Device Gives Cars a Look of Luxury : Enterprise: The man who turned Armor All into a multimillion-dollar business is now trying his hand at selling plastic hubcap facades.
Don’t even think about calling them hubcaps.
“I’m going to have to throw you out of this room if you use that word again,” admonishes Alan Rypinski. “ Hubcap is a terrible word. These are wheel systems .”
This guy is serious about auto accessories. Really serious.
Rypinski is famous among auto aficionados for introducing the car protectant Armor All, which in the two decades since has become a household name. Now he wants to do the same for hub-, er, wheel systems that he did for dashboards and tires.
His latest enterprise is ZZ Wheelz, a plastic hubcap facade that snaps onto steel wheels to give them the look of alloy wheels. “We are reinventing the wheel,” said Rypinski, 53, a big, friendly, teddy bear sort of a guy who’s not shy about self-promotion.
Expensive alloy wheels, with their gleaming and stylish hubcaps, can be found almost exclusively on luxury cars. The rest of us hoi polloi who drive autos priced below $25,000 usually are stuck with pedestrian steel wheels--along with their bland excuse for hubcaps.
With ZZ Wheelz, a Toyota Tercel can boast hubcaps (let’s just call them that for the sake of convenience) that rival a Lexus’, while a Nissan Sentra’s wheels can compete with those on an Infiniti.
“We are an alternative that a customer can do for a fraction of the cost of factory alloy wheels,” said Rypinski, who recently moved back to Newport Beach after a stint in Colorado.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in the case of ZZ Wheelz, boredom was Rypinski’s motivation.
He is the brains behind selling a product, rather than the product’s actual inventor. In 1972, he bought the world marketing rights to Armor All and took it from an obscure polish used by a handful of auto collectors to a multimillion-dollar business.
Rypinski sold Laguna Niguel-based Armor All to McKesson Corp. in 1979 for $49.6 million--a sum that would allow him to dabble in entrepreneurial experiments for years.
His next venture, Wrinkle Free--a spray-on solution meant to dissolve wrinkles from clothing--never quite took off. When he bought the product from its inventor in 1987, Rypinski touted it as a replacement for the soon-to-be antiquated iron.
“It became a specialty product for travelers, marketed through mail-order catalogues, as opposed to the general-use product I had sights for it to be,” he said. Three years ago, Rypinski sold Wrinkle Free to Marketing Corp. of America Inc., based in Stamford, Conn.
After that less-than-satisfying effort, he went into retirement. A Los Angeles native who moved to Orange County during his high school years, Rypinski bought houses in Aspen, Colo., and Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego. He and his wife divide their time between the two--and, he said, “slowly went berserk.”
“I’m an A-type personality,” Rypinski said. “I love the challenge and thrills and chills of business.”
So he started scouting around for the next Armor All. He found it, he believes, while flipping through a brochure in an auto detail shop last year.
There it was: ZZ Wheelz, screw-on wheel covers made of Lexan, a durable plastic used in football helmets.
Rypinski immediately contacted its inventor, George Carter, a Dallas engineer who had a hit computer game in the ‘80s called Photon.
“I’d been selling ZZ Wheelz on a limited basis,” Carter said. “It was great to hook up with Alan. I have a lot of expertise in design, but marketing is not my forte. He is my exact complement.”
Carter arrived at the notion for ZZ Wheelz rather deliberately. “Computer games have a short life span,” he said. “You have to reinvent something new all the time. That’s one reason I wanted to go into the automotive field--to do something with lasting value.”
With a little research, Carter learned that hubcaps could stand improvement. Often the steel-wheel versions don’t look too spiffy, and they have a tendency to fall off. He then unearthed the perfect material for his idea--Lexan, a trademark of General Electric Corp. for a plastic that is both tough and transparent.
His big break came when he received a telephone call from Rypinski last summer. The two men hammered out a deal that makes Rypinski the exclusive distributor of the wheel covers.
“Basically, I’m the sole customer of ZZ Wheelz,” Rypinski explained. “I buy them from George and sell them to auto dealerships.” Meanwhile, Carter retains the patent rights.
Manufactured in Dallas, the “wheel systems” are shipped to their Rypper Corp. distribution center in Costa Mesa. Rypinski started the company at the first of the year and has since delivered about 4,000 ZZ Wheelz sets to auto dealerships nationwide--although he is initially focusing mostly on California.
Customers at participating dealerships have the option of paying an extra $250 to $300 to perk up their nondescript steel wheels with ZZ Wheelz. That’s a good $700 less than alloy wheels with all the trimmings, Rypinski is quick to tell you.
The clear wheel covers, currently available in seven styles, can be custom painted to match the color of the car or truck--but also come in generic silver.
Paint is applied on the inside of the cover, a technique that lends the color a high-gloss appearance when viewed from the exterior. “This way, the paint can’t be scratched,” Rypinski proudly remarked.
However, if the outer plastic becomes a bit scuffed, the car owner “can just rub on a little Armor All” to revive its sheen, he added--still promoting his baby although he no longer has any financial stake in the company.
The covers are fastened by screws to specially designed rings that fit inside each wheel--yet another advantage, Rypinski said, adding: “How many times have you been driving down the highway and your hubcap popped off? That won’t happen with ZZ Wheelz.” In the event of a flat tire, the covers can be removed with a screw driver “in one minute flat,” he promises.
Eventually, Rypinski plans to expand ZZ Wheelz distribution to auto detailing shops and other outlets. But for now, he and Carter have their hands full selling to auto dealerships.
“He can sell more than I can manufacture,” Carter said. “It’s a nice problem to have.”
So far, dealerships seem to be pleased with ZZ Wheelz. “Our customers have been impressed,” said Jim Earnest, general manager of Toyota Costa Mesa. “We just recently took on ZZ Wheelz, so we haven’t sold many, but I anticipate that we will.”
His dealership will even exchange alloy wheels on a luxury car for ZZ Wheelz-covered steel wheels, if a customer is interested in reducing the car’s price by several hundred dollars.
Mark Parkinson, general manager of Tustin Nissan, also sees potential in the wheel covers. “You can take a fairly plain car and make it look pretty sporty with ZZ Wheelz, without spending a lot of money,” he said. “I have a good feeling about them.”
Up Close With Alan Rypinski
Position: President/CEO of Rypper Corp., Costa Mesa.
Birth date: Feb. 16, 1939.
Residence: Newport Beach and Aspen, Colo.
Family: Married to wife Patricia for 31 years. No children. Owns two dogs, one cat and three birds.
Education: Newport Harbor High, Newport Beach; two years at Orange Coast College.
Business philosophy: “Having a great product, not a good product but a great product, and presenting it with style, style, style.”
Goal: “To be happy and enjoy relationships in my associations with my employees and customers, and to make a difference.”
His wild side: “I’m a high-top, black-shoe tennis player, which means I am just terrible. Other than that, I’m somewhat of a celebrity at my alma mater, Newport Harbor High. There is a plaque on the wall there that has quotes of all of the graduates who are celebrities or who have made real successes of their lives. Mine says: ‘Nobody had any more fun here than I did.’ ”
What drives him crazy: “When people aren’t straightforward in their dealings. I like honesty, integrity and forthrightness. I don’t have a whole lot of time for people who aren’t that way. In fact, I have no time for them.”
Fade to black: “I want them to say, ‘What a guy.’ Actually, the most important thing--and I’m really serious--is: ‘He really cared. There was a little extra energy he put into everything.’ ”
