Front Row Motorsports (FRM), which fields the Nos. 26, 34 and 38 entries in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growing privately held companies in the United States. FRM earned a rank of No. 800 on the list. This marks the first time a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team has made the Inc. 5000 list.
Front Row Motorsports has welcomed 12 new primary sponsors this season: Glory Foods, ModSpace, Maximum Human Performance, Scorpion Coatings, Barrett-Jackson, House-Autry Mills, Big Machine Label Group, Classic Media (Where’s Waldo), Green1 Performance, Peanut Patch, 1-800LoanMart, and U.S. Shredder and Castings Group.
Five of these 12 partnerships have turned into multi-race programs. The team’s sponsorship portfolio is representative of nearly $172 billion of the U.S. economy.
“We are selling sponsorship and raising corporate dollars in a time when very few teams are,” said Robin Johnson, chief marketing officer. “It’s not a negative that companies are placing more scrutiny on their budgets. It just forces us to be smarter with how we go about building and executing our programs.”
“Our programs are structured in a manner where a sponsor can justify the investment to determine if NASCAR is all we claim it to be” commented Mike Laheta, marketing director, who led the effort to qualify for the Inc. 5000. “We not only show companies how they can use NASCAR to accomplish their goals, we help them do so. Our team is nimble and has a lot of in-house capabilities. We do a good job at working with our partners to build successful programs. We focus not only on building those programs, but attaching the right metrics to them so that success is more easily measurable.”
“All of the headlines now seem to be focused on sponsorship woes,” continued Laheta “We are finding sponsorship dollars in a time when a lot of the garage area is struggling to. It takes a lot of hours on the phone and a lot of output, but we’re getting more meetings and calls each week. I think that is a positive sign, not only for our team, but for the rebounding sponsorship market of our entire sport. All we ask for is the chance to have someone hear us out. Our approach and dedication to our partners is working for us. We’ve been able to use NASCAR to sell everything from collard greens to modular buildings to supplements and country music CD’s.”
“Our team is focused on constant improvement both on the racetrack and in the marketplace” said Jerry Freeze, general manager who has been with FRM since 2009. “Being named to the Inc. 5000 is certainly a victory for us off the track and shows that we are capable of winning in corporate America. We’re an interesting case study to look at – we’ve raced at least two teams full-time in the Sprint Cup Series since 2009. We’re a team that came into the sport right as the economy started to take a turn for the worse. We’ve weathered the storm, so to speak. Being named to the Inc. 5000 is a nice way to be recognized for our hard work and resiliency.”
The team’s driver lineup currently includes David Gilliland, David Ragan and Josh Wise.
FRM PR
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