At trade shows or on their YouTube channel where they post training videos, they are “Slim Sheddy” and “Vinyl Vixen,” celebrities in the wrapping world.
At home or in their shop, they’re just Mike and Jess, owners of a small business who try to keep a cool, relaxed vibe at the business and are laid back about everything — except the quality of the work product.
“We’re all about the vibe,” Jessica Bonifacio, the "Vinyl Vixen," said. “The only thing we’re picky about is the work.”
The business is Wrapsesh, also known online as Vinyl Vixen Wraps, and the service provided is mostly automotive restyling through vinyl graphics, but Bonifacio and Michael Shedd — a k a Slim Sheddy — point out it could be anything — boats, bike, scooters, helmets, helicopters. They have even done wheelchairs and prosthetics. The wraps can be done for color purposes, protection from outside elements like ultraviolet light and rocks, branding or just for personalization. Custom graphics are some of their favorite work.
The customers can be individuals looking to protect their expensive cars, small businesses with fleets or car-show enthusiasts looking to make their car stand out. But they are picky about who they work with, too. They do not want to churn out product for large businesses.
“If people want fast, cheap or easy, there's a hundred shops here that do that kind of stuff,” Bonifacio said. “And that's not us.”
The two grew up in the Safford/Thatcher area of southeast Arizona, and though only a year apart in a small school of about 400 students, they never spoke to each other then.
“Mike was the popular jock guy that everybody liked and was friends with,” Bonifacio said. “And we never talked in high school because I was kind of how I am now, the little rebel.”
They really met after coming to the Valley, Mike for school at Universal Technical Institute, where he became a certified mechanic, and Jess just for more opportunity than could be found in the Gila River Valley. They met through a mutual friend at a club in Tempe and were soon dating.
Soon thereafter, Bonifacio saw Shedd in action at work. By then, he had found oil changes and turning wrenches monotonous and had moved into the more artistic realm of installing vinyl wraps.
“I watched him wrap a bumper on a car, and it was just really, really interesting to me,” she said. “And I was like, 'this is very artistic,' even though I'm not mechanical or super into cars by any means.”
That got her researching into female installers, locally or online, but she hardly could find any. Shedd did not know of any either.
“I was like, ‘well, why aren't girls doing this? I feel like I could totally do this. It has nothing to do with knowing cars,’” Bonifacio said. “So we convinced his boss to let me come in as an apprentice under him.”
He taught her everything he knew for a year and a half. When they later had a falling out with the shop owner, they started out on their own, lacking investment money and not knowing anything about how to run a business, but having one thing in their corner — Shedd’s budding reputation as an installer.
“I was always called by contractors because I was known in the industry for being decent,” he said. “And, yeah, they would call.”
Meanwhile, Bonifacio was establishing her own brand as a female wrapper under her alter ego, “Vinyl Vixen,” on Instagram. Combining that with coming up with the name “Slim Sheddy” for Shedd led to Wrapsesh as the company name.
The couple also has used YouTube training videos to show off their personalities and extend their brand.
“We’re just going to be how we are and show people how to do this in a goofy way pretty much,” Shedd said. “Whatever way we do it, and people liked it.”
So much so that they are recognized at auto shows — with “Sheddy” and “Vixen” on their name tags — and people come from out of state to have them do their wraps.
They have built a reputation for being able to wrap anything and doing “overwrapping” right into under the hood and in door jambs, producing high quality results. With Shedd’s mechanical background, they can even take cars apart for the overwrapping. It takes time, they said, but it is done right and lasts.
It also is work done by Shedd and Bonifacio, not just as installers but artists, they said. They are a small business with a few workers preparing the vinyl, but the two of them doing the installations.
“It's not like we have 10 installers working in the back full time, all the time like you're going to see with some bigger graphic shops,” Bonifacio said. “You are paying for the owners here for us as the artist to work on your car. So it's a higher price point. It takes longer to get in with us … but you're paying for us to work on it.”
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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