Pelican Parts and ECS Tuning- here's what you should know

[Bryan at Pelican Parts]

Hi all,

Some of you may know me already from e-mails, Coffee & Cars or just when you visited Pelican Parts. I thought this would be good time to introduce myself to the entire community. I have been with Pelican for almost 5 years where Wayne and I put together a team to carry on Pelican with the same spirit and enthusiasm Wayne and Tom brought to the business when they founded it over 20 years ago. That same team is here today, along with all the employees of Pelican Parts that have made us who we are over the past 20 years. We have been and continue to be a passionate group of automotive enthusiasts. We are committed to providing content, community and parts for the do-it-yourselfer.

Some years ago, Wayne decided he wanted to spend more time with his family and side projects (books, cars, doing what he loves...) and started working towards a day when Pelican could manage without him. That day came in September, 2017 when Pelican Parts was added to Bertram’s portfolio alongside ECS Tuning and Turner Motorsports. Shortly after the sale I think Wayne said it well, “The reality is that after 20+ years of sweat, writing five books, and numerous skinned knuckles, I have been transitioning my roles in order to spend more time with my family. This is a process that has been going on over the past five years, and I don't expect any significant changes to Pelican or the great community that we have all built here.”

Since the purchase of the company we have maintained who we are and have always been at Pelican Parts with support from ECS’s new CEO Imran Jooma who joined them late last year. Pelican has an excellent group of employees who care deeply about the company and our customer. The sale of the company has not created any change of employment for any of the Pelican employees. Wayne continues to support the business with his attendance at Coffee and Cars events and most recently represented Pelican in an episode of Wheeler Dealers on the Velocity channel. All of the team members at Pelican are dedicated to serving our customers and continue to strive to meet the needs of the auto enthusiast and that will never change. We appreciate your ongoing support of our community.


Bryan Handlen
CEO of Pelican Parts

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[Wayne 962]

Hi everyone, Wayne here. I read Dan’s posts regarding Turner, and although I don’t have first-hand knowledge of Turner’s situation, from what I’ve heard from other people involved, his summary is probably a fair assessment of what happened with Turner. I was aware of this during negotiations and it was a very large concern of mine at the time. The last time I spoke with Dan, he mentioned he was working for an unnamed competitor, so I’m not sure of the exact motivations for his recent postings.

Having said that, it does appear as if the parent company (Bertram Capital) has made some good moves to reverse some past mistakes. They made some major management changes, hired a new CEO, ripped out all the cameras, and have been working hard to undo a lot of the company culture issues that seemed to exist at ECS. I really respect people and organizations that self-correct - it’s the only way to implement constant process improvement. I ran Pelican this way for twenty years, and trust me, I made lots of mistakes that I learned from.

Indeed - I believe that none of these culture issues exist at Pelican - as Bryan has said, nothing at Pelican really has changed. Proof positive of this is the fact that only two people have left Pelican since the sale of the company - and both left to pursue their dream jobs in other fields.

What has changed at Pelican has been operational and behind the scenes. As an independent, small company, we looked to the future and realized that we were too small to negotiate well with our suppliers and shipping companies. Since the combination, we’ve been able to negotiate better terms, which translates into the long-term survival of the company and the continuation of our legendary customer support. Unfortunately, the realities of actually running a real business is often completely hidden from customers, and they are often shocked or surprised to learn if the challenges we face. Indeed, Turner was much smaller than Pelican and I suspect they may have suffered from ‘small company headwinds’ if they had gone it alone.

So there you have it. As I said months ago, I don’t see much changing at Pelican, and that has proven itself to be an accurate statement based upon the past nine months.

Thanks for everyone’s continued support!

Wayne