Good question. I don't know if I've ever documented this on Mud or elsewhere. There is some early SLC Cruiser scene history here. I need to update it as there are some new players locally:
Cruiser Outfitters - http://cruiseroutfitters.com/utah_cruiser_history.html
Darrell N. ran and owned Cruiser Outfitters since it's 1992 inception. He had a partner in the beginning but by the time I was involved in the mid-late 90's it was just him and he had a few employees. Darrell worked his guts off at the shop, not uncommon for him to pull all-nighters to swap a 2F motor with a rebuilt unit or work 7-days a week in general. In late 2000? or early 2001 Darrell, along with our pal Greg who is a local longtime customer and Cruiserhead, decided to go to commercial dive school on the east coast. That industry was absolutely insane and money was phenomenal if you were willing to work/travel in the off-shore business.
So, Darrell engaged a business sales realtor/listing company to value the business, build a prospective and shop it to potential buyers. I think they came up with $450k, that got you the building (lease transfer), inventory, customer, booked jobs, employees that wanted to stay, etc, etc. A handful of people came and looked but they quickly realized this wasn't a standard automotive repair business, this was a very specialized Land Cruiser parts and primarily repair business. There were a few low-ball offers that he passed on. In the meantime he kept finishing any lingering projects, taking on new projects that could be finished promptly (no full restoration, reskins, etc) and selling off/organizing used parts (part of my job). Towards the end, somehow the it came up and we discussed selling parts to Marv and Kay Spector. I had met them during visits to their shop in the past (always amazing hosts) and felt comfortable reaching out to them to see if they wanted to buy the parts.
Marv and Kay flew up to SLC in the summer/fall? of 2001 and spent a couple days wandering our parts. Marv ended up offering to buy not only the used parts (and some new) but also the bulk of the shop equipment, vehicle hoist, welder, iron-worker, plasma cutter, bender, exhaust machine, etc. We would then spend the next couple months loading pallets full of parts/tools. We would start with a bare pallet, build it up using Cruiser parts such as hard top sides or doors and then fill it full of anything else we possibly could, making these mega pallets 6-7' tall and weighing a ton each. By November/December? all of the parts were loaded and gone, two full semi loads of parts pallets. There were likely 100+ part-out vehicles worth of parts from those 10 years of business plus collections of the earlier owners business.
I had no plans to buy what was left (the name, the accounts and the remaining inventory) but towards the end the idea came up. I was now a full-time engineering student and working at an autoparts store a few days a week in between working at Cruiser Outfitters and building my 1972 FJ40 (the Mongrel I still have to this day). Long and short, I had no talent and means to be running a full service shop so that wasn't going to work. In the end, I paid him a small sum for the business, took over what little inventory was left, the PO box and all those vendor accounts and customers, it was an absolute gold mine to me. I would spent the next few years selling parts on Pirate 4x4, here on Mud (joined in Jan, 2003) and really working with our local Cruiser community and in big part the Wasatch Cruisers, our local TLCA club. I'd buy parts to stock everytime a customer placed an order or I could afford to do so. Finally in mid 2003 I quit any other jobs I had and was full-time at Cruiser Outfitters as a job but still a full-time engineering student. I would sell parts online, in-person and to a handful of shops, it was growing each year. By the time I was ready to graduate from the UofU in the spring of 2006, Cruiser Outfitters was quite busy. I had a couple part-time employees (Cruiserhead friends) that were helping me pack parts and do projects. We were doing power steering conversions, disc brake conversions, trans/t-case swaps, clutches, lift installs, etc. In fact I traded a lift install and labor on my buddy Brian's 80 Series in 04/05 for a wedding ring for Candace. Brian owns Passey & Son Jewelry in SLC and he and his wife are still friends of Candace and I
It was my graduate advisor (senior project advisor) that actually talked me into sticking with Cruiser Outfitters. I had spent the last 6 years in school (part-time for the first few years as a Bus Management major, switched to Mech Engineering later on)... I was sure I was going to get an engineering job after all that schooling. Nope, he told me something along the lines of "we don't teach you to be an engineer, we taught you to be a problem solver... use that for your business". I did, and 17 years later I've been doing Cruiser Outfitters. I've had a couple of other small businesses along the way, primarily doing guide/logistics work for manufactures such as Toyota & Lexus when they want to train employees, media, customers, etc on off-road skills or provide experiences such as off-road trips. It's not
too far from work at Cruiser Outfitters so they compliment each-other.
That answer your question Davíd? Long winded, I apologize.
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