Auto Customizing Service Out of Business

There’s been much in the news lately about the spreading impact of the Asian economic crunch.

One victim is Pacific Auto and Truck Accessories, a Huntington Beach company that helped establish the car and truck customizing market.

Founder Bob Richards says he was forced to close Pacific after 20 years in the business because he had made a huge investment in equipment for Japanese market products, only to see his advance orders replaced by cancellation notices. He still has two other businesses on Machine Drive in Huntington Beach: Number One Sales and Leasing, a car and truck leasing and sales firm, and Number One Accessories, a smaller version of the old Pacific, which Richards kept going to do customizing work for customers of the leasing business.

Richards had to lay off 50 of his 70 employees when he closed Pacific. He said he is struggling to keep his vow to pay all of his creditors. His attorneys advised him to file for bankruptcy, he said, “but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let people down.”

Richards recently spent about $350,000 to install a special manufacturing system to make customizing parts for Honda vans that are sold only in Japan. He designed the parts, which make the boxy vans look sportier, at the behest of a large consortium of independent Honda dealers.

“They were really happy with everything and they’d even come over and inspected the first batch and sealed them up in boxes all ready for shipping,” Richards said on a recent tour of his quiet production plant--pointing to a tower of cardboard boxes, Japanese customs stickers affixed, that filled one section of the floor.

“Then all of sudden they canceled the order. They used to be on the phone to me every day and now I can’t get them to return a single call,” he said.

“In 20 years, this is the first time I put so much into one basket, and look what’s happened.”

It’s a lesson, he says, that he won’t forget--and one that he hopes other manufacturers learn from.