Southwest Region San Diego SPONSORSHIPS?!?!?!?!

[Bhhong 10+ year member]

DO THEY EXIST HAHAHA I want to know if any car audio shops in the san diego area are willing to sponsor I am bout to put in like a good setup well over 6000 watts but mainly just for daily driver and I would want to get into competition if I could and if possible....

Click to read more...

 

[lilmaniac2 5,000+ posts]

LOL, and what have you done to get a sponsorship?

 

[s Beatz]

He posted this thread, I think thats worthy enough haha.

 

[tEh koRnDog 5,000+ posts]

lolololololololololololololololololololool

 

[NeverEnuffBass 10+ year member]

good luck buddy, lol

 

[dumple 5,000+ posts]

carsponsorship.com for you

 

[haunther]

1st

Buy 4 huge subs 400~

then 2 4k amps 500~

Batts~300

Wire~150

Alt~250

Then find a sponsor.

 

[Bhhong 10+ year member]

well not so much I have done something but just help getting into the scene obviously being mocked doesnt aid the cause so much but I assme everyone starts somewhere. I did not mean like I want sponsorship off the bat. I wanted to know how to get one.....I guess I should have just asked the shop themselves or what not.

 

[Bhhong 10+ year member]

Well my system now consists of:

HU: Kenwood DNX 8120

Amp : Soundstream XXX 6500d

4 Chan: Rockford t600.4

Speakers: Infinity Kappa 6X8 Coxials and components in front and Extra tweeters

SUbs: 2 hcca 12"

Dynmated the whole car.....

Power Kinetik 2000 and 1800 with HO ALT

 

[batvette 10+ year member]

Lolz..... current situation, you have a better chance of winning the lottery by searching the landfill for a random discarded ticket.

Blindfolded.

You say "you'd like to get into competition" but that doesn't show any commitment on your part nor a track record of accomplishment. To even be considered you have to foot your own install and go out on the circuit and compete for at LEAST a full season (but more likely 2-3) and not win them all but show you are serious and have potential.

THEN if you are lucky a manufacturer might throw you a few bones (equipment only) with the pressure that you do something impressive and actually finish and compete with it.

Most people who get such sponsorships are employed by autosound retailers, as a day every couple weeks at a show in even the fullest region's shows are not enough exposure, while their job has potential for everyday customer views.

I competed for a year + in IASCA 601+ SQ back in '98, about 7 contests, qualified for the finals but the tow vehicle blew up not even halfway there. Still, my vehicle was wild and impressed a few people with unorthodox concepts. I had around $20k in equipment and materials and over a year constructing it 100% myself in my driveway while I still drove it to work every day.

The next season I jumped to expert 601+ and pursued a couple of mfrs for sponsorships, mainly for alliance with them because a privateer with no affiliation gets crapped on in judging at many shows. (many back then were absurdly inside judged, not to name names ahem competition soundworks LA, bite me you rude and corrupt jackasses if you still operate like that, apologies if under new management) many went the other way, circuit city's shows were incredibly fair in comparison, and when Alma Gates showed up anywhere the BS stopped- she was quietly a force in ending crooked politics (to be fair probably half the mfrs involved were scum, just dirty as hell, the other half seemed disgusted by it and were commendably fair).

Anyway I got a real bad taste from meeting with a couple manufacturers, who offered me some products but tried to feel me out for who I was friendly with or not, and were also going to be rather dictating that I tune my car and even install the product (one a set of hcld's from a very winning mfr) the way they wanted to push their marketing- and I had just won the regional show a week earlier with a similar hlcd with a 50/50 imaging score (given by an SQ judge who was THEIR employee!), an obvious suggestion I change and compromise so they'd sell more units to lazy installer's customers.

I decided sponsorships at that level were not for me. Curiously by chance later that 2nd year I started building a novelty comp car for fun, a hearse, and a real stand up guy who frequented forums and was head of product development at a smaller but growing mfr/importer liked that I was stirring things up and asked me if I wanted some equipment for the hearse. Shows up a week later with a half a pickup bed of pretty exotic subs, mids, FIVE amps, wire, fuse blocks, really everything but a head unit.

And the instructions to build it, show up at a party at CES, then disavow any connection to their company.

An anti-sponsorship. They never sponsored people, hated the politics, and just liked the shakeup. I did take on a really crazy ambitious endeavor, a sand filled sub box that looked like a casket and doubled as a bench seat- to impress them- and almost didn't make it to Vegas. This is a common pitfall, but I did finish it.

That was 10 years ago, last summer I put the 15's in my little old SUV, they are as good as anything out there currently (they were prototypes in '98 of a short lived high end series for them.)

So if you want sponsorships prepare to be somebody's corporate bee-atch most of the time, using equipment you may not like in ways you may not like, in the end not worth the free equipment alone.

Jason Planck (sp?) was an exception, I met him and he was really cool. Employed by MTX, competing with a Mustang, they covered his gas and expenses. That was after YEARS of success on the circuit, and MTX was a tits up company. (assume they still are? Great contest at Showpark north of Phoenix, Jason invited me and confided if you are getting pooped on in a region go outside of it so honest ears and eyes judge your car and when you return the locals will have a hard time giving you noticeably inferior scores without IASCA eventually noticing)

When I first met him he wanted to hear my car, an '80's Corvette with horns shaved down by almost a third and mated to the top of the flat dash. (everyone else was putting them at knee level underneath) He gave me some tuning tips and quietly confided that while his situation with MTX was as good as it gets and he had much loyalty to them and the quality of their stuff was great, he'd like to have horns in his Mustang someday but as MTX didn't make them it wasn't going to happen. (Jason if you're out there, your encouragement was very classy and kept me from quitting after the first show, when I saw some really ugly aspects of competition)

(FWIW)

PS IMO here's what IASCA in 98 was about, maybe they changed: Most small shops had shows expressly to load their customers and their windows with trophies and hand picked judging staff, if nobody really independent showed up to witness the scoring was criminal. Large venues had camps or cliques of each of the same who'd purposely avoid going against each other's cars if they could, even sandbagging the shop's cars into amateur, killing privateers and kids with modest systems.

But most important it was never really about who had the most time invested in a really innovative or insanely well built ride. It was first display the product conspicuously- I got nicked for putting amps up inside my fenders with lit view ports, had I taken ONE amp and had it revolving on a pole taking up the whole hatch area I'd have gotten a bonus-

Most disturbing was the realization that install judges were only interested in borrowing the ideas of the cars they scored to incorporate in their business, and your impressive detail annoyed them and they'd harshly critique you and convince you to tear out a labor intensive part and hoped you came back a month later with an idea that they could use themselves but couldn't create, even if it was lesser than your original concept. (usually stealthy as that's what they needed to sell product to customers who weren't car audio enthusiasts)

Long post over, hope someone gets something from my ancient experience.