One of the most successful car audio/automotive shops in the country, the 35-year-old Ai Design, NY is expanding.
The shop performs meticulous work on rare/luxury/prominent vehicles, including outfitting limousines with all manner of convenience electronics and restoring some of the world’s most exclusive cars, in addition to creating audiophile audio systems that blend perfectly with the car interior. Its car audio systems typically begin at $30,000.
Ai Design has operated out of a shop in the small town of Tuckahoe, NY and is now moving to a 42,000 square foot facility in the city of Stamford, CT, more than quadrupling its space. The location is at the former WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) production facility site.
One could say that Owner Matt Figliola is an audio and design perfectionist. Ai Design began as a car audio shop in the early 90’s and its audio installs were so impressive, customers would ask Figliola to address other aspects of their car. He kept adding expertise and going increasingly high end and investing in the best equipment and the best technicians.
Figliola’s shop will house well over $1 million in equipment when the move to the new location is complete in under 100 days.
His current shop has 6 CAD machines alone. Ai Design typically has about 60 live projects underway at any given time, most of them long-term builds. That total isn’t expected to grow much in the new facility — what changes is throughput. With more bays and three dedicated production lines, techs will be able to actively work on more of those 60 projects on any given day, rather than have cars sitting idle.
Ai Design has 13 employees, many of whom have worked there for over 20 years. Figliola expects to expand to 20 fairly quickly after moving into the new facility, and said hiring will be a key priority.
The new shop will have three main production lines: Mechanical, Custom and Workshop. The Mechanical line will consist of 10 lifts of various kinds, with the ability to handle 4-wheel alignments or lifting a Sprinter to full height or handling a low-clearance hypercar. There is also a new in-ground alignment rack — a $100,000 investment the current shop doesn’t have. Figliola is especially proud of the Custom line, which is suited to electronics like car audio, with features such as high-bay storage, 70 square feet of bench space per bay, and enough room for all doors to stay open at once. The Workshop line will be a series of enclosed specialty shops for wood, metal, design and upholstery. All told, the three lines represent more than $300,000 in dedicated equipment.
Figliola is extending his love of design to the shop itself. He’s not a fan of stacked wheels and tires, so the new shop is getting a 30-foot-high carousel that can store well over 25 to 30 sets of wheels and tires.
“We’re very keen on what the place is going to look like. In other words, where things get placed and how things look. The appearances of everything, the colors and choices are very important to us all, particularly to me.” Painted stripes on the walls and posters won’t work. So, eventually the shop will project art on the walls (Figliola is an artist and collector).
Since the 40-foot ceilings are so high you can’t easily have equipment dangling from them for use in the bays. So, there will be a pergola hovering over the 8 super-wide Custom line bays, with enough room for an Escalade to sit with all four doors open and space for a tech to easily work around the car.
The bays will have enough built-in shelving to store all the parts of a completely dismantled vehicle. “Each tech will have about three times the amount of work bench space [as now],” said Figliola.
Within the Workshop line, there’s also a dirty room where techs can drive a car onto a lift and grind metal. The wood shop is three times larger than the current one, and the metal shop is four times larger.
There are too many different types, sizes and colors of toolboxes owned by the various techs, so the tools are coming out and will be placed in a uniform toolbox system that looks cleaner.
All the changes mean less time wasted by the techs. More cars can be worked on at any given time. Also, the location in a key city such as Stamford should be more convenient to customers.
“Efficiencies in this new shop are massive. We’ve now been in business over 35 years this January. The work has changed, projects have become larger, the cars are more modern with different requirements. Tuckahoe is a beautiful little town, but…moving to Stamford, CT, the wealth is extraordinary. It’s the kind of place where people will come and see us.”
Figliola added 17,000 square feet that will be used for high-end car storage. “At the last minute, I decided to go whole hog. [Car storage] is something ultra-high-net-worth individuals have been purchasing for the last 20 years.” There’s a collector’s garage in a nearby town that is always full, so Figliola expects his space to be rented out fairly quickly. The floor can hold about 85 to 90 cars, and there is the possibility of more room on lifts.
The new shop is in downtown Stamford, 120 Hamilton Avenue.
