Sofa from a car, table from an engine: how to make money on furniture from auto parts

by Alexey | Vintage Decor Workshop Interior | Friday, January 20, 2017

Many readers of the Make-Self.net are car enthusiasts, some of whom have a passion for vintage cars. Perhaps, in someone’s garage, under a thick layer of dust and a pile of old things, a part of the body of his favorite car or a car that was inherited from relatives lies lonely. If you keep this “hardware” as a memory, then today its dark days in a damp garage will end. We have collected for you 40 furniture masterpieces that were made from old cars. There’s just so much you can’t make out of an old body—from a sofa to a washbasin. Take a look at our selection, it will inspire you...

Sofas from old cars.

Using the front or rear of the car body and the rear seats, you can make similar sofas.

Sofa from a car, table from an engine: how to make money on furniture from auto parts

Mikhail Karavaev and Oleg Kalaev are nuclear physicists by training. They did not find themselves in the profession they received at the university, but they achieved success in a completely different field - in the production of unusual interior items from auto parts. They spotted the idea in the British car show Top Gear - and in a few years they went from handicraft production to a full-fledged workshop with millions in revenue. Co-owner of the Rolling Stol workshop Mikhail Karavaev told the Biz360.ru portal about how to make money on furniture from spare parts.

Dossier

Mikhail Karavaev

, an entrepreneur from Moscow, co-founder of the workshop, which he develops in partnership with
Oleg Kalaev
. Mikhail and Oleg are 30 years old, both majoring in nuclear physics (graduated from Moscow State University). The Rolling Stol workshop was launched in 2016.

How it all began

After graduating from university, I worked for about two years at a large telecommunications company as a manager-engineer. And then I came to the idea that I no longer wanted to be a cog in a machine and work for someone - I wanted to create something of my own.

At that time, I was already doing creative work in my garage in the Moscow region: I made tables and various other interior items from car parts. This idea was not my know-how; I saw the first table made from a motor in the British car TV show Top Gear. But the idea seemed very stylish, brutal and promising to me.

From the very beginning, I knew how to present such things and who would buy it; I had a clear understanding that no one was doing anything similar in our country yet, although there was demand. But at the start I didn’t sell anything, I just gave gifts to friends.

Then I teamed up with my friend and partner Oleg Kalaev - and we rented a garage in Moscow for 5 thousand rubles a month. We launched a simple website for 30 thousand rubles. I understood that I needed to put some kind of portfolio there. Therefore, at first we did several things not to order, but just like that - specifically to fill the site. After all, it’s boring to look only at tables; you need an assortment.

That's why we got a watch made from a clutch basket, some mini-sculptures, lamps, and business card holders made from car pistons. It then became clear that there was a shortage of larger, higher-priced items, and we started designing sofas. The first one was from the body shell of a real 407 Moskvich. Next came models from Mustang and Volga.

I designed the first models myself, my partner Oleg was mainly responsible for other tasks in the project. With each new product it turned out better and better. Three months after the site started operating, the first orders appeared.

Spare parts are in short supply

Our first garage could not boast of either a large area or amenities. At 22.00 the lights went out there, and in winter there was no heating, but somehow they worked.

To start, we only needed hand tools: screwdrivers, jigsaws, grinders. Later, a year later, we began to purchase larger equipment - for example, a welding machine, a compressor, spray guns. They invested money earned from their own orders into the purchase of all this. We didn’t take out loans, so we developed gradually.

Some of the spare parts for the base of our products were literally at hand and were obtained for free. I specifically bought only engine cylinder blocks from car repair shops and car dismantling yards.

However, at the moment, used spare parts are rarely used in our workshop. When we make, say, a sofa in the shape of a Volga body, now there are only headlights from a real car. We make the rest of the parts ourselves: for example, we make the body itself from plastic.

The sales volume of products containing real spare parts is already very small and amounts to about 15%. Now we get the most revenue from things that we make ourselves using molding: sofas, armchairs, bar counters.

First mistakes

We started, as is usually the case, by working with private clients. As our portfolio grew, companies began to reach out. The very first of these was a children's cafe in Astrakhan. The owner found us by directly searching for “sofa from a car.” At the moment when this company contacted us, we had to register an individual entrepreneur. The order was to make 14 automotive style sofas and two decorative gas pumps.

This was our first major project, it cost more than 1 million rubles. And of course, we scored our first big shots on it. Since we had no experience, the entire order was delivered to Astrakhan with damage: at that time we did not know how to properly package our products and organize delivery. But we are talking about a large, fragile load that can be scratched with an ordinary nail and broken with a moderate impact. It was painful and offensive. But I had to go to Astrakhan and personally repair all the damage.

After this project, we understood which parts should be transported in disassembled form and which should not, which need to be additionally sealed, in which case hard sheathing is needed and what protection is required for soft panels.

They also began to pay much more attention to the wear resistance of things, usability, and the ability to replace modules: the client, if necessary, should be able to change this or that part himself in his city. All in all, it was a very valuable first experience.

Then large orders became regular, and among them there were especially interesting ones. For example, we once made a bar counter from a 1972 Volkswagen Transporter bus - that same legendary hippie bus ( see video

). The bus itself has already become a collectible model and can cost 5 million rubles. We can make a bar counter in the form of such a bus. That is, it does not have a roof, and inside, in the driver’s seat, a person prepares drinks. The length of the stand can reach 6 meters. The Lipetsk coffee chain Coffee Way bought this from us.

Garage as a chill-out zone

Now approximately 60% of our revenue comes from the B2B segment, and in terms of the number of orders it is approximately 50%. We decorate cafes and restaurants, client areas of detailing centers, and company offices. We do such projects on a turnkey basis.

We have quite a lot of clients in the regions: cool cafes and detailing centers are opening there. Our products were sent to Krasnodar, the Far East, Khabarovsk, Tyumen, etc. But there are more retail clients mainly in the capital.

The owners of such enterprises are usually men who are impressed by our work style. Many of them decorate their home the same way. Men are also more often present among retail customers. But women also contact us who want to give a gift to a connoisseur of our style.

It is common for wealthy men to have hobbies, and often this is something related to the automobile. In particular, they sometimes create a place to relax in the garage with the help of our interior items. This is no longer a place where you can tinker with your car, but a location where our client combines all his interests, can sit with friends and relax.

Marketing and promotion

In terms of promotion, we try to pay maximum attention to Instagram. We have had an account since the start, now it is there. To recruit them, we held competitions and made barter interactions with bloggers (they, however, in our case were not particularly effective).

We practice targeting, we spend about 4 thousand rubles on it per day - but not every day. We monitor how people react to posts, and if suddenly a post gets more coverage, Instagram reports this and we start promoting it to the right audience.

Lately I’ve been trying to do the same and I can already see that this area has prospects.

We promote the site only through SEO. But due to the fact that our specificity does not have many requests on the Internet, there is always organic traffic on the site.

I have not yet seen enterprises in Russia that would work in exactly the same style and with the same productivity. Apparently, there are no other desperate people who would dare to plunge into this from scratch and go through such a difficult path as we did. I know that there are guys who do cool things in related topics, but still in their own style and in small volumes. And there are dishonest competitors who copy our photos and introduce ourselves to clients with our name, after which they make low-quality copies of our things. True, they do not create any special problems for us.

On your own

We moved several times. Now our project is already a full-fledged small production - just not an assembly line, but a small-scale one. For him, we rented the premises of a former furniture factory - 700 square meters. We moved there in 2018.

We got the site covered in dust, garbage and without electricity. We didn’t do any drastic renovations there, but it still required a lot of work on arrangement. Although we tried to make everything as simple and ergonomic as possible.

The construction was going on for about three months by the team: part of the time was spent on it, part on working on orders, because it was impossible to tell clients that we were undergoing renovations here, so we weren’t working yet. Nevertheless, the revenue dropped for that period, because they physically could not do business to the same extent in parallel with putting the premises into operation.

But today we work in a comfortable space, where there is central heating, a lot of our own equipment, and the workshops are separated by partitions and equipped with hoods.

At the production site there is a metalworking and welding shop, where sparks fly and metal bends. There is an area where we work with wood - a carpentry shop, and also a workshop for preparing products for painting, a painting booth, and a workshop for working with plastic.

There is a separate area for final assembly of products. Recently, a so-called powder chamber has appeared - an area where we use special technologies to paint products with powder. There is also a photo zone where we take pictures of finished items before shipping them to customers. Our office is located on the second floor.

Price issue

We hired our first employees after a year of work. These were specialists who worked on a project basis. Today we employ eleven craftsmen: two welders, a welding engineer, a sculptor, two assemblers, a plastic master, a painter, a seamstress, and there is also a manager and a supplier.

Oleg and I, as leaders of the company, are generally interchangeable. But I am more focused on production and working with clients, and Oleg is more focused on new developments and promotion.

Our products usually cost from 2.5 thousand to 150 thousand rubles. About once every two months there is an order whose cost reaches 500 thousand - for example, a bar counter. And we also have a segment of exclusive products. Among them, say, a table made from a real Ferrari engine, it can cost up to 600 thousand rubles. We also sometimes create complex art objects (for example, decorating an entire floor in a certain style), whose cost can reach up to 800 thousand.

At the moment we have 20-30 orders in progress every month. Each of them can contain several products at once. The monthly turnover of the enterprise is 2-3 million rubles. At the same time, when the turnover is lower, this does not mean that our profit is falling. Our business model takes into account the difference in product margins - because of it, the revenue can be small, but the profit will remain high.

For example, our tables are not particularly profitable. Sofas and armchairs have 20-30% higher margins than them. Therefore, we cannot give our distributors a large discount on the table from the engine, so as not to fall out of our margin level. But the dealer receives a 40% discount on the Volga sofa.

Growth points

Today Rolling Stol cooperates with three dealers on an ongoing basis, one of which is located in Israel. Interaction with them proves to be beneficial. To become such a partner, a person can purchase our products in the amount of 300 thousand rubles or simply post a photo of it on his Internet portal (in this case, we ship products as orders are received). In any case, our distributor must have some kind of sales platform: on the Internet, in a store or in a car dealership.

We primarily see our scaling in expanding our dealer network around the world. There are certain difficulties here: the distributor must be trained, he must have a good understanding of the product, he must be offered individual conditions and some special assortment... Nevertheless, we understand that the more earning dealers we have, the more we will earn.

In addition to working in this direction, this year we also plan to optimize our production through new equipment for the accelerated production of body parts for sofa bodies, as well as for laser cutting. This will allow us to replace some of the manual labor in the workshop with automated labor - and will increase the quality of our goods and production volume.

In order not to miss an interesting and useful article about small business for you, subscribe to our Telegram channel .

biz360

Bed made from car parts.

Also, the bodies of old cars look good as a bed.

Materials and tools

Before starting work, you need to acquire materials and tools that will be useful in the work. Here is a sample list of them:

• Welding machine (you can rent it).
• A jigsaw, preferably an electric one.
• Bulgarian (preferably).
• Drill with a set of drills.
• Stapler for furniture.
• Plywood, 1-1.5 centimeters thick.
• Sintepon and foam rubber (sold in fabric stores).
• One roll of upholstery fabric.
• Varnish (optional).
• Hard sandpaper that will be used for sanding materials.
• Self-tapping screws and bolts.
• Screwdrivers, keys.
• Swivel casters (available at some furniture stores).
• Metal profile pipe 40mm.

If you have good neighbors, you can borrow some tools for a short time.

IMPORTANT! When working with cutting tools, follow safety precautions to avoid injury.

Main design elements

The first priority in assembling a chair is to select the correct shape. It is important to decide how a person spends time at the computer, since different types of activities require different furniture. You should also focus on the height, weight, and body features of the future owner of the seat.

Many people decide to start assembling a chair with their own hands due to the fact that the price of furniture in this category in the store is sky-high, and creating your own design is several times cheaper. In addition to saving money, a master who decides to assemble a convenient structure gains new skills, which means he spends his working time profitably.

A homemade computer chair is furniture assembled according to exclusive drawings and fulfilling a specific role. Such designs have a unique design, meet exclusively the needs of the owner and usually last longer than their serial counterparts. Other advantages include the fact that by making your own chair, it becomes possible to make a product that matches a person’s non-standard height or weight.

Assembling a chair according to your own sketches also involves creating a unique drawing in which you can use any components, including unusual elements. But if you need to make a simple chair, then you can use a standard set of components. The following parts are usually used:

1. Armrests - to keep the torso within the chair, comfortable positioning of the arms.
2. Seat – for a pleasant pastime, you need to make it comfortable, not too soft.
3. The backrest is an important element that helps control the owner’s posture.
4. Regulating mechanism - to control the design, create a certain shape.

Before you make a computer chair with your own hands, you need to decide in advance on the type of design, since this will not only be the basis of the drawing, but also the criterion for choosing tools and materials.

Mechanisms

Seat

Back

Armrests

Spring mechanism

Step-by-step creation of an art object

To prepare the tabletop, you need to drill 4 holes in it, which will serve as a place for attaching the glass to the engine. The top edge of the pipe that will be used to support the glass surface must be cut at an angle. A total of 4 similar blanks are needed. After preparing and drying the block, you can begin assembling the structure. The procedure for making an art object:

1. The V6 block is turned over, 4 legs are attached to the bottom. For increased strength, one of them should be supported by 2-3 bolts.
2. Wheels are mounted to the legs, which are designed to support the weight of the engine.
3. The block is turned over, now the stable legs are at the bottom, in their standard place.
4. 4 parts of the pipe are attached to the block using bolts. Holders are mounted at the ends of the elements.
5. The pipes are fixed in the holes made in the glass, additionally using silicone gaskets, they will avoid scratches and cracks during the operation of the table.

If desired, a speaker can be mounted inside a table made from a cylinder block - this option is suitable for partygoers or for use in cafes and bars.

Attach the legs to the bottom of the block

Install wheels

Attach 4 pistons to the block using bolts

Drill holes in the tabletop

Install the tabletop onto the pistons

Fix the position with decorative elements

Video

True car lovers are able to not only improve the driving characteristics and tuning of their favorite iron horse, but also find useful uses for it after active use. An example is furnishings: beds, tables, armchairs, sofas, shelves, and even mini-offices. Such products will make the interior bright, stylish, and give it a real masculine character. For example, sofas made from a car will fit perfectly into a modern living room, a teenager’s room, an original drive-in cafe, etc.

What can this be made from? The side wings and bumper will serve as an original frame for the furniture. In place of the trunk or hood, a small sofa is most often placed. Some craftsmen decorate the frame with working headlights, which turns the product into a real decoration of the room.

As a rule, the entire structure is attached to a specially made metal base. And by installing furniture roller wheels designed for heavy-weight products, you can make your designer sofa mobile.