Small Business Stories -Chop Shop Customs

Ivy Hartman: Welcome to SBTV.com's coverage of the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. I'm Ivy Hartman and with me is Lenny Schaeffer, President of Chop Shop Customs. Lenny, welcome to Small Business Television. Lenny Schaeffer: Nice to meet you. Ivy Hartman: Absolutely what is Chop Shop Customs? I love the name, by the way. Lenny Schaeffer: Well, the name started off as kind of sort of a joke. I was working on in my garage in my own personal cars and they say, oh, what do you run; a chop shop? My neighbor was kind of doing, because we kind buy cars and restore them. So when I had a business name, he came up and he was re-threw a ton of names around and my wife says well, we'll call it Chop Shop Customs and I said, no, no, find a different; Lenny's Custom Shop, Lenny's this, Lenny's that. She says Chop Shop Customs start; it's great, it's looks good on T-shirts. Ivy Hartman: Yeah, it is. Lenny Schaeffer: Basically what we are, is a builder shop which is we restore cars, we also build resto-mod cars and we also do street rod and custom work. What it is, people bring us cars that are needing a restoration, basically; they are apart, they're unusable anymore. We'll take them and fully restore them and make them like new. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous, from start to finish. Lenny Schaeffer: From start to finish. Ivy Hartman: What did you -- you take on it or you help design it for the person? Talk about what makes Chop Shop unique. Lenny Schaeffer: Well, there're two different lines; we do design cars. We work with two artists; Ben Hermance and Marie Buff (ph). We'll do a rendering for a customer, I can do renderings also, but I like to let the rendering guys, they're experts in their field, do it with customers and them we'll put my spin on it. In the rendering also, I like this, this isn't really my style on a restore mode and are definitely our custom in street rod and custom work. We definitely have our own spin, my own taste on stuff. We also do serious restoration and concours restoration and those are done by the book. As you will get restoration manuals, you follow the numbers and then the car gets charged and hopefully, everything goes right, you did the car right. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous! Are you getting -- does Chop Shop have a name out there? What do you know I mean for the restoration side? Lenny Schaeffer: Yeah, we have a name on both sides, mainly my name is for right now; it's been seems to be where the market is heading, which if you walk around, you can see, which is late 60's, early 70's cars with modern drive trends, modern brakes, four-wheel disk brakes, power steering, actually rack-and-pinion steering in most, very clean, very, I wouldn't call loosing the lines, you really don't loose the lines in the original car. We're not cutting up cars anymore and I got a cell phone car and what will happen is -- Ivy Hartman: So you're not -- so you're getting these cars put in the shows, right? Lenny Schaeffer: Yes. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous, and that works well for you business. Well, you're also an ambassador, what is an ambassador? Lenny Schaeffer: Basically, I've gone several companies to join SEMA. I actually, before I've opened my shop four years ago, I was part of SAN Network, which is the government affairs division of SEMA and with the car clubs and we stop exhaust builds, we stop builds that hurt the automotive business and through that, I got heavily involved with SEMA and what they've done for my business in that. So when encounter a supplier or a vendor that I deal with, I spread the word that this is what I get out of SEMA. It's a very good organization I belong to. It protects our rights as car builders because we know these days everybody is trying to cut down the automotive business, especially the aftermarket automotive is trying put restrictions on us. SEMA watches that and helps our businesses drive. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous! You're also a speaker at one of the seminars here. Talk about that. Lenny Schaeffer: I've started my business four years ago and basically the seminar was on our pitfalls. Myself, Jim Barber (ph) from Cars Incorporated, Classic Auto Restoration out of North Carolina started it, did a seminar. His point of view was more from the corporate background, I come from dealership management. Then also I started very small one myself and how we worked our businesses was a lot more employees than mine. I have six employees now in four years and how we worked it up navigating, what it's like to own a small business, the reality of what we're up against financially, what we're up against legality-wise and to push the idea of joining business, small business organizations and try to support that type of deal. Ivy Hartman: What's the reality of small business owners in the automotive aftermarket? Lenny Schaeffer: Reality is as you are constantly fighting, a, I own a business in Massachusetts, which isn't the most business-friendly state, especially for a business based where we use hazardous chemicals in that. The reality is the amount of money that caused to spend, the amount of taxation, the amount of lack of brakes that I feel a small business owner gets in United States today, really I feel it needs to change because truthfully, our country has founded on small business, and I really believe that I need to be out there, pushing that and finding ways to help myself, also making it drive. And unfair tax laws, unfair just all of the taxation, all of the feed, just to watch myself and that's why I do what I go. Ivy Hartman: Fabulous! Do you think you'll have the seminar go and you think you'll do something again like it next year? Lenny Schaeffer: If it went well, they get feedback. It's my first time doing a public speaking thing. So I don't know how, when. I would hope to continue on with that or actually, we finally fit too much into that seminar. I felt may be do smaller seminars on different ideas for our size businesses, which is when you're around ten employees, you're still a very small business. Ivy Hartman: Yeah, absolutely! Talk about Chop Shop Customs, how can we get a hold of you? You take clients from all over the country and -- Lenny Schaeffer: I take clients from all over the country. Basically, I have a website; it's chop-shopcustoms.com. My email address is chopshopcustoms@comcast.net and my telephone number is 781-939-5660, basically 8:00 to 5:00 East Coast time. Ivy Hartman: It's always nice to sit down, Lenny, with another small business owner, really making it work. We're really proud of you. Chop Shop Customs, really may have an impact here at the SEMA Show 2008. Keep it right here as SBTV.com continues to bring you our continued coverage of this show here in Las Vegas.