Our Story

This is NOT your regular boring "About Us" page.
We wanted our audience to hear the fascinating story of how it all started, so we asked Raz Shifrin, Perfect Pass RC founder and owner, to tell us in his own words in a remarkable interview how it all began:

Perfect Pass RC was actually founded by mistake, a pretty weird chain of events that led to forming one of the highest quality RC cars parts, upgrades and accessories in the market today.

As a child, I always loved remote control cars and pretty much RC anything. I was obsessed with them. At my childhood home, the basement was my little piece of heaven, my comfort zone, man cave if you will. Well.. child cave I guess.

This obsession started around the age of 4 and by the age of 10, I was already fully engaged with Nitro powered and electric RC cars, planes, helicopters and boats.

Thinking back, the good old days were so magical, but honestly borderlining reckless.

I remember myself as a 12 year old being picked up by full grown adults and going to the fields to teach them how to fly with a trainer cable connected between their transmitter and mine and charging them $10 for a 60-minute lesson.

Looking back, God only knows how I had the nerve to do it at the age of 12. More so, what were my parents thinking, right?! But I guess it's a combination of just being wired differently and also the times were different, a lot simpler, a lot more innocent.

Back to my reality as a kid. RCs were what I did with most of my free time.

Building and driving cars on weekdays, planes and heli’s on weekends.

I think what’s more interesting is how quickly all of it was gone when big boys toys were introduced.

At the age of 16 I got my first motorcycle, I remember it as if it was yesterday.

A brand-new Yamaha dirt bike. Ohh man.. It was the world to me, nothing else mattered, from off-roading on a daily basis to working on it, fixing it, modifying it. Once again, I was hooked, I was obsessed.

Funny enough, as we are doing this interview, I recognize a pattern.

Not to get too deep here but I guess I can't comprehend "good enough". I always get obsessed about "how do I make it better" no matter what machine we are working on or what part etc. A blessing and a curse I guess, you don't sleep much but your products are a piece of art and that by itself recharges your soul.

Anyway, going back to my new obsession as a teenager – dirt bikes – add to the mix some attention from girls here and there and that is it. My RC collection started collecting dust.

I left it behind, clearing up room and space for the new grown me.

Years went by and I haven't touched a remote, nothing.

From college to serving in the military, getting my commercial pilot license and eventually opening a car dealership in Florida, RC was nothing but a magical memory.

I was very passionate about cars and motorcycles throughout my adult life, from sports cars to drifting, trucks, jeeps, crotch rockets, dirt bikes, ATV's, UTV's, Go Karts..you name it. If it had a motor, I was on it or in it.

Looking back, it's funny how I jumped from one obsession to the next over the years just to circle back to the one that sat dormant patiently waiting to burst again at 110%.

So one day a buddy of mine came to visit me at the dealership with an idea, "I want to get an RC car", he said.

Being that I haven't touched one for so many years, I didn't even know what to recommend.

We went to the nearest store together, it was a HobbyTown and I will never forget the butterflies I felt walking in..

After so many years of not being in one of these stores, the smell of fresh tires, tons of cars on shelves, planes hanging from the store ceiling etc.

It was like the kid in me woke up again at full blast like 25 years hasn't passed. It was quite surreal, almost emotional, I remember it very well.

So we are walking up to the counter and my buddy asks "Ok, what is your baddest thing here?", The store manager at the time, Kani, which funny enough turned into one of my best friends afterwards when we found out we live 5 houses from each other, said "Well for Traxxas you got the Traxxas X-Maxx 8S and for Arrma you got the Arrma Notorious.

We both looked at each other pretty puzzled as we never even heard of Arrma.

"Arrma?" We said, "What in the world is Arrma? No no..let's not roll the dice with this Arrma car” we said.

We ended up buying the X-Maxx and what we needed in terms of batteries and a charger and we left the store. Both, excited like 5-year-olds, we headed straight back to the house and charged some batteries. Once ready, we head out to the fields next to my house and let me tell you, this was the most fun I've had in years.

Mind you, at the time, I owned a dealership with sports cars, trucks, bikes, boats jet skis, pretty much every toy imaginable on the planet and here I am with the biggest smile on my face in a very long time playing with a toy car.

At that moment I knew. I was back, I was awake, I was ready to "come back home" and do what I loved and missed so much.

In the course of the following 2-3 months, I ended up having 3 fully tricked out Traxxas X-Maxxes in my garage literally driving them every single day..What a blast that was, every workday ended with a 30-minute bashing session. It made me happy, really happy, so simple, so pure..one of the best "me time" you can get.

After a while however, I felt like something was still missing, as fun as the X-Maxxes are, they were still lacking the true X factor, the crazy launches from a stand still, the top speed etc.

I started watching YouTube videos just to see what has changed throughout the years and how should I dive back in and with what car.

It's crazy how little things can make such huge impacts and change people’s lives.

I remember one night, sitting in the patio and a video by Philip Jolley popped in my recommendations. At the time, I've never even seen a real "speed run", not on YouTube and not in real life. All we did back in the days was going 50 MPH thinking we have the fastest thing in the world.

Philip's video starts playing on my phone and he is showing his Arrma Typhon 6s build and position it to start a run. I remember this video so vividly, this thing flew by him so fast!! And the sound was just brilliant, intoxicating.

At that moment I knew. I just had to do it also, just had to, I had to drive the same car, go at the same speed and listen to the same sound in person.

The day after I was at the store getting me a brand new Arrma Typhon, some LiPos and a charger. For someone that hasn't been around RC cars for so long, this thing was sweet!

At the time, it felt like a Rolls Royce to me, everything was nice about it, the smooth shocks, the clicking sound of a perfect gear mesh, the body paint etc.

I drove it stock for about 3 days. Let me tell you, 80 MPH felt like the future.

I couldn't resist and contacted Philip for advice, over the phone. I told him that I was admiring his videos and needed some advice. Philip was super friendly and nice and spent about 30 minutes on the phone with me listing every single part I needed to get going, he was just amazing about it.

Long story short, $2000 and a week later, I was in! I was a "speed runner".

It really didn't take long for the bug to fully take over my life and I loved it!

From sitting on google earth at night looking for suitable roads to using every cell in my brain to figure out how to be faster while looking at the car in the garage from every angle at 3:00 AM.

I was speed running for a while, kept getting better, kept researching everything about it and diving deeper and deeper into the magical and challenging rabbit hole called "speed running".

At a certain point I figured, why not opening a YouTube channel and share my progress?

Suddenly, out of nowhere, in the middle of my adult life, I'm fully into RCs again, speed running every day and sharing it on YouTube.

I started getting better and better and gaining more and more traction on YouTube. Suddenly, I'm learning how to edit videos and in general, how to "hold an audience".

This renewed passion of mine made me feel whole, I felt belong, I just knew deep inside that RCs were a huge part of my life and this time around, it will be harder to shake off.

At the time, I owned the dealership for about 8 years and I really started getting bored. I lost the passion I once had for it, how many times can you possibly attend car auctions, check cars, test drive them, bring them back to the dealership, fix them, detail them and post them online..100? 500? 1000 times? I've been doing it for 8 years, we bought around 80 cars every month, ran them through the process and sold them.

Surely, it had the “cool” factor, we did really cool things at the dealership. We built a great team, we drove cool cars and toys and I have thousands of amazing memories from that time.

Eventually however, money stopped being my drive in life, I wanted to create, invent, build, explore. I got tired of the "Raz the businessman" agenda. I didn't need it anymore, I didn't want it. I wanted to get back to my core bases, my actual passion, if anything, my true personality.

Sitting here today throughout this interview, I have no doubt in my mind that I did the right thing when I sold the dealership.

After selling my dealership, I immediately opened a small car wholesale company to still generate a certain income and called it CARLOTY, "LOTY" was my grand grandmother who passed away which I was very close to. Since I dealt with cars at the time I figured "CARLOTY" "CAR" & "LOTY", it just rolled nice, so I went with it.

So now I am wholesaling trucks for a living and deep into speed running, trying to improve every day and sharing my experience on YouTube.

Here's where the real magic starts..

One day, in one of my videos, I saw a comment that got my attention.

You know how it is with YouTube video comments. There are just so many of them that you don't really have a choice but to go through them pretty quickly.

However, this one was different, it felt very smart to me, I don't know how to explain it, but I could just sense that the guy behind the comment was brilliant and different.

So I replied to the comment and asked for his email. something drew me to find out more about this guy.

We ended up exchanging some words through email and then we connected over the phone. It's crazy to think about it now, but that phone call was the beginning of Perfect Pass RC, and none of us even knew.

That phone call immediately gave me the confirmation that my intuition was correct.

Without exposing his position too much, Mike Hoffmeister is a pretty big deal at a very large company in the aviation field. Besides being an extremely gifted top notch engineer, Mike was also friendly and fun to communicate with.

We've had a very long conversation over the phone about everything and anything pretty much and at the end of the conversation, mike said "Well, is there anything you wanted to try and couldn't with your cars?"

To that I replied "Actually, yes..you know, I wish I had a launch control in my car, instead of wrestling with my trigger pull every pass trying to get the perfect pass, I wish I had some kind of launch control that just gave me the perfect trigger pull and traction every run no matter what."

After a brief silence, Mike said "Interesting..let me think about it.

I honestly didn't expect anything from it, we continued our conversation and got off the phone shortly after. I don't remember how many days went by, but it wasn't more than a week, Mike called me and said: "Well, I think I have an idea of how to make it"

At this point, I'm still not 100% convinced this "guy" is for real but I'm definitely intrigued.

We dug deeper into a very detailed conversation about what actually makes the perfect pass, how does a perfect run start, how long should a perfect run be, how many seconds etc.

Long story short, we decided to go for it just as a fun challenge/project and partnered with a circuit board manufacturer as well as a coder and wire/connector suppliers.

The prototype was big and bulky and far from perfect but it worked! For the most part, it actually worked, I remember the first test run with it, it was so cool, it felt like magic, at that moment I knew, we got something here.

A month or two went by, we mastered the code, we refined the board design and were able to shrink it down by almost 50%, we really wanted it to easily fit into a receiver box.

I remember working on the product packaging, head card design and instructions on my phone.. hey, if there’s a will there's a way right?

At the packaging design stage, Mike and I had a conversation about what should we call it, we couldn't find or think of a flashy name for days and at some point I said "Well, this product gives you the perfect pass every time, why don't we just call it that? ‘Perfect Pass’?”. We both loved it and went for it, we decided to call the product "Perfect Pass".

We didn't think of it as a business, it was really just a fun project. However, we needed to decide how many we are going to make. We decided to make 50 units and got rejected by the board factory as the quantity was too small for bulk production.

Eventually we agreed on an initial quantity of 200 units. I paid the factory and we went into production of the first batch, still as a fun project. Remember, at this point, there’s no business here, I wholesale trucks for a living and Mike has a full time job that is completely unrelated to RC.

While we are waiting for the units to be made, Mike calls and explains that he really just enjoyed the challenge of bringing this project to life and to help me, and that he wants nothing in return since it was "just a fun challenge for him".

It actually caught me by surprise and I remember asking him like 5 times..

"Wait, are you sure?? nothing??"

Mike explained that the challenge was what got him intrigued in the first place and that yes, he doesn't really want anything out of it.

Let me tell you, the next few days were a nightmare to me, I just couldn't comprehend the fact that after all this work bringing this product to life he wants nothing and that the proceeds will be all mine, it just didn't sit right. I just felt that it wasn't fair, surely, we didn't really expect this product to do that well or to even sell more than 10-20 units because speed run is such a niche market, but I just couldn't live with this fact.

After a few days of battling with it in my head, I called Mike and said "look, I have no idea if people will even like it or want it but whatever we sell from this "thing", 50% is yours.

I literally had to beg him to take it, my karma and conscience just wouldn't rest until I knew we were equal. It just didn't feel right, as self righteous as it sounds, I just couldn't find peace due to it.

Anyway, we partnered with an RC store to help with the fulfillment and we released the video on YouTube, not really expecting anything or giving it too much thought but curios and intrigued to see what happens.

We published the video around 8:00 PM, the morning after, I woke up to a text from the store owner: "Do you have more? We are out!".

Obviously, at first I thought he was just playing but pretty quickly I realized he was actually pretty serious.

We sold out in 12 hours, we were shocked.

200 units..12HR, nuts.

This was the moment I realized there's actually a big loving and trusting community who shares the same passion as I do that cares and trust my feedback and ideas.

It felt amazing, it really did. The money wasn't even a thing here, I just felt really connected to my audience and felt so grateful they trusted me.

Honestly, I still do, to this day, that is why I love helping customers.

My community is everything to me, my team knows it too, our entire business model is built on these values, customers are everything and the reason we are even here.

Back to the launch controls. We made 500 more units, and they were also gone pretty quickly.

I was happy, clearly. I was very happy, but it also brought a strange feeling in the coming weeks that I wasn't really prepared for.

I remember this period of time in my life very well, I was actually pretty baffled, curious and my subconscious couldn't resist but to repeatedly asking itself.."Is this a thing?"

"Can this become a business?".

My concerned reasoning kicked in immediately every time I thought about it..

"Nehhh, no way.. stop dreaming and get back to work".

Weeks went by and it kept bugging me, I kept asking myself if I'm just delusional and blinded by the success of this "fun project", or can I actually make it a business.

"Is the niche even big enough?"

"This is reckless and not responsible"

"What about my day job?"

"I am making decent living wholesaling trucks, why ruining it?"

Here's the thing, I'm a very total person, I don't half do stuff, if I get into something, it's 100%, it becomes my new obsession and the air that I breathe.

Because I know that about myself, I was so scared, I just knew that if I dive deeper into this, the trucking business is dead.

I decided to not jump ahead of myself and go for "just one more" project.

"Let's just test the water"

"One more fun project", no real obligation.

I had one simple rule that kept me in check, it can't be driven by greed, because then it's a business and I'm in trouble with my inner self, it must be driven by passion, it must really help the community, must be a fun project that actually help and make the hobby better.

At the time, carbon fiber was extremely expensive, and good quality was hard to find.

As a driver/builder, if you wanted real carbon fiber you had to sell a kidney, so most users had to ditch the idea and stay with stock parts.

I figured, what if we could locate a big carbon fiber factory and strike a deal using our buying power? what if we could offer a full kit for the community made by super high quality carbon fiber parts with a reasonable price? That way, finally, drivers can change all their stock parts to carbon fiber without breaking the bank, it made sense to me and I went for it.."Just one more fun project, not a business".

We took our sweet time, we were extremely meticulous and picky and gave the factory hell, it had to be brilliant, super precise and the finish must be a showstopper.

Many back-and-forth later, testing samples, deciding on designs etc., we had it.

We have made a full super high quality kit for a reasonable price.

Funny enough, years later, we still offer the same kit today, it has a new fresh look to it but the factory, materials and finish hasn't changed since day one.

Back to my "not-a-business-just-a-fun-project", so we have made the kits, we got a bunch of them, now what?

Again, we partnered with a store that can fulfill them for us and sent them over.

The next thing we did is kind of crazy but I enjoyed every second of it..it just felt right.

We let the community decide on the price of it. Weird, I know..but it felt right.

I made a video and posted it on my channel, I showed the kit, explained the hard work making it and asked our community what they think we should sell it for.

We got a ton of comments, we gathered all the suggested prices and made an average.

That was the price, no gimmicks, we priced it according to the community and opened the sale.

It was a hit, everyone got it and loved it, I remember starting to see more and more builds with it on Facebook, drivers showing off something we created and they are loving it and proud of it..oh boy.."Are we in too deep now?"

"Did we just unintentionally passed the no return point?".

Well, I’ll save the readers another page of drama, the truth is, yes, we did pass the no return point. I couldn't contain my love and excitement to it anymore, "one more project".."just one more", it was like an addiction, a good addiction perhaps but still unstoppable.

The next project was so revolutionary it set the final nail in the coffin for my wholesale trucking business.

When we introduced the new carbon fiber driveshafts, it was so successful and appreciated by the community that I had no choice but to look in the mirror and just admit it, "That's it, this is my new journey".

I knew that if I actually wanted to offer hundreds of no compromises high-quality revolutionary products, it would take all my time and attention.

Long story short, as you can finally guess by now, I went for it, I went all in on my passion.

I opened a new company and named it after the first thing that started it all, a fun little project that gave the driver a perfect pass.

And this is how Perfect Pass RC was born.

 

Today, every single day, we are driven by the same strict rule that started it all..

If it's not perfect, it's not offered for sale.

It must be extremely high quality.

It must be reasonably priced.

Our community is the reason we are even here, not "customers" but friends.

Raz Shifrin

October 2019, Florida