Alex Turner meets STEVEN BALLARD, director of Runcorn-based Performance Products

THE marvels of GPS technology are usually used to help drivers know their position – but, for Performance Products, they have helped the company to find a niche position in its marketplace.

Steven Ballard’s path, though, has been quite circulatory, to arrive at latitude 53° 20’ 54.82”N, longitude 2° 40’ 55.71”W (as his business card describes, but Manor Park in Runcorn to everyone else) despite now running the company his father founded in 1979.

Performance Products – which sell under the brand name Snooper – began life in 1979.

“My dad brought the first radar detector into the country in 1979,” said Ballard.

“He has always been a car enthusiast and I think initially he probably saw the product in the US and thought ‘I could do with one of those – and people would buy it’.”

Speed camera detectors proved popular, but were held back by questions about their legality.

However, the law was clarified in 1998, in R v Knightsbridge Crown Court, ex parte Foot.

Lord Justice Simon Brown ruled that speed cameras did not contravene the 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act because radar detectors could not be used to “obtain information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any message”.

This changed the scale of the firm’s operations almost overnight.

“It was always a grey area because you could buy it but not use it,” Ballard recalled. “But, in 1998, when it was declared completely legal, the market did boom. We went from selling 6-7,000 units a year to selling 60-70,000 units.”

Ballard, who sheepishly admitted to receiving two speeding tickets in 20 years of driving – “both times on (average speed detection system) Vascar, so I couldn’t detect it” – is unfazed by any criticism of the product.

“The moral argument is a funny one,” he said. “People think it is just boy racers, but in the 1990s all sorts of people from any age group were getting caught at 34 or 35mph in a 30mph zone and getting fined for it. They looked at it as additional taxation and not road safety.”

The product’s popularity remains and it still brings in sales of more than £1m a year – about 20% of the business. Ballard said: “From 1979, we had always tried to find other products. We sold car security and go- faster stripes for steering wheels, but the speed camera detector has always been our bread and butter.

“We just released a new one with the latest technology, GPS and GPRS. There’s a community of users, so if you see a policeman you can press a button that alerts the users.

“At the end of the day, you are just sharing a co-ordinate with people.

“It’s like people flashing their lights but using GPRS technology – it’s only like an electronic signpost. The Government says the speed camera is there because it’s a dangerous stretch of road, or there are lots of accidents, so the alerts slow people down.

“A speed camera doesn’t make people slow down, even if they get flashed, if they don’t know it has happened.”

BUT Ballard’s interests initially were a long way from the car products he had grown up with. He said: “I wanted to go into graphic design.

“I went to a foundation course, which I did in Manchester, and got seduced by painting rather than graphics.

“My dad didn’t want me to do it because he didn’t see any future in it, but at 17 you don’t think that far ahead.

“I was at the Cheltenham School of Art for three years. I learnt sales there – every week there’s about 25 people in your group and you had to talk about your work and pitch and defend what you did. It could be quite critical.”

After that, his plans to open a bar in Leeds with a friend didn’t materialise and he was soon working at the family firm, which was at that time re-establishing itself after being badly buffeted in the recession of the early 1990s.

He headed up a mail order division, which he said was “a really good way to learn how business worked”, before getting increasingly involved in product development.

He said: “I had some natural skills in the creative side – packaging, website design – and then I naturally got into the product development side, which was more my dad’s side.

“Then we sold the company about three years ago to a US company called Cobra Electronics. They sell about 1m units a year of radar detectors. Since then, my dad has vacated but everyone else is still here.

“It’s run between three of us – me, my brother Jason, who runs the sales team, and Shaun Tolley, who is our financial director.”

The company, after a dalliance with the car satellite navigation sector, has had success finding other ways to utilise GPS technology.

Keen golfer Ballard said: “We naturally went into satellite navigation, but found it too difficult to compete against TomTom and Garmin, so we looked at other areas we could use the technology. We have concentrated on more niche areas – trying to compete with some of the big guys is nearly impossible for a firm our size.”

These include its Truckmate satellite navigation software, which avoids low bridges and weight restricted roads based on the size and load of a truck, and its Golf Shotsaver, which calculates distances to any position on over 2,000 golf courses across the UK and Europe.

“You hear a lot of stories about lorries getting stuck,” Ballard said.

“The truck navigation is the biggest-selling product that we do. There was a real requirement for that product, especially overseas.

“We have been dealing in France for five years, but the truck product was the first product that had pan-European possibilities.

“We have been concentrating on export business, we have opened up distribution in Germany, Spain, Italy and a little bit in Poland and Russia.

“The hope is that, as we come out of the recession, we will be well-placed.”

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