EDA Office of Foreign Trade • Riverside County, California • USA
October 2012
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Edelbrock and other businesses
involved with international trade.
“
We look forward to working
with Edelbrock as we move
forward to implement a new
economic development initiative
to attract complementary
automobile manufacturers and
suppliers,” Kotyuk said.
Edelbrock has been exporting
products overseas for many years and
benefits immensely from the strong
word-of-mouth sort of advertising
that is very common in the high-
performance vehicle parts world. The
same positive buzz that can propel a
company forward can bring another
company down if quality suffers or
the parts do not deliver as expected.
“
You only get those repeat sales when
the person is happy and goes out and
talks about it.” Edelbrock said. “That’s
what has kept us going for 75 years now.
That’s the best advertising you can get.”
That dynamic is the same, whether you
are selling only in the U.S or sending
goods all over the world, Edelbrock said.
“
Wherever there are American cars
overseas, there is a market for the
automotive product we make,”
Edelbrock said. “Our 75
th
anniversary
is next year, so we have been in this
for a long time, and the name is very
well-known. It makes the car perform
better in the way we say it will.”
The company sells some products
directly to consumers, but also works
with a system of distributors who rely
on Edelbrock’s strong performance to
keep their own customers happy.
“
These folks know where their
market is, whether they are in
England or in Germany – they
know their market,” he said.
One thing Edelbrock has learned
over the years is that demographic
information, while helpful, can
sometimes be deceiving. It’s not how
many people are in a country, it’s how
many of them have high-performance
vehicles, Vic Edelbrock said.
“
Australia, for example, only has
about 21 million people but they are
very high in terms of the number
of car enthusiasts,” he said. “If it’s a
performance-type application, we
have what they need for that.”
While the company is based in
Torrance, it does plenty of heavy lifting
at the San Jacinto facilities, which
employ more than 100 people in
two buildings that are 70,000 square
feet and 110,000 square feet.
The two buildings have a combined
50,000
pounds of molten aluminum
on hand at any time, Edelbrock said.
Even on the weekends, the aluminum
Christi Edelbrock - Vice President - Business Development, Vic Edelbrock
