Gear up your garage: Area company specializes in items for your garage

For those who are seriously into cars and other motorized vehicles, garages are hangouts. With these car people in mind, the founders of Garage-Toys, a family-owned Big Lake business that annually sells about $3 million worth of merchandise that's connected with garages, have found a lucrative market niche.

Garage finishing is a big trend these days, so the company, born in 1999, benefited from good timing. Richard Hinrichs, his son Paul and daughter Jennifer own it. Their spouses are the only other employees. Garage-Toys has done so well that it recently built a showroom that Hinrichs calls a "car cave" because, he explains, it surrounds folks with "stuff they like to look at for their garage." While you won't find yourself surrounded at the company's website, you will find all sorts of products - the company carries about 1,500 - and all can be visualized tucked away nicely in a dream garage.

The company's name aptly describes what it stocks. Want a nice floor in your garage? Garage-Toys sells (and installs, if you want) interlocking floor tiles that come with logos for Dodge Hemi, Corvette and so on. The company is also the biggest distributor for Rustoleum epoxy floor coatings.

The company's biggest sellers, however, are stainless steel cabinets, toolboxes and workstations. Laser cut and tig welded to company specs, they're made of kitchen-quality, powder-coated stainless steel with high nickel content so they'll never stain. The four toolbox models include two that are 48 inches wide that Hinrichs thinks are unique to Garage-Toys. Its seven-piece storage system includes a rolling closet, a two-door cabinet and a 96-inch workbench. There's even a magnetic wall backer for hanging tools. "Some people line their garage walls with 10 closets or 20 cabinets," Hinrichs says.

Garage-Toys also sells a variety of vehicle lifts. Hinrichs thinks his showroom may be the only place in the Upper Midwest with two- and four-post lifts on display. The company also carries hot rod parts,

wheels, and auto parts, accessories and electronics. There are power converters, vacuums, detailing items (including a rolling stool), parking devices, security systems, tire monitor systems, leak-/ slip-resistant mats, ramps, fire extinguishers, smoke/ CO detectors and FM audio transmitters (to play iPods wirelessly through car radios). There are gift items (car clocks and watches, pub tables, a gas-powered blender, a cooler-size infra-red grill), multi-ball truck mounts, and truck, boat, golf kart and ATV accessories. You can also buy trailer equipment, jacks and dollies and covers for vehicles from RVs on down. Garage-Toys also sells float boats.

"We try to carry things you don't find elsewhere," Hinrichs says. Most of it is elsewhere once it's sold. The company keeps a warehouse in California, for example, because it does half its business there. Another 10 percent is international. Minnesota makes up about 20 percent of company business, largely because Garage-Toys exhibits at big area car shows like "Back to the `50s" and the "Car Craft Summer Nationals."

If all that's listed above isn't enough, Wolfgang Press will publish a book by Hinrichs on garage design this spring.