About FC Slot-Cars

Once upon a time...

There was a man from Colombia who, during a Christmas conversation with his mother-in-law, began to reflect on the Christmas presents we wished for but never received.

A slot car track stood out as a common unfulfilled wish.

This man came from a family with very limited resources, so toys were often beyond their budget. However, his mother always had balsa wood, cardboard, modeling dough, scissors, and glue available for him.

He grew up with the mindset that if he wanted something, he had to make it himself. Due to the lack of resources, he became a do-it-yourselfer.

Then, 2017 began, and he had a project in mind: building his very first slot car track! As he was accustomed to doing, he learned a lot in the process, failing miserably at some basic things, but eventually got his track up and running. Everything was great—at first...

Soon, he realized that without a lap counter and timing system, racing felt more like a parade. There was no excitement in improving his driving skills or getting the most out of each car because there was no data to analyze.

So, he got his hands dirty again, and this time a new skill was needed: coding. Having never coded before, he created a very basic system—a program that was like a bunch of tangled fishing hooks, relying on inadequate hardware. It worked, but it failed frequently and was just acceptable.

But "just okay" wasn’t good enough for him. Day after day, lap after lap, he kept thinking about how to make the system better, more reliable, and more polished.

Finally, after enough study and learning a lot more about coding, he decided to sit down and develop a whole new system from scratch. He came up with a timer he thought would be a hit among fellow racers like himself: home racers with wooden tracks, no magnets, who mostly raced alone.

But it wasn’t. He launched the system on Kickstarter, and it wasn’t successful—backed by only a few people around the world who believed in him, but not many.

He didn’t give up. He contacted each backer, asking what could have been done better. Some said it was perfect and started purchasing the system as it was. By asking around, he began to understand the different needs of the community: different scales and racing styles, leading him to customize, specialize, or even develop entirely new products for each group.

None of this would have been possible without the help of the new friends he made over the internet: Mike, Ron, Bob, Raymond, Andrew, Steven, John—just to name a few.

Eventually, he was confident enough to start selling on eBay, only to realize the hard way that shipping costs and fees were eating away at his profits. Amazon wasn’t much different, and he began to understand why those big companies are so rich, while small entrepreneurs struggle to grow.

And here we are: on may the 1st he launched his own online store, looking forward to grow big!

And that’s how the story goes… In the hope that one day in the future, you’ll hear about this as a big enterprise and remember how it all started.

Slot-cars ...for ever after!

Fernán Castillo