Secret to Success – Ben Bermudez

I grew up in Miami, FL but more specifically the Redlands area. My family business was agriculture and we had few 100 acres lots and grew mostly coconut trees for resale. I would of probably stayed in the family business but fate would have it in 1992 for Hurricane Andrew to destroy our business and our way of life, leveling our house to the floor, and all our trees! Nothing was left, so we moved and just lead a normal suburb life. It took 6 months plus just to get power at the house which was leveled. It was crazy because the life I knew and trusted was gone. Our family business was gone and its was time to start all over and not by choice. I was young but it was scary. Still to this day I have nightmares about this event.

I started in the wheel industry as a salesman in 1994 and ended up managing a large wheel mail order company. Within weeks I out sold everyone and just loved it. It wasn’t a necessity, rather more for experience and to learn the industry, you have to start somewhere. I hated selling off the shelf cheap wheels since I already had clientele interested in custom wheels since I was building custom spec wheels that no one else could. This started with custom HRE wheels in 1997 at the company I was working. I couldn’t really service my high end clients so, I decided I need to do this for myself. In 1999, I opened Wheels Boutique.

Well in 1999 there weren’t any three piece companies like there is now. Back then you had HRE, Racing Hart and Lowenhart who really ran the game. There weren’t forums like now and everything was magazine ads. We got rolling by offering wheels to high end cars in which no one else knew the fitments/specs to which got me my nick name ‘wheel god’. We know specs enough to push wheels to the limits. Honestly, I wish it was like back then where you don’t have everyone just slapping a name on no name brand wheels and saying it’s the best. They’re just over whelming the market and honestly customers end up with junk.

That’s why at Wheels Boutique we don’t sell no name brands. People just don’t understand why companies like HRE have been around forever and the engineering that goes into building wheels. I won’t name names but you have to see how many wheels we see that fail and honestly put a customer’s life at risk. This is why we don’t sell those brands. So if brands aren’t listed by us, do your research because we did. In 2003 we became HRE’s largest dealer in the world and have never looked back since. We also have been the largest dealer for a lot of other brands but most recently when we acquired ADV1 as a new brand, we also became their largest dealer overnight.

A lot but mostly 15 years of custom wheel experience. People need to research where they buy from before they buy. We have full staff of over 21 people and have been in business since 1999. A lot of online stores are young guys out of their bedroom and its easy for them to close and run off with your money and have zero knowledge of this industry. We stand behind all of our fitments and stand behind all brands we sell. I have always been in the wheel industry since day 1! I’m mostly known for my custom offsets and super aggressive fitments and color combos that other can’t replicate. Such as my SLS AMG and 1st Nissan GTR ever done with 375 rear tires!

The most important aspect is fitment. Anyone can bolt on a wheel but will it be right? Wheels with a perfect lip, not so cambered that the wheels look like they face the sky but ‘hella flush’ style, making it fit so perfect that it looks like the wheel and car just flow perfect.

We don’t like to make cars look like rainbows and incorporate 5 different colors into wheels, especially if they aren’t part of the original car color. The most popular finish is two tone brushed with polished windows. I believe the main brands we carry have the perfect style to fit every taste and gap in the wheels industry. I guess that can be easily proven as we’re the world’s largest dealer for what most people believe to be the hottest brand in the wheels game: HRE and ADV1!

Buy mine cause I won’t do this again lol. It’s a very very hard industry. I have seen countless stores in every avenue open and close in my last 12 years doing this. It’s not easy and it’s not about how much money you have. Selling is all about reputation, style, and image.

Wow my 1st car build is still famous here in these parts. It was a 1st ever fully built 1996 Honda Prelude with an S trim Vortech supercharger making over 600 WHP. It ran low 11’s back in the day with no traction and would break axles at the track every time but it was a street monster.