I can’t believe how long it has been since I posted a new blog update but things have been insane for the last two years and I apologize for not keeping to weekly updates.

So we are now in March of 2022 and we are still thrown many curve balls to keep production and distribution at our peak levels prior to the universe shutting down. I can not believe as I sit at my desk writing this that 2 full years of our lives have passed. The events of these last two years have impacted everyone including myself on a personal and business level. I have faced many business challenges in my career but never in my life could I have prepared or planned to face what I have gone through over these last two years. Between the regulations, shortages of supplies and most importantly limited work force in every single industry it has forced me to take on roles as a business owner that I never would have anticipated in my life. As a result of doing some of these physical roles I now have a severe physical injury that has impacted my work, content creation and even enjoying my cars. This was my sacrifice that I made for my brand that I believed in so much with hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide supporting me from day 1. No matter what the show must go on!

It seems the last 24 months were a blur, I was in Madison Square Garden with 50k screaming fans at multiple rock concerts, car events surrounded by thousands and in a packed movie theater watching Ford vs Ferrari with a guy behind us sick as a dog coughing on us for 3 hours most likely severely ill with you know what! Who knew what was about to happen a few short weeks ahead.

A few good things came from this new way of life. It has enabled most of us to spend more time with our family and close friends and also appreciate more humble things in our lives. We continue in this fast paced society and forget about the little things and what I feel are the most important things. I have lost many close friends, family members, extended family members and people in the automotive industry due to this global crisis. It has been a severe shock but I have accepted life as it is and have done my very best to stay engaged with my fans and customers the best I possibly can. Content creation has also not been what I planned for many reasons but I have been so busy behind the scenes running multiple business ventures and almost depressed on and off with these life and business struggles. Obtaining parts for my cars to modify has been a constant struggle and those modifications help me create engaging content with my audience around the world who watch. I also feel that without being in a positive mental and emotional state I just refuse to try and shoot videos. I shoot my videos for fun, passion and pleasure not for views and clicks so my purpose is quite different than most people on Youtube and if I am distracted in life with other priorities this takes away from the passion I would be able to put into the content creation.

2020 kicked our ass with business that forced me to take over not only with distribution but also packaging. Our packaging partner who has been with us from the very start in 2018 was so consumed producing sanitizer products that we were forced to bottle production ourselves for almost a year. It was our goal just to keep orders and stock on hand for you guys who stuck with me and supported the Auto Fanatic brand. There was a huge learning curve and investment into bottling equipment. I will admit we must have bottled about 100,000 units ourselves throughout 2020-2021 until we were able to get contract help. It was not easy and physically taxing on our bodies with very little help. I did enjoy doing everything in house because I had total control of how my labels looked, fill levels and how the boxes were packed for the warehouse stock. Often times when you subcontract even the most basic task it never gets done to the level of a perfectionist like myself.

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As we were chugging along our sales were doing awesome domestic and abroad and on the backend production costs have skyrocketed with bottles, boxes, chemicals you name it. No matter what inflation hit Auto Fanatic on the back end I never once raised my prices to reflect that. What I did do was eat these costs into my margins because keeping my brand going was not always about the profits but more or less my passion for automotive and detailing. To any investor or business person they would call me a fool to do things this way because business is intended to always turn a profit but facing these world circumstances, profit was not my main agenda for the time being it was keeping the brand active. As things continued to prove difficult one of our main chemical blenders went out of business and vanished with our proprietary formulas and secrets to some of our early best selling released products. I was devastated and thrown into a wall after this happened but things happen for a reason and this negative truly turned into a positive. After months of making new relationships in the industry and working with new chemists I was able to update and improve some of our car care products. Having a new team working for Auto Fanatic also enabled us to bring new products to market faster because they listened and had greater resources than our first partner.

As we soar into 2022 we are excited to have released several new products along the way from our new Auto Fanatic 007 Snow Storm Shampoo V2, Auto Fanatic 007 Gloss Enhancer Ceramic Detailer, Auto Fanatic Mega Gloss Tire Shine, Auto Fanatic Money Maker 3 in 1, Auto Fanatic Hyper Gloss Ceramic Waterless Wash and many more exciting products have been developed and waiting for the right timing to release them. I have worked non stop with my 3 separate teams located all over the USA behind the scenes improving and perfecting and creating something special in each and every product.

I am so proud to have accomplished all of this during the hardest time of my life. The obstacles that were thrown in my court for most would have made anyone in my shoes give up a long time ago. I have to say my persistence came from my father in business. There were weeks that passed where I was literally about to delete my social media accounts and give up but my passion for cars, my craft and detailing & connecting with all my fans was the only thing that lifted me up enough to keep going. It was all those Instagram DM of you guys showing off your cars proud with the results of using Auto Fanatic Car Care or those emails I would receive from fans all over the globe from insane locations like Uzbekistan, or Nigeria who somehow found a way to get my products into their country without me knowing. This was really awesome at a time I desperately needed a motivational push. During these last two years I have lost so much money from buying defective bottles, hiring bad bottling plants who spilled about $23k of product and destroyed 20k units with bad labels, pallets of product lost or damaged by Amazon FBA and Amazon continuously destroying our inventory that forced us to slash prices just to move it out of stock. In January of 2022 Amazon also forced us to get a specialized additional insurance policy to cover Amazon FBA negligence that my premium per year is a good mortgage on a house if that puts things into perspective for you all. Being in the automotive manufacturing business poses extreme risk for insurance and living and based out of NY only adds to those obstacles with limited carriers. The same nonsense monopoly also applies to health care in the state of NY as well which my monthly premium could get me a nice Porsche 911 Turbo on lease if I had to choose. My net losses over the last 2 years would have sent many small business owners bankrupt by now. But a persistent entrepreneur never gives up!

When I started this Auto Fanatic brand I created massive hype with my wheel cleaner but little did you guys know that the team I was working with way before I ventured into social media was about to drop a bombshell on this entire plan from the start. In 2014 I personally invested in creating the Foaming Wheel Cleaner which later became the Auto Fanatic Professional Wheel Cleaning Foam. It was created for me not for the world or to ever resell. My goal was for personal use and maybe license this to other markets and brands because I never knew how to even launch a chemical brand or understand the logistics of all the moving parts. I was getting sick from COPD from using all the caustic junk wheel cleaners on the market and this was the driving force behind my curiosity to hire chemists and work on this new project. What I later discovered was my experience with automotive manufacturing for 27 years already honed my business acumen to launch Auto Fanatic without me even knowing it. The moving parts were exactly the same just the players were different and the products were different. I discussed more about this in older blog posts so you might want to check those out but after I posted some videos, the internet went insane. I received thousands of inquires weekly from around the globe yet the company who I was working with were about to throw a hatchet at this entire brand before it even launched. To keep things simple we had 30,000 gallons of wheel cleaner that was blended. Some of this cleaner was for myself, other industries and resellers who would rebrand it for other use. This was a multi partner project that I started back in 2014 through my extensive automotive manufacturing contacts and we finalized this project in 2018 after I shared some videos on my red Shelby GT350. As I started planning the look and image of my Auto Fanatic Wheel Cleaner we tried to dye my wheel cleaner purple, I just thought it would look cool in a clear bottle but that’s when everything hit the fan. Every time these lack luster chemists tried to dye it the color turned brown or gray. Not very appealing for retail and marketing. After months of agony and fans and customers interested trying to call me out on social media how “I will never release the wheel cleaner” I cut my loses with this partnership and moved on. Being an entrepreneur you must have balls to risk it all no matter what it takes and this is how you become successful. The issue with the first batch of wheel cleaner were the chemicals used were not properly vetted for quality, (they chose the cheapest vendors) and they blended our formula with the incorrect ratios and it caused a serious chemical Ph chain reaction for the color to fall out that ruined everything. Moving forward we took our formula and hired a new team of chemists from one of the most acclaimed chemical brands in the world to redevelop our product and then blend it with ISO-9001 certification to ensure quality control. Using this process we specify every single chemical component comes from our specified vendors who meet the ISO-9001 level or QC. We have continued on this path of production for 3 years with our product line unlike anyone in the auto detailing segment of products. We list our ISO-9001 on our bottles for customers to see. I learned the hard way that price does matter and when things can ruin your brand paying more to produce it just makes more sense. I refuse to switch my production process even though we get solicited monthly on chemical blenders who swear they can do it cheaper I just feel the risk does not outweigh the benefit to increase my profits and take a chance that can sink my brand financially. We are so proud of these new Auto Fanatic products for 2022 because of their exceptional performance and value. These are professional grade products packaged for retail with production costs being no object in our development. This offers the mobile detailer, weekend warrior, car enthusiast and professional shop all the same experience and exceptional performance and value. Don’t forget we do sell bulk and wholesale to professionals and enthusiasts FYI. This is what separates Auto Fanatic Car Care from the masses and with customers all over the globe who love using them that should be testament to what I set out to create for you guys. We do not have a marketing team it is just ME. I do not pay Youtubers stupid monthly allowances for videos or fly them around the world for events. All of our marketing is all done through a grassroots social media approach from fans, customers and myself demonstrating the results with out the big funding the big brands have. Call me old fashioned or different but to me this is far more rewarding to do things this way than to pay for fakery which is all to common today on social media from all brands in all sectors. Use common sense when you see brand pages with 100k followers yet their content gets 25 hits a post it is all FAKE! The metrics do not add up and they pay for bots and likes to make them look well established.

Another exciting thing also going on in my life is moving from NY. This has been my plan for over 10 years and unfortunately life and world events caused such delays up until now. I will not announce where I am moving too until it actually happens but things are moving along which can open up all new opportunities for Auto Fanatic and my other brands. The sky is the limit I feel. I have so many more things I want to do with my life from opening up a restaurant music venue, specialized automotive detail restoration facility, a music recording studio, brokering and selling specialty high end cars at a greater capacity and even creating a Dog accessories brand with social media content called Canine Fanatic. Call me a dreamer but almost everything I ever set out to do in my life of interest I have taken risk and accomplished successfully no matter how many times I got knocked down. The future looks bright all I see is more opportunities and more fun to be had by exploring other passions and interests in my life and combining them. I want to thank each and everyone of you all who has supported my passion and dreams and made Auto Fanatic a reality just by having fun on social media. Sometimes in life things happen that never were planned and those tend to be the most rewarding and fulfilling in our lives. We will continue on with Auto Fanatic and I am seeking a financial investor to help take this brand and kick it out of the park to be on the shelves of major retailers all over the globe. Will I be on Shark Tank one day? You never know but whatever setbacks I faced with the incredible momentum we achieved out of the starting gate in 2018 I am determined to take the brand to that next level as soon at the universe and new relationships align. I am working around the clock on making my move from NY a smooth transition without to many interruptions in business. We have shifted warehousing already out of NY and production and logistics remain in place in two locations in the country. Our communications and with technology we are able to keep this moving along smoothly. We also plan to create a new online store platform for purchasing through A SHOPIFY platform to make the shopping experience more streamlined. The future of us selling on Amazon is dangling on a thread just to be honest with you all because with their rules, fees and negligence we are not making the margins we were originally. It is time for a change and we have some exciting new things in the works that will make purchasing products easier for everyone around the world. There will be some changes to my personal car fleet because of ease to relocate and to get some new cars that I can drive more easily with my current physical disability. I buy cars for myself not specifically to create content like all the car channels do but if I buy something cool and interesting you can be rest assured I will be sharing the experiences with you all. I plan to continue on with demonstrations, car reviews and just enjoying some fun drives with you guys while I grab my cameras and gear and have some fun. Weather should warm up soon it has been 6 months of horrible weather making content creation very difficult.

Stay tuned and please order and check out the new 2022 Auto Fanatic products on our site and there will be more to come as things progress. We have full distribution now in Europe, Asia, Japan, Australia, Qatar, Bahrain, India, Canada and USA. Thank you all and God Bless, Get out there and DRIVE!