Audio installation puts young entrepreneur in driver's seat

By Maureen Wallenfang
Post-Crescent staff writer

Q It's not every day you find a 23-year-old guy with his own business. You could have taken many paths … college, worked for someone else. Why work for yourself?

A Growing up, my brother had a store, Millennium Audio. He made a lot of money, probably more than you or I will ever make in a year. I figured if he could make that much money, what could I do?

Q Do you also have role models from TV?

A Ever see the show Unique Whips on the Speed Channel? It's basically a guy who has a huge store and works with a lot of high-end basketball players and football players doing fiberglass and rims. They call their cars their whips.

Q You got interested in this at age 13?

A I'd say a little before that. I've always been around it and enjoyed the base feel. You get in a car with base and you either like it or love it. I loved it.

Q What do your parents think?

A It's almost a bragging thing. "My son owns a shop." I still live with them. My grandma is my bookkeeper.

Q How is your business going so far?

A Sometimes it's really good and sometimes it's really bad. You've got to manage that. When it's really good, you save for the really bad. If you can do that, you can do it. The first year, we started in August. I still worked in another job, a custom cabinet shop. I worked there for two years as I had this. The first year wasn't that great. I didn't want to go in back and turn on the heat because it cost money. The second year, it was huge because it was the first full year. The summer of that year was pretty decent. Not real good, where I could live that lifestyle like my brother. His (business) was 1999/ 2000 when everybody had money and eBay wasn't around.

From there, our numbers went up 30 percent every year. This year they'll only go up slightly. The reason for that is my partner's gone and we did alarms, remote starts and keyless (entries) when he was there. I haven't done them since he left.

Q Your specialty is installation of car sound systems?

A Yes. I do a little bit of wheels, but nothing too serious.

Q Who are you customers?

A I would say 16 to 30. I'm a younger guy so I can relate. I've got the lingo down.

Q What sets you apart from other people who install sound equipment?

A First of all, service. If anybody ever has a problem with a car, it's how you handle those situations. If I've got a guy who's not satisfied, I can work with him better. I can fix it because I own (the shop). In some other shops, the manager doesn't have the authority to say, "OK, let's do this or this do that." He just says, "Well, I'll get back to you." It's a week later and the guy's p***** off because he's been waiting a week.

Q Are you doing work that you won't find anyplace else?

A A lot of this custom fiberglass. Nobody in town will do that. The reason is it takes so long so you don't always make good money on it. If someone brings me a car and says, "Hey, I've been everywhere. Everybody says I can't do this because the size of the hole is not right and I want put a 6 by 9 here," I'll do that for him. I've got plasma cutters and welders and all sorts of things that other people don't have. I can do that kind of thing.

Q What's the cost for custom fiberglass work?

A It depends on what they want. That (speaker) box goes for $450, $500. I have 15 to 20 hours into something like that. On this car here (showing a photo), the whole car was fiberglass and the back seat was taken out. It was $7,000, $8,000, but he had a lot of exterior work done too.

Q What does it cost to install a simple system?

A CD player, all four speakers, set of woofers and an amp — a full stereo installed, nothing too elaborate — you're probably looking at $1,500 to $2,000.

Q I know you've been stopped by cops for playing your car stereo too loud. Does that go with the territory?

A Oh sure. I've gotten probably three, four, five fines. When I was younger, I was a bad kid. I'll be honest with you. Now, when I come to stop signs, I always turn my radio down now. I didn't when I want younger. You almost feel bad when there's a grandpa sitting next to you and you're blaring. I feel bad sometimes, I really do. But I love driving my car on a nice spring day, windows down, just jamming.

Q If your customers are playing their car stereos up to their potential, they're going to get fined too?

A Oh, absolutely. I would say 80 percent of cars, even if they only spend just $400, $500 on a little system, still are going to make enough noise where they're going to p*** a cop off.