August 14, 2008 Issue
Business Spotlight
Mountaintop Golf Cars, Inc. & The Golf Car Catalog—Bringing the Future of Transportation to the High Country
Story by Sam Calhoun
A few years back when the green business craze was just catching on, Jack Triolo’s wife Deborah asked him what he was doing to be green. “I’ve been saving the Earth with my business for almost 30 years,” he replied, somewhat mystified at how people miss the fact that golf carts were one of the first vehicles to run on electric power.
From the very first time Triolo saw a fleet of golf cars, he knew he was staring at the future of transportation and had to get involved. Three decades later, Triolo’s two businesses, Mountaintop Golf Cars, Inc. and The Golf Car Catalog, are still chugging along, helping to usher in a new era of travel for the High Country and nation.
Triolo was born and raised in Summit, N.J., and left in 1967 to attend the University of Oklahoma. In 1972 after four years of classes but no degree, Triolo left Oklahoma and moved to Maine, partly because he was a fan of author Wilhelm Reich who had a fondness for the area. After six months in Maine, Triolo left the North and headed toward Florida where work awaited him. On the way, Triolo stopped in Chapel Hill, a place friends in Maine had recommended. He didn’t know a soul, but he liked the area and took a job as a plumber in spring 1973.
After two months of working as a plumber and another couple of months working for an ill-fated landscaping company, Triolo got an itch to move again. He had made a new friend, a woman named Deborah Peck from Connecticut who had graduated from Stanford and was heading to Boone to earn a teaching certificate at ASU. In fall 1973, Triolo and Peck moved to Boone and “never left,” he said.
In Boone, Triolo jumped from job to job, finally landing at Reilly’s Foreign Car Service. There Triolo learned all the ins and outs of mechanic work on all sorts of automobiles. Around 1976, Peck opened a few day care centers in Avery County. One of her friends from the day care centers hosted a wedding at Blowing Rock Golf Course and Peck and Triolo, who were now married, decided to attend. While at the wedding, Triolo randomly took a walk through the golf course and stumbled on the golf cart shed. He opened the door, walked in, looked around and remembered saying out loud, to no one in particular, “This looks like an interesting way to make a living.”
Following his hunch, Triolo took a job at Blowing Rock Golf Club in the months following the wedding. His expertise from fixing cars meshed perfectly with learning how to fix all sorts of golf cars, and Triolo fell right into the position of golf car mechanic. Triolo was also the youngest person—by far—who was fixing golf cars in the High Country, and that brought him a lot of new business.
In 1980 and 1981, Triolo split his time between fixing golf cars in the summer and working in Florida and Georgia in the winter. As he was leaving to go to Atlanta, Ga. in late fall 1981, Triolo got a call from Grandfather Mountain Golf and Country Club and was offered a job fixing golf cars. He politely said no and took a job constructing a MARTA—Atlanta’s public transportation system—station in downtown Atlanta. While on the job, Triolo narrowly escaped falling off a two-story building to his certain death. It was then that he decided that he wanted to follow his passion for fixing golf cars, and left the world of construction forever.
Triolo arrived back in Boone in 1982 and started working three days a week fixing golf cars at Blowing Rock Golf Club and three days a week fixing golf cars at Grandfather Mountain Golf Club. On his day and nights off, Triolo did freelance work fixing golf cars, making a name for himself throughout the community.
“I found a niche,” explained Triolo.
But soon that niche became too large. Triolo battled with having two different workshops—one in Blowing Rock and one in Linville—and neither had enough room to keep the golf cars that needed to be fixed. After some negotiating, Triolo convinced a local landowner to rent him 3 acres and a primitive repair shop along Highway 105 in Foscoe—the same location where Mountaintop Golf Cars and The Golf Car Catalog are today.
In 1982, at 9647 Highway 105 in Foscoe, Triolo incorporated Mountaintop Golf Cars as a business that sold new and used golf cars, accessories and offered repairs for every make and model. Thanks to some mutual friends who owned EZGO in Augusta, Ga., Triolo became a franchise for the golf car brand almost overnight in 1984. With no money down, EZGO set Triolo up with a full line of the cars—gas and electric—as well as accessories.
Seeing the market growing, Triolo seized the opportunity in 1986 and published the first paper catalog for mail-order golf cars and golf car accessories. The new business, called The Golf Car Catalog, not only expanded his business to a larger market, but it also brought in money during the winter, the lean time for his business.
“In the summer, we had too much business, but in the winter, we were starving. This was the key,” explained Michael Williams, product development director for Mountaintop Golf Cars and The Golf Car Catalog.
Ten years later, Triolo became a forerunner for eCommerce, just as he had with mail-order golf cars. Bering a self-described “tree hugger,” Triolo always wanted to do away with his paper catalog and the invention of the Internet was just what he needed to make the change.
“I’ve been on the web since 1997, before eCommerce was accepted. It was risky, but we had a Thanksgiving Eve launch and my business increased by tenfold overnight,” said Triolo.
Triolo didn’t just put up a website and let it become stagnant; he began updating the site with new products every week, as well as began writing reviews of new cars and products. His website was interactive and animate, and it remains so to this day featuring more than 10,000 unique items. Because of this, the website remains on the first page of sites that search engines find when people type in anything about golf cars.
The Golf Car Catalog is one of the largest purveyors of golf cars and golf car accessories in the world, and it accounts for 70 to 75 percent of Triolo’s business.
The term repeat customers doesn’t even begin to describe the thousands of people who seek out The Golf Car Catalog for products. For instance, last week, Triolo and Williams sold a shipment of electrical golf car motors to the Royal Thai Air Force—the one from Thailand—and that’s a regular occurrence. People from all over the United States also use The Golf Car Catalog, such as Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks that routinely call and get parts for their fleet. Triolo even sells parts to the founder of EZGO, who retired near the High Country.
Mountaintop Golf Cars is still an EZGO dealer, but it can handle any repair problem on any make or model of golf cars—even ones that are more than 30 years old.
“We’re an EZGO dealer but if you bring us anything with four small wheels, we’ll try and fix it regardless of what brand it is,” said Williams.
With nine full-time employees and 26 years of business under his belt, Triolo is surviving in a market where the only constant is change.
“I’ve been blessed with some really great people who make this all work,” said Triolo. “My mechanics know this stuff inside and out. There’s nothing we won’t take on because we know what we’re doing. We can fix any electrical vehicle and we can get any electrical vehicle part if they still make it.”
Over the last decade, the golf car market has changed dramatically, said Triolo. After September 11, 2001, the golf car business took a hit, and golf car prices increased from around $4,000 for a new model to around $6,000. Over the past few years, more golf courses are closing in a given year than are opening—a trend unseen since World War II, said Triolo.
But there is a silver lining. Eighty percent of new golf cars are electric, and 20 percent are gas—a noted change from ten years ago. Golf car repair isn’t taking a hit because golf cars last forever and, whether new ones sell or not, the old ones always need repairing. Triolo’s supply of parts is too big for his storage space, a reminder that a larger facility is needed soon but also one of the reasons why his business revenue grew 20 percent in 2008 so far. Also, the last decade has been good for new accessories. Thousands of after-market additions are now available for all golf cars and all can be found by clicking to www.golfcarcatalog.com.
Today, the idea of what a golf car is used for is changing, and Triolo is riding that wave as well.
“Today, golfers are diminishing and more people are buying [golf cars] for work use, at the farm, in the garden, at home or on the race track,” said Triolo. “It’s the future of transportation. Just look at Sun City and Peachtree, Ga.—a whole community run on golf cars. People use them to go everywhere; even kids drive them to school. Peachtree has 9,000 golf cars and only 500 are used for golf. This is the future; it’s a step toward electrical transportation for all.”
Mountaintop Golf Cars, in fact, used to be a GEM electrical vehicle dealership, but when Daimler Chrysler bought GEM, it stripped all private dealerships of the vehicles.
Triolo and Williams also customize golf cars at Mountaintop Golf Cars, adding more than $15,000 of after-market accessories to each of the vehicles. The customized cars are electric, retail for about $20,000, can go from 0 to 40 miles per hour in seven seconds, are two-wheel drive and feature some unique and colorful paint jobs. Mountaintop Golf Cars sells roughly 10 to 12 of the customized cars annually.
For the future, Triolo is tweaking his business to meet the new challenges of the 21st century. New online golf car catalogs are emerging so Triolo is starting to buy more parts in volume so he can stay competitive. More parts mean more space is needed to store them, so Triolo is looking at how to expand his covered space. He has no plans to leave his location, though.
Further on down the road, Triolo hopes to develop an electric vehicle of his own in the hopes of furthering what he thinks is the future of transportation, but in the meantime he is content with the businesses and life he has built in the High Country.
“I want to remind you though that it’s the people here that make it great—not me,” said Triolo. “It’s the people, my employees here who really make the business.”
Mountaintop Golf Cars, Inc. & The Golf Car Catalog are located at 9647 Highway 105 in Foscoe. The office, showroom and repair shop are open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday and are closed on Sunday. For more information, click to www.golfcarcatalog.com or call 828-963-6775 or 1-800-328-1953.
Community Interest
News & Notes
Events
Arts & Entertainment
