Meet Patrick Warren

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patrick Warren. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Patrick, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

When I was a kid, I loved to draw cars, and I would fill up notebooks full of my car designs. My love for design has stayed with me my entire life. The design process is still very enjoyable to me and very rewarding. I still get excited when I see my drawings turned into real products. The most rewarding part of my job is when a customer gets their custom wheels and calls me to tell me how much they love them. I think that process, creating something new and then having people love it, is what keeps me so motivated to work hard and stay creative.

I also am competitive, and when I see other wheel brands come out with great designs, it sparks my competitive nature. Then I go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something better than what is currently on the market. The ever-changing nature of the wheel business means that things never get old and never get stale. Car brands are always releasing new styles, and I have to create wheels that will look good on and complement each new car style. Also, each car brand has specific design languages, and I have to create designs that match the overall feel of the car.

For example, Lamborghinis tend to be very sharp, angular and aggressive, while Porsches tend to be rounder and more understated. So when I design wheels for customers with a Lamborghini, the designs tend to be more angular and aggressive compared to those for customers with a Porsche. My purpose and work ethic are born from my passion and love for what I do.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am the owner of Litespeed Racing, and I design, manufacture and sell custom wheels for sports cars and race cars. My customers come to me looking to improve the look and performance of their car with a set of custom-made wheels. The automotive wheel business is very competitive, so it requires a lot of creativity and hard work to stay relevant, but it is also a very fun and rewarding job.

Some of my customers are professional race teams and drift teams. One of the most exciting parts of my job is going to Formula Drift events and seeing my drivers race with the custom wheels I made for them. One of my customers broke the Pikes Peak record for fastest time with my wheels, and it felt like a victory for me because the weight reduction of the lightweight wheels actually improves acceleration, top speed, braking and handling. I felt so proud to see my wheels on a record-setting race car, and I knew I played a small role in helping his car be the lightest and fastest it could be.

I want my custom wheel designs to look great, but I always want them to be functional. So I do a lot of testing to optimize the weight and strength of the wheels. Right now, I am working on wheel designs that can also improve aerodynamics. This will help with acceleration and top speed, but will also improve fuel economy and EV range. Making wheels is a combination of engineering and creative design, and pushing the boundaries of each.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

One very important skill that has helped me many times along my journey is the ability to take criticism. As a designer, there will always be people who have different opinions regarding your designs than you do. Many times, my customers do not like something that I absolutely love, and I have to be able to take their criticism without being mad or feeling hurt. It is easy to get attached to the design work that you do, but you have to be able to change directions, start over and bring a high level of creativity and passion even after your first design ideas were rejected.

Understanding consumer psychology is very important for any design-related job. Being a successful designer is not about making the absolute most creative designs. It is about making creative designs that people actually want to buy. So the ability to understand what consumers want, and what triggers the desire to buy, is very important.

Finally, being an expert in my field has helped me so much. My customers trust me because I can answer any of their car-related questions with a knowledgeable answer. I always stay up to date on what’s going on in the car industry, from new model releases to new technologies and innovations. This helps me make wheels that keep up with current and emerging automotive technology.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

The biggest challenge that I am facing right now is the tariff wars. The tariffs are impacting my business in several ways, including in some ways that people might overlook. The tariffs were supposed to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and help make international trade more fair for American companies, but in my case, they are achieving neither of these objectives.

My wheels are made from advanced materials like forged magnesium and carbon fiber. I source material from all over the world and do final assembly here in the USA. There are no suppliers that make the raw magnesium I use in the USA, and the cost to set up magnesium production in the USA is prohibitively high. So I have no choice but to buy the magnesium from overseas. I was able to minimize the impact of the tariff by importing the raw materials in small batches whose total value falls under the “De Minimis” rule, and therefore had no tariffs applied. Unfortunately, the long-standing “De Minimis” has been ended, so now I am looking at new, creative ways to deal with the tariffs.

I sell wheels to customers all over the world, and now all of my international customers ask me if my wheels will have tariffs on them when I ship to their country. It is impossible for me to answer that because the tariffs change from week to week and are different for each country. My custom wheels take several weeks to manufacture, so I have no way of knowing what the tariff will be once the wheels are done and ready to ship to my customers. I have had a number of customers decide that they are not willing to risk buying an expensive item from an American company because they don’t want to end up paying 50% or 100%+ more in tariffs. So this trade war is really not making international trade easy for me. The tariffs are changing weekly, if not daily, and I am always looking for ways to deal with them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.litespeedracing.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-warren-565ab13/