Today we’d like to introduce you to Carlos Garcia Aceves.
Hi Carlos, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hello, my name is Carlos Garcia Aceves, a multi-talented media producer, and new filmmaker. Working on a movie script that is the start of a new step from my past journey of printing a custom car magazine called LoCompany Magazine. My printed magazine had a very big following of custom automotive enthusiasts. I am also in the works of pre-production of an automotive TV show called “Kandy and Chrome TV” samples are available on the IMDB website. Getting into this venture was almost automatic for me as I have been interested in photography and video since a very young age of 11 years old. I grew up around classic Chevy cars all my life and it has been my main influence. I have a memory of being 5 years old actually working with my uncle Armando Aceves (rip.) wet sanding his cars that he would paint inside my father’s garage. The reason he liked me helping him is because I took it very serious and actually did a great job. He would spray guide coat on the grey primer and have me wet sand it off with 400 grit and if the guide coat stayed in any spots they were considered “Low Spots” and needed repair. So, throughout life, I became a good bodyman and automotive painter. One of my proudest moments were painting my 11 grade Life Science teachers 72 Oldsmobile Jet Black using the best paint called IMRON. almost 27 years later, and he still has my paint job shiny as the day I painted it. Another family trade I was involved with was construction framing. My father and his father and his father were stuck in the trade, and they were successful, but I did not like the labor intense work, I wanted something else. At the age of 11, my mom bought me my first canon 35mm film camera and I would take it with me to school and take pictures of my friends. Then my mother would take the film for me and get it developed and it was back in my hand 3 days later. The next day I would sell the pictures to people that posed for me for $1 It was very fun, and the young kids liked how my pictures would come out. When I was 12 my dad took me to the Pomona swap meet where thousands of cars would gather. So, there I tried what worked for me at school I would pick some of the best cars that I liked and ask the car owners if I can take some photos and sell them at the next swap meet which was every 3 months. During that time, I would print enlargements of 11″x17″ and mount them to plywood, and pour resin plastic over the picture something my dad used to do in his teenage years with Teen Angels posters. One car owner, in particular, was named Whitey McNeely and his 38 Chevy. His car was a full show custom, so it got lots of attention. He displayed it at all the car shows, and it got published in a National titled car magazine giving me special thanks. That was a very proud moment for me and my artwork. I began doing this frequently and remembered at the age of 14 collecting up to $600 at a car show selling my pictures. Between the age of 15-18, I would now be considered a professional and published photographer. Even though my grandfather taught me all the camera shutter speeds and settings, I was still amature. I wanted more of a business model for my artwork and photography. One day on the way to work construction my father and I came up with a business name called LoCompany and began making a trading card like the famous Tops baseball cards but with custom cars; I did 4 series of 5 cards and created store-ready packages with barcodes and shiny plastic covers. I started researching how to get my products into major store chains and found an LA Distributor called Newsways; they had a meeting with Walmart and allowed my trading cards to go on sale in over 200 Walmart stores in the section where magazines were sold. At that time, we had printed 50K packages then we got a phone call one day from Toys R Us marketing and they wanted to carry LoCompany trading cards. The only request they had was a 500K minimum delivery. At the time, we did not have enough capital to produce that many card packages. I remember going around trying to find an investor but was unsuccessful. I even applied for a business loan from the SBA and was turned down. It was so heartbreaking for me. One day I wanted to run a LoCompany Trading Card ad in Lowrider Magazine and was quoted 10K for a half-page color ad. Even though I thought an ad would be the way to get noticed, I met with a printer in San Diego called Monochrome Graphics He told me, “10K for a half-page add, no way” he also told me for 10K I can print you 5,000 full-color magazines and 76 pages. When I came back to my father and told him we planned out the first LoCompany Magazine. It took us about two months to complete our first issue. We used a beautiful famous Lowrider model for our cover named Connie Fregoso. Once the magazine was print ready, I came to my father-in-law Jose Gonzalez who took a chance on investing 10K in our first premiere issue of LoCompany Magazine. Without him, it would not have happened. The magazine journey was a very tough one, with rival competing magazines making business hard for us to conduct. We printed two volumes, 12 Issues total going from the original 5K up to 155,000 after issue number 7 we went and signed up with a national distributor from New York, and it turned out to be the worst decision we ever made. After accepting 6 magazines and only paying for 2 of the issues, they moved to Canada and filed bankruptcy and didn’t have to pay any of their publishers. We ended up closing the doors after issue 12 because of the distributor. During 2004 we decided to start a series of car show events to try and raise more capital, we called it the Kandy and Chrome Carshow and concert. The show was a very big success. We hired a big show performer named Brenton Wood. At that car show, there were some showrunners for spike TV that approached me and offered the opportunity to create a pilot tv show Kandy and Chrome TV That was the opportunity that we have been waiting for. At that time, the only thing like that on tv was the monster garage. We were invited to go on set to see what it was like. We began to produce the pilot and had lots of fun doing it. Well, one day during filming our contact guy showed up and told us he got fired. Well, there goes our pitch. In 2010 we were approached by another showrunner, this time for Discovery Channel, and she was very interested in our TV show concept. Well, guess what, she was also fired during the editing of our TV show. In 2018 we decided to go back and recreate the TV show and build off of what we had with our 59 Impala Convertible calling it the Extreme makeover” we obtained very big sponsors like Edelbrock, Optima Batteries, and Red’s Hydraulics. Also in the current works is a film script that was written by myself in 2011 called Mysterious Ways This movie will be the start of a very motivated self-driven venture to get back into filming and then release a few series of Kandy and Chrome TV at the same time.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
In the beginning, our main problems were not being able to obtain the funding source for our big projects. Like our failed Toy R us deal and the botched TV network deals. I have learned a lot now when it comes to financing projects and locating the funds necessary to have the right amount of funding.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about LoComnpany Studios, LLC.?
Right now, we have a garage restoring Classic Chevy cars and creating video content for later editing as episodic videos ranging from sheet metal fabrication to bodywork and also automotive painting. We are a very loose organization that can go in any direction.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
So, my story begins way back in 1980 around December I believe. I was around 3 and a half years old. Yes, I have vivid memories of those days. One of my favorite memories is standing on the sink in our restroom, combing my hair with my new pocket comb. From that angle, you could see my dad’s car outside through the window. I was standing against the window looking at our vehicle; outside the window, it was a 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. It was primer black and lowered, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. That’s when my dad crossed the hallway and stopped to see what I was doing. I guess he was nosy enough to see what was taking his sons’ attention outside. Hmm, maybe he thought it was our neighbor or someone. So, he took a look for himself. His first intentions were to go in and yell at me for standing on the sink. But before you know it, we were both looking out the window. “You looking at my car, son,” that’s what he said to me. He started talking about how he wanted to paint it and put some Crager rims with tires like 5:20-14’s and maybe some hydraulics. He said he was going to paint it “Black with a Blue Pearl” he also said it was going to have a lot of clear coats to make it look wet and shiny. At that time, he probably didn’t think I would even care about was he was talking about or even understand. But I did and what he didn’t know is that I kept watching over this project. Every time we came outside, I was looking at the car first to see if my dad did anything new. It took him a long time but eventually, after a few months, I remember being in my grandmother’s front yard on the grass helping my dad and his brother (my uncle) wash the car with big soapy sponges. I was having fun rubbing the smooth body lines and all the chrome with the sponge. When I came around the corner, my uncle was putting little white circles with his carpenter’s crayon. At first, I ran to my dad and told him my uncle was writing on his car. I figured someone was going to get their rear end kicked. That’s when he took me and explained to me my uncle was finding dents to fix. At that time, my uncle was really into repairing wrecked cars. So, every Sunday, we went over there, and the car would get a little something worked on. My mom used to drive the car around town, and one day we went into a local Shell Gas Station in the city called “Mitchel’s,” and I remember telling the owner of the gas station that my dad was going to paint the car “Black with a Blue Pearl.” He said what, come here and tell me some more. He gave me a coke bottle out of his old coke machine. We sat on the bench drinking our sodas together while his attendants were checking our tires, oil, trans fluid, air filters, and who knows what else. I told him we were also looking for some tires 5:20s. The old man laughed so hard he said, “Kid you sound just like your dad, 5:20’s” “Tell you what when your dad is ready to tell him to come and buy the tires from me, and I’ll give him a deal. I may have been a little guy, but I had taken a new pride in vehicles that day for sure. I felt like I was doing some critical brainstorming for my dad. From that point on I would notice other nice cars on the streets with new paint jobs or some seriously loud music. Some of my family and my dad’s friends had the nicest cars I’ve ever seen. One of my dad’s closest friends had the actual black and silver 1939 Chevrolet from the “Cheech and Chong” movie Nice Dreams. So, once I was in school, I would always talk about cars with my friends. But not many of them could relate, except one good friend of mine in kindergarten he told me his dad had a car that was shot in “Lowrider Magazine” and used for the center spread. I didn’t believe him until he brought it to school to show me. I had a higher respect for him that day. I remember seeing the car in his garage dropped to the ground; it was a full custom 1959 2 Dr. Hardtop. It had a crazy flake candy paint job.
I remember talking to my friend’s dad and telling him the color we were going to put on our car; he knew what I was talking about and even showed me a baby food jar with some blue pearl in it. So now I had a good vision of how the car was going to look. (This is some text from a book I am also writing about my life around classic cars.)
Contact Info:
- Website: locompany.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kandyandchrome
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kandyManOG
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDx_kLzueafKwhsbuXf9_hw
Image Credits
Sophie Aceves
