Cat is out of the bag... Dirtbag Brands is featured in the new issue along with an interview with Josh Salazar. We were minding our own business in the booth at AIMExpo when some dirtbag rolled up. Not just any dirtbag, it was the head of Dirtbag Brands Josh Salazar. Not to be pejorative but we had to know if this was truth in advertising. Is he really a dirtbag? And what does Dirtbag Brands bring to dealers?
“You know, my entire life my dad always called me his “dirt bag” — so now I think it's safe to say I became the head dirt bag for Dirtbag Brands.”
What is Dirtbag Brands?
Dirtbag Brands was built on a premise of serving the dealer — I was a rep for many years in the industry, and a lot of times complaints would come to me from dealers and we'd escalate up the food chain, but more often than not fell on deaf ears. So I saw a niche in the market for a brand that focused specifically on the dealers. That is where it was born. I took all the complaints that we heard of for the last 20 years from dealers and decided we can do a lot better than what's going on right now. And so far, it seems to be working.
Product specific for Side X Sides?
Side X Sides and some dirtbike stuff, Dirtbag Brands is an off road company. That's what we want to focus on… that’s our specialty. There's a lot of big brands out there that I had the pleasure of working with along the way and helping develop… we kind of want to continue that. We started with a grab and go UTV toolkit. With the industry growing so much, it just seemed a natural option — you can just grab pretty much whatever you need. There's plenty of room to add to it. We expanded the lineup based on that and focus on niche products.
The grab and go toolkit is a starting point?
Absolutely. It's a complete toolbox, and it's got a mini compressor, it's got the metric tools they need with room to add your own. If you want to add an impact drill, or you want to add belts, come-alongs or a tow strap as well.
What’s the concept behind the marketing and the packaging?
Regarding the packaging itself, we started with so many different dealers complaining about plain brown boxes, they said “we're setting it out, customers are asking us what it is.” And we said, if you just pay a little bit more attention to detail and make the packaging work so they can display it as soon as they unpack it. It's good to go and kept packaging uniform
You know from those years of complaints, you can't “hang and hope” — especially if it's a brown paper box.
Absolutely. We just came out with our new latching go system for the Polaris for both the Ranger General and the RZR. The thing that astounded me was everybody sells individual tie down points. Well, if I don't need one tie down point I need two! Common sense would dictate that, right? So what we did is roll it out in a two-pack. You know, convenient, it was our first packaging deal. We kept it clean, we put a lot of emphasis in that we run it by some of our actual dealers asking if this was displayable? What would you change? One of the biggest things that we found is so many dealerships are receptive. That's what we want to encourage. We really want to hear from the dealer. What do you need? And why do you need it.
How do you stay on top of stuff?
When I worked for a distributor that's no longer around, I opened up the Midwest for them and established relationships. And we are a Colorado company, I’m a Colorado native, and we are only an hour and a half from Moab, Utah so I can see what’s going on. The West typically does more of the sport stuff, whereas the Midwest and the South will do a lot of the utility stuff. And where we came from, we have a lot of contacts on both sides. When we came out with a fire extinguisher mount we decided to make it universal. So we did our research. It fits every tubular roll bar from CFMOTO being an inch and a half to Polaris in a 1.75 inch roll bar to up to a two inch roll bar for the Talon and the new Pro and even the 1.87 for the Can-Ams. We want to do one part number one SKU — let's make it simple and let's make it clean. Oh, and let's do something else. Let's include a fire extinguisher with it. Who would have thought so and we make sure that we provide stuff like that and it's been absolutely incredible for us.
Is there a dealer minimum?
We don't ask them…there is no minimum at all. There's been so much emphasis put on the Mega dealerships, and we wanted to pay attention to the smaller dealerships. So we thought, let's keep it clean. Let's keep it simple. $100 free freight, no buy in minimums. I'm a big believer of the KISS rule, and I think a lot of people have let that fall by the wayside and neglected that these days.
You're not above a sense of humor, your social media channels demonstrate that!
We definitely try to do that. I want dealerships to tag us and we want to post our products in the dealerships. Every dealership that buys from us we make sure to follow. We like to reshare their stuff as well. Anytime we go out and visit the dealerships, we take pictures ourselves, we take video ourselves, I've had some customers actually make comments… I get more exposure on social media from you stopping by the store than I do from my marketing manager. The good news is I really like seeing what's going on with the magic of everything. All the new people that are twisting the throttle for the first time, all the new people that are pushing the pedal for the first time and we will try to make easy go products that just make sense.
Click here to become a dealer:
https://dirtbagbrands.com/become-a-dealer-1