Dodson Motorsport has signed a sales partnership agreement with Exedy Clutch Europe that will allow it to expand its sales into 53 countries in Europe and adjacent markets.
Under the agreement Dodson and Exedy will jointly fund a team of eight salespeople, all multilingual, experienced in automotive transmission sales and with high-level connections across the high-performance sector. The sales team will both sell into Exedy’s existing customer base and develop new opportunities, growing Dodson’s overall footprint in Europe.
Dodson has also shipped an initial stock of its high-performance transmission components to four Exedy warehouses. Exedy will hold the stock as inventory and use it to supply dealers in its network throughout Europe.
Currently over 99 percent of Dodson’s products are sold into global markets, and European business represents around 20 percent of its export earnings. The company expects that this will significantly increase sales of its high-performance transmission systems for European marques like Porsche, Audi, VW, BMW, Mercedes and Lamborghini, as well as Dodson’s traditional Nissan and Mitsubishi business.
“This partnership with Exedy, the world’s number one manufacturer of clutch componentry represents an important stage in our market development plans,” says Steven Parker (pictured), General Manager of Dodson Motorsport. “We will have highly experienced sales people to handle day-to-day product inquiries and meet with customers throughout Europe, and an inventory holding in Europe to improve the speed and ease of delivery to dealerships in markets we have previously not been able to properly address.”
Dodson’s European market development initiative was supported by a grant and assistance under NZTE’s international growth fund. The company also received a grant from Callaghan Innovation to assist with its R&D programme, allowing it to address a wider range of vehicles. “Being able to extend our range has been critical to our plans to target the European market,” says Parker.
Dodson recently released a VW Sportsman Plus clutch upgrade which runs in the world’s fastest VW Golf MK7R. It now has a large number of new transmission systems in its R&D pipeline and expects to release 27 new products over the next two years.
