Racing and Cars, a new Dallas-based online portal with a mission ‘to be the catalyst that unites the collector car community,’ has launched to bring car fanatics together from across the globe.

The company has created a new and unique way to unite over 10,000 companies that sell over $50 billion every year in products and services and over 10 million collectors that all share the same passion: cars. 

“Racing and Cars is a unique portal designed to unite the collector car community globally,” founder and CEO Stephen Page told Dallas Innovates.

The company philosophy is broken down into three parts: connecting members with others that share the same love for cars and racing; providing members with the most recent information or news regarding car related events, shows, or job opportunities; and saving members both time and money when purchasing apparel, products, parts, cars, and services in the collector car market.

The goal of RAC is to provide customer insight, centralize the racing and car communities, give centralized repository merchant intel and information, and make it easier to find parts and services for cars. The main consumer demographic averages members around 50 years of age, with over $2 million in net worth, the company said. The average customer owns five to eight cars and spends $50,000-100,000 annually on this passion.

And, RAC’s growing; last month, it announced its newest partnership with the Ferrari Club of America, allowing the 42 chapters to communicate with one another via online portal. 

Stephen Page, founder and CEO of Racing and Cars, and Shawnee Broadhead, chief digital officer, caught up with Dallas Innovates to provide an inside look at the innovative company that’s uniting car enthusiasts worldwide.

How many active users are currently using racing and cars? 

Page: There are more than 13,000 members of the original site who will become members of RAC when we go live. We have a variety of tactics to grow the membership to over 1 million members within a three year period.  

Broadhead: We have identified more than 10,000 car clubs, more than 2,000 race tracks, more than 400 sanctioning bodies, more than 500 collector car dealerships, and more than 10 million collector car owners. We have created incredibly concise, compelling, and consistent campaigns to target these individuals on a strategic and automated basis, as we build the community to exceed 1 million members in the next 24-36 months.

Discuss the implications an integrated platform like Racing and Cars could have outside of the automotive world. 

Page: …We believe that the timing is right to create vertically focused, passion driven communities. To that end, we will white label the RAC platform to create vertically focused, passion driven communities for businesses, celebrities, associations, media companies, and universities.

Explain how advertisers can use Racing and Cars to target consumers. How does the platform disrupt advertising norms and save marketers and advertisers money? 

Page: There are hundreds of thousands of websites serving the car aficionado market. 
RAC is the first integrated community, merchant directory, marketplace, consolidated news and jobs platform. Advertisers will be able to target their messages to specific owners of cars and attendees at specific events by advertising in Car Marque Groups, Car Club Groups, Race or Car Show Events and Sanctioning Body Groups.

Broadhead: When a member registers, we ask them a series of questions around their passion. With this insight, we are able to bridge the gap between out members’ detailed interests, and companies that sell products directly related to these interests. Because this is their passion, the amount of information they are willing to part with is truly remarkable. It’s marketing unlike you’ve ever seen before. 

A platform like Racing and Cars can be a goldmine of user data. How will that data be used?

Page: First, we will not sell our member data! Merchants will invite their customers to join their Group on RAC. We have identified 10,250 merchants that sell products and services to the collector car community. Merchants will significantly enhance their knowledge of their customers with individual information gathered during the member registration process, allowing them to target market their customers with products and services specific to their needs. RAC has integrated a very sophisticated (AI) CRM platform. It’s possible that the majority of the small to medium sized merchants that we serve will use RAC campaign services to improve their target marketing, digital sales outcomes. 

Broadhead: One of the most important things to reiterate is that we do not share this member data. While we are capturing this detailed information, Racing and Cars becomes the “Trusted Source” by the strategic value we provide. Our members will not receive hundreds of emails from different vendors, trying to sell them products (we do not use email lists as leverage with these organizations). Instead, all communication will come from Racing and Cars. Additionally, we have set very tight parameters around the amount of emails a member can receive on a monthly basis (one per week) and are only sending them campaigns based on their specific interests. What we are doing is analyzing the time it takes for a racing and car fan to join the platform, then engage on our site, and lastly, complete some sort of transactional element (e.g. list a car for sale, list a part for sale, post a new job opportunity, etc.). Then the question becomes, how can we expedite this process? 

Payton Potter contributed to this report.

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