Article by jacob martin

Under the Wrap S S

C u s t o m s

Jake Martin

U n d e r t h e Wr a p

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Under the Wrap A t the awkward intersection between El Camino, Pine Street, and Lathrop Street lies a small auto garage in Redwood City, California. Just by looking at it from the street, it is hard to imagine that SS

Customs is a world renowned aftermarket auto shop. With an ominous dark paint job and signage limited to a small sticker on the glass door, SS Customs looks like any other beat up auto shop in the area.

But step inside, and

you are immediately surprised by what you find: a wide assortment of supercars randomly packed into the large, triangular room with music (chosen by the employees), whistling, and laughter. This positive working environment is all thanks to the founder and owner, Shareef Khan.

Shareef has created a community where all of the employees are completely comfortable with each other. A perfect example of this would be one evening, at around closing time, Shareef brought his hookah to the center of the room, where the whole crew gathered to review the day. They all laughed and joked as one of the employees rapidly twirled his hand in the smoke, attempting to form it into a cool shape.

SS Customs is an automotive

performance enhancement studio that mainly focuses on wrapping cars. A car wrap, or vinyl wrap, is best described as a temporary skin that covers the entire car. These come in hundreds of different colors and finishes such as mattes and chromes. Their website describes their work as “the only certified ‘Paint is Dead’ vinyl installer in the Northern Region of California.” They go on to explain how they are part of an “exclusive global network of vinyl wrap studios” and that “only a selected few are welcomed to join the ‘Paint is Dead’ network.” The Paint is Dead network was established as a global league of wrap shops that uphold to the highest of standards in the wrapping industry. While SS Customs is unquestionably a professional establishment with remarkable craftsmanship, it is more importantly a friendly, tight-knit community, made up of people equally devoted to each other as they are to the cars. With all of the benefits of being a world renowned business, SS Customs still manages to stick to its roots by keeping a small, family owned business feel.

Nic Jimenez is the co-owner and managing partner to Shareef at SS Customs. Nic has a rebellious look to him with arm tattoos, and is usually dressed in dark clothing. Despite this rough image, Nic is always willing to have a deep, and genuine conversation. He enjoys drifting around the shop, joking with the employees, and making connections with the employees, all with a smile

on his face. One day, Nic approached an employee working on an Aston Martin V12 Vantage that is elevated on a lift. He proceeded to give him instructions on acting for a short social media video. Nic took out his phone and started panning along the side of the Vantage and stopped on the employee who appeared to be very focused on his work. After a brief moment of the camera being focused on the employee, he took out his phone and pretended to answer it in a very professional way. They both broke character to watch the video to see how it turned out, and after very animated laughter, they both agreed to redo it.

They proceeded to do this another four times before they were both pleased with the finished product.

According to VehicleWrapping.com, the wrapping industry dates all the way back to 1900, when Milton Hershey became the first person to advertise his company on the exterior of his car (Kennell). For years, people relied on painting to advertise, but in the late 1950s, companies turned to a new material, vinyl chloride. However, It was not until the early ‘90s, when a German wrap company wrapped the first car entirely with a vinyl wrap (King). Just like Milton Hershey, Shareef’s dad “...started off as a hand painter in Fiji Islands. He used to paint buses and other vehicles or whatever he could paint – buildings, windows – and he was just more so a hand artist, hand painter” (Khan). With his dad aesthetically

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modifying cars long before Shareef was born, it is obvious that Shareef’s drive to modify cars and the creation of SS Customs was no mistake. But in 1984, Shareef’s parents moved to the United States. After about a year, they started a sign business called Sam’s Signs, which evolved into custom wraps for commercial businesses in the late 1990s. In the 2000s Shareef decided to start a new division in his parent’s company called Sam Signs Customs, which was abbreviated to SS Customs. Shareef started reaching out to suppliers of vinyl, who eventually responded by releasing several solid colored vinyl wraps. When Shareef first started SS Customs, he was the only one on the West Coast wrapping cars. And as the industry grew, Shareef was

able to join the board of Paint is Dead. Despite this rapid growth, the people at SS Customs still manage to keep their values and roots. A large part of this is because of the mind-set they keep. Antonio Ochoa, the design consultant at SS Customs, likes to say,

“As soon as you think you are the best, that’s when you’re going to fail” (Ochoa). They always stay on their “game” and because of that, are able to adapt to new techniques and technology.

Antonio, believes that this is essential to staying competitive

in the wrapping industry.

While Shareef has built up a very positive working environment with lots of friendly employees, it is important to remember that these are car guys who believe in a standard of quality in a car that deserves the attention and effort of an SS Customs wrap.

This was tested one day when Shareef was briefly out of the office.

The phone rang in the far back corner of the triangular shop. An employee rushed to the phone to answer.

“Hello, this is SS Customs, how can I help you?” He said.

The employee paused to listen with several, “Uh huh”s and, “of course”s, before he responded with, “Can you please hold? I’ll have to ask my boss for a quote for that.”

The employee put the phone on hold and turned to everyone else in the shop, and yelled, “Hey guys, this lady is calling to ask about wrapping a ‘93 van!”

Everyone stopped what they were doing, whether it was applying a large sheet of matte vinyl, masking the paint underneath, or cutting the wrap with an x-acto knife. There was a menacing silence in the shop. Even the music seemed to have paused in suspense, when suddenly somebody on the other side of the room called out, “Hell no!” The original employee then picked up the phone and responded to the woman with “Sorry, the boss isn’t in right now, may I have your name and number and a time he can call you back?”

Instead, the guys who work at SS Customs expect to find other car

enthusiasts, like themselves, to modify their cars. Khan, Cousin to Shareef Khan, says that they mostly see people who, probably spend a lot of money on their car and ever since they were younger they probably wanted to customize them, change colors, put wheels on them.” In other words, not owners of a 1993 minivan.

With SS Customs a fast growing business in an even faster growing industry, it looks to expand. They have just recently repainted the exterior of the building, and their neighboring upholstery shop has just moved out, so SS Customs has moved some of their cars in to await their turn to get wrapped.

When asked about expansion, Shareef says that he has “always envisioned SS Customs to first off, start off from the West

Coast and just dominate there, and then grow into the US” and that he would “love to see SS Customs as a worldrenowned automotive aesthetic and performance studio that comes up with crazy designs and collaborates with our clients to help them deliver and achieve the dreams that they have.” But more importantly, it is clear, that Shareef truly believes that cars are a “function of ourselves” and that people have what he calls an “inner person” that is hidden under the surface that they cannot outwardly express.

Shareef says that “We help people do that, and have an outlet or a medium for them to express themselves. That to me is what I’d love to do on a grander scale for people around the world” (Khan).

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Works Cited “About Us.” SS Customs, SS Customs, www.sscamerica. com/?page_id=2. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Kennel, Mikala. “The History of Vehicle Wrapping.” Vehicle Wrapping, Absolute Perfection, 13 Aug. 2015, www.vehicle wrapping.com/2015/06/the-history-of-vehicle-wrapping/.

Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

King, Alanis. “From German Taxis To Sick Chrome Lambos: The Crazy World Of Car Wraps.” The Garage, Thegarage.jalopnik.com, 19 Dec. 2015, thegarage.jalopnik. com/from-german-taxis-to-sick-chrome-lambos-the-crazyworl-1743782685. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Martin, Jake. “Interview With Antonio Ochoa.” 25 Mar. 2017.

Martin, Jake. “Interview With Jameel Khan.” 20 Mar. 2017.

Martin, Jake. “Interview with Shareef Khan.” 1 Apr. 2017.

--- Personal Interview. 8 Mar. 2017.

“

A staircase is only

tallest

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as tall as its

stair.

Jake Martin is a student studying film at freestyle Academy. He enjoys playing lacrosse and driving his car. Jake finds the most challenging part of writing to be writing about something he is not passionate about. When he gets older, Jake hopes to study entrepreneurial business, and start his own company.

His advice to writers both young and old is to pick a topic that speaks to you.

Because if you don’t you will be stuck with a project that you do not enjoy for a long time.

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