Solar creates ‘tricked out’ system for Tri-parish vehicles

When other girls were playing dress-up and imitating supermodels, Tina Solar was demolishing her Barbie dolls with Mattel cars and Tonka trucks.

Solar, a die-hard car fanatic, has owned Midtown Customs on Tunnel Boulevard in Houma for two years. She purchased the business from former owners Ronald and Jennifer Bergeron.

“I really like this job because I get to come in and do what I love to do – Make things elaborate,” she said.

In fact, Solar expanded her business six months ago to include audio, buying out David’s Car Stereo on Main Street in Houma.

Former owners Lewis and Brenda Saltz wanted to get out of the Houma market because their time was split between their Baton Rouge stores and the local site.

“When I got Midtown Customs, I already had audio on my brain,” she said. “I could have started from scratch, but I really wanted a quality line of products. David’s Car Stereo was perfect for me because it had already established a rapport with its product line.”

Such a career is not typically thought of as “woman’s work,” but in Solar’s case, it is.

“People tend to assume that my business is owned by a male and I just work here, but I am the owner and operator,” she said. “As a woman, I can do anything a man does.”

“I have excellent male employees who know about the business. This makes us a team. I don’t consider myself as the ‘boss,’ so to speak. I am the coach, I have a quarterback and the rest are key players,” she added.

Her go-to guys are Midtown Customs’ wheel and accessory installer Steve Domangue and Midtown Sound’s audio installer Ryan Callahan. “These guys are good at what they do. I don’t have to worry about anything. I have total confidence in Steve and Ryan,” Solar said.

Her main focus is giving customers what she values the most – good service. This philosophy is instilled in her front store guys Marco Chacon at Midtown Customs and Jamie Breaux at Midtown Sounds.

“The best service starts and ends with them. They have to leave that lasting impression on the customers,” she said. “Marco and Jamie already know customers come first.”

An example would be when customers come in, the employees greet them and say, “Thank you for coming,” even if they don’t make a purchase.

“We have a hassle-free business. Are we perfect? No. Do we make mistakes? Yes. But we are destined to make our customers feel good when they come in to the shops and when they leave,” Solar said.

Her target customer base is not what you would typically expect. The businesswoman feels that her clientele includes 18 to 36 year olds (which is the norm), with the occasional 40-plus man and a few women sprinkled in.

“We are a growing market,” she said.

With both shops being owned by the same person, Solar has seen a rise in her clientele.

“I can send my customers from the custom shop over to Midtown Sound and vice-versa,” she said. “You know you can’t have one without the other.”

The competition hasn’t worried Solar either. “I tell my workers not to worry about the competition because the only people who can put us out of business is ourselves. If you do good work you don’t have to worry about the competition. The customer will come where they get the best service,” she said.

Undoubtedly, Solar has to prove herself. “Men test me all the time to see if I know what I am talking about, and I do. My work is evident. I have been doing this for a long time,” she said. “Sometimes I talk to men who just started working in this line of work and I have to tell them, I was doing this when you were in diapers.”

Her passion for souped-up automobiles started in 1988 when she turned the ignition of her white 1977 Monte Carlo with the baby-blue vinyl top. She turned the classic automobile into a man’s dream car that was fit for a woman.

“I was always into muscle cars because I thought they were really neat. I looked in car magazines all the time,” Solar said. “No one in my family really fixed up cars. My grandfather had a few Chevelles in the back, but that was it.”

Back then, the popular thing was to add the big Cager wheels and 6-by-9 woofer speakers in the rear dashboard of the car, she said.

Solar added a touch by designing the front seats to swivel toward the doorframe.

“It was a big car and all the guys loved it,” she said.

At age 37, Solar has had other careers. But her passion for fixing up automobiles remains.

While she was still fixing up cars for fun, Solar began working as a construction site surveyor in the early-1990s. The job was a pleasure and made her a nice chunk of change. However, she said, it felt like something was missing.

An opportunity arose for her to work at Accessory World in Houma for a good friend, James Caro. Solar was in heaven until Accessory World changed management. Constant battles to offer good customer service drove her to leave a job she loved.

“I had reached a point where I felt like I couldn’t please the customers any longer,” she said.

Solar went back to the construction field for a short period of time because she needed employment. She soon was hired as a manager at Hart’s Furniture in Houma.

Again, her pockets were lined with a lot of Ben Franklins, but her desire to fix cars was still brewing. To satisfy her passion, Solar continued to hook up her own cars. However, good service was still hard to find.

“People have grown accustomed to bad service and that’s not the way it should be. You should give your customers what they need,” she said.

Solar’s battle with poor customer service reached its boiling point when she wanted to purchase rims for one of her cars. She made several calls to different shops looking for the perfect rim, but couldn’t get a response on the prices or types of rims each shop carried.

“I had money to spend and it was looking like no one wanted it. I couldn’t get anyone to call me back and I was growing restless at the idea that I couldn’t get good service,” Solar said.

This changed when Jennifer Bergeron called her back at Midtown Customs. Solar recalls the day she intended to purchase the wheels. “We talked about the time back in 1999 when I helped her out with some stuff when they first opened. I was working at Accessory World then,” Solar said. “She remembered.”

During the conversation, Solar said she mentioned that she wanted to get back into the field. “I was just about to write the check for my wheels and I was telling her that I missed working in the field and I wanted to possibly own my own business one day. Then Jennifer asked, ‘You want to buy this one?'” Solar recalled. “We talked about it some more, and I made a few calls and then I told her, ‘You just sold your business.'”

The rest, as she says, is history.

“People tend to assume that my business is owned by a male and I just work here, but I am the owner and operator,” said Tina Solar, pictured. At the helm of Midtown Customs and Midtown Sound of Houma, Solar has carved a niche doing what she loves. * Photo by SOPHIA RUFFIN