Because of his passion and love of cars, he opened up his first garage conducting mechanical repairs for all vehicles. I started going to the garage as a kid and was just excited to see repairs taking place. During school holidays, I would spend all my time in the garage, passing spanners, cleaning up and doing small jobs. My father didn’t want me to go to university but was very much of the understanding that I should learn and know a trade. So, I studied engineering and left with an HND in engineering from Uxbridge college.

I worked with my father, and we expanded into a 3000 square foot garage where we installed a spray booth and a Car Bench jig; with nine people working for us, the garage was a great success, having earned contracts from Rolls Royce and BMW Park Lane.

A family issue changed everything; my father retired, I continued to learn new skills, and Raj, my son, was born. From a young age, Raj was a practical kid, always investigating opening things that weren’t broken to see how they worked. Raj left high school and had no interest in further education and made it clear that he wanted to do something with cars, just like his grandfather and me.

Raj found a training course in America with a campus running in Canada called the MECP Certification, which taught him everything about vehicle electronics, car modification etc.; this meant he would need to go there for months and stay in a hotel, which he did.

When he returned, I often saw cars outside my drive that would be doing all kinds of modifications to customers’ cars; the day I saw him installing a sound system in a Ferrari, I knew it was time to allow him to grow.

The day came, and Raj found a building for sale, which was still in the planning stage, so I decided to buy it. We then needed a name; this was when I remembered some text in a Cadillac brochure reading sheer opulence; I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up. So I entered the word opulence in the thesaurus to see what other words it means, and that’s when the penny dropped. I saw the phrase profusion, and we named our company Profusion Customs and trademarked the name.

Today we not only live together but work together as a team. Raj builds the exhaust systems and handles accounts. In contrast, I oversee the entire business operation and write all the material for media and websites. One thing is for sure we make a great team and make critical decisions together. Raj’s dream has become a reality. I could go on, but today we are proud that hard work, perseverance and commitment to growth are now seeing us purchase our second freehold warehouse in Reading. The key has always been never to give up and work above, and beyond expectations, lessons learned from past generations.