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Sleek, Sparkling Rims Power A $3.1 Billion Aftermarket Industry



 
 
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  #1  
Old June 2nd 05, 10:54 PM
MrPepper11
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Default Sleek, Sparkling Rims Power A $3.1 Billion Aftermarket Industry

June 2, 2005
Fortune's Wheels
Sleek, Sparkling Rims Power A $3.1 Billion Aftermarket Industry
By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer

We write today in honor of chrome. We write of the lowly car tire
elevated to art form. Of P. Diddy and designer wheels, of Shaq and the
$40,000, 24-inch Superman set of spokes on which his la fabulousness
glides.

We write today of rims.

We write of the formerly unremarkable steel or aluminum cylinders
which, when bolted onto a grimy axle, support your tires. A hundred
years, they make cars in Detroit and everywhere else and most people
didn't think too much about rims, which usually were plain old
utilitarian wheels -- so ugly that you hid them with hubcaps.

What idiots.

Today rims are a $3.1 billion industry that stands at the revolving
heart of two American obsessions: automobiles and finding ever more
expensive ways to buy things you already have and don't need. Turning a
50-cent cup of coffee into a $4.25 triple latte: That's what makes this
country great, and don't you forget it, sister.

Hamid Ahmadi understands this and he wasn't even born in this country.
Ahmadi, 42, fled his home town of Kabul to escape the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan. Today he runs Big Boys Toys in Oxon Hill, a flat-out
fabulous red, yellow and black testament to the terminally automotive
hip. Every week somebody comes in and drops $4,475 for a set of 24-inch
Omega spinners.

And people say this country is going to hell in a handbasket.

"We have 400 different models in stock," Ahmadi is saying in the back
storeroom, where tires and rims are stacked in long, profit-rich rows.
"I want my customers to be able to feel, touch, smell the product
before they buy it. We don't make you wait, either. You buy it, we
mount them on the car in an hour, hour and a half if we're busy."

Bling. Instant gratification. Chrome on your car for no damn reason.
This place is more American than Hooters.

The rims explosion is not, we stress, anything like your gearhead Uncle
Kevin working on the GTO out back. Nor is it your Springsteen '69 Chevy
with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor. Gearheads are into
performance, speed and technology.

People who drop money for rims -- let's say Patrick Williams, right
here in Big Boys, picking up a $2,000 set of Vision 20-inchers on his
new Yukon -- are not gearheads. They do not get their fingernails
dirty. They watch the big, flat-screen up front and take calls while
Abdul Basir and the fellas in the back put on the rims, polish them and
the tires and pull it back out front for you to admire, sitting there
on the leather couch.

"We're a full-service shop," Ahmadi says.

"Rims are the big thing now," says Williams, an engineer for the
federal government.

"Rims are more of a fashion statement rather than an automotive one,"
says Peter MacGillivray of the Specialty Equipment Market Association,
the California-based agency that promotes and tracks the $31 billion
after-market car modification industry. "People have really bought into
the idea that their car is a reflection of themselves, their
personality."

There is no precise genesis for rims trade, but there is certainly
precedent. Americans have a long history of turning the ordinary into
the stylish and perhaps outrageously expensive -- dungarees become
designer jeans, sneakers become Air Jordans, prescription sunglasses
morph into Oakleys, sweaty track suits evolve into DKNY loungewear, a
cuppa joe turns into the Starbucks franchise.

For rims, the beginning was about five or six years ago among members
of the West Coast-based "tuning" culture. These are guys who gear out
their cars with performance engines, fins, new grills, and then
somebody came up with some custom rims. Their chrome-laden
extravagances began popping up in rap videos and in movies like "The
Fast and the Furious," and then there was MTV's "Pimp My Ride," and
suddenly Sly Stallone and Adrien Brody and Ozzy Osbourne were rolling
with them. Glossy magazines like Dub, Lowrider and Top Tuners are now
filled with dozens of pages of rim ads. Diablo, D'Vinci, Hipnotic,
Lexani, Polo, Player, Zenetti -- the list of manufacturers grows by the
day.

"It started out as a hip-hop thing, but now I get calls from everyone
from rappers to movie producers to some lawyer's secretary, setting up
an appointment for him," says Ernie Boehm, who designed Shaq's wheels
for Blingz of Beverly Hills. Boehm, who also designs for the less
expensive sister company Blingz Wheels, makes limited series of each
design, say 350, like etchings.

There are fads, of course within a $3 billion trade. Spinners, the
insets within the wheel that keep turning after you stop, have peaked.
Floaters, insets that remain still while you drive -- giving the
appearance the wheel isn't turning at all -- are the new hottie.

Kitmani Rollins, president of Silver Spring-based
Automotiverhythms.com, says rims only recently caught on in Washington.
"In D.C. you didn't get a lot of bling, compared to New York, Atlanta,
L.A., Texas." One problem, he says, might be the poor condition of the
streets. "D.C. streets are so jacked up, I think it scared some people
off here."

Now P. Diddy is coming out with his "Sean John" limited-edition rims --
going for $700 to $3,000 each. General Motors is planning to offer rims
right in the showroom.

Ahmadi isn't worried.

Rims are a personal item, he says, and people want the experience of
picking them out themselves, from a ton of options, not just four or
five at the dealership.

He bought this place, a rundown former auto-parts store on a busy
street in Oxon Hill, in early 2003. He ripped out the insides and
turned it into a primary colors playroom.

The side walls in the front half of the store are bright yellow, the
floor red. Dozens of spit-shined rims float in black or chrome racks,
stacked eight or nine feet tall. High overhead, bright fluorescent
lights are suspended from a black ceiling. Track lighting spills onto
the rims lining the walls. The back half of the store, where the walls
switch to red, is stocked with stereos, grills, alarms and the like.

Business was slow when he opened in late 2003, he says, but with
advertising and word of mouth, things boomed. He estimates he moves 60
to 80 sets of rims per week, accounting for 60 percent of the store's
gross profits.

Selecting a set of rims in this candy-store atmosphere isn't easy.

Anthony Michaels pulls into the parking lot in a 2000 BMW 323-I. It's a
nice black car with 15-inch rims. He walks around the shop for half an
hour or so, bending over and checking this set of rims against that
one, then goes with the 18-inch Zenetti Deuces, at $2,299.

"It really brings the look of the car out," he says of the rims. "The
18s are fine with me. You can't go any bigger on this car safely."

And that's the issue -- as rims go to 18, 20, 22, now 24 and 26 inches
-- the depth of the tires decreases. These tires wear out quicker, and
are mostly higher-cost performance tires. One European design company,
Claus Ettensberger, reminds buyers that tires on something going 70 mph
on the interstate are not playthings.

"There are a lot of knockoff tire companies that have sprung up in the
past couple years, and these are not like fake Nikes or Louis Vuitton
handbags -- they're a critical safety feature," says Victor Carrillo, a
company spokesman. "They're performance tires, so they wear quickly.
There is a greater risk of blowouts, so you have to carefully monitor
the tire pressure. You have to understand when you get these that they
are not going to last like ordinary tires."

Ordinary?

Who said anything about ordinary?

Rims, Oakleys, the latte, the hot stone massage, the 57-inch plasma
high-definition -- Americans want ordinary right up until they can
afford something else.

Ads
  #2  
Old June 3rd 05, 02:07 AM
The Real Bev
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"...Rims, Oakleys, the latte, the hot stone massage, the 57-inch plasma
high-definition -- Americans want ordinary right up until they can
afford something else."

I've seen ads -- "Rent the rims you deserve!" Is this sick or what?

--
Cheers,
Bev
----------------------------------------------
Linux: The penguin is mightier than the sword
  #3  
Old June 3rd 05, 02:20 AM
James C. Reeves
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Back in my day, if one wanted shiny rims, one would pop off the hubcaps and
spray paint the stock rims with aluminum paint. BINGO, custom rims for
$3.98! :-)


  #4  
Old June 5th 05, 01:09 AM
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"MrPepper11" > in ups.com:



previuosly, chrome lips to give your 89 excel this look
http://images.google.com/images?q=Me...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8


> Bling. Instant gratification. Chrome on your car for no damn reason.



> People who drop money for rims -- let's say Patrick Williams, right



>"Rims are the big thing now," says Williams, an engineer for the federal
> government.




>"Rims are more of a fashion statement rather than an automotive one,"


> "People have really bought into
> the idea that their car is a reflection of themselves, their
> personality."



> For rims, the beginning was about five or six years ago among members
> of the West Coast-based "tuning" culture. These are guys who gear out
> their cars with performance engines, fins, new grills, and then
> somebody came up with some custom rims.


fins?


one for the soccer mom's hummer
http://www.putco.com/images/body/Image15.jpg
http://www.putco.com/bodyart.shtml


> There are fads, of course within a $3 billion trade. Spinners, the
> insets within the wheel that keep turning after you stop, have peaked.


not common

> Floaters, insets that remain still while you drive -- giving the
> appearance the wheel isn't turning at all -- are the new hottie.
>




>"There are a lot of knockoff tire companies that have sprung up in the
> past couple years, and these are not like fake Nikes or Louis Vuitton
> handbags -- they're a critical safety feature," says Victor Carrillo, a
> company spokesman. "They're performance tires, so they wear quickly.
> There is a greater risk of blowouts, so you have to carefully monitor
> the tire pressure. You have to understand when you get these that they
> are not going to last like ordinary tires."




> the 57-inch plasma




  #5  
Old June 6th 05, 04:19 PM
dr.benway
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If Shaq is into rimming, I guess that's his business..

  #6  
Old June 6th 05, 11:29 PM
John S.
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And just what the point you are making with this long copy of a Fortune
article.

  #7  
Old June 7th 05, 02:04 AM
Dave Lister
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"John S." > wrote in news:1118096943.696443.257950
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

> And just what the point you are making with this long copy of a Fortune
> article.


It was interesting.

--
Republican Health Plan: Don't Get Sick

Guantanamo: The Gulag of Our Time

  #8  
Old June 7th 05, 04:10 PM
N8N
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John S. wrote:
> And just what the point you are making with this long copy of a Fortune
> article.


Um, it might be of interest to a driving newsgroup?

Personally I don't see the "spinner" fad peaking at all; they seem to
be more common than ever.

nate

ObAmusing: seeing a Yukon or some such along the side of the road, 20's
all a-bling, with a flat LF tire... ooh, that's gotta hurt.

nate

  #9  
Old June 8th 05, 04:36 AM
SoCalMike
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N8N wrote:
>
> John S. wrote:
>
>>And just what the point you are making with this long copy of a Fortune
>>article.

>
>
> Um, it might be of interest to a driving newsgroup?
>
> Personally I don't see the "spinner" fad peaking at all; they seem to
> be more common than ever.
>
> nate
>
> ObAmusing: seeing a Yukon or some such along the side of the road, 20's
> all a-bling, with a flat LF tire... ooh, that's gotta hurt.
>
> nate
>

and they couldnt afford a "spare" 20? or are too dumb to change a tire?
  #10  
Old June 8th 05, 10:35 AM
Nate Nagel
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SoCalMike wrote:
> N8N wrote:
>
>>
>> John S. wrote:
>>
>>> And just what the point you are making with this long copy of a Fortune
>>> article.

>>
>>
>>
>> Um, it might be of interest to a driving newsgroup?
>>
>> Personally I don't see the "spinner" fad peaking at all; they seem to
>> be more common than ever.
>>
>> nate
>>
>> ObAmusing: seeing a Yukon or some such along the side of the road, 20's
>> all a-bling, with a flat LF tire... ooh, that's gotta hurt.
>>
>> nate
>>

> and they couldnt afford a "spare" 20? or are too dumb to change a tire?


Who knows? I'd venture to guess that most people can't change their own
tires these days. What I was actually thinking was there's a 50/50
chance that that expensive rim is screwed, if the driver hit one of the
many potholes around before making it to the shoulder... I obviously
didn't stop to investigate however...

nate

--
replace "fly" with "com" to reply.
http://home.comcast.net/~njnagel
 




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