G-Force Consulting Inc.
Expert witness with 30+ years experience designing and troubleshooting ATVs, ROVs, UTVs, Snowmobiles and motorcycles
Portfolio
A TRACK RECORD SECOND TO NONE
Why take chances with your company's success when you can count on a consultant with the best track record of success in the industry? Experience includes: Due diligence and analysis for mergers and acquisitions of distributors, suppliers and accessory companies. GPS navigation and connected vehicle technology research and development. Hybrid UTV engineering and dealer channel development. Powersports market reports on batteries, oils, lighting, winches, sensors and more leveraged by brands all over the world. OEM sales accounts landed for Engine, CVT and electronics manufacturers. Professional writing for enthusiast media and company websites. Media launches for UTV manufacturers and accessories. Sponsor and advertiser growth for magazines and race circuits.
MARKET REPORTS FOR BATTERIES, OILS, WINCHES, LIGHTING AND MORE OUT NOW
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Bosch MySPIN powersports connectivity
research
Bosch counts numerous global powersports OEMs among their customers and the mySPIN platform is an innovative way for OEMs to integrate the most relevant and popular mobile apps right into a vehicle dash board. Taking each market one at a time, I worked with Bosch to identify a list of the best apps for each customer base and market, with many of these apps being accepted by OEMs into their own new product developments -- most of which are still to be released. Stay tuned!
Schumacher Electric Business Development
Schumacher Electric saw an opportunity to sell it's battery chargers, jump starters, and other electrical accessories to ATV, UTV, Motorcycles and Snowmobile OEM customers for inclusion in their catalogs.
The successful partnership with G-Force Consulting culminated in Can-Am / BRP, Arctic Cat / Textron and Polaris all adding accessories to their OEM catalogs in just over a year's time with other potential customers still in the sales pipeline.
Symtec / Heat Demon Acquisition
Mr. Gustafson assisted prospective buyer Riley Harlan by developing a report about Symtec's reputation with OEM buyers and distributors, a SWOT analysis of Symtec and their house brand Heat Demon vs. their competitors, and best practices for both how to operate within the industry and how to handle the all-important transition to new ownership while maintaining current business relationships.
Gravely Atlas UTV
Media Launch
Gary was employed by the Ariens company (a leading manufacturer of lawn tractors and snow throwers) to coordinate with powersports trade media for an event they hosted at Lambeau Field and a nearby hunting club introducing their "Atlas" UTV. The result was a media launch event that generated priceless consumer media coverage and was termed "the best launch we've ever had in the history of the company". Even though the target customers for the Atlas are commercial users in the lawn care and landscaping markets the consumer media launch was so successful that sales skewed toward the consumer market in the first years following the launch.
The highest-volume ATV instrument cluster ever produced
This is a project undertaken as an 11-year employee of Polaris. Gary moved Polaris away from a supplier that was providing inferior parts that were a top-3 warranty problem to VDO, a world-class instrumentation supplier. A year of intense testing and development resulted in a successful program. This project was used as an example for how to write specifications within Polaris and variations of the cluster have been in production for 20 years with >2,000,000 units in the field.
While developing this instrumentation Gary began exploring ideas for off-road GPS navigation. This was the origin of the Ride Command and RiderX systems.
Taiwan Golden Bee aka TGB
US Market Development
Taiwan Golden Bee manufactures CVTs, engines, and entire vehicles in Taiwan. TGB was professionally introduced to numerous North American OEM customers, sales presentations were created and personally delivered by Gary Gustafson, and strategy for penetrating the US market was successfully executed. The result of these efforts was a private label agreement with ARGO, a direct import agreement for full vehicles with DRR, an agreement to supply engines to Intimidator UTVs, and other 6 and 7-figure sales agreements such as Westward Industries an LSV mfr in Canada.
Borg-Warner
acquisition of
Powersports
supplier
Borg-Warner was looking to expand their powersports sales intelligently via a supplier acquisition. They employed Gary Gustafson for due diligence research on the acquisition target.
The target had decent current sales revenue but it was discovered that the same person had championed the supplier as an employee at 3 different OEM customers! This person was no longer employed by any of them. In addition, the supplier was considered as having somewhat antiquated and under-performing engine technology vs. competitors. Based on these and other factors Gary Gustafson recommended that Borg-Warner pass on the deal. This was validated later as the supplier lost most of their powersports OEM customers.
Magellan GPS business development with Yamaha
After partnering with G-Force Consulting Magellan received sales introductions to nearly every major OEM in the industry and participated in numerous OEM requests for quote. One of the biggest successes was with Yamaha, where a connection was made by Gary Gustafson with a key Director of Engineering at the company -- who was looking to launch a house GPS/Navigation experience for their customers. After sales meetings and the development of detailed specifications The Adventure Pro GPS and TRX Trip Planner were successfully launched by Yamaha in partnership with Magellan. The Engineering Director said "You were the reason we chose Magellan."