Our Truck Interior Kits Got So Popular We Had to Move

So we're building complete interior kits for classic pickup trucks, but lately we just can't seem to be building them fast enough. It's been a little bit chaotic. We've outgrown this spot. Only got 2,500 square feet and there's a bunch of people here working. I started this like five years ago. We decided to figure out ways to develop kits, but we wanted to bring you and kind of take you into the interior shop. And so if you stay to the very end of the video, you're going to see something much different than what we're going to show you here. This is Fat Bender Garage second location. This is our interior department and these are racks. These are projects and customers who've ordered some stuff and they're going to be shipping out soon once all the things come together. Lately it's been a little bit chaotic. You know, we're going to walk you through this. It's pretty tight here. There's a lot of people here. We sew a lot of our inserts up here. So if we're doing seats and the seat inserts and some of the other components on the door panels, they'll all get CNC sewn up here. So pretty cool machine. So over here is just a table where they're cutting out the leather for seats and door panels and kick panels and sun visors. But right now he's kind of grading the leather looking for any imperfections and they're hard to see sometimes. And so it's nice to have this little light to kind of help us look at it. Then we know what to kind of look out for. So once they'll cut, they'll start moving down over here into different stations. This is a 61 to 66 door panel right here for a Ford. And so they kind of make that there. If you take a look at it, the door panel itself needs a little bit of clearance here. And so these will these will fit right in there and they'll get wrapped and they'll look pretty cool when it's all done. Each door has its own set of complications and things you got to work around and to come up with some quality parts. And so they do a lot of the sewing of the stuff over there, like the seats and things they'll sew up over there. Workstations. Anyways, it's tight. Yeah, sewing table becomes a workstation, you know. Anyway, so as that moves along, a lot of the production kind of will start down here. So this is actually really pretty blue that you can take a look. It's going to be pretty nice. I love this blue and white. It actually turned out really awesome. So whoever's getting this, good job. All right, let me show you one kit. This is a signature kit that we have where he's picked his color and it's kind of all the same color for a 48 to 52. He's got his door handles here. Very cool. Got the armrest here. These bolt on and take a look at that. These just magnetize on there and then you can open and close it. But anyways, very cool product. Keeps it nice and tidy. So anyways, but Signature Series 48 to 52. Check it all out. All right, but follow me. Let's let's mosey on. I got something else I want to show you. So we've got this teeny tiny like little millwork fab department. We've only got like 2,500 square feet here and there's a bunch of people here working and so it hasn't been very ideal for us. So we got some product here that comes off the racks and goes and gets CNC cut. We got this teeny tiny baby CNC, which honestly has been great. It's been a workhorse. I've been surprised this lasts this long, but it's just overdoing it and it's and it's messy and it's dirty and it's not it's not how I roll. Anyway, so we've got a great team doing a lot of good interior stuff and we're really excited. But we've outgrown this spot in order for us to continue to get better organized and service our customers better and and try to reduce lead times and kind of clean this up. We knew we had to make some changes and so I'm not going to lie, we've had some growing pains and we're working through that. And so we're hoping that some of the changes and the risk we're taking on will help solve that, but also allow us to keep growing where we want to head. So with that, let's go check something out super cool. Follow me. All right, keep walking. We walked a short distance of about 100 yards in 107 degree weather in Arizona. We are troopers. Troopers. And that's mostly because somebody took the golf cart and I could have driven the K truck, but it's right hand drive and stick shift, which we would have put Gavin in and let him like Gavin drive it because he knows how to drive a stick. I know how to drive a stick. I mean, I've heard he knows how. Absolutely. But come on in. This is the new place we're going to. This is FF2, so Fat Bender Garage second location. And so all of our warehouse stuff, shipping, receiving, everything is getting set up here. I mean, they have probably four times the space they had before. So but check this out. So here's a interior kit. This is a signature kit that is getting ready to go out to a customer. Beautiful leather interior. And so super excited to send this out and get it to them. So we have two different kinds of kits. So you've got a signature kit and you've got a tailor made kit. And so the tailor made kit allows you to get two tone, maybe some different stitching designs. And so it costs more, a little more VIP treatment when you when you get that. The signature kit is just for guys like, listen, I just want to upgrade my truck. You're just like want to get rid of the original interior and get something a little more fresh and nicer. And the signature kit is perfect. They're a little easier for us to make. It's all one color. You don't have to get multiple colors of hides of leather and a little easier. So this signature kit is going to be heading out. It's over here. It's in shipping and receiving. We're going to vet it, make sure we have everything there. They've been wrapping things up, getting ready to ship them, and it'll it'll be going out. All right. So over here, let's let's talk about this is the interior department over here. So it is it is. And they pretty much have this space all here, almost all the way down to the wall, not quite a little bit off. So that little CNC machine that cut wood is getting replaced by this one. We've just been taking the panels off, going through everything. We're getting ready to have this set up, power connected and a dust collection hooked up to it. We've got a larger dust collection that's coming in. And so we'll be able to process a lot of parts and components faster. This is a very industrial machine that's made by a company called BSE, who's one of the top CNC machine companies in the United States. And so we're really excited. It's a lightly used machine taken very well care of and it was a good upgrade for us. So very high tech and pretty cool. Comes with dual pumps. And so we've got a lot of good suction. The tables are plenty big and long for what we want to do. And when it's all done, it's kind of cool because it actually pushes all the product off onto this little conveyor. And so and as it comes through here, it's sucking dust on the bottom and then we'll have dust ports here where it'll suck the dust off the top and any little dust or plastics, whatever we're cutting will all be sucked off. And then we can load up another sheet and start cutting. So it will definitely help with production and these vacuum pumps are going to be pretty awesome to hear those all day long. That's for sure. Dust collection system over there. And then we've got, this is kind of like the fab area, which is basically the size of what we have now. We'll come over to about a little over here. So we've got a machine that is coming here. That will be here in a couple months. I won't tell you what that is because we want to do a video on that. This one machine that's here is our machine that will do perforations for us. And so we'll do all of our perforations in house. And this is the machine that you saw the CNC that does the sewing. So it'll be right here. So pretty much all that kind of working through there and then coming over into carts, station assembly line. They'll get staged over here and then it'll move down here to the end. And so if you see this little yellow box that I'm currently in, which is one of our assembly lines and we'll have four assembly lines for producing product. Probably funnel like certain year making models just through one and get some consistency with what we're doing. And you'll have three different stations in each one. So we've got power that we've been dropping down from the ceiling, our airline, finish up the airline. So we'll get all that stuff done. All right. So station one, we got it here. We also have station two where things will get sewn, move on down. We got station three. Again, we'll have our sewing machines right here and then they'll come down here and, and get wrapped up here. And then we've got station four that will be here. So a lot of stations, a lot of interior. And we come to about right here. This is about the end. And there will probably be a wall that'll come to about right here because in this section here, we're going to take this corner here and build a cyclorama wall. I think that's how you say it. Cyc wall. And we're, where we come up here with a radius and that gives you that, that infinity look. And so we'll have all that. And then we'll paint the floor white and the wall white, everything kind of that semi-gloss look and just get all that done. And then we'll have to hang a big light above it, hopefully by the end of the year. But we've got the space carved out and you can see they've been taking some photos right here on some stuff. I took those photos. Yeah, you took those photos and I took those photos. No, I don't know how to use the camera. If it's not my iPhone, I don't know how to use it. But yeah, we're really excited about having space for marketing. And then over here you can see the warehouse. So they just moved into it last week. So it's taking a minute to get everything organized, but I think another week and they'll be pretty well organized. And I've told them that, you know, it needs to be like a showroom over here. By the end of July, this thing has to be completely ready to go. Check it out. These are tall. We've got to get another forklift to reach some of that stuff. Just working on finishing up here. We've got an airline that they're just running over here. So they've got air over here. And this is kind of a parts assembly, things putting together more stuff over here. And then a lot of our fittings and you can see all the fittings that we keep in stock. So pretty close. So we're really excited about the expansion and being able to get product out quicker. But also when you buy it off something like this, you also look at what your plans are and your goals. And so our goal is by the end of this year to have all the OBS interiors done, some of the bullnose truck interiors kind of redone, adding three more Chevrolet products that we'll be doing. We currently have 67, 72, but we'll be adding some other products, square bodies and the 60s. And then also the 55 to 59, kind of that realm right there. We'll eventually have all that. And then we'll go into some cars and stuff, but we're going to keep expanding our interior. We love the interior process and we're excited about it. We love good quality products made in the USA. We want to control the product and we want it to be a good product. And we want to be able to offer easy repairs or easy this, whatever happens. We want it to be super, super good quality product. And yeah, there's a lot of people trying to copy what we're doing. You know, that's great. At the end of the day, we're excited with what we're doing. So that's it. That's interiors in a nutshell. We're really excited about it. And we're really excited to be moved in. Be patient with the transition for us. Offer some grace, please. These guys are working really, really hard doing what they're doing. They got to shut down for a few days, but this will speed up and streamline. We'll be adding some more help and that's it. If you're interested in an interior for your truck, please reach out to us. We've got sales people that are dedicated just for interiors. We'd be happy to help you find an interior for your truck or your Blazer or your Bronco. We've got a lot of stuff coming out. See you next time.