Ride Right Custom Carts is the golf cart dealer doubled sales story that happened in a down month. The owner went from nine or ten carts in July, a month he calls “usually a down month for us,” to 22 across his two Florida stores. The newer store in Gainesville, which had been “struggling a little,” went from four carts the previous July to 11 or 12. He told the whole story on camera, including the three weeks at the start where he wondered what he was doing. Here is what he said, with nothing added.
Who is Ride Right Custom Carts?
A two-store golf cart dealer in north central Florida. How we work with other dealers around the state is on golf cart dealer marketing in Florida.
“We got two locations. One in Keystone, one in Gainesville. The one in Gainesville we opened up about a year ago.” The stores are about 30 miles apart. “My Keystone location’s pretty well established. We’re well known in that area.”
The Gainesville store was the reason he called. “Mainly the Gainesville store, just trying to get it to take off. It’s such a huge population and a lot of golf cart communities. You got the school right there.”
What was the problem before Cart Launch?
Buyers in the next zip code did not know the store existed, even though 35,000 cars a day drove past it.
“Previously, before Cart Launch, it was struggling a little. We get a lot of drive-bys that would come in and buy locally, but we were missing sales to people in other cities. They were going to other zip codes to buy carts. Didn’t even know we were there.”
“We were on a main highway. We had 35,000 cars passing in front of us every day. We still weren’t seeing the door traffic or the online inquiries that we thought we should be getting.”
There was a week that made it real. “There was a time where I went over there for a week because my sales manager was out. I was literally there all week and we didn’t get one person to walk through the door.”
What had he tried before?
Print, a couple of marketing companies, and doing Facebook himself.
“We had tried several other things like ads in papers and magazines, and we tried doing some Facebook stuff ourselves, but never really could get good buyers to come through the door that were serious.”
On the marketing companies: “Really didn’t see any factual success from it. Of course we had sales, but sales can come from anything. It didn’t seem like we were spending X amount and our sales went up. If I’m spending a set amount of money and I’m getting sales at, let’s call it five, and I spend money on advertising, it should go up. You should get seven, eight, nine, ten. We didn’t really see that. It kind of stayed status quo. I’m like, I don’t think we’re doing anything that’s actually benefiting us. We’re just pissing money away.”
On running Facebook ads himself: “We paid a lot of money in Facebook ads doing our own little posts and sharing them, but I don’t think it was targeting the right people, because I’d get people that there’s no way they were going to buy a golf cart messaging us. Just messaging us with a spam message almost.”
How has this golf cart dealer doubled sales?
Slowly for three weeks, then all at once.
“From an onboarding and communication standpoint, phenomenal. Now I will say it started out slow. The first two, three weeks we were like, man, what are we doing? But then we just slowly started seeing a progression.”
June came first. “June’s usually a really good month for us anyway, and we hammered out, I think it was five or six more sales in June than we did in Gainesville the year before.”
Then July, the month that is normally quiet. “July is usually a down month for us. We went from last year probably getting nine or ten, to this year we did 22. So that doubled our sales between both locations. But specifically Gainesville doubled their sales as well, not just Keystone. If you took Keystone out of it, Gainesville doubled their sales. I think they had four last year and they had 11 or 12 this year.”
What changed about the buyers who came in?
They came in to buy a specific cart, not to look around.
“The quality definitely is better, because now it seems like more people that are coming in the door are actually looking to buy a golf cart. Not ‘oh, we just seen you’re new here, stopping in, checking you all out.’ Now we’re getting people coming in like, ‘I seen this cart and I want to test drive it.’ Then most of the time they’re leaving with it.”
That is what a buyer who has already shopped your inventory online looks like when he walks in. He is not asking whether you have anything. He is asking for the keys.
Where do the leads come from now?
The website, every day, and the door.
“We get a lot of website leads now. I get a lot more leads on my website, constantly. At least daily we’re getting several leads, somebody looking at it. And the only way they’re getting to it, I would imagine, is through Facebook.”
“We’ve definitely noticed, especially the last two months, a big influx in walk-ins. When you go from that to now we’re getting three, four, five through almost daily, something’s obviously bringing in more people.”
Service picked up too. “Not only have our sales increased, but our service has increased. We’ve been doing a lot more lithium swaps, which we love to do.”
What was he unsure about at first?
The same thing every dealer is unsure about: whether it would work, or be one more sponsorship nobody could measure.
“I was unsure because it’s an investment. The thing about advertisement is you never know what’s really going to work. You invest money in all these banners and sponsoring this and sponsoring that, but at the end of the day the people that are seeing that aren’t really targeted. They might never even buy a golf cart.”
What tipped him was seeing it work on himself. “Well, you were blowing up my phone with all your ads. I said, ‘Dang, if they can do that to me, they can do that for me.’”
Who does he say this is a no-brainer for?
Dealers losing sales to a store outside their area because the buyer never knew they were there.
“I can’t tell you how many shows I went to out in Gainesville when we were trying to establish ourselves, talking to customers, and they’re like, ‘We just bought one two weeks ago. We didn’t even know y’all were there.’ And that hurts, because you didn’t even give us a chance. But it’s not their fault. It’s because they didn’t know.”
To a dealer on the fence: “Just do it. Just do it and don’t look back. At the end of the day the commitment is big, but if it pays for itself, and then if it makes you money, it’s a no-brainer.”
In one sentence, what Cart Launch has done for him: “Increased sales.”
What can another golf cart dealer take from this?
Three things.
First, a busy road is not marketing. Thirty-five thousand cars a day drove past a store that went a full week without a walk-in. Buyers do not find a dealership by driving past it. They find it on a phone, usually before they have searched for anything. Getting in front of them there, and then giving them an online showroom where they can shop the actual carts, is the whole job. It is why we build golf cart dealer websites around inventory before we spend a dollar creating demand.
Second, the first three weeks can feel like nothing. He said so. Then June moved and July doubled. The dealers who see results are the ones who did not pull the plug in week two.
Third, a second location is a marketing problem before it is anything else. His Keystone store was known. His Gainesville store was a stranger in its own town. What the website has to do for a dealer with more than one store is on multi-location golf cart dealer website. The page each store needs on the website is in golf cart dealer location pages. The map-pack side of that is covered in local SEO for golf cart dealers, and the bigger picture in how to grow a golf cart dealership.
This is one dealer’s account in his own words. We do not promise a number, and every market is different. The order we work in is on our golf cart dealer marketing page, and more dealer stories are on our results page, including Oceanside Golf Cars and Tillery Custom Carts.
If buyers in the next town do not know your store exists, book a call. We look at your site and your market before we talk, and you get the findings either way.
FAQ
Questions dealers ask about this story
Straight answers to the things you’re probably wondering before we talk.
How did Ride Right Custom Carts double sales?
In his words, July went from nine or ten carts the year before to 22 across both stores, and the Gainesville store alone went from four to 11 or 12. It started slowly, with two or three weeks of little change, then June added five or six sales in Gainesville and July doubled.
Where is Ride Right Custom Carts?
Two stores in north central Florida, in Keystone and Gainesville, about 30 miles apart. The Gainesville store opened about a year before the interview, which was published in August 2026.
What was wrong with the Gainesville store before?
Buyers in nearby zip codes did not know it existed. It sat on a highway with 35,000 cars a day passing and still went a full week without a walk-in. Customers at local shows told him they had bought a cart two weeks earlier without knowing his store was there.
Had he tried other marketing companies?
Yes, a couple, plus newspaper and magazine ads and running Facebook posts himself. He said sales stayed status quo with the companies and that his own Facebook ads mostly brought spam messages from people who were never going to buy a cart.
What changed about the customers?
They arrive having already picked a cart. “Now we’re getting people coming in like, ‘I seen this cart and I want to test drive it.’ Then most of the time they’re leaving with it.” He also reported several website leads daily and three to five walk-ins almost daily.
Will my dealership double sales too?
We do not promise that. This is one dealer’s account in his own words, and results depend on your market, inventory, team and how the work gets done. We look at your dealership before we talk and tell you what we would fix first.