Auto Trim Restyling’s Kevin McGowan Brings Restyling to the Masses

This article originally appeared in the July 2025 issue of THE SHOP Magazine.

Photos courtesy Josh Poulson & Auto Trim Restyling

Tuesday night, Nov. 5, 2024, I was at the SEMA PRO reception that was held on the third level outside the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center as the council’s annual awards were being handed out. Every year it is an amazing honor to even be considered for, let alone win, awards such as Restyler of the Year, PRO Person of the Year or Manufacturer of the Year.

Included in the accolades is the Nat Danas Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors a person’s career commitment to the restyling market. The 2024 winner was Kevin McGowan from Auto Trim Restyling in St. Louis, Missouri.

McGowan is known in industry circles as the “Ambassador of Aftermarket” and has lived up to that nickname in many ways. I recently had a chance to sit down with him and get some details on his beginnings, his challenges and what makes his company really stand out.

CAR DEALERS AS CLIENTS

Growing up on the north side of Chicago, McGowan was a big Cubs baseball fan and loved to attend games. But you can’t talk to him very long without him bringing up his immediate family—wife Wendy (married 35 years), sons Michael and Ryan, and daughters Megan and Rachel.

He recalls Aug. 8, 1988 (8-8-88) as a very special night, not only because of the unique date, but because it was the very first night game in Cubs history. It was also the night he met Wendy through some mutual friends at the game.

Their relationship quickly developed, and they were married two years later on Sept. 1, 1990.

Kevin has always been a natural salesperson and at the time was selling cars while Wendy was working a corporate job with Shell Oil Co. In 1991, Wendy was given the opportunity to take a job in Los Angeles and Kevin happily followed, knowing he’d be able to find something to sell.

He started by selling cellular phones and plans, and even setting up agents, including local car dealers. This gave him his first taste of making car dealers his primary customer base and learning how to sell and support them.

In 1993, Wendy’s career took them to St. Louis. Kevin again found his niche by working for Flex-n-gate, which was a distributor of aftermarket accessories including bumpers, bedliners and hood shields. He sold and delivered them to car dealer parts departments and was very successful growing his territory.

After the company went through some adjustments, McGowan found himself back selling cars until 2000, when a man named Tony Hinton bought a vehicle from him. Hinton was running a local restyling shop in St. Louis and loved McGowan’s passion and energy.

It wasn’t long before McGowan began working with Hinton as a sales rep and together they quickly built the business. In fact, McGowan was able to grow his territory from $1 million in sales to $2 million while focusing more on the products that dealers couldn’t do themselves, such as power sunroofs and leather interiors.

McGowan was thriving in his role of selling to car dealers and being their go-to person for aftermarket accessories.

He remembers making a sales call at Alton Toyota where he heard a manager giving an earful to a salesperson who had been gone for four hours, waiting at a shop down the street while a remote start was being installed. The salesperson had not only given the remote start away to the customer at no charge, but had then taken time away from selling by waiting on the install.

McGowan remembers saying “I can fix that,” explaining how his shop would pick up and deliver cars and also train the dealership’s salespeople on how to present and charge for the products. Thus started a great relationship that continued to grow, as McGowan honed his skills of teaching dealerships how to view aftermarket products as a profit center instead of a necessary evil.

STEPPING UP

Things were going well for McGowan as a sales rep, but around 2005 the restyling business he and Hinton worked for was having some ownership problems. The business was in trouble and the pair’s jobs were on the line, along with those of all the other employees that had become like family.

Thus, in June 2006, McGowan and a partner became the owners of a new company that saved the jobs of all the former shop’s employees and maintained the car dealer business that he had substantially grown.

The only problem was deciding what to call the new company. McGowan remembers sitting at the kitchen table with his kids and talking about how he needed to come up with a name. The kids said he should call it “restyling” and the name Auto Trim Restyling was born.

The business began offering new services and products such as remote starts, DVD entertainment systems, window tint and spoilers. In late 2008, McGowan and his partner bought a building for the fledgling company—only to have the Great Recession hit soon after.

Those were challenging times for ATR and the shop had to do some creative things to keep the doors open and make sure it was taking care of its employees and their families. Like many restyling shops, the company grew strength from those tough times and soon after began to thrive.

In 2012, McGowan bought out his partner and became sole owner of a business he loved dearly. He was able to bring his two sons into the business—Michael is now in sales and Ryan is in the tint/PPF department.

Both are very proud of their father and were able to be there in person, along with Wendy, at last fall’s SEMA Show when the Lifetime Achievement honor was awarded.

MOVING FORWARD

Today, Auto Trim Restyling (atrstl.com) continues to have success with leaders such as James Johnson as shop manager and Lindsey Lawson in sales, along with many other office support staff members, technicians and drivers.

The shop has transitioned into different products over the years including spray-on liners, truck lifts and accessories, PPF, fleet products and chrome delete. It has made a consistent effort to grow its retail business, which today makes up about 30% of total sales.

ATR has shown its creativity and industry leadership by competing twice in the PRO Cup Challenge build competition at the SEMA Show, winning the Fan Favorite award last year for its awesome 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser package. In fact, it turned out so well that the local St. Louis dealer sold it and then eventually it was sold again through a Bring a Trailer auction, showcasing the customization skill and creativity of the ATR team.

McGowan and Auto Trim Restyling have also actively partnered with the St. Louis Auto Show, helping develop an Aftermarket Alley where they have performed live vehicle builds and shown consumers ways to accessorize everything from Ford Mustangs to Jeep Wranglers. He has also been instrumental in helping the industry on a national level with his time as a volunteer on the SEMA PRO Select Committee, where he served three different two-year terms.

McGowan’s passion and willingness to give of his time has always been something to be admired, and our industry as a whole is better for it. In fact, he and his team even won the prestigious Restyler of the Year honor in 2011.

MR. AMBASSADOR

With all the success and joy the business and the industry has brought him, I asked McGowan about the challenges he’s faced over the years. I really appreciated his honesty as he opened up about past struggles with alcohol.

He has been sober since Dec. 26, 2006, and says he’s learned valuable life lessons that he hopes to pass along to his family and others. He is active in the Alcoholics Anonymous community as a volunteer and reminds himself every day how fortunate he was and still is to have a supportive wife and kids despite his past challenges.

Finally, I had to find out was how he got the nickname “Ambassador of Aftermarket.”

He says he was at the St. Louis Auto Show one year where he ran into a couple of his competitors.

One of the guys he was talking to was brand new and working for his competition. That person introduced himself as a “business development manager,” which McGowan knew was just a fancy way of saying “sales rep.”

McGowan found it funny, so when the man asked what his role was, he responded with “Ambassador of Aftermarket.”

People seemed to like the catchy new title and, as a joke, McGowan put it on his business cards to get a laugh out of his dealer customers and vendors. Others, including his product manufacturing reps, soon started using the nickname as well, and over time it stuck.

I think I can speak for many in the industry when I say that he has definitely proven his role as an ambassador in many ways over the years. Here’s to you, and your award, Mr. Ambassador!