a distributor by then but I was very intrigued because first of all I knew Rotax, I was doing consulting with Bombardier who owns Rotax, so I knew the product very well and when they showed me what they were doing that’s exactly where I wanted to go – is a spec seal program that I felt would help grow the industry. You didn’t have to be a wiz mechanic and all of those other things that I felt would invite non-karting enthusiasts but just the general speed freak out there. So that’s how we got involved with the Rotax program and it’s been a great ride I have to say.
Rotax has done an incredible job to develop what is technically the Olympics of karting if you will. I was convinced that we had to really develop our feeder system at the local level so we’ve established 30 regional challenges throughout the country; each challenge runs between eight and ten races a year. Some of them are stand-alone challenges; others are intertwined with local clubs. A good example here in Southern California, we’ve got the Gatorz that’s pretty much a stand alone, LAKC which is a club program and so it has helped the development and growth of the Rotax program. One of things of course that I think has helped mostly is our paying attention to the spec integrity of the program. We’re very, very committed to do everything that we can in our power to maintain the spec integrity and as we have more and more engines out there, more engines are now being sold as used engines and you know it gets more and more difficult to keep it inside the box if you will. But really our best police force out there to ensure that this happens is our customers. When they see that something is going wrong they flag it and we get involved and we investigate it.
Go: We can argue whether or not Rotax is the best TAG motor, but when you’re racing Rotax to Rotax, everybody knows what everybody has, and I think that a lot of the popularity of that particular class is that you know what you have going in, that everyone’s got a fair shake to a certain level. Sure this guys motor might be a tad quicker but it’s probably his carburetor is better tuned or his chassis set up might be a little bit quicker. They’re really pretty even. Looking at the field of International at XPlex, only a second separated the first 25 guys. So that’s pretty close competition considering the difference in driver ability and every other variable. Everybody thinks they’re getting a fair shake. Sometimes you get DQ’d for petty crap that’s just annoying as hell, but at the end of the day if you didn’t have Scott Evans (Tech Director for the USA) nickel and dime’ing you on every single stupid little thing the program would suffer.
SSC: Scott has been a great choice for the Rotax program. He has been committed to it and he does just a phenomenal job. He’s got a lonely job I must say.
Go: He’s not going to be the most popular guy in the pits on any given day. Tech director is a bad place to make friends to begin with and let alone when you’ve got a spec program that calls out every little nut and bolt that he gets to but the worst part is I think he enjoys it.
SSC: He knows that that’s part of the job. When we go to these events he eats by himself or with one of us when we’re around but he doesn’t buddy up with anybody.
Go: That’s why he’s got that house up in the middle of nowhere so people can’t get to it.
SSC: Exactly. So anyway the Rotax program has certainly met what our vision and expectation has been and we’re still excited to keep it going. Nothing lasts forever so you’ve got to be prepared to bring out the next unveiling. Rotax brought out the RM1 which when I saw it I thought it was going to be an absolute homerun. We invested a substantial amount of resources trying to get the notoriety of that product to outside of the karting industry. We hired an ad agency out of Boston and had two major press showings, one in the east and one in the west to magazines throughout the country- not only automotive or kart or motorcycle related but also business related. So we were very, very excited about the launch of that product, but in all honesty it went off like a rocket and then just kind of sizzled. I found out it was a good lesson learned. This industry is very tight in terms of who helps and supports who. The RM1, what I found was that it did not really lend itself to helping anyone else in the industry but ourselves and the person that bought it basically. There’s nobody else that could supply anything for it so the other players in the industry wouldn’t get behind it, the press didn’t get behind it to speak of and so on. So three years into that we met with Rotax and the discussion was to open the chassis thing up to other chassis manufacturers. We felt that it was probably the time to do that. We agreed and now I think there’s around 20 different chassis that make the DD-2 chassis as it’s called. It has certainly helped the growth of that concept now.
Go: Locally here we don’t have a real strong contingent of DD-2 drivers, but nationally have you seen growth with the chassis then?
SSC: Oh yes, we’ve even seen it here on the west but you’re right. The big growth for the DD-2 has occurred mostly in the east, primarily because of the Florida Winter Tour. The excitement that was brought to the DD-2 program and the good press that it brought through the PRI show for example and on into the Winter Tour. So it has given the DD-2 a shot in the arm and we’ve been working hard here on the west to grow the DD-2 program. We have a rental program that basically doesn’t even cover the expense of being out there in any one of those karts. It’s like $150 a weekend.
Go: It’s cost effective.
SSC: Some of these guys are pretty smart though because they wanted to sign up at $150.00 a weekend and we transport it back and forth, they want to sign it up for a year and we go no, the maximum number of rentals at $150.00 is three and then after that you’ve got to decide to either buy it, which we will give you 100 percent of your rental fee back for purchase or you can rent it at a new fee and I think it is $350.00 or $400.00.
Go: Which is still a bargain.
SSC: Yep, it is and you know a lot of guys are actually taking us up now wanting to do that for the Grand Nationals. So its one of those products that is innovative, the engines are solid, they’re 2-speed paddle shift, direct drive, there’s nothing like it in the industry. I know that Rotax has played with the same concept only in a 4-stroke version except that the price now would be a little bit out of reach I think. I think things will stay status quo for a while until Rotax sees the competition heating up and having to do something, they’ll unveil some things that they’ve been working on I’m sure. The Rotax thing has been a real shot in the arm for us and hopefully it has been a shot in the arm for karting.
Go: I think it certainly has I mean it definitely kicked off the TAG movement which I think is good for everybody. I know how much I hated to go to the track and then having to use the starter and it was just a pain in the behind. I raced last in 1997 in the Hortsman 125 and that was basically the leopard before the leopard and it was great. They’re low maintenance and you can’t compete with water-cooled versus the air-cooled and you know a low stall clutch, It just saves you a lot in the end and you can be competitive for a lot longer without having to over do the maintenance stuff, rebuilding your KT100 every single weekend.
SSC: Well what intrigued me and why I wanted to really go that route to begin with was I remember at Yamaha when I was there we brought out the first Japanese motorcross machine. Up to that point they were all European manufacturers of motorcross machines and the first motorcross bike brought out by Yamaha was spot on. It really performed well and it was a good hit but through studies after a couple of years or so, all we could make of this particular model, we found out through our marketing department that the majority of the people were buying these Yamaha motorcross machines were actually out there trail riding with them. We looked at them and said that isn’t the right motorcycle for these guys. It’s too hyper, high maintenance and this kind of thing, it’s great for racing but not for just out there tooling around in the woods. So the engineers went to work here in the U.S., not back in Japan to develop what was ultimately the DT1 Enduro from Yamaha and it was an off-road bike, tuned down allowing the weekend warrior out there to go trail riding and have some fun with it and it wasn’t high maintenance, it was easier to ride and so on and so forth. My experience with that lend me to see that in Rotax, you know as to here’s not such a hyper motor, something that’s going to be high maintenance and most of these guys don’t want to work on them, they want to take them and put them in their garage and two weeks later start it back up and take it back out. So I think that it answered that bell in my opinion and then it brought other TAG motors into the market and then I think it has given a shot to the industry as a result.
When we first started the company going back a little bit, one of the things that our business plan showed is that we wanted to provide the dealer what we felt were the hardcore basics items that a dealership needed. We committed to being a distributor, in the motorcycle industry again if you’re a distributor that’s what you do, you’re a distributor. If you’re a distributor and you retail you won’t have motorcycle dealers buying from you. You’ve got to make a choice. You’ve got to either be in the retail business or in the distributing business and we brought that mentality from the motorsports industry into karting. We committed to being a distributor and we wanted to carry the products of which we felt were essential to our dealer. A chassis was important to find, an engine was important to find which at the time we became the importer for the Kawasaki 2-stroke and we also had Honda because we happened to have Honda dealerships and the third thing was tires. We were the importer for Vega if you remember years ago and then everybody needed a race suit so that’s when we got into Gearbox.
Go: And that was originally Harro’s brand?
SSC: Correct. We bought the name and he was having it manufactured in Mexico by GT Racing, same manufacturer that did off-road motorcycle clothing stuff. But the quality control there was not as we would like.
Go: I remember when the Gearbox suit with the checkered board on the chest came out, that was a really hot suit but you could pretty much guarantee that the crotch was going to rip out of it within like a week.
SSC: We started looking into it and we found a manufacturer in Italy which is MIR they manufacture Gearbox products.
Go: They still manufacture?
SSC: Yeah and we designed our line and they built the products to our specs so it has been a good marriage but its now kind of changed from the original owner Bruno to his son Rick and Rick has tried some new things, some of them work and some of them haven’t but you expect that because he is a go getter, he’s ambitious, he wants to make sure that he stays in the front line of the race apparel industry. He’s got some big boys out there like Sparco to deal with and so on. But our Gearbox has been an edge for us.
Go: Well it’s a great brand. It can cross the barrier of karting to motorsports without any issue. It’s Gearbox. CRG is a great brand in karting and Rotax is a great brand in karting but Gearbox can go anywhere.
SSC: Truly that’s what we saw in it and we’ve toyed with the idea of branching out into other areas of motorsports with a brand name. As a matter of fact, Aaron Justus wanted to come in as a partner a couple of years ago and not only get into other facets of motorsports but also come out with a casual line of clothing for both guys and gals and we investigated that for some time and we didn’t feel our timing was quite right then; at some point I think it is something that should be looked at.
Go: Well I just saw that those guys from Tap Out made something like $8 million in apparel last year on their lame brand. $8 million on Tap Out.
SSC: Incredible. What we were looking at, if you remember Shift had come into the industry, which is Fox and they were doing a great job. They had a lot of resources in that area and they came in with some nice styles that I really liked and I thought well I’m not sure that we can go after and try to complete against that gorilla right now. I told Aaron we need to cool our jets and kind of wait this thing out and see where it goes. Unfortunately, I got to hand it to Shift or Fox because they put their heart and sole in marketing and styling of the product and all and they lasted a couple three years or so and realized that the volume wasn’t there for them in the karting industry so they pulled out. I don’t think that they lost because they really gave it a go.
Go: It’s a different deal going from karting to motorsports versus going motorsports to karting.
SSC: The numbers are just so incredibly different.
Go: And they did have a real innovative design style that was different than any of the typical European stuff that we had, it was uniquely American in the way that it was designed with the camouflage and the knees and elbow pads. Kyle Martin really made that stuff look good on the Track Magics. That was perfect for that race team at the time and they did a good job, but I’d be surprised if it was even three years.
SSC: What they found is what we know too, our Gearbox line extends beyond just branding of CRG in our case or Rotax, but it goes out without branding.
Go: It needs to be different colors so that if you drive a Tony Kart you have no problems buying a Gearbox driving suit.
SSC: Right. We have that, we actually design a whole line, its called the High Tech line that has the green and the blue and the red that goes along with - Top Kart it’s blue and the red is of course Birel and the green is Tony Kart and so on. We did not put the brand names on them but I felt that if a person wanted to go ahead and put the name brand on it that they could go ahead. But in all honesty we probably sell as many brand suits as we do the rest of the line. That was a problem for Shift and I recognized that problem when they came in as to how many died in the wool, Birel drivers, Tony Kart drivers, CRG drivers, on and on and on.
Go: The average Joe racer at So Cal Sprinters is not going to spend $400.00 on their driving suit.
SSC: So the Gearbox thing for us keeps kind of plugging along and we’re not catching the world on fire in terms of the race wear industry but it is still making a profit for us. Our dealers know where to go for that. Going back to our original business plan, we decided to stop at the key lines of products to our dealers and not try to be everything to them. We have stayed pretty true to those colors. Every once in a while we could tend to do this and that but we eventually come back to our core. That’s been a good decision for our company.
Go: I don’t want to say that you guys pioneered the giant circus tents aspect of karting but going back to the start of SSC and Pat Long most people were pitting out of the back of their pickup truck. I remember your first trailer with Pat couldn’t have 
been more than 20 feet long. That was twice as long as the trailer that most people had. You had the doublewide EZ Up and it brought a whole new level of keeping up with the Joneses in the pits to karting. Even JM who is by far the king of drivers and chassis and everything at the time their setup wasn’t nearly as slick as what you guys rolled out once it was established that hey we’re going to bring the show and try to generate some buzz in the pit lane and stuff on that.
SSC: Its funny you say that because we abandoned that somewhat because we stopped really doing a lot of local racing and kind of put our shingles on the Rotax program as well as just supporting the Stars thing you know with Gary Carlton. We’re just in the mix of doing that again as a matter of fact. The manufacturer that we bought those tents from and the original tent was up in Canada and so we’re having tents built again.