Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Bickers.
Hi Steven, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started working on cars about 15 years ago, during high school days, and always knew that’s what I eventually wanted to end up doing. I dabbled with all sorts of jobs throughout the years, and ended up getting a CDL and driving semi trucks making loc deliveries here around the Wasatch Front for a few years, around 2017. Around that time I also decided to learn the basics of how to throw a vinyl wrap on my own car and soon my friend and soon to be business partner did the same on his. We had a few people ask us to work on their own cars and from there, we started honing the craft of vehicle wrapping as well as polishing paint and applying coatings. I would make posts on the local Herriman Facebook pages and got a few jobs that way as well. The business was strictly limited to weekends as I already had an 8-5 full-time job during the week, so adding these 10-12 hr jobs on the weekend made it quite a long week. Right from the first wraps and ceramic coating jobs that I did, I felt that was really what I should be devoting my time to, but it’s risky leaving the stability of a full-time job for something that requires you to obtain all the business and consequent income yourself. Soon my partner Adam and I decided to make the jump and both leave our day jobs and start booking jobs 6 days a week. We were working from my home garage for about 1.5 years before we reached the point where we simply didn’t have the space for the client’s vehicle plus my own vehicles in the garage and driveway and we felt we needed to expand a bit. We found the shop in West Valley that we currently are located at and made the move. Since then, we have continued to improve, add more services to our shop’s menu, and grow our online and community presence!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have definitely been some setbacks such as COVID around that time and other low points with little to no sales, but for the most part, we have pushed through and just been looking for the next opportunity as they’re presented!
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Revautolize?
Revautolize is a name that I thought of that simply combines revitalize + auto. That’s what we do, is take vehicles and give them a fresh, new & updated look, in whatever form that may be. We are a vehicle specialty shop that focuses on color change and commercial vehicle wraps, paint correction/polishing and high-grade ceramic coatings, paint protection film, custom decals/graphics, part installs, and more. What we strive for and what we have heard from our customers, is that we simply put more care and thought into what we’re doing that other shops in this space, while also maintaining a reasonable price tag. We know what to look for, we know what customers look for, and we know how to make your vehicle stand apart from the rest!
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
As with any new business, there are certainly a lot of risks. I would say the main ones for us have been leaving the stability of our past jobs that Adam and I had when we were doing this part-time, as well as making the jump to a shop where we have overhead costs as opposed to working from my house where we did not. We saw these as necessary risks and wouldn’t have been able to grow our business without them. I don’t think you can really be a successful entrepreneur if you are not at least somewhat inclined to taking calculated risks somewhat often.
Contact Info:
- Website: Revautolize.com
- Instagram: @revautolize
- Facebook: Facebook.com/revautolize
