By David MacDonald H ave you seen Malcolm Smith, Mert Lawwill and Steve McQueen in On Any Sunday (1971)? It’s a cult classic. It’s considered to be the first pure moto- cross movie ever made and it turned a generation of kids into dirt bike fanatics. When the 80s rolled around, some of those kids – by then teenagers and young adults – turned their passive passion into pastime. For Napieraj, the starting line was just a natural progression from the movie line. By the end of the decade, he was touring Southern Ontario with a motocross league. “A big part of motocross is camping on-site. Competitors, crew and spectators camp – it’s part of the lifestyle,” he explained. “Well, I’ve always had bad allergies and the closer to the ground I am, the worse it gets. One night, I decided I was going to do something about it. I headed to a Canadian Tire store, I bought some wooden beams, a tarp, and an air mattress and created my own tent in the back of my truck. It worked out so well that I kept putting this makeshift tent up weekend after weekend. People kept commenting on the setup and giving really positive feedback and then one night, it started to rain buckets. Every camper who could grabbed their tent and put it on their truck bed. I knew right there that I had something – a game changer. There was nothing like it on the market at the time.” “One night, I decided I was going to do something about it.” In 1990, Napier Enterprises was born and offered the first Sportz Truck Tent to consumers as one of the original companies to produce and market truck tents in North America. Seven short years later in 1997, General Motors launched Napier’s Truck Tents in the genuine GM Acces- sories program for Chevy and GMC Full-Size pickup trucks. Two years later, Ford USA launched Napier’s Truck Tents as a genuine Ford Accessory. Three years later, Nissan. Jeep Canada featured the Sportz SUV Tent in a national commercial in 2008.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 2016
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