He’s everything you might expect from the owner of a Benz dealership robust, imposing, dressed in nicely tailored clothes, surrounded by big toys and fancy gadgets, a member in good standing of the good ol’ boys’ club. But then he speaks, and Skipper Beck becomes a real guy, a personable one who seems more excited to tell you about his son’s stock car racing than his business successes. Don’t get me wrong; you can’t accuse Beck of being a regular guy.
He has a 15-seat movie theater in his home, drives a car that costs as much as a condo, owns a boat that’ll go 140 mph. He doesn’t just go enjoy a Bobcats game: he’s part owner, sits in floor seats (where he once got so riled up at a referee’s call that a technical was called on him. So you can’t say he’s a regular guy. But you can say he’s unassuming, doesn’t act like the world owes him his riches, is grateful for them. And when you ask him what really matters, he answers without hesitation, “My family. I’ve got a great wife and beautiful children, and at the end of any day that they are doing well is the only thing.”
If you’re looking for a rags-to-riches story, this isn’t it. This month is Uptown Magazine’s luxury issue, and we went all out. How did Skipper Beck get to where he is today? Pretty simple. “My father handed me the keys,” he says, then laughs heartily because this, of course, isn’t the whole story. It omits all Beck’s hard work, which we’ll get to later. But see what I mean? Beck doesn’t make up some hardship story, doesn’t apologize, just gives you the facts and gets on to the stuff that really excites him.
He loves modern, sleek cars, and various other machines with motors: bikes, planes, boats. He starts describing the arena racing he and his son have become involved in (by ‘involved’ I mean that they run five teams). They race half-scale stock cars on a 1/8-mile aluminum-banked track in Cricket Arena. Beck had the idea of arena racing as a hobby for his son, but when he figured out he could fit in a car, he joined the sport as a driver as well. So there are 14 cars per race, zooming around and around a quick track that can fit only two cars side by side. You bet there are accidents, “but they’ll come out and if you’re not hurt, they’ll flip you back over and off you go!” Beck says, more in the manner of a five-year-old at the bumper cars than a CEO.
We eventually get back to business. Beck’s father had worked his way up from successful Benz salesman to running a dealership, and Skipper started hanging around whenever he wasn’t in school. It’s not that he didn’t have to work, but his dad didn’t push him or groom him to take over the business. Instead, Skipper meandered according to his own interests: he washed cars, hung out with the mechanics. In his teens years, he could do a variety of work around the dealership, and by the time he was ready for college he knew every job in the place. He could change brakes or write sales tickets. “It was a natural choice for me. I got my business degree and was equipped to be a general manager.”
I want to know if being President and CEO of Beck Imports is as luxurious as it sounds. Beck could take the opportunity to be all brag, but he doesn’t. “People say, ‘wow look at all those great cars!’ But you have to work hard. Any successful position, running a company, it’s a grind. Everything falls under me.” Beck manages nearly 600 employees around the U.S. He describes how crucial it is to delegate to his very competent management team, but the job still costs him long hours that have nothing to do with fancy cars. “Just managing people: payroll, benefits, vacations. I used to think fax, email were the greatest inventions, but now it’s like they consume my every waking minute.” Beck rarely gets time to do what he loves, which is go down to the floor and sell a car.
One perk was Beck’s position as a Chairman of the National Mercedes Dealer Board. Of 366 dealers in the country, he and ten other guys were elected and took several trips to Germany to consult with the manufacturer. He gave his opinions on U.S. trends and design and saw cars in their conception and testing phases. In true Skipper fashion, he was most impressed with the big warehouse where they keep the stock of historic cars that aren’t even displayed in the Benz museum. “We are walking through and the guy who takes care of the place would roll back a tarp and there is a pristine race car, a model you could never see. The place has a little of everything and anything Mercedes ever did or will do.”
Beck favors sleek and modern--Benz, Ferrari, Aston Martin, Audi--and says the increasing visibility of these makes of cars (and the opening of new dealerships) shows Charlotte’s growth in the luxury market, and as a city overall. Beck is a Charlottean born and bred and can remember riding his bike around what is now SouthPark Mall when there “just wasn’t much there. Now the city has two Mercedes-Benz dealers, Tiffany, Neiman Marcus, a Ritz-Carlton. Our growth is wonderful; it signals we are a vibrant city with a vibrant economic system.” Beck also recognizes that Charlotte’s development comes at a cost. He cites the expense of the light rail, but points out what a success it’s been in ridership and how necessary it is overall for the city’s transportation needs. He recognizes that the widening of Independence Boulevard devastated some businesses but is confident that eventually the entire corridor will be revitalized. “It’s a give-and-take, but Charlotte is really coming up.”
Apparently, you can chart Charlotte’s growth by Benz prices alone. Beck recalls his father worrying about price points, thinking they’d be doomed when sticker prices got to 30K, 50K, 70K. When the first model rolled out with a 100K price tag, Beck remembers his father saying, “We’ll never sell that!” Now it’s not unusual to see even more luxurious cars on Charlotte’s streets. “It takes a special person to buy a half-million dollar car,” Beck explains with a smile. “You used to have to go to Miami, L.A., but now Charlotte supports its own market; we’re on the map!”
So amid all this luxury I wanted to hear about a different slice of Beck’s life, a recent experience that was not so luxurious. It took him a minute, “Ahh, that’s a good question,” he started out. Then he relayed a story. “You see, Charlotte is becoming a big city but still has that small-town feel. Being in the business I am as long as I have, I’ve come to know a lot of people and can often arrange dinner reservations or theater tickets. So here I am down in Miami Beach, dying to go to this new Japanese restaurant. I call them up, use all the tricks I know and they tell me--not so politely--there is no way I’d be dining there that evening. Made me realize how just because you’ve built a little bit of substance in one community, it spoils you and it’s easy to forget you don’t have any clout in other places.” Okay, not exactly hardship; but once again you can appreciate Beck’s humility in describing himself as simply “I’ve gained a little substance.”
Which is what Skipper Beck wants to leave the interview with—a little substance. When I ask him if there’s anything else he’d like to tell Charlotte, he says he hopes that all the people who’ve lived here as long as he has can appreciate how far the city has come. He’s proud that running a successful, longstanding business in the community has contributed to that growth and feels that owners like him have the opportunity to make a mark on the city. “That’s a good feeling.”
~ Celina Mincey
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