It's a well-documented fact that adding a leather interior to a car automatically increases its value by several hundred dollars (just check out a Blue Book listing of used cars with various options). So the advantages are twofold. First, your shop makes money from both the materials and labor charges. Second, your customers benefit from not only getting more pleasant surroundings in the cockpit, but also a vehicle with a higher price tag at resale time.
To go more than skin-deep on this subject, we spoke with Ron Leslie of Katzkin, which has been in the custom upholstery business since 1983 when Mitchell Katz began distributing leather hides to trim shops around the country. Katzkin hit upon the idea of designing seat and door panel covers that were direct replacements for factory cloth and vinyl interiors, lowering the high costs associated with hand-stitched interiors.
Today, Katzkin is a leading manufacturer of custom leather interiors, manufacturing more than 2,000 interior patterns through a network of more than 2,500 restylers in North America. Katzkin offers more than 100 colors and materials in a variety of two-tones with many customizing options.
Even if you're moderately handy with tools, you can remove the old and replace with the new in less than a day. But Leslie admits that the same set of skins can be installed neatly and create a high-class look, or handled poorly and look loose and sloppy. If you're not concerned about aesthetics and appearance, it's not the right product and service for your shop to offer.
Katzkin has a customizing function on its Web site to help design the color and fabric combinations to match the vehicle's color scheme. Just click on the Seat Selector, and you can create your own interior treatment in short order.
Dressing up the Interior
THE PART
Custom Leather Upholstery
THE DISTRIBUTOR
Katzkin Leather(800) 842-0590
www.katzkin.com
THE CHALLENGE:
Becoming proficient at installing leather upholstery in order to improve the look and increase the value of your customer's vehicle.
TIME TO COMPLETE
Usually about three hours per row of seats, so a sedan with two rows can be done in less than a day, while a full-size SUV with three rows would require at least a full day.
COST TO YOU
No specialized equipment is needed, other than upholstery hand tools and standard shop tools. Katzkin has no volume requirements, but does offer discounts on bulk orders. A single order on a typical interior carries a jobber cost of about $500, and that installation sells wholesale (such as to a car dealership) for about $1,000. The final retail price of the leather interior would be around $1,400 (whether sold by an independent shop or the car dealer).
PROFIT POTENTIAL
In addition to the markup on the material goods, the labor charge for installation ranges from $400 to $500. If an independent shop focuses on servicing new-car dealers (through either a Ford or Chrysler-approved program that carries a factory warranty), the volume of sales will likely be much greater. On the other hand, individual retail sales provide a larger profit margin on each sale. As anybody in the auto business can attest, this last year has been highly unusual and extremely challenging, so Ron Leslie of Katzkin is cautious in generalizing about which vehicle types are more popular for restyling. Even so, he notes that mid-size cars and crossover SUVs continue to be the mainstay of market demand.
LEATHER LINING
1 In order to recover the stock seats, first remove them from the cockpit. Unless you're dealing with power seats or an electrical interconnect for the seat belts, it's a simple matter of removing a few bolts. Katzkin supplies pre-fitted upholstery for both the front and rear, and in a wide array of colors and patterns.
