About We ♥ Our Dealers
At Race Sport® Lighting we love our dealer partners. “We ♥ Our Dealers” is a video series capturing success stories from our top dealers around the country. This affords us the privileged of learning from and sharing in their successes in the lighting category. These are dealer lighting stories, in their words.
In this video we chat with Jayson (Jay) from Columbus Car Audio located in the Columbus and Reynoldsburg, Ohio. You can watch the video above and read a summary below followed by What We Learned from Jay.
Before you guys hooked up with Race Sport, what were you guys doing for lighting and how was that going?
Jay: Well, it was going horrible. Just like probably a lot of the other guys. We were buying, I call them, knockoff stuff but for lack of better terms it was just cheap kits. That you know, you had to flick your high beams to make them work half the time. Or you’d have to turn the headlights off and turn it back on so they both worked. And we were really turned off by that. We quit doing them. We didn’t want to deal with that hassle.
Jay: I mean you’re talking about somebody’s lighting in their car, like their headlights. It’s not a dome light or something like that, it’s something that has to work. So, Eddie picked up the line and told us you know we need to get on board. That this stuff is actually good stuff and it’s a reputable company that’s going to stand behind it and offer warranties and you know we’ve been through the trails and tribulations with other HID manufacturers. With Race Sport, you guys have been by our side and really helped us get product moving and grow the category and it turned into something really reliable.
I have it on my own vehicle and on my wife’s. We all have it on our cars and we feel comfortable selling it to other people because it actually does work and if it doesn’t work and there is a problem, it’s not like it’s just because the stuff is junk. Like there’s a legitimate problem it’s a defective product and you guys are great about swapping it out and getting us taken care of for that.
RSL: That’s a common story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to a dealer and they’ve had the same experience. To the point where they were giving up on things like HID kits or LED lights in particular because whatever brand they were using before us, they were having too many issues with so that’s a common thing.
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Right now, what is working for you guys? Like what lighting products are you guys finding a lot of success with?
Jay: We’re doing the GEN6 HID kits. We’re doing the Terminator LEDs. Both of those are solid and bulletproof but we’re also doing a lot of the lighting like the accent lights. We do a lot of RGB strip lighting with Bluetooth controllers. We do a ton of it in boats, slingshots, harleys pretty much anything and everything you know. And the nice thing is its reliable stuff. It’s pretty much fail-safe.
I have some unique vehicles that I do for a news channel in town and we do white strip lights across the headliner in the back area and the cargo area, so they can see their camera gear and stuff at night. It works well for them. We’ve done a lot with that that’s been a huge success for us. The rock lights are growing. I did rock lights on this guys boat trailer are a few years back and it was amazing. The guy loves them. They were cool.
RSL: Like was it on the underneath of the trailer so when he backed into the water it would glow?
Jay: Yeah
RSL: Oh, that’s great! I love it when people get super creative with the lights man that’s great.
Jay: That’s the beauty of the product, you know? Like the rock lights, you know, it’s not just for like a Jeep wheel well. It’s for anything you can think of to do with it. I mean you can do them in all kinds of applications. Same with the strip lights. Same with any of the accent lights. You know we, do a little bit of the light bars, but not a lot, but your light bars are really nice and I have one on my I have an old, old truck that when we go to bonfires and stuff it’s nice to light it up so we can see what we’re doing.
RSL: I like old trucks. So, don’t act like having an old truck is a bad thing. Old trucks are good.
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When you talk to other dealers, what do you tell them about us? Be candid.
Jay: My biggest response to them is, you know, my big thing with any manufacturer that we deal with is the support that we get in the relationships that we build, and we’ve got that with you guys. You guys have always had our back anytime something’s wrong. It’s not “Oh, we’ve never seen that problem.” When you’re sitting on a thousand of them. Like a mountain at your shop you know. It’s like, “Hey look, we screwed up. This is what’s wrong. We’ll get a replacement out ASAP,” or whatever it is. But that’s what I look for you know.
Ownership is a big thing with us, it’s one of our core values and I feel like everybody needs to have that and that’s what we look for once again with manufacturers and vendors that we partner with just to make sure that if there is a problem you guys get out in front of it. Just like we would want to.
Jay: And then the support that we get on the backside. You know, if there are any issues that maybe you haven’t seen that we’re running into, you guys are always available to help troubleshoot and help our technicians out and help our sales guys when we have questions too. So, we really appreciate that. And that’s what I tell people when they ask about Race Sport.
RSL: Excellent man. That’s cool cause we try to be available. You were talking about core values right? Our core values are quality, support, and service. And that’s what we want to be known for. It’s great to hear because it just came right out of your mouth, that basically we’re doing our job, it sounds like, so that’s that good!
