Word: earnhardt
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...Also sure to be leaving DEI will be Anheuser-Busch, which hitched its beer wagon to Earnhardt in 2000. The Budweiser contract with DEI has an opt-out clause that will allow them to follow. Earnhardt also made it a point to express his loyalty to Chevrolet, whose nameplate he's raced under his whole career. The automaker has featured him prominently in its celebrity driven advertising campaigns. Were he to end up in another make, such as Toyota - which entered the Nextel Cup Series this season but has been embarrassed by poor performance and cheating scandals from the start...
...elder Earnhardt, who drove for Richard Childress Racing for the last 17 years of his life, started DEI in 1980 to control the marketing and merchandising side of his name and image. He was the first driver to truly take command of his business affairs and gained a reputation for being as calculating and ruthless in his dealings off the track as he was racing on it. Dale Earnhardt, Sr., wanted control over his affairs...
...Going into the final year of his contract with DEI, Earnhardt, working with his sister and business manager Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, said that he wanted at least 51% of the family business to continue his career there. Elledge had given a date of late May for striking a new deal or moving on, but Earnhardt said Thursday that the sides were so far apart that there was no need to wait until then to make the split official...
...prepared statement on the DEI website, Teresa Earnhardt, CEO of DEI and Earnhardt's stepmother since 1982, said, "While we are very disappointed that Dale Jr. has chosen to leave the family business, we remain excited about our company's future. Our aggressive expansion and diversification plans have not changed. This company has continued to thrive since Dale left us in 2001, and it will thrive following today's announcement. Dale and I built this company to be a championship-contender, and those principles still apply...
...What she failed to mention, or perhaps appreciate, is that the company let its most valuable commodity slip away. Last December, Teresa Earnhardt told the Wall Street Journal that her stepson had to make a choice between being a driver or a public personality. What that statement illustrated was not so much Earnhardt's conundrum but her own failure to recognize that his celebrity was, is and will be the driving force behind the lucrative sponsorship deals and broad-based fan support that fuel the business. In a time when even well-heeled shops like Roush Racing are looking...