About Andy Laird

Full Name Andy Laird
Business Name Laird's Customs
Position Owner, janitor, secretary, labor
City Milan
State IL
Tell us about yourself My name is Andy Laird Owner/labor/secretary/janitor of --- Laird’s Customs.

I’ve been in the upholstery business starting in 1999.
First I attended Wyoming Technical Institute for Auto body and Upholstery. It was a good experience and I learned a lot that you won’t always get by working for someone else. With that said, was it worth the $$? ….. ummm…. maybe?? I would never tell someone not to go, you will learn a lot in a short time.

After school I went to work for a small auto uph. shop for about 2.5 years. That is where most of the real life school happens. It was a great experience, but you’ll never make much $ working for a small shop.

From there I went to work for a seating manufacturer, sewing freight truck and implement seating. Talk about boring!! Sewing the same thing 300-450 times a day gets old really fast. It was a great experience, and the $ was pretty darn good as well. I was able to see first-hand how the manufacturing of automotive seating works. I was also 1 of 3 laborers in the whole company that were non-union, Boy was that an experience!!! Once again I was there for about 2.5 years, then I got bored.

Next was aircraft interior on Small business class jets. Wow that was cool… for about a year. Once again it was a great experience, and I learned a lot! But when all you do is upholster seats and aircraft parts it gets pretty old pretty quick. Everything is some shade of tan, forget about being creative. These are big $ customers there’s no room for creativity there. Then you have all of those regulations…..wow it boggles the mind, though the regs. are there for a reason! I lasted at that job for almost 3 years then got too bored.

The whole time I was doing auto inters on the side, and eventually had enough work lined up to keep myself busy. So in 07 I set out on my own and started Laird’s Customs…. Okay I got fired from the aircraft place. I decided that if they wouldn’t pay me what I was worth, I would show up to work whenever I wanted. Well they made an example out of me and I got fired. They tried to hire me back a month later, but I really was busy on my own. So Here I am building custom auto interiors on my own terms and loving it… well most of the time anyway!
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