LAUNCHED THE SABELT BRAND
My role: marketing: branding, product, digital, social media, website development, wireframes, comps, site map, user personas, product specialist, to packaging.
The team: Ganesh Krishnan, Product Specialist, and two other account managers.
CHALLENGE
Assist with the market penetration of the Sabelt brand into specific niche markets such as professional GT racing.
The existing Sabelt harness program had an infinite amount of configurations with no off-the-shelf part numbers. To further compound the problem, the most opportune markets had to first be identified, along with determining what the ideal product/set-up for each segment was.
SOLUTION
Introduced Sabelt products to specific key teams to increase awareness. This involved demonstrating the technical benefits of the Sabelt brand in the professional GT racing market which also involved working with teams to “validate” the product for their intended use and environments. This feedback was then provided back to Sabelt to assist with new product development or to tailor existing product to meet specific target market requirements.
We also attended several enthusiast events throughout the year to allow people to interact with the product, but more importantly we made sure that the products we had displayed had a “bolt-in” solution to the market and vehicles of the events we had attended. I emphasized that we do this because it falls back on our value discipline as a service leader/solutions provider.
In the early stage of development of Sabelts digital assets, Brembo who had a controlling interest (65%) of Sabelt sold off their stake of the company in June of 2015. Since Race Technologies is a market partner to Brembo, Race Technologies also seized development and continued support for the Sabelt product line.
RESULTS
• The GM factory Corvette Racing team chose Sabelt ZYTEX ultra-lightweight harnesses for one of their team’s C7.R GTE cars which won the 2015 24 hours of Lemans. Corvette Racing chose to equip the 2016 specification C7.R GTE with Sabelt harnesses as the baseline based on positive driver feedback in 2015.
• Ferrari customer racing team, Scuderia Corsa, chose Sabelt as the soft goods (suits and underwear) supplier in 2014 and 2015 for their IMSA GTD program.
• Porsche and Lamborghini factory supported GT3 racing teams in the North America and Australia switched to Sabelt harnesses in 2015 and 2016.
• Key market Porsche race shop influencers start to supply Porsche GT3 specific Sabelt harnesses for the track-day market.
