Kelly Wooton, co-owner of Battle Ground-based Trail Tech, has finally found her niche.
Her company, which specializes in the manufacturing of off-road motorcycle and snowmobile parts such as gas tank gauges, speedometers, headlights and, as of this year, GPS systems, did $5 million in sales last year. This year, that number is already up 20 percent.
As Wooton tells it, Trail Tech got its start from the family’s off-road motorcycle riding hobby. Her husband, and the company’s co-owner, Jeoff Wooton, wanted a speedometer for his off-road motorcycle. After the former HP engineer designed one, based on a bicycle model, other riders caught sight of it and wanted one too. Before long, the couple found themselves in the off-road motorcycle manufacturing business.
“Most of our products are because Jeoff likes them,” said Garridan Robinett, the solo sales team for the 22-employee company.
According to Robinett, the uptick in this year’s sales is largely owed to the newly released GPS units – a product line the company invested heavily in at the onset of the recession. Five engineers on staff design all aspects of the company’s products, which are also manufactured on site in a three-year-old building along Southeast 18th Avenue.
One of the keys to surviving the economic downturn, explained Wooton, is that much of Trail Tech’s customer base identifies themselves as off-road riding enthusiasts. Therefore, while a customer may put off buying that new off-road motorcycle, they’re still riding – and still in need of equipment add-ons, like a GPS unit to ward off those “where am I?” moments.
“We went flat [during the recession], but we didn’t see a major drop off because we weren’t reliant on new [bike] sales,” said Wooton. “We appeal to customers with all years, makes and models… Do-it-yourselfers are always on the lookout for something new and different and that didn’t change with the downturn.”
Additionally, Wooton said the company has been able to grow thanks to an ever-expanding customer base that includes distributors in other countries such as Australia, South America and the United Kingdom.
“I would guess 30 to 40 percent of our business is international,” she said.
Looking down the road, Wooton said she expects Trail Tech to hire at least one new engineer before next summer. In the meantime, she said the company will focus on improving its existing product line.
“It [growth] has been a one-thing-leads-to-another sort of thing,” said Wooton. “However, we have stayed true to our original business model and the types of products we make. Our scope hasn’t changed, it’s just broadened.”
