How to Start a $835K/Year Car Wrapping Business

would you like to start your own car wrapping business and hopefully scale it up to making 70 000 in monthly revenue or our friend fred did just that and today he's going to spill the beans on how we made it happen [Music] in this interview we're going to talk with fred who's the brains behind rapco and we're going to find out how he became so successful i mean he's worked on the nike campus with professional athletes and he started at a young age right around 19 fresh out of the military and today they do a lot more than just car wrapping they do digital printing they do paint protection and a bunch of other stuff and today we're going to find out how they became so successful there was no investors it was just a couple hundred bucks and a tool box and off i went well proper margins are great because the vinyl is very inexpensive we got a hat coming up so make sure you guys keep watching propane torch a blade and a squeegee i'm going to take you over to one of my higher end clients which is what i would suggest to anybody wanting to start their own business the necessary items are going to be your heat gun you can get pick this up by harbor freight for less than 15 today fred is going to share secrets with us on how he moved his business to such new heights how he makes more and more revenue each year and how you too can start your own car wrapping business we like the quick and easy commercial stuff kind of like this big bucks vehicle that we're doing here here we got a 48-day challenge that we did some graphics on so this kind of stuff is definitely more of a money maker we're projecting to do over a mill next year if you're new to the channel make sure you leave a like and subscribe and let's go meet the man himself ah there he is how's it going fred yeah hey man it's good to be here are you ready for this interview yes sir all right let's make it happen all right [Music] so fred tell me you know what's your background you know how did you even get into this business that you have here well i started off when i was in the military in the marine corps down in san diego and i would see cars drive by that were kind of fixed up and from there i fell in love with cars in general came back up here to oregon and uh the the import scene wasn't very very popular yet so i started fixing up my cars and my friends cars and it just kind of developed from there into into a business that i started behind my parents clothing store back in about 1999. nice and have you always had a passion for cars or you know being creative like when you were a kid or yes i got a lot of the business sense from my parents from their their small business that they started so i didn't go to school for business i just kind of learned by trial and error mostly so um that's one thing i wish i could have done is has gone back and done a little bit more schooling it would have probably helped me everything speed along a little faster all right fred we're here in your office man can we get a tour of the place can we get a sure thing let's do it all right let's go so here we got our printers okay and our tables where we get all the signs and all the commercial printing done nice we've got uh bay number one where we do some of the smaller car vehicle installs bay number two where we've got the big rigs all the much larger jobs won't fit in normal shops that don't have 14 foot tall bay doors right because some shops don't have these here correct definitely plenty of space yeah here's where we do all the paint protection the window tinning and ceramic coating as well very cool so a little bit of everything yeah you guys it looks like you utilize almost all of this space that you got here i think we're pretty close to outgrowing it as well okay that's not a bad problem no not not at all very cool all right fred we see you're so successful now but when you first started off you know how did you get off the ground you know financially do you have an investor did you save money you know how did you get it going i was never good at saving money and there was there was no investors it was just a couple hundred bucks and uh in a toolbox and off i went uh i just kind of developed from there into this building i'll show you the toolbox yeah yeah let's check it out so the toolbox just like this one okay and uh so before i didn't have a location for vehicles to come so i would go to the locations or to a business and do the installation there so all i needed was my propane torch a blade and a squeegee and for you how much did you know something like this cost to get you started in the beginning probably about a hundred dollars oh not bad about 100 bucks yeah nice and how long did you use something like this before you actually did get you know office or you know some infrastructure i would say about about a year no more than a year and then i eventually got into a building where i rented a space from a friend and then eventually i got to renting half of that shop and then eventually i moved into the biggest shop in our complex now yeah gotcha so you were actually making a profit using just this to start off yes i was making plenty of profit and eventually i just realized i needed a building for to make to get some of the more profitable jobs and now when you first started off with justice here was it only you or you had a partner or just me myself wow man that's awesome [Music] for overhead you know what's that like for you guys you know now that you guys have scaled to you know this huge you know infrastructure you got here i've tried to keep it small but uh our overhead is is right near about 25 000 a month okay and so we have to make that 25 000 first before we can start seeing some profit right definitely employees is going to be the big one um and then the size depending on the size of the shop but um our shop is is the next biggest overhead well as well as materials like vinyl and things like that yeah so would you say that materials is what you spend the most money on every month or is it something else you think outside of employees of course outside of employees it's going to be the materials the inks for the printer and tools that might break um but uh that's about it it's not it's not too much right after after employees and in the shop and for you does that change at all throughout the year like you know maybe uh in winter months compared to summer or no all year you're going to need a certain amount of vinyl certain amount of it it used to be more seasonal for us when we were only working on people's cars because mostly people wanted to only fix up their cars during the summer okay but now that we do a lot more of the corporate stuff now we're just busy all year round now [Music] so when it comes to car wrapping for someone just getting started you know what are some of the equipment that they could use at the minimum you know if they only got a couple dollars maybe three 500 dollars yeah you know what can they start off with with that type of money i would say the necessary items are going to be your heat gun you can get pick this up at harbor freight for less than fifteen dollars okay um squeegee knife the vinyl roll will will vary you can get a roll of vinyl as cheap as 300 uh some vinyl the printed vinyl could be four times that so it just depends on what kind of job you're doing whether you're doing a color change or a commercial sure and would you say for a lot of these things here you can get them at like a hardware store or you gotta go to a specialty shop for these type of no you can get pick this up at harbor freight amazon um has actual full kits you can order um that comes with everything uh some of the stuff might be a little on the cheaper end and but like i said event eventually you could work up to getting the the higher end stuff nice and that's perfect because later on in the video we got a hack coming up so make sure you guys keep watching because coming up soon we got a hack and a tip for you coming up what was your revenue like in your first year did you make a lot of money did you you know break even i don't think i broke even i had to um have a part-time job at first which is what i would suggest to anybody wanting to start their own business is have a steady income from somewhere else okay and then slowly as you go developing your skills and getting more clients eventually branching off okay once you're able to sustain the amount of money that you need in order to live but i probably didn't probably barely made twenty thousand dollars the first year really now for you though was that a win were you still feeling optimistic or were you kind of like uh maybe i should just get a regular job there were a lot of ups and downs definitely us in the beginning a lot more downs than ups but eventually it it did uh it started panning out and once i saw that it was kind of like a light into the tunnel and just kind of went for it so in the very beginning you know we saw you started out of this small box here were you just doing regular cars that you know me and you would drive or were you doing commercial you know uh vehicles as well when you first you know jumped off well when i first started i was working on just import cars fixing them up and i started dabbling in graphics there eventually some of my friends got their own businesses and wanted me to do some commercial stuff and slowly i started seeing how there was more money in that but when i first started i i was wrapping cars from my home garage so it was a you know a lot smaller than this um i i do have an example of a vehicle that that we that we recently wrapped yeah i'd love to see it yeah for sure now i'm not a car guy so you have to tell me exactly what type of vehicle is this right here so this is a bmw m4 m4 okay so these type of cars i couldn't i couldn't wrap them from my garage at home right because yeah there's a little bit more work needed a cleaner space uh some some more tools to take it all apart and everything so we wrapped this one in the 3m brush metal look if you look up close you can see the the grain on it now what car what color was this originally before you guys touched it it was white it was bright white okay so we that was extra work getting it all covered up so you can't see a hint of white including the door jambs i think that's what sets us apart from other wrap shops is is that we get down to the details make sure everything is taken apart correctly and put back together perfectly when it comes to advertising marketing you know for you what are some of the social media platforms or apps that you know you like to use to get the word out and you know talk about what you guys do here right now we just use facebook and instagram my friends are on on my facebook they'll share some of my so some of the cooler stuff okay and then uh pretty much word gets out that way we don't really use any kind of uh ads or things like that sure um i mean we might eventually down the road if we start to slow down but i i don't see it slowing down really yeah and have you guys been using like facebook for a while now or is that something new that you guys have been doing i've been using i've used facebook since since it came out and just kind of developed the following there from my previous business as well and um it's definitely helped out a lot and and then when instagram came around that's further helped as well get get the outreach even further nice and i was going to say you know pretty much everybody in the world is on facebook do you get a lot of clients that you know when they come over to you guys they say oh i you know saw you on facebook or i saw you does that ever happen for you guys or yeah yes talking to facebook and lately we uh through our through google because we have a five-star rating across the board on google and so that definitely helps out to have great reviews nice when it comes to profit margins what it was like for you you know especially you know now that you've got this huge you know building almost taking up the whole block you know what's it like for you nowadays well profit margins are great because the vinyl is very inexpensive you can take a small piece of vinyl about this size cost you pennies and i mean after labor labor is the the most expensive part of it after label you can charge say 60 to install oh a small small part so okay it all depends on how how you want to scale it you can you can keep it small and and just do it from uh your garage at home or a room at home you can sell decals online or you can to scale it up to where you've got a big huge building with a ton of equipment millions of dollars worth of equipment right solely only work with uh large corporate companies so it kind of just depends on what you decide to do as far as like your clientele kind of sounds like yes correct and how much work you can take on whether or not you want to hire more people to do help you out with larger projects or to be able to be doing multiple projects at different locations at the same time [Music] when you first started were you hoping to get to this level where you're doing cars like this on a regular basis or you know that type of thing you know yes yes and no um eventually uh the the good the nice cars came but now that we're doing more of the commercial stuff we like the quick and easy commercial stuff some kind of like this um big bucks vehicle that we're doing here okay yeah that's a big boy you guys got there yeah so got my guys over here wrapping this vehicle for t-mobile for that they take to different shows and events yeah um so this kind of stuff is definitely more of a money maker than your color change wrapping something like this bmw takes a a week to do roughly where this we can do it in a couple of days and make more profit from it wow and is this something that even back then you wanted to do you're hoping to get to you know bigger vehicles and commercial stuff like this or it definitely just kind of developed over time i started off doing small mon paw paint you know paint shops or landscapers and then eventually you know you've got big corporate clients calling you just kind of uh doesn't happen overnight yeah and the money's not bad i'm sure no definitely not very cool we heard about what you were making back when you started back in the 90s now in 2021 you know what's revenue looking like you know nowadays for you for our sales now per for the year like last year was about a little over 500 000 so we're projecting to do over a mill next year hopefully so everything keeps going on the track that we're going now nice and tell me this when you started back then were you hoping that you would get to the point where you're at now at least revenue wise that you'd be bringing in this much i was hoping for that it would take less than a year okay but things happen so slowly so it's taken close to a decade for that right now but are you now that you're here are you happy that that process you know took the time that it did or do you wish you know i wish it would have been you know i wish it would have been quicker but i would definitely suggest to anybody who has their own business or starting off to to take things slow not not grow so fast that's one mistake i did make when i was younger was i went from a small a small shop at one point and jumped into a huge warehouse and the overhead was a little bit too high so i had to go back and downsize at one point in in my business career nice so definitely watch out for that hey guys i'm going to take you over to one of my higher end clients i'm going to show you what we do to their vehicles and how you can get your own hiring clients as well so we're here at my client vital speeds uh this is the warehouse uh here we got a 488 challenge that we did some graphics on we did all the wrapping on the spoiler the the stripe graphics and all the sp the various sponsors on it as you can see it's a it's a full race car nothing that's treatable so in this case we had to come to the customer we couldn't uh have this car come be brought over to us yeah i can imagine it's a pretty expensive car and i'm not sure if my insurance would cover that cover all of this geico might not uh yeah how long did it take for you guys to work on something like this here printing producing the graphics about a day and then installation about half of a day but uh this is one of many cars that they that they own and so when we come out here we're usually working on various three to four cars got you and would you say as far as high-end cars go this is probably the highest you guys have done or you think yes the highest occasionally we'll get at our shop some rolls-royces or bentleys and things like that but this is definitely because these are modified for racing they're definitely worth a lot more money than ever a typical street street race or a street ferrari [Music] for employees how many you know folks do you have working here you know what's wage is like for you guys and even you know how do you find someone who you know can do rapping and you know all the things that you guys offer so we have about four full-time people here and then some subcontractors in case uh we get really busy or have a large project okay but so we're trying to keep it keep it smaller but uh they can make uh anywhere between 20 an hour and not depending on experience right now as you know it's it's hard to find find employees right now yeah it is and so um you know we've kind of had a little bit of problem with that but uh we'd be probably good with at least one or two more people in case anybody's looking sure yeah and for your team do you prefer for it to be kind of condensed or do you one day want to have you know 20 you know 30 folks you know running around here i prefer to keep it smaller okay just uh less less stress yeah yeah and of course we know in you know in the early years it was just you by yourself you know how long did it take for you to get up to you know four or five or you know the game you have now it was it was beat me by myself for several years but i would say up until recently about two years ago is when we started hiring more people on as we got busier and busier gotcha [Music] so fred uh you know you've been doing this for a while now you started way back and you know around 99 when you first started how long did it take for you to break even just to even make you know exactly what you put into the business not not that long not the real one because like i said the materials are really inexpensive the tools to get started are are pretty cheap and so it uh it happened pretty quick nice it was when i wanted to start scaling the business up that i needed to come up with a little bit more money so the projects just kind of had to get a little bit larger sure and what was that feeling like when you finally did break even you know were you exhausted from all the work you put in or was it a feeling of you know you got the monkey off your back kinda you know honestly i feel like uh um sometimes i feel like it's i'm not broken even yet because of all the goals that i have and so um usually after after so many goals are met um there's some relief yeah and do you have any uh maybe any advice for those who are getting into business and they're working on trying to break even because i know i'm sure it's probably a tough process you gotta have some patience you know uh a lot a lot of patients but definitely uh make sure your pricing is right and you're competitive with other places around you [Music] so for someone who's at home maybe they're in the cars you know they might be in the fast and furious you know for them if they have nothing or if they have maybe enough money for a toolkit like you had you know what would you say are some of the steps starting off they should you know do to you know if they want to get started into into wrapping any kind of vehicle wrapping or commercial wrapping first you got to get your step one is get your vinyl roll okay get your heat gun basically your tools your squeegee your knife and then step two probably get on youtube university there's plenty of tips and tricks on on how to get everything done and then uh step three post it up on your social media yeah your friends see it um do maybe do a friend's car for for cheap or even for free and then help get spread the word that way do you think it might even be easier for somebody at home to get started because you know we have youtube google much easier when when i first started there was no social media right so it was just all friends word of mouth and just do it doing the right work and and just went from there wow i mean you guys heard it here from a professional the year is 2021 you got google facebook twitter instagram all those things that you could do from home he's telling you use those resources you see how successful he is take advantage of that and get started youtube university he said you know go ahead and get your degree [Music] how do you go about finding you know a good subcontractor something you can rely on to you know get the work done sometimes it's difficult uh online they'll have postings uh through through friends uh you can put the word out that you're looking for somebody who who's who's a subcontractor and they're definitely a big benefit if you're if someone at home is definitely trying to look for uh how to get jobs done you can always outsource i started off by outsourcing my printing my design and and and labor until eventually i had people doing it full-time here nice and for you obviously you have full-time employees you know what's kind of the difference between you know your full-time folks and you know the subcontractors you bring in you know to work for you that's the other benefit with subcontractors you don't have to have them full-time paying them full-time you can just pay them per job or or for the hours that he's that he works so just a little bit helps out with the overhead there and would you say probably going forward in the future you're going to continue to have a mix of full-time staff and subcontractors as well or yes definitely a full full-time help for the work that we have here and then whenever we get a run of more work or stuff that we can't handle then we can call in the subcontractors gotcha okay it makes sense all right guys you've made it to the blitz question portion of the video you know what time it is we're going to ask him a few quick questions he's got to give us a few quick answers fred are you ready yes sir all right let's do it all right first question what are your plans for the next five to ten years business wise business place i want to expand the current business that i have and start up other businesses um as i currently have been already sure uh with your current business what made you even started what was the inspiration or motivation for it i think my my parents owning their own business i saw them um go through um owning their business and i was intrigued nice if you were to start another business in another field you know what do you think it would be it's something automotive okay got you yeah same way what's a uh future goal or something you're reaching for a target that you know you want to hit like a five year goal um to to expand more okay and bring on bring on a couple more people got you sounds good uh if you could go back to before the pandemic started what's one thing that you wish you would have known in advance before you know everything kind of shut down definitely been more prepared with a larger savings account okay yes savings that's good uh tell me about a bad habit that you have that you know it gets on your nerves and you know i say yes to too much stuff okay yes man when you're not running the business uh what do you like to do in your downtime in your free time uh travel i love to travel a lot nice travel uh and then what's an immediate red flag for you in the industry or when you're you know working i would say taking too long on a project okay got you when things just you know taking a while but you want to make sure you get go through projects quickly but make sure they're done right at the same time that's the difficult part there we go wait fred did it those are the blitz questions for us guys it comes to advertising you know marketing you know one how much do you spend on advertising and marketing two you know what kind of style do you use for that and three you know what do you feel like you get the most bang for your buck for you know what are you seeing that actually works you know for you guys well we don't currently we're not spending anything on advertising so we're fortunate that our word of mouth is carried on and kept us busy but there were times whenever we'd slow down with say a certain service like window tinting or the paint protection film where we would put facebook ads out pertaining to that service um in order to get drive more um more more work for the employee nice and would you say that facebook i know you mentioned earlier you know a lot of your friends and family and you know car enthusiasts are on there is that where you would say you got some good results from facebook using definitely facebook and instagram uploading as much as you can on there the work before before and after pictures of your work videos of you doing the work definitely helps out a lot people like to see that stuff because you guys are in the car culture and that's so big you know especially online and you know tuners and street cars street racing you know do you ever find employees in those environments or you know you have people come to get their car worked on and they happen to know something about wrapping or you know anything like that yes definitely the experience in in the automotive field or mechanics who know how to disassemble vehicles that definitely helps out with what we do so they at least can help us with the disassembly and reassembly and we can slowly train them in the wrapping from there gotcha because yeah i would assume a lot of people out there who are especially into cars this might be like a dream job for them or something that you know they might love you know putting this together every day so definitely we offer a lot of services that uh that somebody can can learn they can also cross train and and different stuff they can if they come in as a tinder they can learn how to wrap pretty easily okay or do the paint protection film as well i got you so for say someone out there looking for a job and then you know interested in working for you and your team here you know how do they reach you should they go through the website you know give you a call or you know our emails on our website on rapcopdx.com okay would be the best way send in a resume nice if you're looking for a job hit them up you know you've been doing this a long time what are some of the skills you've been using over the years that you know every day you kind of have to you know put into your work that you do i would say definitely the work ethic is a big one um because this industry requires a lot some sometimes long hours some customers need stuff done right away and so when you're able to meet the deadlines uh is definitely a big plus in their book um with uh with installation it it's it could be laborious uh so definitely be in shape um you know and you are i think you have to do some some meditation every morning kind of deal with every the day-to-day stresses but you know it it pays off if you now if you want to do on the the printing side the digital side i would say uh taking some courses i took an online course that helped me with uh some creative and some some design health as well and would you say because you got a lot of technology around you would you say that a lot of these machines they take care of a good chunk of it and then the labor part on your end is really after the machine does its job kind of or yes it takes some work to get the file set up but eventually it's it's kind of like printing money when you leave it alone and sometimes some people they like to leave it running overnight i would like to but don't trust the machine just yet yeah but uh for example like this job that we're doing for nike i'd want to keep a close eye on it make sure that everything is is printing correctly that there's no discrepancies in the print or or that the material or ink is going to bunch up or run out fred you've been in the game for a while now how did you know when to grow your business when it was time to you know level up a little bit well after learning from a previous mistake of growing too fast i tried to grow it as slow as possible but up until the point where i was forced to grow it like let's say if i i was needing to do multiple vehicles so i had to upgrade from a smaller garage to a garage that could fit more vehicles up until the point where i can fit eight to ten vehicles in in the place i am now so sure i usually would would let it kind of just happen naturally but if i were um to want to scale it up even quicker then i would maybe do get a loan and and get you know in order to be able to hire more people and then go go from there yeah and what was kind of your strategy uh when you did it yourself you know when you went from you know working either out of that toolkit or going into a building to or even where you guys are now you know huge garage you know what was kind of your planning and those steps there i've always had a step up that i wanted to get up to a level that i wanted to get up to and so i've always waited until the money was there and until do it without really getting too much into getting loans or or things like that so kind of once again kind of letting it kind of happen on its own all right guys we've made it to that point of the video it's time for the hack the tip the advice the wisdom that you've all been waiting for fred has it here for us we're going to find out exactly what it is fred what can you tell the folks at home that they need to know all right guys a year ago i wouldn't be telling you this because then you'd be my competition and we don't i wouldn't want that so no now that i have them all work there's plenty of work to go around but uh the the hack is get certified contact 3m avery some of the top rap companies they have their own training centers you can go there fly there they're usually about a couple thousand dollars but it's worth it you could probably make your money back within your first job because they will actually put you on their website and other people looking for uh installers uh higher end clientele will actually go to their website and punch punching where they're at and and it'll locate installers around them so it works for anybody in the united states even even in europe as well and don't forget he's also looking for some new blood down at the shop so if you get certified if you do what you got to do you know you might have a job with fred here so who knows [Music] you know when you work with you know companies like nike or t-mobile you know outside of obviously you guys getting paid for you are there fringe benefits to doing that is those like dream gigs or you know it's just nice to have that business from these you know corporate you know entities basically it's definitely nice to have to have that business it it it feels great at the beginning i never thought i would ever ever ever work with companies this size but it definitely makes it look better for a brighter future yeah and then money wise is it a significant profit compared to if you're doing just my car or somebody else or yes it is um corporate corporate businesses definitely uh uh they pay well sometimes they take a little longer to pay so okay if you want to get into working with corporate companies you definitely want to have a reserve because uh they could take 60 90 90 days to pay real and you have already paid out on materials and so it could kind of bottleneck you for a little bit if you're not careful [Music] what's something so far in your career and in the history of your business that you know you think was a mistake or you might have slipped up on and you know you wish maybe didn't happen uh well i wish i would have got more education before starting the whole thing um it definitely would have helped out with all the hurdles that i had to jump through sure would have made made things a lot easier and would you say that for those who are out there and want to start a small business or even get into car wrapping that they should do some level of education or training or you know print me an apprentice intern you know something like that minimally at least get certified uh with with the rap company um but if you want to take on owning a whole business like the size of of ours i would definitely say as much education as possible um you know as much college as you can if not at least resort to uh listening some ebooks those are just as great sure absolutely well fred first off you know we want to thank you for allowing us to get into your world you know give us a tour of your facility you know let us you know talk and hobnob with some of your uh employees there and you know we appreciate it you know we really had a good time and anytime you know love having you guys there thank you and you know for uplift i'm justice rogers fred here thanks again fred thank you thank you sir all right guys you've made it to the end of the video we had a great time with fred today he took us on a tour around his facility he gave us advice he told you about the education certifications different tools pieces of equipment you can use honestly i learned a lot and i hope you guys did too and as always we hope that you will like this video we hope you'll subscribe to our channel and we hope that you leave a comment below we do read the comments if there's a certain video you want to see about a certain business or industry let us know in the comments below we'll read it and hopefully we can take care of it for you guys and as always for up flip i'm justice rogers

2021-08-12 13:56

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