INDUSTRY INSIDER: STEVE BRAUS
Author: Justin Fisk	Features | Friday, 26 December 2008 13:51

Photography: Justin Fisk

The car slides to a stop. Out the windshield a discrete shop with a standard-size garage door and no real signage sits in front of us. The snow crunches beneath our feet as we approach the door. That’s when a single, fluorescent-lit window comes into view, exposing several custom painted helmets on display; we’re in the right place. We’re about to enter the world of custom helmet painter, and owner of DB Customs, Steve Braus.

Steve’s brought his brainchild, DB Customs, from its humble beginnings in his basement, to a custom helmet company whose lids have sat upon some of the most recognizable names in the business—and you’d have never known it by talking with the friendly North Dakotan.

Steve, how did you get into the helmet painting business, anyways?

Well, it first started locally with a lot of buddies and guys that I raced with. I threw up a website—CustomSTDs.com at the time—and got together with Justin and Tammy at KTM Cycle Hutt [where he’s been a parts salesperson for years] and everything just sort of started going up from there.

Back in the day, a custom-painted helmet was just the coolest thing possible to have. You know, it was something that pretty much nobody did, unless they were fast as hell but I wanted one and I couldn’t afford one. I had some artistic talent, but not as much a lot of people, and I just did one for myself and haven’t been able to do one for myself since. I’ve been doing them for everyone else! That’s how I got started and it just seemed to click for me.

You’ve done some really cool lids for Blake Dungey. Talk about how that came about.

Well, we’ve painted helmets for a local guy, Tanner Reidman, since he was a little kid and I think Blake must have run into him in Millville or in Minnesota somewhere and must have seen his lids for a while. Then he just gave us a call and was wondering if we could do some helmets for him. He likes to put a lot of his own ideas into his own graphics, which is cool, so that’s how that happened.

How is Blake for a designer?

He’s good. He throws together some different designs that I’d never come up with so it’s a totally different style. It’s a good thing. It’s one of those things where I wouldn’t ever come up with what he does, but at the same time, I can look at what he does and I can spin off of it and it works well.

Then the deal with Blake kind of spun off into a deal with Ryan Dungey.

Yeah. Ryan, being that high up in the pro ranks, has real specific guidelines for sponsor placement on his helmets. He has to have Target in this spot and Rockstar in this spot and unless you’re paying him, you can’t have your name on there. So, Blake came to us with some ideas and said, “I want to have you guys do a gift for Ryan and if you can have it done in a week then we can see if he’ll wear it for Steel City.” We didn’t really think that he’d actually be able to wear it. We thought it’d probably just be a practice helmet or something that he could just put on the shelf as something from Blake to him. He ended up liking it so much and all his sponsor guys that were at the track said that they liked it and that he could wear it if he wanted.

He wore it for practice on Friday and Saturday and then won both of his motos on Sunday wearing it. We were pretty jacked about it!

And, anyone could see it in the magazines or on the web, right?

Yep. It was in a few of the magazines—I think Racer X for sure—and it’s on our website, of course.

You also did a ridiculous “Geisha” lid for Transworld’s editor, Donn Maeda. How did that come about?

Let’s see. We talked to our sales rep there and he said that we should do some of our best work and they’d see if they could get it in the magazine or throw it up online or something. So, we did some research on Donn Maeda and into Japanese heritage and came up with a helmet design that has probably more time into it than any other design we’ve ever done on a helmet. It turned out really sick and really detailed. Yeah, you can see that on our website and it was in Transworld, I think the August issue this year.

Through your modesty I noticed you didn’t mention what you got for a score on that helmet.

(laughs!) Yeah, we got a 10-out-of-10.

Man, the cool stuff just keeps showing up for you. You also did some stuff for Speed TV’ s Jason Britton.

Yeah, when we heard that Tammy at Cycle Hutt was bringing him up for the fourth of July, we knew that we had to do something for him, you know, at least for a gift. I knew he had Colors Own paint his bikes but never saw him in a custom painted lid before. So, we figured that if he couldn’t wear it, then at least it was something that he could put on his shelf. We did a helmet for him with his No Limit logo on one side, the Captain America shield on the other side—just like his bike—put a Captain America image on the top and an image of his America Pit Bull Terrier on the back. We presented it to him and hopefully it’ll be on Speed in January and he liked it. He must have liked it because he wore it that weekend and has worn it several times back in California since then, so he was definitely jacked about that.

You built DB Customs from an idea, to a very cool custom paint shop. What advice would you have for someone with the same dream as you or maybe even just wants a career in the industry?

Man, tough one. The best advice is probably just to take your time and figure out what you’re passionate about, figure out what you enjoy to do, and then figure out how you can make that work.

The last time you and I spoke, you still hadn’t had time to paint a helmet for yourself since the very beginning. Did you get around to it yet?

(laughs!) I don’t have time to paint anything for myself! Everything is for other people, customers, and ever since the start I haven’t really had time to even go ride or go racing, so I figure there’s no reason to. I got stock graphics on my Shoei and I still wear the red one I did for myself and that’s it. That’s the first DB Customs helmet ever. I’ve worn that way too long!

Thanks, Steve!

Thank you.

See more of Steve’s work at DBcustoms.com