We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jerry Kondwros. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jerry below.

Jerry , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

Over a year ago my son and I were walking around a large Corvette Car show in Tennessee and came across a vendor selling car show boards featuring custom artwork and customer provided photos of their car. I bought one for around $400 for my 1979 Corvette Coupe. I followed all the post purchase instructions such as how to take pictures of the car, angles and such and sent the photos off to the address for the vendor. After 2 weeks or so I was emailed by the vendor with a proof for the show board. I was not overjoyed but satisfied so I approved the proof. After another 6 weeks the board arrived and I will say once again I was satisfied but not $400 worth of satisfied. That is where the idea was born. I thought to myself “I can do that better, cheaper, and faster.” I have proven to be right on all 3. I have been around cars my whole life and both of my sons 17, and 12 are both into cars and we go to car shows locally in the area when we can. I began offering custom car posters and called the new company AMJM Designs (AMJM are the initials of my sons). As of this writing I have done around 200 custom car boards and am now working on scaling and rebranding into the new company called American Car Show Boards. I have developed a decent local following where the show promotors have been inviting us to set up at events and even paying for our entry and vendor fees. I prefer to do mainly smaller local charity shows especially anything with cancer, kids, or animals. I normally donate a certain % of gross sales to the charity that day. The business has been very profitable and since this is not my main source of income I do not mind donating sales.

Jerry , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am 47 years old and started 2 small businesses in January of this year as experiments. My first business was called AMJM Enterprises (our parent company name) that specializes in in offering Battlefield Tours of the Antietam National Battlefield and Harpers Ferry National Park where I am the guide. Our other business is called Marry You Anywhere where I perform wedding officiating services as I am an Ordained Minister. As far as career I am a Federal Law Enforcement Officer with the United States Department of Homeland Security and have been in that line of work for over 20 years.
As a business model I have one simple creed, do everything that other businesses are not doing to service customers. It is indeed as simple as it sounds and has paid off handsomely in my latest venture creating and selling custom car show boards at car shows. From offering my free photography services to working to get the boards exactly as the customer wants, to even mailing out handwritten thank you cards after the sale is complete I just do all the things I wish businesses would do when I purchase a product. It is as simple as that. And that sets us far above our competitors.

As for business branding I do understand the importance and have done well with my brand strategy. I am now scaling up and rebranding my company into a more specific area. The original name of the car show board business was AMJM Designs as I had plans to branch out into other graphic design projects. After market research and just general sales experience I have found that our new launch of American Car Show Boards was needed to scale up and specialize and perhaps one day even franchise. Our new website launched this week, www.americancarshowboards.com has been successful thus far.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Our reputation is completely built by service and end product. I tell my customers at each sale that I want their honest opinion when I send a proof for their board as well as letting them know that I do not stop until they are happy with their product. Sometimes people can be difficult sure, but the end results is 100% satisfied customers, and the word has spread quickly.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

In the beginning the only way I found out about car shows to go to was on social media outlets like Facebook. I was a slave to the algorithms and what they wanted to show me. I was liking all the car show ads I could find and updating all addresses in the area hoping FB would show me something close that I could attend. Now however I have many car show promotors reaching out to me to be at their shows because we draw a crowd with our artwork and superior service. I often have to set up an additional tent for past customers to come by and say hello and hang out as the car show community is a family. I have been adopted by 3 different car show clubs and do the advertising artwork and flyers for 2 of them. My best source of clients now is a mix of car show patrons and word of mouth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.americancarshowboards.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575936027493
• Twitter: @carshowboards

Image Credits

AMJM Enterprises provided all images