ElantraClub and online aftermarket vendors/sponsors Options

[elantragt]

Over the years, we've had some vendors/sponsors here but they quickly gave up on the place. I sort of know why yet at the same time I think they made a mistake. The reason most vendors quickly left the club is the seeming lack of interest by our members. And sure, this tends to be a tough crowd. But, I still think they could have been successful if they actually stuck with the community and were active members.

Some of the vendors we had here included:

Diode Dynamics
Seoulful Racing
TWM Performance
AutoGeek
RockAuto

Over the years I've tried to get some of the bigger vendors here but they showed no interest.

It's very shortsighted of them because I believe there is a place here for aftermarket vendors/sponsors.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

[mlumz]

I know it's hard for vendors to sponsor, they seem to want immediate results and a very high return. But the Hyundai market is in its growing stages. I think need to think about Honda during its infant stages, you can't look at Honda now since it's tuning market has been around for a very long time. Hyundai is gonna get there but I think it's gonna be a few years. I hope the vendors see this and get into the scene early by sponsoring clubs like ours to help promote Hyundai and their brands for the tuning market.

And maybe we can make a section on the top of the screen that has a banner ad for just the vendors that sponsor the club, so it's more visible for everyone.

[Alex2013GT]

I agree that if a vendor would sponsor the club then to have a banner (say similar to the one for the EC Mall for Holiday Shopping) at the top would be appropriate. Heck, it just makes finding their site that much easier. The fact that in addition to the active members and those that participate in the forum we have hundreds or thousands of "guests" that visit each day would be enough for me to want to sponsor this club if I was a business owner.

Quite frankly, if they pick up a couple sales that easily covers the cost of sponsoring the club too. Then they could sponsor various group buys or "hot online deals" or anything else and promote it here for all to see. I know once I find a site or store that treats me right as a customer I will continue to frequent them. If a sponsor would be willing to help this club of Elantra and other automotive enthusiasts, they would certainly earn my business and I'm sure many, many other members business too.

Also, I think it would take a little time for a company to notice an uptick in consumers from sponsoring a club like this. Obviously, there aren't going to be hundreds of members that jump to buy something just because a company sponsors the club, but rather when they are ready to buy something (which could be a few weeks or a couple months down the road) they will be much more likely to frequent the site that is sponsoring the club and continue to do so in the future.

Ok, so you asked for ideas so here's mine. My feelings won't be hurt if you find my idea completely unrealistic, but hopefully other members will chime in with ideas too. What if you contact a company (or more than one company that might sell different types of products) to see if they would be willing to "sponsor" the club in a somewhat unconventional means for a trial period. After that, they can then decide whether they want to be a full time club sponsor or not. The way I would word it is basically a win win for both them and us. So, you would give them a club banner with a direct link to their site. In the banner would be a discount code for EC club members to use. The type and manner of the discount could be negotiated with the company involved, but as an example, say they give 10% off regular priced merchandise to club members. So they get free sponsorship here with a nice club banner, in turn they get increased sales and revenue, EC club members get a discount on some merchandise, but I figure by using the club discount code it will allow them to track the purchases that were generated from the club for evaluating whether to be a club sponsor. In addition, for putting the free club banner up for them, they could contribute a percentage of the sales that were generated by EC club members during the trial period back to the club. Maybe periodic contributions to the club (i.e. monthly) could be made from the company.

[elantragt]

So you know, I've contacted many of the big players, offered to give them a forum here and their own banners as well. There just isn't any interest in ElantraClub for whatever reason. I've offered a forum here to a major company for as little as $100 for a year. The companies are simply very short sighted and have no interesting in cultivating business here. Sucks. Another thing that makes it tougher now is that so many car forums are now run by corporations. These vendors seem like they prefer that versus dealing with an independent forum like EC. Their loss, their stupidity I guess.