"You Don't Want to Forget About Your Grassroots Customers..." | Kevin Bailey on Race Winning Brands 2

The powersports industry is loaded with companies supplying products we need and love to make our motorcycles better, faster, and to look cooler. Many of those companies are owned by a larger group that oversees them all. Race Winning Brands is a leading manufacturer of high-performance parts including Wiseco, Rekluse, and Pro-X. I reached out to their Marketing Manager, Kevin Bailey, to learn about the company and their involvement with our sport. We all like to support those that have a true passion for moto and Kevin and RWB fit that bill.

For the full interview, check out the Vital MX podcast right here. If you're interested in the condensed written version, scroll down just a bit further.

Jamie Guida – Vital MX: You are the Marketing Manager for Race Winning Brands, which owns a bunch of companies that are involved in multiple different facets of automotive racing. Tell us about that.

Kevin Bailey: We are a group of companies in the powersports and automotive sectors, pretty much all in performance part manufacturing. We have just about any engine component there is and a couple of things outside of the engine as well. It's a group of individual performance companies, a lot of legacy companies too, that have been around for a long time in the different areas of motorsports.

Vital MX: On the moto side there's Wiseco, Pro-X, and Rekluse. Before we get going, I'd like to get a bit of your background. Did you grow up in the moto industry and riding motocross?

Kevin: I did. I've been riding since I was four years old. I grew up a little more on the off-road side, though. I was born and raised in SoCal and I grew up doing a lot of off-road stuff. So, District 37 stuff in the HiDez, that whole thing. I still do quite a bit of that. I'm part of the Desert Motorcycle Club with District 37 and I help put on some races and participate in races when I can. So yeah, I definitely grew up around it. I've been with R.W.B. for going on 6 years now, this month. Before this, I spent some time at Pro Circuit as well. So, in the industry for close to nine years.

Vital MX: At Pro Circuit you worked in accounts payable. Before that, you went to business school. Was the goal to get into the moto industry?

Kevin: At the time I didn't have a hard-set goal of getting into the moto industry. While I was going to school, I got a job at Pro Circuit. It just kind of happened on its own. I saw them post an office position and I applied, and I ended up getting the call. When I initially got hired, they needed someone that was part-time, essentially, and I was going to school full-time so that worked okay. I went to Cal State, San Bernardino, and I always liked the business side of things, but I wanted to keep it somewhat general to keep my options open. You never know what might come along. It worked out that once I graduated or right around the time I was graduating the opportunity, which initially started out as a Content Marketing Coordinator for powersports, at R.W.B. was starting to grow and get their feet wet. We didn't have Rekluse then either, so they needed a powersports dedicated person and it worked out they were looking for that position as I was finishing school.

Vital MX: Did the Pro Circuit and R.W.B. jobs feel like a dream come true? The opportunity to work in the industry that you were passionate about.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. I'm very grateful to be able to deal with this stuff every day. I couldn't imagine doing something that you don't care either way about. I don't take it for granted for sure. I know every time I'm at a race, an event, doing social media, or anything in between, it's awesome to be able to relay into something that I've been doing my whole life.

Vital MX: What are your day-to-day roles at Race Winning Brands?

Kevin: Oh man, I have quite a few hats on the hat rack that I wear. So overall, kind of everything overarching marketing. Right now, we have a big focus on some new websites with e-commerce growth. There's been a lot of work on the content side and even the data side for our new websites that are coming. Everything from handling advertising, advertising budgets between digital and print, and social media sponsorships. I handle the sponsorships on the powersports side of things for a handful of our brands alongside some of the Rekluse team, and all the small stuff in between those major categories, too. It can stack up to be quite a bit at times. It's also nice to have some variation throughout the day. I'm never doing the same thing every day, that's for sure.

Vital MX: How much focus from R.W.B. does the moto side get compared to the automotive side? Is one more important than the other and do you oversee all of it?

Kevin: I wouldn't say that I completely oversee all of it, but I am involved in marketing with all of our brands. So, I wouldn't say that automotive is more important than powersports or vice versa. We do have quite a few more automotive companies in our portfolio, but that's definitely not to say that it's more important. We refer to some of our brands as our Legacy Brands, which is somebody like Wiseco and the big guys that our group initially started with that have such a long history in their respective areas of motorsports. Wiseco is deeply rooted as a powersports company and is still to this day for sure. So, it does kind of depend on the brand, I would say. We stick to the roots and what Wiseco is known for. If you use Wiseco as an example, it started out as a powersports performance company with two-stroke performance engines between marine, go-karts, dirt bikes, and everything like that. The two-stroke piston is still the best-selling Wiseco piston today. 

Vital MX: Coming from an accounts payable position to what you're doing now, were there a lot of things that you had to learn when it came to marketing?

Kevin: So, I did get hired as accounts payable, but anybody that knows Pro Circuit as pretty quickly as it progressed, you start helping out with a little bit of everything. Working up in the office there, everybody kind of helped out with areas that might have needed help. The AP stuff was my main focus, but answering phone calls and giving customers tech support pretty much every day, placing orders for customers, taking hosting tours when they were doing tours before COVID for some of the European tourists that were coming over for Supercross, it was a little bit of everything. I didn't necessarily dip my hand in marketing directly at Pro Circuit, but I did help with some copywriting for ads or product descriptions and things like that to a certain extent. So, I did have a small hand in it a bit and it was nice because I got experience in several different areas of the business at PC. To circle back to your question, once I came to R.W.B., I had some product marketing experience, and from school too. There's definitely a lot to learn, especially on the content marketing side, SCO (Social Channel Optimization), and how deep you can dive into the digital side of marketing, which is the leader today, of course. I've learned a ton over these past six years for sure. I wasn't coming into it as an expert, that's for sure.

Vital MX: I want to ask about that because the scope of marketing has evolved so much in the last ten or 15 years with digital content. Probably 15 years ago, print ads were a huge factor. Maybe not so much now, but now you have websites and all the social media platforms. These things are always evolving. How do you keep up with all that? How do you figure all that out and what do you focus on as the primary marketing tool?

Kevin: Yeah, it's definitely tough. There are tons of different avenues that you can take and in each particular avenue, if you look at Meta or you know, Facebook, you can dive in and there are so many different ways to try to reach your existing customers, reach your potential customers. Then you go look at the Google avenue and the other social platforms. It's overwhelming for sure. Something that is important to focus on is who your customers are and where your customers are and focus on those avenues first. You know, make sure you're reaching your core people that have been with you for a long time and serving them up with what they need for support, and what they like to see. Then you also identify other areas where you can best reach your new potential customers. If you try to go all in and just embrace all these different things, there's just not enough time in the day for that. You're going to end up with half effort on all these different areas just because there are so many ways to go about it. On the digital side, I think it's important to understand what your demographic is and who you're trying to reach. That helps you narrow down what the best channels are.

Vital MX: Within the moto industry, how do you decide the best way to reach the consumer between sponsoring riders and teams, advertising with media outlets, doing events, and other options?

Kevin: That's a good question. On one hand, as you said, working with advertising partners is no longer just doing print ads or even digital ads anymore. If you're talking about a website, it's trial and error, which trial and error is a huge part of the digital scene. Doing it 2 or 3 different ways and seeing which one works best and then expanding on that one way that works best. So, working with advertising partners has evolved into things that we've seen work better to where now we'll approach it with, “Okay, we want to work with you guys on a social post for this product. We want to do a sponsored technical article for this product.” Maybe we want to do a sponsored video spot, or we have a pre-roll video commercial for some video aspects, things like that. Things like that tend to engage a lot more than more traditional forms of advertising. Then, the sponsorship side is a big part of it too. You have to focus on your grassroots people, especially with brands like Wiseco and Pro-X, you know, the core motocross and off-road folks. The dual sports adventure bikes, too. It's the people that are working 9 to 5 per se, but just love to go do it. That's the core and you can't forget about those people because that's who we are, too. We're not professional racers, so you don't want to forget about your grassroots customers and those racers that are just doing it because they love it. That's where some of those local events, like the Two-stroke Championships at Glen Helen we do with Wiseco, where those core events really let you get out there supporting it at a local level and connecting with it. It's also important on the other hand to keep working with some core high-level teams like Honda HRC or Pro Circuit. That plays a big hand in product development at the highest level to fine-tune the product and you can in turn take that back down to the customer for all the end users. I'd also say that it helps give people an idea that there's some legitimacy to the product because if it's able to compete at the highest level, then it's definitely able to do what a weekend warrior might need to do.

Vital MX: A lot of times these groups come in and they buy up some companies and maybe they don't have a passion for the industry. Do the people behind Race Winning Brands have a passion for the sport in your opinion?

Kevin: Yeah, I do feel our ownership group does have a passion for it, and that's part of the reason that they're in it. When they acquired Race Winning Brands as a group, I don't think they would have been looking into acquiring a company of performance part manufacturers if they didn't have a passion for that side of things. There are some people on our board of directors that are building their own cars. They have everything from LS engines and are building Shelby's and things like that. It's very important that they can continue so that companies like Wiseco and Pro-X can keep living true to their legacy. They also have a heavy focus on North American manufacturing, which I think is important. It’s why they’ve aligned with R.W.B. and are continuing to push the ‘Made In the USA’ point. Wiseco Pistons have been made in Ohio for its entire life for 80 plus years and they continue to embrace that. 

Vital MX: Working in this industry, what's one of the coolest things you've got to be involved with, or maybe some people that you met that were really exciting to have the chance to meet?

Kevin: That's definitely been a huge part of it. I would say dealing with different sponsored riders or sponsored teams, etcetera, because from the outside, when you're a kid and you're watching racing, you have your heroes. You know all the riders and names that you see, and they seem to be at a celebrity level in our sport's capacity anyway. Now in my position, whether you're working with a team manager or you're texting about some business getting something handled, it’s like, “I'm texting Lars Lindstrom right now” or whatever. Sometimes you take a step back and you're like, “This is kind of crazy.” If I had told my 12 or 13-year-old self they wouldn't have believed me. Something that stands out is Travis Pastrana who’s been a Wiseco-sponsored athlete for a long time. I got to do a video with him when he was prepping for MXdN for Team Puerto Rico. We went out to Pala and filmed a video with him and interviewed him. That was a really cool experience.

Vital MX: What's the future for Race Winning Brands? Is anything new coming? 

Kevin: We're going to keep building on what we're building on. The industry had record numbers coming right out of COVID and things are settling back down again. We're just going to keep building on what we're doing. We're still in development, always working on trying to improve the product, improve pistons, new forging designs, and things like that. We're going to keep working with some of the great partners we're working with, keep supporting all the new platforms and keep doing what we're doing. 

Vital MX: You just said something about new forging designs. That's kind of interesting. I don't know a lot about manufacturing in general with that kind of stuff. What are some new technologies that are helping improve the integrity of the parts? 

Kevin: Really, it's every year the OEMs come out with a new bike and OEM compression gets higher every single time a new 450 comes out, it seems like, or even a 250 for that matter. OEM power delivery is better with every new model, etcetera. So, things keep getting so much better from the OEM that it gets to a point where you have to adapt and adjust your approach a bit because you want to offer something that is an advantage over OEM. In the earlier four-stroke days that was just bumping it up a half point or a point of compression because compression ratios were lower, and you had a noticeable increase in power. Well, now you buy a new KTM 450, and the thing comes with like 13 ½ to one compression and it's already out of the box a race bike essentially. What we've done is try to do some benchmark data. We have a dyno that we use in-house and we dyno parts to see not just performance, but we see where things are wearing. If there's wear on the skirts or wear on the cylinder, ring grooves, things like that. So, we've used that data to try to optimize our forging designs so that we can keep parts light but try to improve where they might be more susceptible to wear. We can offer a part that has really solid performance and possibly even better performance, but then also has had some improved durability and be overall an optimized piece, whether somebody is racing or they're just riding for fun.