Driving business

Matt Snow launched his business five years ago with $5,000 and his invention: a water-and-methanol injection system that boosts the horsepower of just about any vehicle.

His Woodland Park home became the factory for Snow Performance Inc.

He placed a tiny black-and-white ad in Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords magazine and kept his day job as a lead technician at Sturman Industries.

As phone orders started rolling in, he recruited his wife and three children to help with assembly and shipping.

“In the first month the ad came out we sold $3,500 (worth). It was amazing how well it was received,” Snow said.

Sales in 2002 totaled $34,500. This year, Snow expects sales to tease the $3 million mark.

Snow, 50, points to a combination of answered prayers, a little luck and a lot of hard work for securing a pole position in the highperformance automotive market.

“I have no qualms selling and installing their product. I’ve tried two other companies and like this product the best,” said Kenny Kouba, owner of KAZ Motor-Sports, a domestic tuning and performance shop in Colorado Springs.

Snow sells his kit wholesale to automotive-catalog companies and performance-market distributors. Retail sales are through magazine ads and performance shops. Trade shows also boost business. For the first time, Snow Performance will have a booth at SEMA, a large, annual automotive-specialtyproducts trade event that begins Oct. 30 in Las Vegas.

Snow got laid off from Sturman in 2003 and turned all his attention to his business.

He now has 10 employees and in November will double the size of his production plant and warehouse in Woodland Park to 6,000 square feet.

He also recently struck a deal with a toy manufacturer, Maisto International, to have the Snow Performance logo put on the company’s die-cast replica cars, which are sold at stores such as Wal-Mart.

“We’ve made a real effort to leverage the power and position of other big names in the industry,” Snow said.

“The idea is guys see your logo on the little cars, in our trade magazines ads and our third-party endorsements — and they start talking about your name.”

And he’s negotiating a contract to co-label his product with one of the nation’s top-three automotive-aftermarket manufacturing companies. He would not disclose which company.

“A company that large wants to use the Snow Performance name because of the market position we have,” said Greg Dunn, director of operations, “and it could double our volume in short order.”

Snow’s interest in automotive power stretches to his hot rodding days of the 1960s, when his hobby was building Mopar muscle cars.

In the early 1990s, Snow owned three health clubs in California with 105 employees and more than 10,000 members.

At one time, he ranked fourth in the nation in heavyweight amateur bodybuilding and held 20 titles, including Mr. Midwest, Mr. Southern California and Mr. Minnesota.

But he said the industry was sagging financially and he began to notice competiting clubs using unethical practices to get members.

He prayed for a new career, moved his family to Woodland Park in 1995 and got hired at Sturman Industries, where he worked with the engineering group developing the fuel system used on the 6.0-liter diesel Ford Powerstroke.

In his spare time, Snow began playing around with an old concept that was used on fighter planes in World War II — cooling an engine to increase performance using a combination of water and methanol.

By applying technology to the physics of combustion, Snow said he and a few fellow engineers were able to create the most advanced system on the market.

The system injects on demand a fully atomized spray of water and methanol into the intake track. As the liquid evaporates, it absorbs heat, which allows more air into the combustion chamber and increases performance.

Compact digital sensors read internal engine signals, such as revolutions per minute and air flow, and engage the system to deliver power when it’s needed.

On a typical street-performance car, the Boost Cooler kit adds 50 to 100 horsepower and on race-car engines, up to 200 horsepower, Dunn said. The system also improves fuel economy by 10 to 15 percent, he said, and decreases emissions.

KAZ MotorSports’ Kouba said the water-methanol injection is a safety mechanism he highly recommends.

“It becomes a prerequisite for me to install it — especially with factory motors that we put a turbo charger or supercharger on — because it reduces the cylinder temperature dramatically, so we can control what the motor wasn’t really built for,” he said.

Kouba said it takes him about five hours to install a Boost Cooler kit. Snow offers about 20 kits that fit virtually every vehicle, and can be used on either gas or diesel engines.

Kits cost $249 to $769, before installation. Snow plans to continue to gain more of the market and sees the business potential as limitless. He’s making a move into the commercial diesel market.

“Our strategy is to push to wholesale at the distributor level — that’s the fastest way to grow,” he said.

Applications for his product extend to diesel locomotives, military vehicles, offshore boats and personal watercraft.

“Everyone wants more power, better fuel economy and lower emissions,” Snow said. “Any internal combustion engine can benefit from our product.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0235 or debbie.kelley@gazette.com

BIOGRAPHY

Matt Snow: Founder of Snow Performance Inc.

Biggest challenge: Dealing with fastpaced growth and trying to keep ahead of purchasing, maintaining steady cash flow and attending to capital needs.

Sage advice: “No matter what business you own, business is business — it all revolves around cash flow. Always look at the risks and benefits.”

WHAT ENTREPRENEUR MATT SNOW HAS LEARNED ABOUT BUSINESS

Believe in your product

To test his injection system, Snow installed it on his 1993 Mustang Cobra, adding 50 horsepower, and took it to the track. Drag racers and road racers asked him what his secret was. Manufacturing and marketing the product developed from there.

Align yourself with people and companies that can take you to the next level

“We rely heavily on editorial content in specialty trade magazines, like Popular Hot Rodding and Diesel Builder. In one two-month period, we got 10 mentions,” Snow said.

Streamline operations

Snow reduced the cost of goods by buying in larger volume and has engineers working on upgrading the product’s atomization technique and computer controllers.