28.03.2022 Category: Site news
Episode 12: VRC v3.5 distribution and promotional efforts
When v3 was released, we started our promotional efforts to let the r/c world know about this new exciting r/c racing sim: Virtual RC Racing. One of the first things I had to come up with was a good VRC slogan, how about: DON’T WAIT FOR THE WEEKEND… A pretty obvious slogan but what did I want to get across?
RC racers practice their hobby mainly in the weekends, and usually don’t get much more than an hour or so of real track time. Add to that probably an hour or 2 driving to and from the track, and 3-10 hours of preparation to be ready to go practicing or race. And add to this the considerable expenses for tires, fuel, batteries, bodies, and parts, you end up with a very time consuming and expensive hobby. That’s no news, we know this for a long time. To get good at it you need to spend a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money! However, the r/c hobby is so challenging and addictive that tenths of thousands of racers head to racetracks all over the world, meet their friends, race their cars and are having a great time. And practice makes perfect, right? So the more you practice, the more you race, the better you get!
The concept of Virtual RC Racing was to offer practice and race time, any time of the week, at minimal cost! And of course, all the time spent on VRC would be net track time, no traveling time, no preparation time, no cost for spares etc. Of course, the ‘virtual’ r/c experience had to be close enough to the real thing so that racers would really benefit of this track time, could develop their r/c skills, and improve their racing fitness at minimum cost and time. Afterall, r/c racing is not easy to get into and can be very stressful as the whole race unfolds in front of you! I think with the release of VRC v3.5 we had made a great start to achieve this objective!
Horizon Hobbies distribution
After I established a successful relationship with Kyosho I found another important partner to distribute the generic version of VRC: Horizon Hobbies. Tony West had designed 2 versions of the controllers and the packaging, the red/black Kyosho version, and the yellow/black VRC version. Content wise they were the same, and of course they shared the same infrastructure, i.e. the same server, competitions etc. Horizon Hobbies already had their own proprietary flight simulator, so Virtual RC Racing was a great addition to their sim product line and through them we were able to sell to many hobby shops in the US and Canada.
VRC Dealer App
The same yellow/black VRC version was also offered to hobby shops in Europe and the rest of the world. The CD-Roms had a key-code which had to be registered on the VRC website to activate the account. We had also started to sell the VRC-3 USB adapters directly to hobby shops as there was quite a big demand for it. Selling directly from the VRC website (e-commerce) had only just started. Paying was limited to credit card, and many customers were not able to make credit card payments, in certain countries it was even impossible. So, we came up with a concept for dealers to sell just key codes to their customers which they then paid cash: the VRC Dealer App.
Basically, it came down to a system where dealers had to create an online account with VRC and make a deposit in that account. The dealer could then create a purchase in that account, print a voucher with the exclusive key-code for their customer which he could then register on the VRC website. The dealer deposit account was charged at dealer price level. In principle a very straight forward and attractive system which enabled dealers to sell the VRC game and make a decent dealer profit with minimal investment and risk! Some dealers understood that it was a simple and safe way to make a profit on VRC licenses, but the majority didn’t however much I tried to explain it with simple schemes like the one below. I thought it was a great and innovative system, but at hindsight it failed. As so often you have to place this in a time perspective, e-commerce was not as common in 2008 as it is today.
VRC consoles
What if we could bring VRC to r/c racers who visit their hobby shop? Wouldn’t it be great to have a console where you could simply try out VRC? How attractive would it be for a hobby shop to ‘entertain’ its customers by offering this possibility in his shop?
In 2004 we had developed a demo console which could be used on trade shows by Kyosho and ourselves. These consoles had a ridged alu. tube frame and were designed to hold a so called ‘small form factor’ PC which was equipped with a ‘state of the art’ graphics or video card and a sound card. A 1024x768 pixel flat screen monitor and 2 small speakers completed the set! (I will post some images of this console in the Comments section below). However, this console was too expensive to offer to hobby shops. Therefore we developed a new console which was cheaper to manufacture and to ship, and easier to assemble. Tony (what would VRC have been without him…) had redesigned the console which now consisted of 2 split side panels made of 18mm MDF sheet material which were printed in either Kyosho or in VRC colors, and steel shelves for the PC and the monitor. Thunder Tigre was approached to manufacture these consoles and package them. We had an initial batch produced, but much to my surprise (and disappointment) there was little interest from our dealers, so this project was abandoned. It’s not the first time that one of my ‘great’ ideas was not embraced by dealers. Maybe I simply don’t have retailer blood…
Columns
I started writing monthly columns and offer these to r/c magazines, websites, and r/c communities. It provided me a platform to explain what VRC was all about, the special features and inform about the racing we organized. Many of our ‘media partners’ were non-English but they were willing to translate my columns in their own language, even Chinese! It was a very effective way of communicating with r/c racers from all over the world and trying to interest them to try out VRC.
Advertising
As you probably know or can imagine, r/c magazine advertising is very expensive and circulation information is often very doubtful, as are the effects of the ads. And in those days there was no Facebook or Youtube advertising yet. There was absolutely no budget available to do world-wide campaigns, so we focused our ads on a few English-speaking magazines, Radio Car Action (US) and Radio Race Car (UK). Occasionally we advertised in specific markets like Germany and France. With the ever-increasing popularity of internet, we also started doing banner ads on major r/c community websites.
VRC v3 in conclusion…
With all these promotional efforts we built up a member base of well over 200.000 VRC v3 members in the period 2004-2011. But how sustainable was the v3.5 platform? was so thrilled and encouraged by the initial success we had with Kyosho, Horizon and our dealer sales that I took a very important decision, as early as 2006, really? Let’s start all over again…
That was the start of the VRC v4development, later called VRC Pro. But we had only just begun with Virtual RC Racing… Why? That’s next.
Comments
Only active members can post comments
(Total posts: 3)
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Giovanni F. D
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who wants to pay the millions of man hours
Edited by author: 30.3.2022 22:00:40 GMT
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Sandro L.Centurion
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I've been following the posts about VRC development and I see you Pieter, as a visionary. despite being away from real-life R/C and VRC-Pro, I'm still following the news. My congratulations on your initiative and best wishes for the future
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Jose M MModerator
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Pieter, you say: "Maybe I simply don’t have retailer blood". It is very likely that this is the case, and that is that nobody is perfect. But the truth is that you are a genius.
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