By John Allaire C aliper covers are a pretty specific and unique product. How did you get started in the business? Mike: In my previous business, I was making titanium golf clubs. And at the time, I had purchased a suburban and had 22-inch wheels put on it. It was nice and we had done a few upgrades on the wheels and we put TVs in it for the kids. I washed it after installing the new wheels and sat to have a beer and admire my awesome truck, and the ugly brake calipers blatantly caught my eye immediately. I knew that there was a product out there to paint them but I didn’t really want to use paint. First of all, the paint doesn’t stick well to casting — I’m a manufacturing engineer, so I know a lot about castings. And secondly, the brake dust gets everywhere. So I sat out there and drew up what was in my head, and what I thought would work to cover the calipers. From there, I took the ideas to my facility and worked with my tooling guy. We developed some caliper cover prototypes. I tried them out and we found that making the cover itself wasn’t a big deal. But the fastening attachment was where it really took some thought and effort. The fastening mechanism was the hardest part to develop? Mike: Yeah. I came up with this clip design, got it patented, and then after a few years, I lost my golf business. It ended up all going over to China. I had this idea already devel- oped and I had some prototypes. So I built maybe 30 or 40 different sets for different types of vehicles. I tried them out on friends’ and family’s cars and things were working well. At that point I was ready to try and make a go of this. What were your initial steps to getting the new product out into the marketplace? Mike: I kept going to SEMA [the Specialty Equipment Market Association show] and petitioning them to add caliper covers as an accessory, which they eventually did. Once we were about a year or so into manufacturing, I started asking Ford, GM and MOPAR for licenses. I was fortunate enough to get licensing with Ford first then GM, MOPAR, and a couple years ago we got Honda and Acura as well. Once we got into the licensing, that helped give us a more legitimate product and we really gained a lot more atten- tion. With the uniqueness, the fact that caliper covers change the four corners of the car and the profound visual impact they make behind each wheel — it has really taken off. You manufacture the caliper covers in house, in San Diego?
Mike: Absolutely. My background is in manufacturing which made that part quite easy for me. We do all the develop- ment and we go right to the dealerships so we can take pictures and take measurements and make sure there’s clearance from the wheels and rotors and anything else that needs to be looked at. “I was fortunate enough to get licensing with Ford first then GM, MOPAR.” The goal is to cover every car. I visit every dealership I can. I’m constantly trying to work out ways to get our calipers on their cars. We recently purchased a 3D scanner that has been crucial in not only expediting this process, but also producing even better fitment and we are excited about pushing harder moving forward. That must be a tremendous number of cars! How many different types of vehicles can you put your calipers covers on at this point? Mike: We currently have over 5,000 different vehicles which extrapolates into about 140,000 part numbers because
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • MAY 2018
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