It’s been a brilliant year for us at Driftworks, and we’d like to thank everyone who has shopped with us, supported us, sponsored us, visited us and been a member of our community during this year. So lets have an overview look at the year, and go through the good and the bad times!
At the very start of the year, Driftworks was still operating of rented office space, Phil’s M3 still had only 6 cylinders, the Driftworks S15 was still wearing it’s 2009 graphics and big gay wings still seemed to look OK.
The biggest change by a long way was the purchase of Driftworks HQ. 5500 square feet of space for us to fill with Federals, Engines and most importantly, stock and new staff.
It didn’t look like much, but this was all to be transformed within a couple of months.
And before long, it was all built, painted, finished, a ready for 3 new members of staff, Kam on Sales, BigJay as Sales manager and myself (Al) doing a few days a month on media and of course the blog.
The S15 was given a new lease of life with a new wheel and colour scheme for 2010. Following on the multi-logo pattern of the mug and hoodies, plus the deletion of the big gay wing and the addition of subtle spoilers totally updated the look.
We amazingly used just about all of these tyres this year, and it wasn’t even a very busy driving year for us! I guess that’s to be expected.
Mostly doing things like filming with Fifth Gear, and all sorts of other really fun stuff. Sadly this episode never made it onto the air because of technical problems with the two cars they were reviewing.
The R32 has always been some what of a cursed car, plagued with mechanical problems that just happened due to bad luck. It’s gone through a huge number of engines, but always because of something silly and sometimes undetectable. Nickson Motorsport built the cage into it this year and Bon spent many hours getting the car ready for the first event of the year which was JDM Allstars at the Trafford Centre.
The car still carried the curse though.
And some how Bon defied the laws of physics and set fire to a differential. Amazingly, he still qualified for the round after putting in an amazing effort to change the differential in about 3 hours, including driving from Lydden Hill to Watford and back.
Stress aside, Driftworks was in it’s new building with amazing workshop, turntables, stock rooms and little orange finger puppets.
Everyone at Driftworks are friends as well as colleagues, and we’ve managed to have lots of very enjoyable nights out of the office when the software problems with the webshop that plagued it earlier this year were causing issues for customers and the stress levels rose higher and higher.
Good times.
Over the year, lots of friends have dropped into help out, or just chill out which has been great.
Some just came to eat Pizza.
And that’s about the sum of it. We’ll look at the S15 / R32 crash in another post, and some more highlights from behind the scenes another time. 🙂
Good times 😛
with businesses going to the wall left right and center it’s great to see a company expanding and developing innovative products for it’s loyal band of followers.
here’s to a successful 2011!
THANKYOU for the little DW sock on the blog, hope he is well!! you still looking after him?
As a long-time S13 owner I have to say, Driftworks should be a Business School case study in how to develop a brand and enter an already crowded market successfully. The consistent branding, use of internet, focus on being the best technically (with the S15 being a flagship example), and ability to project ‘coolness’ are just masterful and have me reaching for my wallet time after time 🙂
Also, the way you can filter wheels in the webshop now is simply brilliant, a perfect application of IT in a way that somehow continues to elude your longer-established rivals. Why is it good ? Because you can simply say ‘show me all the wheels of the fitment I need’, and it lists them for you. Other companies do it the other way around, you choose a wheel that looks good and only then find out that it isn’t available in the fitment you need.
So keep setting the standard, never let ‘good enough’ be good enough, and here’s to a successful 2011 🙂
A great review, so hard to compress 2010 into a blog post (or two or three) and still capture all the key moments, but you have come very close to that so far. 🙂
Quality review. Keep up the good work lads, and ladys. Il be hopfully seing you in the new year for wheels, coilovers, stickers and loving,lol. Sound as. Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. Martin