It takes a lot of people to make a race team run, from the driver to the crew members to the office staff back at the shop. But one particularly indispensable employee at Joe Gibbs Racing is Ron Aram, the man responsible for the multi-logoed outfits Joe Gibbs wears every weekend to the track.
“I start my workweek on Mondays by laundering what Coach (Gibbs) wore the previous day”, said Aram form his Huntersville, North Carolina cubicle. “Later that day, I meet with the marketing folks to see what sponsors will be represented on the cars that upcoming week. That’s where my work really begins.”
Aram said that with the multitude of sponsorship combinations, virtually no outfit is worn a second time in a season.
“Because of how many combinations we have, I almost always have to design a new logo layout every week”, Aram explained. “I’ve wound up burning the midnight oil on Monday evening—sometimes bleeding into Tuesday morning—trying to decide how to arrange four different logos for Sundays and three different logos for Saturdays.”
While such work can take time, Aram only has until 10am Tuesday morning to finalize his designs, “…because that’s the deadline to get them to our digitizer. Then its off to the embroidery contractor to bring my work to life”.
While it may seem like Aram is only placing logos on a polo shirt, he explained that there was far more to his job.
“I have to figure out the weather for every race weekend—I spend all day Wednesday figuring out if Coach will be wearing a heavy jacket, a light zip-up, or just a polo shirt”, said Aram. “Then on Thursday morning I get the outfits back again, run them through the laundry once to get rid of that ‘new shirt smell’, and pack them away for Coach to wear before he leaves for the track.”
Aram said that while his job is made easier by Gibbs wearing a Toyota hat regularly, he could see this changing in the future.
“We’ve had some in-depth discussions about adding a different hat each week as a sort of ‘sponsor spotlight’, Aram opined, “but we’d definitely have to add an intern to make that practical.”
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