How to Get Sponsored by Horizon Hobby

Plenty of racers own an RC car. Far fewer understand why an RC company spends money in full-scale racing, and that's what you need to know before you pitch Horizon Hobby. Horizon owns Losi, Axial and Arma, and Losi is its main motorsports brand. Its president and CEO, Chris Dickerson, joined my panel at the PRI Show, and he and Losi brand manager Brian Nunez came on Meet the Sponsors. Their message was consistent: Horizon isn't buying podiums. It's looking for people who live its brand.

Understand what Horizon gets from racing

"For us, we are largely non-endemic," Dickerson said at PRI. "There's nothing that we make that you're going to put on your car to make you want to race. But what you do is you help us reach a larger audience that probably has this passion for racing and just wants to live it." ▶ Watch Chris Dickerson explain this

Horizon does that with scale replicas. It often starts by partnering with an endemic brand that already sponsors a team and building an RC version of the car. "A lot of times it starts with us having a relationship with some of these more endemic brands," Dickerson said. Those products take a long time. "It takes anywhere from 12 to 18 months to develop an RC car," Nunez said, and while a model is in development the team asks "who is a good brand or who's a good ambassador that's going to help us carry that flag. Because at the end of the day, we're really just trying to legitimize our brand message." ▶ Watch the Meet the Sponsors episode

That's also why Horizon's planning follows its product launches. Dickerson said the company tries to "align our new products with where are we going to most have the opportunity to reach that full-scale motorsports crowd with the right product." ▶ See the full answer

Winning isn't the test, character is

This is where Horizon differs from most racing sponsors. "We care really more about you and your personal brand and you as your personal person, and the people you surround yourself with, at least for us, more than your wins," Dickerson said. ▶ Watch Dickerson at PRI

He was direct about what that means: "If you're the bad boy of your race series and you win every race, you're probably still not for us. Because we would rather have the guy who's going to have a strong family bond and be a good positive role model than the guy who everybody hates but he wins every time." ▶ Watch Dickerson on family values

Nunez looks for the same thing. "Our brand is about the parent, the guardian, the father, the mother working with their child and teaching them the basics of fixing things," he said. When an athlete clearly "lives our brand" and "understands our purpose," he said, "that is the first thing that I look for." ▶ Watch Brian Nunez on what he looks for

Bring an audience and content they can't reach alone

Off-road racer Casey Currie is the model. "Casey's probably one of our, if not our best ambassadors when it comes to both Axial and Losi," Nunez said. Currie built his own media team, so working RC into his content is natural: "Hey, we're going to go out and use this YouTube series with our full-scale Jeeps. Why not include RC cars in them?" ▶ Watch Nunez on Casey Currie

Juan Pablo Montoya is another. Horizon's relationship with him began because he loved its model airplanes, and he shares new products with his international following because he's genuinely excited about them. "When it's authentic, and I think it's reaching an audience that we don't maybe reach with some of our normal marketing, that's where we see a lot of value for Horizon," Dickerson said. ▶ Watch Dickerson on Montoya

Horizon wants partners who post because they want to, not because a contract says so. As the Horizon team put it, they don't want to be "knocking on your door saying, hey, you agreed to two social media posts per month. You didn't do them last month. We want the people who are posting four or five because they're so into it." Dickerson added that Horizon is building an affiliate program, so "if you can show us that you can engage a customer base and you can drive traffic and that traffic converts to our sites, we're happy to share some of that success with an athlete, with a driver." ▶ Watch the Horizon team on content and affiliates

Start small and let them find you

Nobody gets a Horizon deal cold. Asked whether he has ever sponsored a team he hadn't met, Nunez said, "Never." Every deal grows in stages: "We've always crawled. We walked and then we ran." And he won't script your marketing. "It's, hey, what is your brand? What is the YouTube series? What are you doing on social media? And how can we integrate our brand into that?... If we see some return on investment, let's take it to the next level." ▶ Watch Nunez on starting small

His favorite introduction is one where he already knows you. "I prefer to actually learn about them organically," he said. The ideal meeting at a booth isn't "hi, I'm Joe. It's, oh my God, you're Joe from so-and-so. I've seen your content." A deck handed over at an event "typically never leads anywhere, honestly." What matters is what makes you different, and it isn't exposure: "With all due respect, we don't need your help to sell more cars." ▶ Watch Nunez on getting noticed

Do an hour of homework, then send a short note

Dickerson's advice: "Know your brand, know what you're trying to promote, what you stand for," then research Horizon. "If you watch the Horizon YouTube channel, you subscribe to our social media, in about an hour of homework on social media, you would have a good feel for what we're trying to bring through either the Losi brand or the Horizon brand." ▶ Watch Dickerson's advice

Keep the first email tiny. "If their email is more than what I can see on the screen, I probably don't read it," he said. "If you can tell me in a really short paragraph what you're doing and why you think it'd be a good fit," a brand manager can take 15 minutes to hear you out. Horizon budgets on a calendar year, and the "August, September period is probably when we're really starting to put the big opportunities out there together." Nunez would rather get an invitation than a six-figure deck: "Let's put you in a car. Let me see it firsthand, let me experience it, let me see the passion." ▶ Watch the Horizon team on how to reach them

Your checklist for Horizon Hobby

• Show how you represent family values. Wins alone won't get you there.
• Spend an hour on Horizon's YouTube channel and social media, and know whether you fit Losi, Axial or Arma.
• Build real content and an audience Horizon's own marketing doesn't reach.
• Point to an endemic sponsor or sales channel that could lead to a replica RC car.
• Send a short paragraph, not a deck, and get on their radar before the August–September planning period.
• Invite a brand manager to an event and put them in your car.
• Expect to start small and earn more over time.