September 1, 2011
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Talking with Jared Rosen and Jonas Cooper of Lethal Performance, you can hear the enthusiasm in their voices. The two friends share a passion for their business, commitment to their customers and willingness to embrace new technology that drives sales—even through a rocky recession. In fact, focusing on their customers and great customer service is what brought them such success.
The two started Lethal Performance after Rosen—a Ford Mustang owner and enthusiast—was online researching aftermarket performance parts for his car. He discovered chat rooms and forums filled with potential customers. “There were lots of people out there looking to purchase specialty, niche items,” Rosen recounts. “So we decided to put together a website, do some marketing and see if we could drum up some sales.”
From zero to seven million
With only some garage space and less than $10,000—their only startup capital was the few thousand dollars they each invested—they got their website up and running and started marketing themselves in the online forums dedicated to their target market: late-model Mustang owners.
“Our first month, we did $2,800 in sales. By the sixth month, we’d done $44,000 in sales,” Cooper says, reviewing his records. “Fast forward to last month, which was $756,000. Every month where sales went up we were surprised that people were buying so many car parts, and it really hasn’t stopped since 2005.”
Even during the economic downturn, when Rosen’s “other job” as a real estate broker took a huge hit, Lethal Performance sales continued to climb. “When everyone out there was lamenting ‘the economy, the economy, the economy,’ we saw only growth year after year,” Rosen notes.
“It just keeps blowing us away,” Cooper jumps in. “Our first year we did a little over $100,000, and last year was closer to $7 million. That’s in the span of five years.”
Thriving, not just surviving
One big factor contributing to their continued growth is their marketing. These two have a keen understanding of their audience and their brand image; they maintain a consistent message and persona—right down to their telephone hold audio: energetic, heavy-leaning instrumentals often voiced over by up-tempo marketing messages.
Over the last few years, when the competition scaled back their marketing, Lethal Performance took a different approach. “That’s when we decided to go full blast with all the marketing and advertising stuff we wanted to do,” says Cooper. “When other people were turning it down we amped it up, and that’s actually when things really turned our way.”
Knowing that their customers are part of a strong community that likes to share their discoveries has also proved invaluable…particularly in their online marketing. “Viral marketing accounts for upwards of 70 percent of our traffic,” notes Cooper. “YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook—the viral stuff has been huge for us, especially with the explosion of social media.”
But they’re not content to stick with what’s safe. “We’ve explored other avenues totally unrelated to our industry to help us market our products.” Rosen explains, “We’ve done some cross-branding with mixed martial arts, which has become such a huge sport followed by so many people. We’re involved with a couple of really well-known MMA fighters, and although I wasn’t sure having a little logo on their shorts was gonna bring us a million hits on our website, it has helped.”
Reputation, reputation, reputation
Customer service and satisfaction are paramount in a market where the culture is heavily influenced by customer recommendations. So even though Lethal Performance employs only a team of six, they provide personal service to each client.
“We’re known for offering top-level customer service,” Rosen emphasizes. “People call up and they know us on a first-name basis. That’s helped us build our customer base. They’ll keep coming back to us no matter how many cars they go through, ’cause they feel at home. That’s important.”
Word spreads far and wide among car enthusiasts when they find a product or company they can rely on. That’s why Lethal Performance has customers even in the Middle East and Europe. “From what we hear from clients there, it’s very difficult to find companies that can actually deliver product in a timely fashion internationally,” says Cooper. “So being able to get all of our product ready to go, shipped out and tracked from door to door, that’s been huge for us—especially internationally.”
Quickly fulfilling and shipping orders, whether domestic or international, is key to customer satisfaction. “There are a lot of items that people want right away, and it’s very important that we have them and get them out the same day,” Cooper explains. “FedEx was kind enough to come in here and basically integrate our entire warehouse for us. So it’s streamlined our shipping process tremendously. In terms of domestic shipping, FedEx is all we use—that’s the only way we’re willing to ship to people. The service we get from them is like the service our customers expect from us.”
Small = nimble
Maintaining a small, tight crew has afforded Lethal Performance with the agility that otherwise often falls prey to the bureaucracy of big-business competitors. And they take full advantage of their speed.
“The big guys carry huge brands, but we were able to quickly pick up and present newer emerging technologies in our industry—products from smaller companies that don’t have huge marketing budgets and aren’t in with the big companies yet—from some mom-and-pop vendors who make really, really cool products but just had no way to bring it to market,” Cooper reveals with a hint of pride. “We were able to really help them get a foothold in the marketplace and put their product out in front of hundreds of thousands of people. And I think we’ve helped launch some pretty successful companies.”
The guys make quick, well-informed decisions and don’t waste any time getting word out about new products. Cooper says candidly, “Basically, we can turn on a dime. Jared will get a call from someone, and we’ll look at the product for a few minutes, have a conversation about it, and then we’ll make the deal. The next day we’ll send an e-mail blast out, and just go all out to try and market the product. First-to-market is a very big thing for us.”
Kate Fisher is a Minneapolis-based writer and editor.
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