Dave and Charity Kindig recently returned from the SEMA Show, their first time at the show as exhibitors.

“We’ve had many vehicles there on display for the last seven, eight years, but this was the first time that Kindig-It Design has ever had a booth at the SEMA Show and it couldn’t have gone any better,” Dave, who owns the Salt Lake City-based shop with wife Charity, said. “I think that we [beat] it by tenfold what I expected to have out of it as far as business and recognition.”

The couple was at the show promoting Kindig-It Design’s new line of door handles, a product that was designed for in-house use but is now being offered to the masses.

“When you’re building these one-off cars, you build hundreds of parts prototypes,” Dave explained. “The door handles [were] put together back in 2006 for a 1956 Chevy. The theme of that car was to smooth over what the original car was, one of those parts included making the door handle disappear into the car yet they still looked like they were chrome door handles. After developing those, the guys and I got together and I was like, ‘I think we could probably sell a lot of these,’ and so we started looking into manufacturing and then we started realizing that this was going to go really well, and went forward with getting a patent on it.”

The door handle parts are manufactured by an outside company and assembled at Kindig-It Design. A few shops are already selling the door handles and Dave is planning to add more parts to the line.

“There are so many things we can do because of our experience,” Dave said. “We know a lot of the different tricks and we know what works and what parts don’t work, and so as far as the things that we sell and what we’re working on now, I think that a lot of builders would love to be able to jump on those lines. Kind of like with the door handles, it’s such a unique idea that it snuck up on everybody. It’s something that’s different; nobody has ever done an exterior change-over door handle like that.”

By expanding its business beyond custom builds into arenas such as the door handle line and maintenance work, Kindig-It Design has managed to grow despite the economic downturn. Dave understands that diversifying is essential for a business centered on a luxury item.

“We’re selling something that’s really expensive that people don’t need,” he said. “We were used to having six or seven really high-end, full, complete, turnkey vehicles being built [and] it changed to where it was maybe half that many but the maintenance of vehicles went up tremendously.

“Basically we were making the same amount of money, we were just moving through more cars that didn’t need complete makeovers but rather just an upgraded motor and transmission, or maybe it just came in for paint touchups,” he added. “Instead of a lot of the collectors building new vehicles, they would just change up the ones that they had existing.”

Customers are now once again showing an interest in complete builds, according to Dave.

“We stayed equally financially busy, it just kind of changed a little bit for those couple of years, but it’s certainly back and better than ever,” he said. “I think [the] business that we’re seeing is just completely taking off to where I’ve got closer to 10–12 complete builds starting up right now.”

Winners’ Circle

Many of those vehicles belong to a high-end clientele who learned about Kindig-It Design because of the shop’s award-winning builds. A 1939 Buick built at the shop has won numerous awards this year, including the America’s Most Beautiful Street Rod Award—a first for a four-door vehicle, according to Dave—at Goodguys West Coast Nationals this summer. (Click here to read more about the Buick.)

Though it’s gotten national attention, the Buick wasn’t built with the intention of winning awards.

“That car in particular was built just as a driver, it just happened to be such a nice car that we took it and debuted it at the Autorama here in Salt Lake in the beginning of March and that car ended up winning the Wasatch Cup, best of show,” Dave said.

“[We] went up the next week to Idaho and won the Trendsetter and ended up winning [the] America’s Most Beautiful Street Rod competition, it was a heck of a feather in our cap. I think that as far as people wanting a full-on show car, yes, we certainly do that, but even drivers can be considered that as well,” he added.

The shop has been winning awards since the beginning. Dave started building Volkswagens in high school and eventually branched into classic and late-model American vehicles, doing builds in his garage with Charity’s help (her father is a classic car collector and she earned her chops working on his cars) at night and on weekends while working for a ceramic coatings company during the day.

Dave and Charity won their first award for a 1991 Oldsmobile custom cruiser station wagon, which pushed Dave to quit his job and build cars full-time.

“I was already doing air bags and graphics out of my garage for other people, as well as designing for magazines and other shops, so it kind of progressively snowballed,” he said.

“Pretty soon it was something that I found that after eight-and-a-half years working for somebody that the amount of work and my integrity in my workmanship was so great that it was almost like a waste of time to work for somebody else [because] I was missing so many opportunities to do things on my own,” he added.

Dave cashed out his 401(k) to start the business. The builds he and Charity had done before opening the shop attracted customers, and within their first year in business the Kindigs won Utah’s Finest and the Trendsetter award for a four-door 1960 Bel Air called “Bella.”

“That particular car, being very classic but not a very commonly built car because it was four door, set into motion people looking at us saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what kind of car goes in front of Kindig-It Design, I think they can make something cool out of anything,’” Dave said.

Today the shop’s output is mainly classic cars, with only about 25 percent of its builds late-model. The shop covers the gamut for early models, turning out classic trucks, street rods, muscle cars and Tri-Fives.

“We’re kind of all over the place,” Dave said. “Four wheels and a steering wheel, I think anything really does have the potential of being the nicest car you’ll see at the show, given the right attention.”

Labor Rate

Kindig-It Design recently raised its labor rate from $62 to $65 an hour to meet increased overhead costs. The shop had been charging the $62-an-hour labor rate since 2003.

“We’ve been leasing a building for 12-and-a-half years, the rate that we pay our guys plus their taxes, and then we have the overhead, the administrative group here, and then also profit is built in,” Dave said of the costs figured into the labor rate.

The labor rate covers all services except research.

“We do have a $45-an-hour rate for doing parts research” Kindig said. “That’s typically one of my engineers calling [for] parts, getting dimensions and so forth.”

Making It Happen

The business is operated out of an 18,000-square-foot facility with electronics, metal fabrication, mechanical, body work and paint divisions. It has 15 employees.

JS Custom Interiors, an upholstery shop operated by Justin Stephens, a long-time friend of the Kindigs, is operated out of a 4,500-square-foot space rented within Kindig-It Design. Stephens’ shop does all of the interior for Kindig-It Design but invoices customers separately. He also does work for his own customers, and has won numerous awards himself, including an America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award for interiors and a Great 8.

The shop also sells clothing and accessories under the Kindig-It Design Apparel name. That side of the business is run by Charity and has its own dedicated website.

“We had gone to a couple of shows and [Charity] found herself standing around waiting for somebody to walk up and build a quarter-of-a-million-plus car, that doesn’t happen every 20 minutes, so she found herself out shopping for shoes and purses and found a couple of really cool things that she just really was into and decided that she’d start selling it,” Dave said.

“That’s been a couple of years now she’s been doing the hot rod apparel stuff and it’s really taken off,” he added.

The apparel is sold in the shop’s current showroom. The Kindigs are planning to expand the size of their shop, either by expanding their current space or by moving into a newer, larger development and purchasing that.

Having more space will give Kindig-It Design Apparel more room, give Dave space to sell vehicles on consignment, and allow for the expansion of various divisions in the work area.

In addition to the growing their shop, the Kindigs would also like to further expand their business by providing services like training courses in metal shaping, air brushing and automotive art. A new website is also in the works that will feature e-commerce and technical support.

All of these efforts are meant to help Dave reach his half-joked goal to “conquer the world.”

“I want to grow the business to where one day down the road we might have a showmanship award in some big venue that remembers Kindig-It Design and myself for the contributions we gave to the industry, [our ingenuity] and helping out other people,” Dave said.

“Something that is very important to me is to give back to the art so we don’t lose it down the road, and then we’ll take over the world,” he said.

Kindig-It Design

Owners: Dave and Charity Kindig (shown at left)

Address: 164 Hill Ave, Salt Lake City, Utah 84107

Phone Number: (801) 262-3098

Websites: www.kindigit.com, www.kindigitapparel.com

Services Offered: Full custom, fabrication and paint shop

Current Projects: Include a mid-1950s Ford pickup truck, 1955 two-door post Bel Air, 1955 two-door hard-top Bel Air, 1955 Nomad, 1957 Nomad, 1966 Nova and 1967 Chevy pickup truck

Number of Employees: 15

Years in Business: 12

(All photos by Casey Hyer, Casey Hyer Photography)

Tags: America's Most Beautiful Street Rod, Award Winners, Kindig-It Design, Restorer Profile