Editor’s note: Good things happen even in the worst of times. Three years ago, the world as we knew it shifted from its axis as COVID-19 brought on a statewide stay-at-home lockdown. Thousands of North Texas businesses fell into pandemic oblivion. Other owners faced down their companies’ near-death experiences and came out in better shape today. This is one in a series of stories about five such business owners.
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This year, Benny Black, founder and partner of Iconic Sprinters Inc. in Fort Worth, expects to sell more than 250 Mercedes-Benz vans that he’s converted into mini-RVs.
That’s more than twice as many vacations on wheels as Iconic sold in 2022 — and that was a banner year.
“I’ve got some that are going for as high as $225,000, depending on how decked out they are,” Black said recently at his Cowtown dealership on Lone Star Avenue. The most expensive is 24 feet long and comfortably accommodates eight to 10 folks. They typically have a small bathroom.
“Our smaller Metro Day Lounge, suitable for a family of four or five, goes for about $150,000 to $160,000.”
Do people actually sleep in sprinters?
Families traveling with kids who don’t want to stop will buy the sprinter with a daybed in the back, he says. “But the majority of my upscale demographic will tell you, ‘We want the sprinter so we can travel in style, but we’ll stay at the Ritz-Carlton.’ ”
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Read other stories in this series
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He’s got a “coming soon” 2023 Mercedes-Benz Getaway Camper 4x4 geared to off-road adventurous folks wanting to explore places like Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. He plans to list it at $170,000.
All told, he’s shooting for about $30 million in gross sales. That’s based on conversions in the pipeline and expectations of adding more Mercedes dealerships in Texas to his national sales channels, even as sales to individuals taper off.
First a tornado, then the pandemic
The 52-year-old knows what it’s like to be hit by a double whammy and live to tell the stories.
On Oct. 20, 2019, Dallas’ devastating tornadoes demolished his Platinum Motorcars luxury car rental facility on North Central Expressway at Royal Lane.
“Thankful to God, all my high-dollar cars were out on rental,” Black said.
There was a Dallas Cowboys game that night, and many of his Rolls Royces, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Ferraris and McLarens were leased out for $750 to $3,000 for the day by folks who wanted to arrive at the football game in overstated Big D style.
It was also his 49th birthday.
Rather than rebuild in Dallas, Black moved Platinum’s rental and sales operations to Fort Worth, where his six-month-old Iconic Sprinter company was gaining traction. That was in January of 2020. When the lockdown was declared in March, his car rental business came to a screeching halt.
Meanwhile, his sprinter sales were clipping along at a robust pace.
That’s when he switched gears entirely.
His wealthy exotic car clientele wanted conversions so that their families could travel without exposing them to the deadly virus. “When you’ve got kids, you want a bathroom. So we quickly added them, and saw our business completely take off.”
By “we,” he means he and his partner, Ryan Hayes, who was formerly in the oil and gas business and spotted the opportunity to buy into a manufacturing franchise with the rights to sell in the Lone Star State.
“Texas, in the form of Houston, was the largest sprinter conversion market in the U.S.,” Black said.
“Ryan said, ‘Man, I have no idea how to sell them, and I don’t know the demographics very well.’ But I did. When COVID hit, I sold to current [rental] clients. Then it was boom, boom, boom, just like that,” Black said snapping his fingers.
“He pushed me into making that move. But I didn’t realize just how good of a move that it would turn out to be.”
Building his base
Early on, his supply chain was a three-part hassle. Mercedes chassis from Germany and semiconductors from China kept getting bogged down at docks in Los Angeles.
Remember those photos of thousands of containers waiting to be unloaded. And then there was the big problem of shipping from California to Fort Worth.
By the fall, the supply chain was more predictable, allowing Iconic to sell more sprinters directly to dealerships that wanted to compete with Ford’s passenger vans. Dealerships add stability because they are repeat customers, said Black, who counts 32 dealerships as customers — mostly in the Midwest and California.
Houston is by far his strongest market, followed by California and Florida.
That’s why Black wants to build up his Lone Star base.
“We’ve got a coveted relationship with the Mercedes brand, and we’re able to build our product from start to finish,” Black said. “That’s made it easier to forecast business throughout the year.”
The only holdup these days is how fast his body shop crew can convert them.
“We pick out the components, the colors and do the conversions ourselves,” Black said. “That was the issue when we first got into the business. We saw certain things that we thought we could do better being here in Texas — mainly the air conditioner.”
In addition to tricked-out vans, Black keeps a handful of chassis on hand for DIY-ers and professional service people who want to transform their vans themselves.
“I put them on our Iconic website in case someone wants to pick up one or two before I send them into production,” he said. “We’ve got a steady stream of standing orders.”
Black has pretty much abandoned luxury car rentals. He now buys his trophy cars and flips them as fast as he can.
“We couldn’t rent cars during COVID, and after COVID, the prices were so ridiculously high that you couldn’t afford to buy a Lamborghini and try to rent it.” he recalled. “Now that prices have settled in, nearly everybody in the luxury car market is upside down and awash in inventory. That’s not us.
“If you bought anything from 2019 to 2022, you bought inflated,” he said. ”When Budget, Hertz and Enterprise started shedding their vehicles, that was my cue that selling cars was better than sucking wind.”
His goal starting out in 2006 was for him and his wife, Jennifer, to be able to drive fancy wheels without having to pay for them. Ironically, the couple left the suburbs to live in Victory across from the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas. He takes the train to Fort Worth to go to work.
“It’s so friggin’ awesome,” Black said.
