Spencer Lewis Sterling

Chairman & CEO

Spencer Sterling was born in Los Angeles and had a highly successful career with the Ford Motor Company.

37 years with Ford Motor Company included appointments to progressively more senior executive positions in the United States, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia and Taiwan. In 1982 he resigned a senior management position with Ford in Detroit, to take up the position of Managing Director of the Sigma Motor Corporation. Sigma was one of the largest motor manufacturers, importers and distributors in South Africa in the 1970's and early 80's. A wholly owned subsidiary of LSE100 conglomerate, Anglo American Corporation.

In 1985, Sigma Motor Corporation, still under leadership of Spencer Sterling, was merged with Ford South Africa to form the South African Motor Corporation (SAMCOR). Mr. Sterling was then appointed as Group Managing Director and Chairman.

In March 1988 he was elected President of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa, a position he held for an unprecedented four years.

In 1992 he was appointed to the main board of directors of the Anglo American Industrial Corporation.

In 1992 he was also elected President of the South African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In March 1994 Mr. Sterling chose to leave day to day management within the motor industry to start a new career as an international business consultant. This has enabled him to enjoy not only further success and independence, but the opportunity to give back his wealth of knowledge and experience.

In August 2003 he was approached by a publicly traded Technology company to take up a position in Boca Raton Florida as President and CEO. Specialists in the field of developing ground breaking machinery for recycling organic waste products into marketable commodities.

Spencer graduated from University with a BSc degree in Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering. In 1974 he completed his MBA. In 1988 he was awarded an Honorary Professorship by the University of Pretoria and two years later was elected to the Council of the University.

Brian Dillon Ferris

Chief Architect & CIO

The company's founder is also a veteran of the motor industry with a long history as a maverick and lateral thinker.

Growing up he was only interested in cars so he started his career with a leading Ford dealer. It was during this time that he became interested in Ford’s innovative inventory coding systems, so it is no coincidence that this is now a key element in some of DealMaker’s market intelligence.

He continued his studies in parallel for a number of years, focusing on high output combustion engineering and after two years with Ford he was invited to join a leading Chrysler dealership that also happened to be the local Ferrari and Maserati specialists in their area, which provided an ideal springboard to pursue his ambitions to enter the world of Italian supercars.

A year later he decided to accept an offer to join Smiths Instrument Group as their regional factory representative and technical advisor for automotive ignition systems where he worked with franchised dealer groups and motor racing teams.

A year later he joined Wynn’s International, in those days a high powered American petrochemical based sales organization, which proved to be a very rewarding experience, including promotions to progressively more senior positions in SA, the UK and USA. He also started an independent company as sole distributor in a new territory in partnership with a like minded investor. They were ranked as the world’s top distributor by market share, going from zero to 92% in less than two years.

During those 6 years he worked with every major franchise brand in the world, on 3 different continents and learned more about the retail auto business than he could ever have learned working for any one single dealer or manufacturer. He also found the time to start a small Ferrari dealership with a couple of dealer friends, which went on to do very well.

His passion for Italian sports cars then got him involved with a small upstart factory that had secured a franchise to assemble new Lamborghini and Lotus cars. He ran the sales end for a while before taking over as sole importer and distributor for Lamborghini and Maserati. He also seemed to be attracting most of the Ferrari fanatics in his area, so continued a very close relationship with Ferrari for more than a decade.

After being named as the top factory distributor by market share for both Maserati and Lamborghini he was then invited by then Chairman De Tomaso to take over Maserati of North America. He agreed and moved to Southern California. However, after only a few months he recognized that Maserati was a complete basket case in the US and pulled out of the deal; but decided to stay in California where he set himself up as an independent dealer in supercars and a consultant to the retail motor industry. Altogether he was a DMV licensed dealer in California for 11 years and an active member of the California Auto Dealers Exchange (CADE) for 8 years. That is where he first became interested in the concept of dynamic pricing and open markets.

While he was there he qualified as a corporate tax accountant and finished off his studies in business law. He also entered the world of computers, initially studying day and night through a very steep learning curve. In between he also bought and sold a number of diversified businesses, gaining valuable experience in real estate and the hospitality industry.

Then someone invented the Internet. He immediately recognized the potential of the world wide web and poured all his time and energy into this new and exciting challenge, focusing on harnessing this global network to create a marketing and trading channel for mainstream commodity brands. Initially he concentrated on trading electronic securities markets where he learned, (under a baptism by fire), how to appreciate the law of supply & demand.

Convinced that more transparent markets would be the future for commerce, he dedicated the next 5 years to developing the world’s first electronic trading exchange for heterogeneous commercial commodities such as motor vehicles, computers, travel packaging, etc.

.   .   .   and so the MACDAX was born