Talk-It-Up Tuesday with Schelle Racing's Kurt Wenger

  

Over the past several weeks we have seen more and more product releases from the all-new Schelle Racing Innovations. Schelle Racing Innovations is the brain child of Kurt Wenger (former designer at Team Associated and Avid R/C). With such a plethora of new products and releases, we felt it might be a good time to sit down once again with Kurt for another edition of "Talk-It-Up Tuesday!"
 

  
 

LiveRC: Welcome back Kurt to "Talk-It-Up Tuesday!" You are no stranger to most of our viewers, but for those who don't know you, can you give us a little background of your background in R/C?

Kurt: Good to talk to you again Mike! I’ve been around R/C since I was 9 years old. The RC10 Classic re-relase….that was my first car in 1987. I took my car to a track after only a couple of weeks and I’ve been racing ever since. I studied Mechanical Engineering in school and worked at Ford Motor Co. and Boeing, but landed a job in the R/C industry in 2002 with Team Associated and worked there for 10 years. My first project at Associated was the B4 buggy design working with Cliff Lett and Torrance Deguzman. During my career at Associated, I helped with design, testing, and as a “coach” to the pros as the Team traveled around the world winning championships with Associated buggies and trucks.


LiveRC: You have had an exciting past few years as you went from Team Associated to AVID, and now you own your own business in the industry known as Schelle Racing. Let's start by talking about the name...where did name "Schelle Racing" come from?

Kurt: Mike, it’s a long story but I’ll try and shorten it. First, the brand name Schelle is pronounced like the word “shell” and not “shelley”. We wanted to build a brand that had meaning, but also find a name that wasn’t expected or widely used. We threw out anything that had to do with “coach” or “wenger” and I went back to my roots. My family name is German and I started looking at names rooted in German (hence the “sch” spelling). In addition to having a family meaning, Schelle is our play on the German word for “fast”. A funny story in closing, after we selected the brand name we found out it’s a slang term used to describe when you “smack” somebody.

LiveRC: What made you decide to start your own brand?

Kurt: Having a business is an adventure, you are doing something that is un-charted and new. There’s a lot of freedom and excitement to call the shots. In the end, the only people I answer to are the customers. It’s my goal to create a brand and products that people identify with and love.

LiveRC: Are you alone in this journey to get Schelle Racing up and running?

Kurt: No, of course not. We have a great team of driven people at Schelle. Carl, Mike, Sue, Jason and Michelle all help make the company work….and my daughter Charlotte loves to provide custom art on the white boards.

LiveRC: We must say your press releases have been among some of the most creative we have seen. Tell us a little about being "slimed" for the company announcement press release.

Kurt: The entire concept was Carl Hyndman’s idea and it wasn’t slime, it was actual green paint. What does paint dripping over my head have to do with R/C Cars? Nothing….or does it? It makes you think, that’s for sure.
 
 
LiveRC: There are a lot of aftermarket companies in the R/C industry, in your opinion what will set Schelle Racing apart from the others?

Kurt: Schelle Racing Innovations is a design driven company focused on bringing next generation parts and accessories to the R/C industry. I think our outlook and our design philosophy help set us apart from other brands. We are always asking ourselves questions like “What’s next?” and “How can we make it better?”. From our products down to our packaging, we’re always thinking of ways to improve. We create and innovate in an effort to enhance our customer’s R/C experience.


LiveRC: Some companies focus on budget racers, some focus on bling factor, some focus on performance, some focus on bashers, and so on. What is Schelle Racing's primary target audience with your products?

Kurt: We would love to have every R/C user as a customer, and hopefully in time we can bring our brand to many different customers. For now, the Schelle brand stands for premium, performance, and innovation and I think our typical customer is a racer that’s visiting a track regularly, seasoned or not.

LiveRC: Is there a particular platform or brand of vehicles you plan to focus most on?

Kurt: With my affiliation and racing sponsorship by Team Associated, I am using their brand of cars the most and I have to outfit my own cars of course! Associated is a strong brand but we have parts in the pipeline for Kyosho, TLR, and Durango. Really it comes down to economics…. If there is a large customer base for a certain car or brand, it makes sense to offer some parts for it. Carson Wernimont is running Mugen now and he’s one of our drivers that I hope to work with more since the Mugen cars are so popular.
 

LiveRC: Can you share with us any info on upcoming products yet to be released?

Kurt: We have a few things in development. We are running a prototype RB6 chassis brace at Cactus Classic and soon you will see our shorty pack B44.2 setup. There is also a sneaky new feature on our T-Handle wheel wrench…. It can fit an accessory nut driver on one end so that you can use the wrench trackside to change tires or adjust your slipper clutch.

LiveRC: Clearly you have the capability and knowledge to do so, has there ever been any thought of creating a complete car of your own?

Kurt: Hahaha…(laughs). Mike, I’ve already done that job for about 10 years…designing complete cars is pretty nuts. You have to think of everything, design every single part and how it all fits together. It’s pretty time consuming…I lead the GT2 project which was a complete new gas truck and the time it took was measured in years and not months. With a business to run and a 3 year old at home, that’s definitely not on my radar.
 
 
LiveRC: On average, how much time do you spend per product in design, development, and testing before it hits the production line?

Kurt: It can vary, some projects are designed in a couple hours, some take more iterations. Usually I try and “sleep on it” because when you come back to a design it usually gives you a new perspective. For things like a topshaft, those are pretty standard and I can hammer them out quickly because the part has to fit in an existing gearbox, and I usually have a reference part to go off of. Most parts take 60-90 days from idea to production. That’s because usually it takes 60 days from when you place an order to get the parts made…then add the time to design and test on top of that. We don’t have our own dedicated factory, we partner with machine shops and vendors to make products so we have to work into their schedule too.

LiveRC: To the best of our knowledge, Schelle Racing is the first ever R/C company to offer a root beer of their own to racers (as we saw at the Reedy Race). Will this also be available to purchase?

Kurt: I have to also give credit to OCRC and Robert Black, they partnered with us so that they could also be the first track with their own beverage line. Carl Hyndman found the facility and ran the project so that everyone could have a cool souvenir from the event.
 
 
LiveRC: Where is the best place for customers to purchase the Schelle Racing products?

Kurt: We sell direct to customers on www.SchelleRacing.com, or you could have your local shop carry the products. Internationally, we are building a team of distributors to import the brand into several countries in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

LiveRC: When and where can we expect to see you next showing off the new products?

Kurt: We are chained to the office right now packaging products and working on our site. Our next planned trip is to visit Utah for the April Fools race in about a month.

LiveRC: Thank you for joining us today Kurt! We certainly wish you and the Schelle Racing team the very best, and are very anxious to see what is next! Is there anything you would like to add before we go?

Kurt: Go to www.schelleracing.com and remember that if you’ve been there before, hit the “refresh” button and you can see the site instead of the old “coming soon” banner that is saved in your browser. Hopefully we can continue to grow the site and add more interesting content and products.
 

 

 

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