Race Winning Brands — home to half a dozen premiere powersports product lines — has been bought by private equity firm MiddleGround Capital for an undisclosed amount. “We are thrilled to be partnering with MiddleGround,” notes RWB CEO Bob Bruegging. “We believe their operationally-focused approach paired with their culture of continuous improvement and longstanding experience in the automotive and powersports aftermarkets will align perfectly with RWB’s objectives and growth strategy – with the ultimate goal of providing innovative products to best serve our powersports enthusiast customers.”
No strangers to the performance space, MiddleGround founding partners John Stewart and Scott Duncan have history with enthusiast-based aftermarket performance products having worked with Holley in 2012. “We are very excited to be partnering with Bob Bruegging, Josh Vogel, and the rest of the Race Winning Brands team as we look to usher the company into its next stage of growth,” says Stewart.
“We look forward to further enhancing RWB’s leading position in the market by leveraging the company’s engineering expertise, coupled with our Operation Team’s automotive aftermarket experience and network, to expand into new product and vehicle applications – both organically and through complementary acquisitions to the platform.”
Powersports brands rolled up in the RWB acquisition include, JE Pistons, Wiseco, Rekluse, ProX Racing Parts and CV4. Headquartered in Mentor, Ohio, RWB has sales offices and manufacturing operations in strategic locations throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.
RWB is just the tip of the iceberg for MiddleGround’s recent expansion — the firm closed eight deals in the past 60 days with a combined value of $1.4 Billion! According to their research, the powersports space is where the action is: the enthusiast powersport segment has seen annualized growth of 10-15% in the past 18 months with forecasted growth of 6-8% over the next 12 months.