I have $50,000 is this enough to open my own custom car shop up?

$50k should be enough to at least get started. Probably concentrate on getting at least a couple reputable brands to feature selling so that people will want to come to your store.

I'd start with car audio/window tinting first until you can start to turn a profit and then maybe move on to custom interiors and custom enclosure fabrication. If you have experience w/fiberglass, that is well sought after for custom work because it looks good in competitions.

Maybe later look into typical bolt-on performance upgrades and work your way into full-blown nitrous/supercharger/turbocharger setups and/or maybe custom body/paint work. Before you know it, you'll have the full blown deal to offer to everyone.

Good luck ...

It has been said the best way to make a million dollars in the auto business is to start out with several million dollars !

The biggest item for you is to have billable hours. Without billable hours, you have little chance of succeeding.

That $50,000 not only represents your ability to buy and resell but also your income for the bills at home. If you go through that money buying product for resale, what will you use to pay yourself? I am on the east coast. I see stereo shops come and go all the time. That market is changing faster than any other right now. There is no cassette market and CD s are being replaced by MP3 s. I am sure the makers of the head units are trying to figure out what is the next thing. With satelite radio becoming the main rage, regular radio might just fall out of favor which would leave a stereo shop trying to figure out what to do next.

When you deal with the public doing any type of custom work, you can bet that you will run into the guys who have you do the work and then say, Hey, can I give you a couple of hundred dollars every 2 weeks until my bill is paid? This is a major problem doing this type of work. You need enough to carry not only your purchases and salary but to cover those who don't or can not pay for the work you did. Believe me, this happens more than you can imagine.

With all this in mind, $50,000 might not cut it unless you have no bills and don't really like to eat.

I lost $80,000 in a hot rod shop a few years ago.....we just flat ran out of money because there was not billable hours and there were many people who thought the shop was a bank allowing monthly payments

I would suggest only offering services which you can provide yourself or if you have to pay someone to install the item in question, do so on a 'sublet' or 'contract' basis. Once you agree to put on a staff member you are committed to paying their wage every week regardless of sales; and dont forget this will be on-top-of your rent, utilities, consumables and your own wage/profit.

Dont forget to really think about your target-audience, these are the people who are going to buy your products. they will be prodominantly males in their late teens to early 30's so deck out your store accordingly: guys dont care about fancy lighting and good store airconditioning - you can have an industrial garage or storage unit with some crazy posters and loud-az music and they will love it. you can target the girls by putting flyers on any car that parks in the nearby shopping centres - just look for the "revhead girl" stickers and seat covers and you cant lose. Also explain things to the girls in the same way you do to the guys not like they are stupid.

dont over stock either or you may tie up too much cash in items which are sitting around, its safer to have less in stock and order as you go.

stay away from custom paint etc unless you already have the equipement and experience or else you'll end up needing massive loans for the setup and paying huge wages to tradesmen

idk how much it costs to start up a car shop, but my friend started the same way you say you will, audio and window tinting. then he got really big without n e advertisement at all, just relying on customers/friends to spread the word about his shop. now he does some big jobs and can even tune cars and install big projects like superchargers and turbo.

***50k would be a good start i think, but you could always take out a loan if you need more.

I used 100k to open up a full fledged garage I did tune ups, trannsmission work, restoration, body work, everything with a car you name it and I did it but I had some constructuon experience since my dad owns his own company and was able to build my own garage and I got some used lifts and everything so that I could afford all my tools and everything but it worked out great.