Outside sponsors have long been a necessary, yet somewhat elusive, source of revenue to help maintain the health and growth of our sport, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a man doing a better job of brining them in than Dustin Pipes of Pipes Motorsports Group (Progressive Insurance Cycle Gear Suzuki, and Twisted Tea Suzuki Presented by Progressive Insurance). And as of Friday, September 18, 2026, AWM Fulfillment has been added as a new title sponsor in a multiyear deal with the team. The company’s CEO, Kevin Howard, was on hand for SMX Playoff 2 in Southern California, so we pulled him aside after the Friday press conference to learn more about this sponsorship, how it benefits his company, and his interest in racing.

Racer X: Kevin it’s nice to meet you. How big of a moto fan are you?
Kevin Howard: Pretty big. I’ve followed it for a long time. Back in the day I had a race team with Ryan Hughes. I’ve been around it for a long time and have worked with a  lot of riders many years ago. It was called Hughes Racing, Ryan ran it for the last few years of his career. We ran KTMs and Suzukis. So, being around the sport for a long time, I thought the sport needed a little bit of an elevated experience. As we started talking to the folks at PMG [Pipes Motorsports Group], we saw they had kind of the same vision. First and foremost they want to win, but they also want to create the best experience possible for fans and folks in the paddock.

So being a fan is what initially drew you back in to sponsor another team?
I love all motorsports, but supercross and motocross are at the top for me. When we had the team I got to see how hard it is to actually be a racer, and what it takes to deliver and succeed. So there’s some admiration of what the sport requires, and I also like racing so it was a natural fit for us. The team is fantastic to work with and we’re really excited about the upcoming seasons.

How’d you meet Dustin?
John Papola, a common agent, contacted me, and their team knew I had some experience in racing. My company works predominantly with contractors and construction sites, in what you call the mission critical space, so think data centers and things of that nature. Most of our customers are folks in the field who all love motocross and supercross, so we thought it would be a good fit to try to do something for our customers.

In terms of what, hospitality at the races?
Yes, entertainment at the races. They’re all moto fans so they’re going to love coming to the races. Everyone likes motorsports, and this happens to be one that’s tied to a lot of folks who work in the construction field.

The benefit for PMG is obvious, they get a title sponsor, and for you the value is providing something for your clientele.
Yes. The circuit runs all over the country and we have customers all over the country—there are jobsites all over the country. The customers we have all love supercross so it’s a good fit for us, from a hospitality standpoint. The goal is to create the best program possible when we’re bringing out our guests.

And it helps that they won the supercross title!
[Laughs] Yes, that definitely helps. And Ken Roczen is just a fantastic human, too.

He is! And he’s so professional.
Yes, he is. He’s been around a long time and knows his stuff. He does a great job at everything. Jason [Anderson] is fantastic too. He’s got a long history in this sport, has done great, and is a consummate pro. These guys have worked really hard and have put themselves to be in the position to be top riders, and I’m really excited about where the team is and where it’s heading. I really think there’s a chance for us to be the top team in supercross.

I was reading up a little bit on your company. Can you explain what frictionless shopping, and that kind of thing is?
A lot of what you’ll see today when they talk about scaling up with data centers is AI. We build computer vision. We use cameras and we build our own scales that are weighted and we combine those, it’s called sensor fusion, and create a predictive algorithm that defines what people and machines are doing in any given space in real time. Basically, you can walk in, grab something, walk out, and we can define from an automated standpoint, what was taken.

That’s one side of the business, and we have lots of stores that you’d find on college campuses and corporate campuses and things like that. But secondarily, the bulk of our business, we build solutions that track people, machines, and products on jobsites. You want to make sure you know who’s on your jobsite when you’re on a mission critical data center and there’s 5000 craft [workers] on that jobsite, and we’re really the only solution on the market. We’ll build turnstiles with cameras that are automated, and things of that nature. It’s a fully comprehensive solution we can deploy to the jobsite that can provide and track all product, and people, on a jobsite in real time.

It seems like it would help a lot with procurement and inventory.
Yes. On the Ecommerce side we have a little over 3,000,000 SKUs. From fasteners and PPE to truckloads of drywall or steel beams. You can order anything you want, and we’re able to track all of that in real time. The goal is to make sure you know not only how many craft are on the jobsite every day, but that they’re the right workers who should be there, and also tracking every component that needs to be delivered every day in real time.

Does it help a lot with loss prevention?
We’ve averaged over 99.95 percent accuracy from a corporate perspective for over four years with hundreds of millions of transactions. The reality is, people will try to do nefarious things, but if the system is robust enough you can track anything and everything. We did sell the IP and technology to Grainger about three-and-a-half weeks ago and they’ve been phenomenal to work with. We have a long term partnership with them as we go forward. This is something that gives us the ability to get additional exposure and create a world class hospitality program in motorsports.