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Design House.
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Alex Fees: I'm Alex Fees on sbtv.com coming to you from SEMA 2007 at specialty equipment market association and with me here is Andrea Carnahan. Andrea is the President of Motor Head Design House out of Louisville, Kentucky. Andrea appreciates your being here.
Andrea Carnahan: Thank you.
Alex Fees: Welcome, so here we at Friday at SEMA 2007 you're here representing your company Motor Head Design House and you said you have a booth here.
Andrea Carnahan: Right.
Alex Fees: How’s it going?
Andrea Carnahan: It’s been a great show, it’s a great show we’ve seen amount of old plans, we've made new context it’s been really wonderful over top.
Alex Fees: And Motor Head Design House is a company that makes custom emblems, correct?
Andrea Carnahan: Right.
Alex Fees: Tell me about it.
Andrea Carnahan: Well there a few things that, make our emblems different. My background is fine jewelry, so I take that approach and really look at it as pieces of jewelry for the car.
Alex Fees: As far as your designed is concerned or?
Andrea Carnahan: And the relationship behind it, a lot of the emblems that are made now a days are plastic emblems as they are in metal emblems must have been prone plated, we can do different finishes as there also customs. So instead of you know something that’s black, cut out of bullet, laser cut, there is a lot of dimension in the emblems. They are almost like little pieces of sculpture, start out with people’s logo it’s a two dimensional logo, one is finished and there are three dimension pieces art that they put on their car.
Alex Fees: And Andrea, you said you have some pretty high profile clients, costumers in that industry and in that design tell me about those?
Andrea Carnahan: Well one of them just one GM’s designed awards here.
Alex Fees: Not, too shabby.
Andrea Carnahan: No, and that is the Corvette that requires those, last year brings other with their mustang, one ford the best of show abort, they are the .
Alex Fees: I see lot of mother’s polish staff here.
Andrea Carnahan: Yeah, uh-huh, do work for like cutting tins, Chip Fooze, our emblems are—Chip Fooze car.
Alex Fees: West coast customs say’s boosts outside here out of in the South Hall have you’ve been there yet?
Andrea Carnahan: No I haven’t made it around it all.
Alex Fees: No, I see it right, I guess you're too busy made you feel and see right feruling house and establishing contact there or something.
Andrea Carnahan: Yeah, it has been an excellent show.
Alex Fees: So is this your first time at SEMA, Andrea?
Andrea Carnahan: No, it is probably our eight year.
Alex Fees: All right, in the same capacity.
Andrea Carnahan: Right.
Alex Fees: Representing your company?
Andrea Carnahan: Right, when we first came we went—we spent first couple of years with the Carnahan art gallery popularity. And we decided it was time to have our own booth and so we both associated with the hot rod industry in Lions and I think that this hot rod alley.
Alex Fees: And Andrea what about the design of those emblems because I’m just guessing this stuff could completely change and evolve from one year to the next. I mean as far as your current trends and things of that nature what is popular, how do you go about keeping on top of that?
Andrea Carnahan: Not as much as you would think, because a lot of emblems that clients that they work with, they kind of go back to the roots of emblems and the history of the emblems.
Alex Fees: Yeah.
Andrea Carnahan: One thing that we do love, we call them phantom emblems. Where it looks like the old emblem, we match the angles, the thicknesses, the fonts and everything, exactly but it set something different. So when you walk up to the car you think “Oh, that’s the factory emblems” but its not its says something different it the name of the car or the name of the companies.
Alex Fees: So do you have a lot of competition in that industry?
Andrea Carnahan: There are other people making emblems but what we do is a little bit different from everybody else.
Alex Fees: Yeah, it sounds like they probably gives you a real match then.
Andrea Carnahan: It does because a lot of what we do is lower production, we even do one ounce for people because a lot of times its that one special piece that really completes the car in kind of physics that over the top.
Alex Fees: Yeah.
Andrea Carnahan: But what we really offer our clients is the way to keep their name with the vehicles after they leave they’re shop.
Alex Fees: Yeah.
Andrea Carnahan: You know people use decoys or pinning their name on and that’s just to add value to the vehicle, I mean a lot of times it doesn’t stay away from the vehicle.
Alex Fees: Right.
Andrea Carnahan: But what we do, the owners love and it adds value to the vehicle for the owner. The owners made an investment in its builder and they're proud of that and they want the builders name on there and the really nice way.
Alex Fees: Andrea, eight years here at SEMA, right?
Andrea Carnahan: Right.
Alex Fees: The past eight years, eight years in a row.
Andrea Carnahan: We sat out for two years and then I'm back again this year.
Alex Fees: What was that experience like after you came back, were you glad you did?
Andrea Carnahan: Oh, definitely, I mean it was nice in the past two years that coming out here and just walking the show.
Alex Fees: Oh, I see. So the two years when you weren’t represented here you attended anyway?
Andrea Carnahan: Of course, yes.
Alex Fees: Never missed one.
Andrea Carnahan: No.
Alex Fees: Well you said you’ve been too busy this time to walk around and see what's the big display here. How has this process worked for you and your booth, what do you do in there? What kind of context are you making? And what do you do with this? Where there like potential clients or?
Andrea Carnahan: Yeah, there are. Meeting a lot of people that have featured vehicles here, other exhibitors here who are doing prototype vehicles, who are going to be looking at during production runs. Those are the things that people are potential plans. Cut right builders, massive car builders, and new car amateur production. When clients of ours to be in a Van Cruiser just some conversion of those.
Alex Fees: Right.
Andrea Carnahan: You know when he’s taking a brand new cars, not the older cars again where doing kind of retro feel but a real stylist feel with it and one thing we do pull with them is, he had this antique lizard its about this big, which is crawled around in circle in brass. That we just thought was just a favorite piece of his and we've produce that form.
Alex Fees: Oh, really.
Andrea Carnahan: Yeah, its just kind of a cool piece.
Alex Fees: Custom made.
Andrea Carnahan: Yeah.
Alex Fees: Certainly a lot of that here.
Andrea Carnahan: Yeah.
Alex Fees: All right, Andrea. Where can people get more information about Motor Head Design House?
Andrea Carnahan: On our website which is MotorHeadDesignHouse.com.
Alex Fees: MotorHeadDesignHouse.com.
Andrea Carnahan: Right.
Alex Fees: All together.
Andrea Carnahan: Long word but its fair.
Alex Fees: All right, good deal. Again she is Andrea Carnahan, Andrea appreciate you being her.
Andrea Carnahan: Thank you.
Alex Fees: She is with Motor Head Design House I’m Alex Fees you're tuned in to sbtv.com.
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