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It was our founder's 15th birthday, when he received his first airbrush. He began selling his art to friends by word of mouth. Soon after, he started traveling to flea markets on the weekends. His father supported him by financing a Wells Cargo trailer to travel to fairs, shows, and anywhere that he could set up and paint.
While still in high school our founder would travel everyday after school 60 miles to and from Cocoa Beach, FL to paint. His artwork was painted on just about any surface including t-shirts, hats, jackets, vehicles, motorcycles, helmets, surfboards, fingernails, sand dollars, license plates, etc. In 1996, Airstrike, Inc was founded. Airstrike landed a contract with Ron Jon's Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, FL. The world's largest surf shop with over 52,000 square feet. Airstrike was the only airbrush retail operation that Ron Jon's ever had in the company's 30 year history.
Airstrike provided a variety of airbrush services for the Ron Jon customers. They painted t-shirts, surfboards, tire covers, license plates, and just about anything the customers wanted.
One day the director of retail from Kennedy Space Center came into Ron Jon's and approached Airstrike with a proposition of painting custom license plates for the space center gift shop. That project started the license plate division.
 Immediately Airstrike started soliciting the new wholesale license plates. The "100" series began with only 46 designs that consisted of basic airbrushed backgrounds with silhouettes.
In 1997 Airstrike closed the Ron Jon's location and opened their first corporate office. They were now providing products & services at corporate and retail markets.
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The company's first service was the license plates. The second was web services, which included design and development, hosting, and maintenance. The third was contract printing. Printing catalogs, flyers, and business cards in gang runs, they offered lower costs for individual jobs. The fourth was illustration services for ad layouts, packaging, business identity, and merchandise designs.
The strongest attributes of their design capabilities consisted of airbrush, computer, and mixed media. This provided visual solutions for communication objectives.
Airstrike realized the market potential for a high quality license plate. The current license plates were lacking detail, resulting from 2-dimensional silhouettes on airbrushed backgrounds that were hand painted.
Airstrike spent over 6 months on research and development to engineer a more detailed, 3-dimensional, photographic reproduction of art onto license plates. Conventional methods didn't allow this, but finally the research and development paid off, and the first plate, P200 "Bengal Tiger" was introduced in October 1997. 
The first focused market introduction was in January 1998. Immediate success proved that Airstrike had introduced a great product. By June, the company changed focus to solely marketing and producing license plates. The previous services were no longer offered.
In 1998 Airstrike was contracted to make custom license plates for Universal Studios. The project included designs with E.T., Terminator, King Kong, Back to the Future, Betty Boop, Popeye, and many more. Not long after they were making custom license plates for Walt Disney, Busch Gardens, Mastercraft, and many other clientele.
In 1999 Airstrike started licensing artwork for the product. The first license was with The Collegiate Licensing Company for college teams. Later that year, the artists Don Ray and Al Agnew were added. In 2000 Chrisitan Riese Lassen , Ford Motor Company, and General Motors were added. In 2001 Nancy Glazier was added. In 2002 Larry Dyke and Tom duBois were added. In 2003 The Hautman Brothers Collection was added to increase the market for the Airstrike license plates. In 2004 Carl Brenders, Terry Isaac, and Robert J. May were added. In 2006 Randy McGovern and Matthew Hillier were added
In March 2003 Airstrike launched a new product, key chains with matching artwork to complement the license plates.In July 2004 Airstrike launched Fine Art Magnets to expand their product base. |
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Jason, thanks for the great work you did on the license plate. My wife was completely floored when she saw it. The cat is her favorite (I'm second, maybe third place) and she has nicknamed the car the "Beau-Mobile." After 27 years of marriage, I finally got it right for an anniversary gift. Thanks for your help and the great job. Brian Hinman.
