Sports

Business Owner Finds Deals and Thrills in NASCAR

As cars chase each other, David Marmurek chases new accounts for APS.

David Marmurek remembers all the fall afternoons he spent with friends in Giants Stadium, a pair of headphones glued to his ears so he wouldn't miss out on any of the action.

He heard it all, as bitter rivals pounded on each other to settle scores, veterans tried to match speed with wits, and invariably only one could leave the victor.

Only thing is, he wasn't listening to football.

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He was listening to NASCAR.

"They thought I was listening to the Jets game," Marmurek says of his buddies. "I just sat there in my own daze. I couldn't care less about the Jets."

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The 42-year-old CEO of Advanced Payment Services now sits in his Syosset office, with a race-worn firesuit from Tony Stewart strewn over a table. Marmurek is initially a bit blasé when he mentions downing some snacks in Stewart's racecar hauler a few days earlier at Daytona. Then he catches himself and realizes just how cool that is.

Marmurek has infiltrated the NASCAR bubble, and although you won't see his company's name affixed to a Sprint Cup car, he's learned that there is more than one route to the same place.

Recently APS became an affiliate partner to the Ryan Newman Foundation, the non-profit run by the driver which largely promotes animal welfare. For a beagle owner/NASCAR fanatic like Marmurek, it was a good personal fit. But it was also his latest step in utilizing the large business-to-business access NASCAR provides to take his company to the next level.

"I could call the owners of every Fortune 500 company, but I'm not going to open those doors just making a phone call," says Marmurek, whose business deals with merchant services, namely credit/debit card transactions. "What's an avenue where I can actually interact with these people?"

He found the answer back in 2006, when by chance he was at the old Commerce Bank in Farmingdale just as Steve Wallace's show car was being unloaded. The son of legendary driver Rusty Wallace was there for a meet-and-greet along with John Paysor, an executive from Rusty Wallace Inc.

"I did whatever was possible to get back there after my appointments and I caught them just as they were getting into the limo," Marmurek remembers. "Basically I asked them how somebody like me could get into the pits. [Paysor] asked, 'Did you ever think of sponsorship?' I'm like, never happening, not a chance, we're not spending 10 million dollars."

Paysor assured Marmurek that there were more economical options, and the end result was a three-year associate sponsorship with RWI. Marmurek kicked off the Newman Foundation relationship in December at a banquet in North Carolina, where APS's logo cycled on a big screen along with bigwigs like Ranger Boats and Office Depot. For a company that competes with the likes of Bank of America and Chase for business, that's some tangible exposure.

Newman drives for Stewart's Sprint Cup team, Stewart-Haas Racing. And while Marmurek doesn't have any official relationship with Stewart-Haas, some light bulbs are already going off concerning working together.

"I think they see an opportunity to possibly build me," Marmurek says. "They're not doing it for nothing. But they see that APS is coming in to save people money who are already accepting credit cards. [Stewart-Haas] really sees the benefit, because they're going up to sponsors and saying, 'Hey, we need 20 million dollars from you. But, we might be able to save you some of that money.'"

Over the last few years APS has also established relationships with the likes of Pocono Raceway and Drivers Support Team, a company that has trained and provided pit crews for drivers. Part of the deal with DST involved Marmurek providing uniforms with the APS logo, which led to a moment he will never forget leading up to the 2008 Daytona 500.

"That Sunday morning of the race, they said they got me a present," Marmurek says. "They handed me a firesuit, and I'm like, 'Don't you need these?' They said it was mine. I'm like, 'Wow, I'm going to get this framed. Let me put it in the car.'

"And they're like, 'What do you mean you're putting it in the car? You're wearing that. You're doing tires on [John] Andretti's team today.'"

Marmurek, who admits he can't even change a spark plug, helped out by handing tires to the over-the-wall guys. He had done it the previous season to help out DST before they were even affiliated, but the Daytona 500 is a different animal.

"I'm picturing, like, Talladega Nights where the guy is going to get out of the car because I just screwed up and kick the crap out of me," laughs Marmurek. "It felt weird, but what an adrenaline rush. What I was doing was surreal, in front of 160,000 people at Daytona."  

Marmurek does plenty of networking at the track, but spends just as much time asking crew members about the cars and B.S.ing with race officials over coffee in their hauler. He doesn't think having fun and getting business done on race day is mutually exclusive.

"NASCAR has opened doors and opportunities that we never would have gotten," he says. "But it's also a passion, so it's something that I really do enjoy getting to go to. And maybe that's part of why people want to open doors to us, because they see my passion for the sport. I'm not someone who's coming looking to sign up people and then leave and take all the money and be like, 'Hey, thank you, been there, done that.'"


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