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August 1st, 2018 by Emmariah Holcomb
Thousands of car windows are tinted every day, but have you ever stopped to think about how many windows could be tinted in an eight hour work day? That was the question that motivated XPEL and dozens of window tinters to set a record in the Guinness Book of World Records on Sunday, July 29.
It all started when Mike Burke, SunStoppers Window Tinting owner, attended XPEL’s dealer conference where a guest speaker gave insight on how he set a Guinness Book record related to shooting nerf guns. “I said we should do that for film,” Burke said, and the idea took off from there.
The next step was getting a film supplier on board and finding a location big enough to accommodate the amount of vehicles and installers. That’s when Burke contacted his longtime friend, Charlie Pierce, the owner of Town & Country Ford in Charlotte, N.C. Pierce wasn’t sold on the idea at first, but after some convincing he agreed. Then XPEL representatives and SunStoppers’ installers met there Sunday for the event.
XPEL supplied the film. “For us it’s just the kind of thing we would do. So when Mike mentioned it I thought about it for all of ten minutes and said let’s do it,” Ryan Pape, XPEL president and chief executive officer said.
The challenge, was to tint a minimum of 300 windows in an eight hour work day. Only full panes of glass counted for the record which meant quarter windows were excluded from the final number. But SunStoppers chose to tint the quarter windows even though they wouldn’t be counted. The reason was not only to have a finished look for all of the tinted vehicles, but it also went towards the overall customer experience.
Those who wanted a chance to get their vehicle tinted signed up in advance for the contest. Hundreds signed up and out of those selected ten cars per hour were driven in to be tinted. All of the roll-up side windows and back windows were tinted at no cost. Several Ford F-150 trucks from the lot were tinted. Its windows were pre-cut prior to the event’s start.
“My main concern throughout the whole day making sure we did not run out of film before we tinted the 300 windows,” Burke added. The pressure was on, seeing as more than 35 cars were tinted within the first hour. “It’s creating a lot of awareness for window film,” Pape said. “The benefits are way beyond setting a world record,” Pape mentioned.
Dozens of guests and community members watched as installers filmed on more than one hundred vehicles. As more cars and trucks were being finished it was clear that the goal of 300 windows had been reached long before the time was up. “We not only wanted to get the record but we also wanted to tint as many windows as possible,” Burke said, so they kept going beyond 300 and chose a special car for the final tint.
The car is owned by Kyle Lindsey, the social media guru with more than one million subscribers to his YouTube channel and other social media. He streamed the event live while patiently waiting for his car to be tinted. The crowd was silent as his car was tinted in just a few minutes … then the Guiness representative counted the approved windows.
The SunStoppers team of tinters tinted 438 windows on 170 vehicles and set a record in less than eight hours. “Our future is strong and we want to do more events like this, find more ways to partner with our customers, and try to find ways to help them grow their business,” Pape said.
