Ivy Hartman: Continuing our coverage here at the SEMA 2008 Spring Expo. I am with Andy Barbieri who is the National Sales Executive for SkyJacker suspensions which is a small business exhibiting here at the spring show. Talk about SkyJacker.
Andy Barbieri: Well SkyJacker is a company that—we have been in business for 34 years. Started in and it is still in West Monroe Louisiana and we build suspension kits and systems for light trucks and sport utility vehicles from 1955 and all the way up to 2008.
Ivy Hartman: You have been doing it a long time, so as we see the market go up and down, what is the secret to this small business in this industry keeping its head out of the water?
Andy Barbieri: Well you have got to adapt with the changes in the market and that’s what we try to do. You know we make every kind of leveling and lift kit from mild, right up to wild. You know everything from a very inexpensive leveling kit up to an eight-inch rack ready kit for a TJ or six-inch rack ready kit with a new JKG.
Ivy Hartman: When you talk about the industry and its customization—your consumer, are you distributing to other small businesses who can install your stuff, or you guys doing it yourself?
Andy Barbieri: No we go to market and we go to—we are selling to warehouse distributors who in turn sell to some of the jobbers that you are seeing walking around the aisles here. And that’s how we kind of get three-step distribution and then they sell it to the consumer.
Ivy Hartman: And then installation. Who is—do you have to train those people or—?
Andy Barbieri: We have some installation videos with some of our more complicated kits. We have a person who is, pretty much their sole purpose is a, we have a training manager that goes around trains the jobbers and the WD’s around the country on the features and benefits of our product.
Ivy Hartman: How do you prepare your business to come to this exhibit and be successful?
Andy Barbieri: Well we bring some of our, our you know, our most newest applications. We have them on rolling displays, we brought our rig with us, and we brought some vehicles you see these two—’07 Thunder with our new six-inch kit that is right behind us. So we take this rig here to a lot of the consumer shows, the big scene show in Las Vegas and some of the smaller shows also.
Ivy Hartman: I bet just because it looks good, you are going to get a lot of traffic. But people who are coming are looking for the function of what SkyJacker can provide.
Andy Barbieri: Well sure I mean that this is, I guess this—well here and you know that is the snake. What were trying to do is and if you will notice if you look on the internet, or any of the print publications on any cable networks in the weekend, its stuff like you see something SkyJacker that were involved in either let us say; install, let’s say a race team that we are sponsoring or an ad of replacing.
Ivy Hartman: Talk about that so how it is grown and how much visibility you have gotten since 1955.
Andy Barbieri: We cover applications back to 55. It has changed a lot I mean, the McCurry family started off with a little four wheel drive shop and they were into mud racing and they wanted to lift the vehicles up a little bit to, you know get them through the mud and it evolved into, you know being one of the most popular suspension there is in the industry. It’s been a long, you know, interesting story that they had.
Ivy Hartman: Okay talk about the announcement that Ford is going to the industry have a sneak peak of its new Ford Truck coming out in the spring and stuff. How does this help with your business?
Andy Barbieri: That helps a lot, that is where SEMA gets involved. They help us out with the measuring session. We attend many of the measuring sessions that Ford and the manufacturers have and it gives us kind of a sneak peak of what is going to be happening so we can plan ahead and see what were going to need to do in order to make our suspension systems work on the new vehicles that are coming out.
It is better than having to wait until they actually release the vehicle and then you are trying to play catch up just to get something out in time.
Ivy Hartman: Are we seeing the industry changing or are you seeing that it has to make a shift in a different direction? What is the future of it?
Andy Barbieri: I think the industry is always changing, I think you’re probably going to see with some of the new lifts coming in place that they are going to; some of the more milder, shorter lifts; milder lifts are going to become more popular. On the newer vehicles, they will still be very popular on the older vehicles and some taller lifts you might not see as much of in the next five years.
Ivy Hartman: One last question for you, I mean I look at SkyJacker’s booth, you guys look big. You have 50 employees, I mean that is a trick to make a small business look bigger than it is and in order to do good business, talk about that.
Andy Barbieri: Well we, you know we try to take our marketing dollars and put them in places where we feel we’re going to get that big pop and SEMA is definitely one of the places that we spend a lot of our marketing dollars.
Ivy Hartman: We are looking forward to seeing more of your booth here at SEMA. We will give you some more sneak peak look at SkyJacker’s. Thank you very much for being with us.
Andy Barbieri: Thank you.
Ivy Hartman: Keep it on SBTV.com as we continue our coverage of the Spring Expo here in Indianapolis.
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