SUNDOWN GLASS TINTING LLC
WESLEY CHAPEL, FLORIDA

SUNDOWN GLASS TINTING LLC, WESLEY CHAPEL

I wanted to move out of Gainesville because it was a college town and unless you are selling pizza or beer or renting apartments, it’s hard to make a living in a college town. My installer in Ocala had moved there from Sarasota and he told me that Sarasota was a beautiful town with a lot of money, so I figured I should check it out. I got into my 1973 Datsun 240Z and went on a fact finding vacation across the state. The first week I went down the east coast. I went to Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami and then down to Key West. I went into each town and looked into the Yellow Pages to find as many tint shops as I could find in one day. I went and applied for a job at each one. Not to find a job, but to find out what they did, how they did it, and how much they charged for it. I brought with me my portfolio of custom window film installations to see what kind of reaction I would get. I found that some of the most lucrative shops were the CHEAPEST. They would “hack-n-slap” the film on for $49.00 a car. Three guys would do a car in about 20 minutes. I was very surprised that the customers were happy with the job, ‘because I NEVER would have put my name on a job like that. The next week I went to Tampa and Sarasota. I stopped into a tint shop on Dale Mabry called Solar Graphics and the guy told me I should go talk to the owner at the St. Pete location. So I went and met with Richard Perdum, who is still the owner of Solar Graphics, a company that specializes in window film graphics. After seeing my portfolio of graphic designs he told me he needed somebody to run the Dale Mabry location and I told him that I really didn’t want to be an employee and that I wanted to go check out Sarasota. He told me to come back in a week and we would go down there to see if we could find a place to rent. A week later I came back and we went down to Sarasota, all the while stopping by a few graphic designs that his company did and soliciting a few strip mall businesses along the way. I honestly believe that he was really going down there to impress me with his operation and to show me that there was no property available so I would be resigned to running his Dale Mabry location. However, as luck would have it, we found a perfect spot, which Richard quickly dismissed as unsuitable. I immediately knew it was just what I was looking for. A thousand square feet, free standing, 10 foot high garage door with an office and a bathroom right near the corner of US 41 and Bee Ridge Road. It needed a little work but at $350.00 a month…. what do you expect. It was perfect. I was there for 8 years before he got a permit. By then I had established myself as the industry leader in the area, servicing almost every car dealership in town and tinting the windows on 800 to 1000 cars a year. The shop was directly across the street from another window tinting shop called Sun Out. After only 3 months the owner of Sun Out, Dick Austin, sold the company to Tom Holnaegel (I don’t know if I spelled that right). Tom was very arrogant, aggressive, and very persuasive. He promptly painted a huge florescent sign in the window that said $49.95 MOST CARS…. and the war was on. He did the worst work in town. His customers would come over to my side of the street all the time and complain about the job he did, but his install bay was PACKED…. ALL the time. He kicked my ass for 8 YEARS. I was a great installer, but I knew nothing about sales or marketing. Eventually, he sold the shop and moved away. So I guess I won the war with attrition. My landlord got his building permit after 8 years and I moved the business across the street and that lasted for another 8 years when I decided I’d had enough car tinting for a while. I was the first person in town to put the film all the way up to the edge of the door windows. I was the first one to “butt-splice” strips across the compound curve of rear windows to give it the look of one piece. I was also the first person in town to use heat shrinking to mold one sheet of film to the compound curve of rear windows. These innovative techniques are all common today. My competitors soon learned my tricks and began using them too. As the seasons came and went I would have to hire and train installers during the busier summer months and then it became necessary to lay off installers during the slower winter months. Invariably, some of those whom I’d let go would open up their own shop and compete against me. But after the season ended, they wouldn’t have enough repeat business to keep them alive during the lean winter months and they would have to shut their doors. At one time I had trained over half of my competitors. Shortly after I left Gainesville, Stereo-To-Go went out of business and Jack Matheny, who built and managed both Stereo-To-Go's went out on his own with a partner, Frank Curtis. Their company was called Mobil Tech. After a brief start-up period where they operated the business on a shoestring budget, installing car stereos on location out of a van. (Hence, the name.) They opened their first showroom location on Main Street in Gainesville. Right next to him was Custom Glass Tinting, the largest volume tint shop in town. On the other side of Custom Glass Tinting’s two install bays was Mobil Tech’s install bays. So Custom Glass Tinting was between Mobil Tech’s showroom and install bays. During the summer of 1988 Jack was calling me up every couple of weeks complaining that the guys who were running the tint shop next door were dealing drugs and drinking beer all day long at the shop and making his business look bad. The manager didn’t show up with the keys to the shop until 10:00a.m., leaving 4 installers, two 8:00a.m. appointments, two 9:00a.m. appointments and two 10:00a.m. appointments wondering what the hell’s going on. The irate customers were walking next door to Jack’s showroom and asking him “what kind of business are you running here?” and he would have to explain that it wasn’t his business during a period when he didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with it. He repeatedly tried to get the owners, who lived and worked in Panama City, to handle the situation, but to no avail. Then he began calling me to chase them out of town. He knew that I ran a first class operation and that I had the intestinal fortitude (juevos) to deal with these guys. However, I had my hands full running two shops already and I didn’t have the time or the energy to do it at the time. So we planned to wait it out until things slowed down during the winter. The plan was that I would get some rest and take a vacation at the end of the busy summer season. When I got back, I would move to Gainesville, we would knock a hole in the wall of Jack’s install bay facing Main Street and open up a garage door right next to theirs and then slash prices all winter long until they caved in. We didn’t care about making any money from tinting at the time. I would make my money from my Sarasota shop. Jack and Frank would make their money from the stereo shop. We would then take over their location and raise the prices back up to the market rate. Then I would move back to Sarasota and get a small piece of the pie from then on. That was the plan. So Frank Curtis and I had planned this wonderful 10-day get-away to Belize. We had connections with some locals who owned a hotel, an island 8 miles off the coast and the only bus line through the country. So, suffice it to say, we were totally hooked up. The night before we left we went to a Johnny Winter concert at the Great Southern Music Hall in Gainesville. The next day we were sitting in the Gainesville Regional Airport waiting for our plane to Miami and the front-page story in the

KEY FACTS ABOUT SUNDOWN GLASS TINTING LLC

Company name
SUNDOWN GLASS TINTING LLC
Status
Inactive
Filed Number
L17000210772
FEI Number
Date of Incorporation
October 11, 2017
Home State
FL
Company Type
Florida Limited Liability

CONTACTS

Website
http://sundownglasstinting.com
Phones
(813) 936-9339

SUNDOWN GLASS TINTING LLC NEAR ME

Principal Address
26052 FOAMFLOWER BLVD,
WESLEY CHAPEL,
FL,
33544

See Also

Officers and Directors

The SUNDOWN GLASS TINTING LLC managed by the one person from WESLEY CHAPEL on following positions: Manager

Mark Esr Herwig

Position
Manager Active
From
WESLEY CHAPEL, 33544





Registered Agent is Mark Esr Herwig

From
WESLEY CHAPEL, 33544

Events

September 28, 2018
ADMIN DISSOLUTION FOR ANNUAL REPORT