Clear steer: William Rau offers high-end customizing of car interiors, and he's ready to go mass market. But is the mass market ready for him?

AFTER a dozen years churning out custom inlays for steering wheels and shift knobs, William Rau wants to switch over to the fast lane--the mass market.

Rau, owner of Los Angeles-based Ran Corp., caters to an elite group of drivers who can pay $10,000 or more to deck out the interiors of their Rolls Royces, Bentleys, Mercedes-Benzes and Shelbys with exotic woods and specialty materials like carbon fiber.

"What we do with steering wheels and the ability to customize with exotic inlays, I don't think anybody else is doing that, period," he said.

Rau's celebrity clients have included basketball stars Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter, Hollywood icons Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, singer Brandy and rap stars Queen Latifah and Dr. Dre.

But Rau, who operates his company as William Rau Automotive Woodwork, believes there is a broader demand for elegant interiors among drivers with considerably less disposable income.

He plans to buy a computerized wood cutting machine that would increase by fivefold the number of parts for steering wheels, dash boards, shift knobs and brake handles that his 11-employee operation can manufacture.

The plan is risky; it's already brought caution warnings from Chuck Blum, who headed the Diamond Bar-based Specialty Equipment Marketing Association, the trade group for automotive aftermarket parts, for 22 years.

Blum, whom Ran sought out for advice, believes there's a wider market for the products, but he doesn't know if it's big enough to absorb 3,000 custom steering wheels per year. "I don't know if there would be that many people who would want to spend that kind of money for this product," Blum said. "This isn't for everybody."

William Rau Automotive Woodwork operates out of a 3,000-square-foot facility on the Westside, with 1,000 square feet of additional space in Rau's backyard.

He has grown his business by networking with car dealerships and larger parts makers who commission him to do the work they don't offer. Demand has been strong, but it's also dependent on the vagaries of automotive manufacturers.

For instance, much of Rau's growth last year was based on a spike in the demand for work on $75,000 Range Rovers. Land Rover, a division of Ford Motor Co., makes the Range Rover with interior wood trim that doesn't include a wood steering wheel, brake handle or shift knob. That's spelled business for Ran, who charges about $1,900 retail for those three components (wholesale runs $1,100). A 10-piece interior panel for a Range Rover costs $5,000 if carbon fiber is used, and $6.000 for silver fiber.

About 30 percent of Rau's income is generated from restorations.

"I always use him for the main stuff," said Andrew Mortimer-Lamb, general sales manager for Newport Beach-based Newport European Motorcars. "He is an expert when it comes to Rolls Royce and Bentley."

To create the inlays, Ran stocks factory-made prototype parts, which he replicates using templates and hand-held routers to cut sheets of American cherry, walnut buff, carbon fiber and a dozen or so other types of sheet material.

Dealerships remove the parts from customers' vehicles and ship them to Rau. To laminate a steering wheel, he cuts the stitching on the factory-made leather and foam, peeling it back and cutting away the portion of the metal to be replaced by wood.

Once the wood pieces are cut, cleaned and colored, they are attached to the metal portion of the wheel using an industrial glue. With the leather wrapped for protection, the entire component is placed in a "hot box" for four hours at 110 or 145 degrees to accelerate the curing of the waterproof glue.

The wheel is then cleaned and sanded before the stain is applied and the entire component is again placed in the hot box. Finally, the adjoining leather is re-stitched.

Rau, 54, made the transition into auto parts after working 13 years for organ makers Abbott & Sieker Inc.--in the same Pontius Avenue location where his shop now stands.

He graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz with a degree in philosophy in 1974 and spent the rest of the decade working odd jobs, in between extended trips through Canada and South America. He began playing the recorder in amateur ensembles and made organ transcriptions for the piano. That inspired him to take a metal shop and two woodworking classes at California State University Los Angeles--training that got him a job at the now-defunct Abbott & Sieker.

His first automotive project was a wooden steering wheel for a Bentley. Eventually, he took over a custom auto shop when the two owners retired in the 1990s.

Rau plans to invest $32,000 to $70,000 for a used computerized cutting machine to increase his daily output to 3,000 wheels annually, from the current 600. The machine will automate tasks that woodworkers now do by hand, but will involve more hiring, especially for leatherwork, sanding and finishing chores. "There would still be other areas that would remain hand work," he said. "That machine only takes the wheel so far."

Rau isn't sure whether to take the next step of selling the equipment directly to automakers for sale on new vehicles. He admits he would need help breaking in. "People who are familiar with the doors to knock on, who have the connections in that industry, would be a tremendous asset," he said.

PROFILE

Rau Corp.

Year Founded: 1993

Core Business: Custom-made inlays for vehicle interiors

Revenue in 2003: $800,000

Revenue in 2004: $1.2 million

Employees in 2003:10

Employees in 2004:11

Goal: Expand the business through high-volume manufacturing

Driving Force: Customers who want their vehicles to have a traditional high-end look or need restoration of an existing wood-laden interior