by Matt Konkle
Managing Editor
A garage. A dream. And a Jeep.
As far as origin stories go, it’s not a bad one for a 33-year company that now has warehouse locations throughout the United States—and customers across the globe.
The garage was a small one-car version; the kind you see everywhere attached to modest homes normally filled with those who have modest dreams.
Only this garage on Plant Avenue in Wayne, Pennsylvania, contained an inspiring, rugged 1989 Jeep Wrangler Sahara YJ. And its owner was far from just a modest dreamer.
In late spring of 1990, with the country’s economy teetering on the brink of recession, Ted Wentz Jr. decided to take his love of racing and passion for that Jeep Wrangler, and turn it into something that would define a generation of Jeep parts and accessories, as well as those who buy them.
Call it a hunch, a gut feeling, intuition, whatever, but Wentz Jr. believed there was a whole niche market out there in the 4x4 community that was being underserved. Customers, he believed, who wanted better service. Faster service.
And better prices.
Now he just needed someone to believe in him. Or at the least, his dream.
So Wentz Jr. cold-called Bestop, the Jeep industry’s biggest soft top manufacturer, and asked if he could place an initial order worth $18k—an amount that would give him the maximum available discount.
While Bestop didn’t outright laugh at someone calling out of the blue and asking for that much product, the company was skeptical. However, it also realized orders around the country were beginning to dry up because of that recession. So it said sure, but on the caveat that everything had to be pre-paid.
The next day, Bestop received a cashier’s check for $18k. So it sent the product.
And Wentz turned his initial investment into the industry-disrupting juggernaut known as Quadratec.
It first started in that small Plant Avenue garage, filling orders gained from tiny ‘back of the magazine’ ads that read ‘Need a top? We sell tops cheaper.’
The small trickle of orders soon turned into a stream, that in due time turned into a flood.
The response also led Wentz Jr. to move Quadratec out of that garage and into a business location in nearby Newtown Square, Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s.
Not long after, the small group Wentz Jr. assembled to help answer calls, open mail and process orders, began to grow. A sales staff formed. The beginnings of a warehouse materialized.
Through it all, orders never stopped coming. In fact, year-over-year growth exceeded even Wentz Jr’s best estimates. Other manufacturers noticed as well, and Quadratec soon began offering more Jeep parts like bumpers, side steps, hardtops, seats, winches, exhaust products and many other accessories.
These products quickly became incorporated inside a catalog that began mailing to customers already on the company’s growing mailing list, while Wentz Jr. changed those small Jeep magazine ads to advertise the catalog, instead of physical products.
By the late 1990s, Quadratec Essentials became the largest Jeep parts and accessories catalog in the world.
And so the company, once again, made the decision to move locations because it simply outgrew its current residence.
In 1999, it pulled up stakes in Newtown Square, and ventured out to West Chester, Pennsylvania — settling into a huge complex that offered both cavernous warehouse space as well as room for a growing sales, customer service and management staff.
In 2000, the company added two new warehouses—one in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and the other in Sparks, Nevada. These new locations, along with Quadratec’s West Chester facility, now gave it the ability to ship products anywhere in the country in an average of one to three days.
The company’s footprint also grew beyond just product sales, as it began to send representatives around the country to several popular Jeep events including Moab, Utah’s Easter Jeep Safari and Pennsylvania’s All Breeds Jeep show, among others.
Additionally, the growing popularity of internet sales provided yet another avenue for Quadratec to connect with its customers — allowing the company to now sell its wares 24 hours a day all over the world.
This spurred even further growth, and in October 2007 Quadratec expanded its West Chester headquarters; adding a new facility dedicated specifically to housing the swelling sales and service departments, photo and video studios, purchasing, internet, catalog and administrative staff.
Like everyone else in the industry, the 2008-09 ‘Great Recession’ slowed Quadratec’s growth for a spell, but it wasn’t long before the company was again roaring at a sales pace well above the industry average.
Sales continued to grow past 2010, and so, too, did the brand’s overall reach and product offerings. The events team expanded to represent Quadratec at more of the biggest Jeep gatherings all over the country, while multiple catalog types now allowed the company to send specific versions to a larger segment of select customers.
Meanwhile, Quadratec’s enormous visibility throughout the Jeep marketplace attracted more and more vendors with new products for both catalog and website pages. In turn, this gave the company’s video, social and content channels the perfect chance to educate an entire industry on those products, as well as entertaining and informing with feature, news and event coverage — proving Quadratec’s worth as more than just a retailer.
As the decade progressed, the company added even more convenience for its customer base by offering free shipping on most items. This, combined with an ever-increasing Internet sales footprint, fueled unprecedented sales growth. Customers across the entire industry were now using their smartphones to place orders at any time, no matter where they were or what else they were doing.
In response, Quadratec completely revamped its website in August of 2016 to provide a faster, better user experience for its customers across all digital platforms. This also turned into the perfect system for them to receive even speedier service, faster shipping times and a way to, more quickly, identify what they want and place their order from whatever device they choose — telephone, keyboard, mail, or smartphone.
Better service. Faster service. Better prices.
As Quadratec forges through its fourth decade, Ted Wentz Jr. is now Chairman of the Board, while his son Ted Wentz III has taken over as Chief Executive Officer. That family dynamic echoes throughout the company as many in its ever-expanding ranks are related—brothers, cousins, in-laws, or father and son.
Family is also what both Wentz Jr. and Wentz III consider every single one of their employees, so much so that it is one of the company’s Core Values: We Are One.
But no matter how much the company grows, those three mantras—better service, faster service, better prices—will always be just as important now as they were nearly 30 years ago when Wentz Jr. first put a check in the mail to Bestop and changed an entire industry.
