- [Man] Yeah, either works good.
(laughing) Woo hoo!
- Whoo!
When we're kids, people like you, people like me
dream about becoming astronauts,
race car drivers,
professional log cabin builders.
And we often never get there.
And I'm not really sure why,
still think I can build mini log cabin better
than that one (bleeps)-head Ryan
in my third grade class
that obviously couldn't build it as well as I could,
but that's besides the point.
You know when really go into something,
parental pressures and college
pretty much end up making you, like,
not go into whatever it is that you wanted to become
when you were a kid.
Except for this one.
But every once and awhile,
somebody makes it through school and the parental pressures
to truly go into something
they truly, really, (bleeps) love.
So come on, pull up a chair,
maybe your favorite blanket,
and lets learn how Chris, a normal Johnny car guy,
created his own wheel company.
Chris Sempek, or Sempek as we'll call him,
was just like any other boy in the good old US of A.
He enjoyed car models, Legos, Gran Turismo,
and Need for Speed.
Entering high school,
there was a certain movie that was coming out
that had never really been done before.
I live my life a quarter mile at a time.
For those ten seconds or less.
I'm free. (giggles)
Oh, yeah.
Chris ended up snagging his very own
1997 Acura Integra to modify.
Neat.
Twenty years may have passed
from the first Fast and Furious movie.
Holy (bleeps), that was twenty years ago.
But Chris dove into headfirst into everything
you could expect the 1997 Acura Integra to have
after watching the first Fast and Furious movie.
APC Euro tail lights, cold air intake,
and a $40 muffler to boot.
But it didn't end there, oh no.
Little Chris wanted to have a little bit more power
to go along with those damn killer chrome tail lights
and he ended up fabricating his own turbo.
To his race car.
What did you do when you were 16?
That thing kicked it up to 255 beautiful ponies.
Chris wanted to keep building
neat after-market things for cars,
like most people do when they're a car enthusiast,
but really enjoyed wheels the most
because it could change the mood of your car.
That's a little foreshadowing for ya,
if you know what I'm saying.
So Chris went straight to college to do
that.
Chris rolled up to snag that mechanical engineering degree
in a Honda S-2000 on Advans, Buddy Club coilovers,
and an exhaust.
He may have picked those wheels up at Fitmentindustries.com,
because we have it all online.
Back to the story.
Maybe not true, but anyway,
young Chris would then for through four years of college
to learn mechanical engineering
while turning into an
a-dult
by selling his S-2000 for an IS-300.
Not too sure
where he wanted to land in the automotive field,
Sempek began to design wheels using school programs
and posting them on Instagram.
For those saying the only job you could land
from posting on Instagram is modeling,
you wrong!
The designs posted ended up getting
more than enough attention to warrant
a DM into you know, Chris',
you know what I'm saying.
Chris was getting inquiries to build wheels
for interested parties.
Enter friend Stevan Knope.
Or Nope.
Or K-nop.
We don't really know.
And he wanted to set of three-piece wheels
for his LS powered S14.
Enter from the other side, Terry from Fortunado,
who wanted a set of wheels for his M5.
Wow.
Stevan's wheels would be a 17-inch concave 5-spoke
combined with OZ Futura style wheels
with a Volt wheel and ARP hardware.
Which looks awfully similar
to another wheel that they launched recently.
Mm-hm, it really does.
It looks pretty similar.
Terry wanted 19-inch BBS LM style wheels
that Chris made by getting the forged wheels
made at a local CNC shop and hoops from CCW.
Those wheels were assembled with blow torches,
love, and probably a little bit of guessing.
Because when you really think about it,
wheels aren't just like drawing a design
and plugging it into a CNC machine.
For some reason there's this thing called,
math
and wheel tool belts
and (beeps) knowing how to do it.
Chris learned that the hard way.
From his first wheel designs,
the local machine shop taught Chris
how to properly understand
how the machines made these wheels,
because Chris was like, I thought I was pretty close,
and the machine shop was like,
pretty close is relative, Chris.
Pretty close is relative.
But after all, this was his first time making wheels.
What do you expect?
You try making something that you actually draw on paper.
I can't (beeps) draw anything.
And from there, Chris found out
exactly what he wanted to do.
One could say he wheelie found what he loved.
One could say the wheelies really worked hard
to wheelie figure it out.
(laughs)
Over time, Chris began traveling to local car shows
until meeting D2 Forged
and began designing wheels for the brand.
But it didn't last long because in 2013 Chris jumped back
to freelance full time for different brands.
He did notice something.
Everyone was in (beeps) California
making wheels.
Not New York.
Like the start of a rite-of-passage movie,
Chris packed up all of his stuff into his IS 300
and moved across the country to California,
with hopes of becoming a full-time wheel designer.
A brief stunt at the local home furniture business,
and he finally landed his dream gig.
In 2014, Chris became the lead production designer
and engineer at Raceline Wheels.
Whoo!
Making the designs for trailer UTV, ATV, passenger car,
and everything between,
Chris had finally began to start his dream job.
Living the dream.
Only one problem.
Chris wanted to make wheels for like his tuner buddies.
Didn't really have a whole lot of trailer buddies.
Not really a whole lotta UTV buddies, I would say.
Mostly the tuner guys, ya know?
That's why he was in it to begin with.
Not saying that the trailer is a bad thing to get into but,
ya know?
I just figured that if you were a tuner guy,
you'd probably want to make tuner wheels.
Getting the okay from the man above,
Chris began work on his true dream job,
a little side job that would become to be known as
Kansei Wheels.
Meaning thoughtfully engineered
with the customer's emotional
and psychological needs in mind,
Kansei began to take shape.
Chris wanted to find a way to increase,
like to show his passion of, like,
the community in every wheel design for Kansei.
And for that to happen Chris designed
all of the flagship wheels himself
using the community feedback
and friends that he had out there.
'Cause he has friends.
Must be nice.
It took over a year to finalize the concept for the brand
and even ended up launching the company
with three designs.
The KNPs, the Corsa, and the Tandem.
Progress.
In 2018 Raceline Wheels lended a portion of their SEMA booth
to the launch of Kansei Wheels.
And it's actually where Chris jumped out,
in front of the aisle way,
to stop Mari and I from walking to get
our much needed taco break at SEMA.
Which, I will still hold that to him till the end of time.
Still never ate that day.
Since that November evening,
Kansei Wheels has been involved in anything and everything
to whatever it possibly can actually be involved in.
Kansei Wheels makes wheels for enthusiasts
because Chris is an enthusiast.
Which sounds really redundant,
but you'd be pretty hard pressed to find people
in the automotive community that make wheels
that are actually enthusiasts.
The team's pretty small.
There's only three of 'em at the helm of the brand,
but that's what allowed Kansei to actually
move into whatever the community wants.
Whether that's the KNP with its tried and true
five style with tandem for the massive break clearance.
Or the Corsa for people that enjoy
a mesh design with modern technology
that doesn't weigh an arm and a leg.
Not entirely sure that's how that sort of
appropriation is used,
but the wheel designs themselves are continuously evolving
because they need to.
From BTE profiles to the types of oil coolant they use
to actually make the wheels,
every detail is what makes Kansei, Kansei.
Chris's dreams were helped on by people like
Terry from Fortunado,
Dan Young from CCW,
the car community itself
and friends and family within Raceline Wheels.
And starting a wheel company
because you're just a passionate car guy
doesn't really come around too often.
In a world of everyone chasing a dollar,
Chris is chasing a dream
and that's what makes this story so great.
If you're looking for Kansei Wheels,
or any wheels, tires, or suspensions,
check out Fitmentindustries.com
I'm Alex.
You can find us on Instagram, @fitmentindustries.com
Or if you want to watch pictures of my cats,
you can find mine down there too.
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I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
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Peace.