Global expansion adds life to Trojan Battery
For 85 years, Trojan Battery Co., now the top U.S. provider of batteries for electric golf carts, has had a quiet existence as a family-owned and operated company.
But from the calm of manicured fairways, the Santa Fe Spings firm has been thrust into the international green movement. The company’s specialty is deep-cycle batteries that dole out energy in a steady stream over relatively long periods of time — just what’s needed for solar power systems in remote parts of the world.
Trojan’s batteries, used predominantly in recreational products, are now helping to change people’s lives in a far more fundamental way.
“There’s a solar panel on the roof powering an outside light, interior lights and a ceiling fan,” Brian Godber, Trojan’s vice president for renewable energy, said about homes in Bangladesh getting electric power for the first time.
“The children can study better after the sun goes down,” he said. “They’re not breathing in kerosene fumes anymore.”
The company’s expansion into the world arena has drawn the attention of the Obama administration’s National Export Initiative, which seeks to double U.S. exports in the next five years.
“We are trying to make U.S. companies aware of the fact that 95% of the world’s consumers are outside our borders,” said Ro Khanna, deputy assistant secretary for the Commerce Department. “Trojan is becoming a model for the president’s goal.”
The company received merit certificates from the Commerce Department’s U.S. Commercial Service and Congress.
But the path from stateside to international supplier was not a smooth one for the company founded in 1925 by George Godber, who worked on batteries in Navy submarines during World War I. The co-founder was Godber’s brother-in-law, Carl Speer, who had been a member of USC’s first football team — thus the name of the firm.
The company started out making automobile batteries, later expanding to commercial trucks. But in 1952, Trojan teamed with Autoette Electric Car Co. of Long Beach to design a golf cart that at first was meant for physically challenged players.
Currently, the company says it supplies the batteries for a variety of golf carts used on 98% of top U.S. courses. Trojan also makes batteries for other uses, including watering systems, floor polishers and solar systems at its factories in Santa Fe Springs and two locales in Georgia — Lithonia, just outside Atlanta, and Sandersville, near Macon.
Last year the company had about $300 million in sales.
The international segment of its business grew 17% in just seven months that ended in March, as Trojan ventured more into the solar segment. Finding customers overseas, especially in remote areas, presented challenges in dealing with numerous languages and cultural nuances in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, as well as several counties in Africa and South America.
Bryan Godber — George’s grandson and now Trojan’s vice president for renewable energy — said the U.S. Commercial Service was “providing us with reports on potential customers, talking us through the market dynamics.”
For a company that seldom ventured outside its home country, the assistance was invaluable. “How else would we know who it was safe to do business with?” Godber said.
Trojan executives went on a trip to India in which they met with 15 prospective clients in Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad over the course of just five days.
“When we were in the southern part of India, the people there had a saying: ‘Every 100 kilometers you travel north, you get a different language, culture, food, and climate,’ ” Godber said.
“It’s almost like moving from one country to another.”
The potential for growth for companies in this field are vast, said Jock O’Connell, international trade and economics advisor at the University of California Center in Sacramento.
“So much of the world — parts of India, Pakistan, China and Africa — is off the grid,” O’Connell said. “Some of the fastest-growing markets for cellphones are also in India and Africa, and they all have to be charged.
“If you can help people off the grid enjoy the benefits of being on the grid, you have a lucrative market there.”
That market has also provided new life to the company.
Just three years ago, Trojan had about 700 employees. Then the recession hit, and it fell to 500 — a drop of more than 25%.
But now, largely because of the overseas business, the company is back to 600.
“It’s been exciting,” Godber said, “being able to get some of our old friends back.”
More to Read
