Johnny Petrozelle

NASCAR sponsorship is way more than about on track ROI. It can open doors. Not just business doors but emotional doors. Lubri-Loy is an 80 year old industrial lubricant manufacturer that I have been trying to acquire. They were founded in St Louis in the 40s. The owner who is very proud of the brand wanted to sell it to someone who would be a good steward of the brand and not necessarily private equity to maximize the $$ he could get for such a storied name. Fortunately we got a last second opportunity with SSGL to put together a Lubri-Loy scheme. Of course this was a risk on my part because if I didn’t end up buying the business it would have been an extremely expensive associate for Costa Oil. I rolled the dice that this gesture would move me to the top of candidates to buy this business for an amount less that others had offered. After getting permission to use his branding I could tell the owner of Lubri-Loy was excited for the car, asking for picture updates frequently. I chose to send the offer to him during the race, hopefully capitalizing on the emotional equity I created - I asked for several hundred thousand dollars less than the asking price which is much less than offers he has already received. This evening the LOI was mutually executed, and barring any out side of the norm surprises in due diligence I will be the owner of Lubri-Loy, a brand that in the 50s was on par with major oil brands such as Castrol, Wolf’s Head, Amalie, and others.