I'd like to take the time to clear the air a bit about our service, products, and overall commitment to our customers.

In 1990, my best friend's father let me drive his 750iL. While I let my best friend drive my beaten to death Toyota Camry. I was hooked. But my family couldn't afford those "fancy shmancy" cars.

In 1992, my double's partner's father bought him a graduation present - a 318is, an e30, 5spd. While that car wasn't fast, it was beyond fun to drive. Later that same year, his mother got an E36 325i - literally the first in Norther California and I was the 4th person to drive it - first outside of him and his parents. WOW I'd never driven such a perfectly balanced car. Again, the hook was sinking deeper.

It would be 8 long years before I would fortuitously acquire my own BMW - a black 740i for my wife and the kids. I began feverishly researching and understanding the car's every nuance. Got some mods, but was more interested in keeping the car stable for the growing family. But I was in pergatory, as I had to commute in - yes, you guessed it - a Toyota Camry (a 97 at this point).

Commuting 100 miles per day made me realize that if I was doing this, I better do it in a great car that I enjoyed, so I began my quest for the perfect commuter. Lo, along came an M3/4. But the honeymoon was over 2 months later when the winter months came and I literally couldn't see when driving home after a long day's work.

This is what began a 2 month quest to find better headlights. I searched high and low and finally fell upon a set of ZKWs that I purchased for $500. But I had heard about this new "Xenon" lighting and decided I had to have it. So $450 more out the door I could finally see at night. At this time, I had begun as an avid member of a fledgling community of cast-offs from another forum - www.bimmerforums.com became my home.

I was granted moderator status by the PTB, then later "promoted" to Super Moderator status within a few weeks due to my constant involvement on the forum.

It was purely by chance that I was presented with an opportunity to enter the aftermarket parts business by a friend of mine in Florida, who had fallen onto a prime shipment of ZKWs that he didn't have the money to purchase. We decided to do it together. Both of us were somewhat aprehensive, but we were also recently "victims" (jokingly of course) of the high price of ZKWs. Mind you, at the time, ZKWs were selling for no less than $500 for the pair for an E36, and no one was importing them in high volume since the Euro was at a very high 1.20 (little did we know how great that exchange rate really was).

So, we decided to do something nice for the community. We sold over 50 ZKW combos for negative profit each in one month. But, I started Umnitza as a result of this venture.

This was over 4 years ago. At the time, I had wanted to do nothing more than deliver the best products in lighting to the most discerning clients. People who valued their lighting needs as much as their performance, handling, or stopping needs.

Along the way, I poured my heart into the business - often driving directly to the terminal to deliver packages at 10pm, personally building and assembling last minute changes to orders that had body shops waiting for the parts to release the cars, staying up til all odd hours of the night to answer customer emails, and of course handling all the calls to make sure everyone was personally taken care of.

This could not scale. It didn't scale very quickly. As we added more custom products that required our "touch" and assembly, our motto for superior service was strained by the rising tide of happy customers and more orders.

This was a double-edged sword - as some on this and other forums have dualy noted - I hired staff. Initially, the staff was very good, but sometimes, good staff needs to move on, and you don't always get a good notification. It takes time to train a new staff, which may or may not be there in 6 months because much of the staff we afford (in order to keep our prices as low as possible) is relatively transient by nature.

As we grew, demands on my personal time have grown more and more. Both personal and business demands increased to such a degree that we had to move to a larger facility, one that could not only warehouse more parts, but also give my staff the freedom to build parts without falling over each other.

At any one time, we have 3-5 people working for us, not including me. Through the various increases and decreases in both staff, products, and orders, we've stumbled. Custom orders - such as those for X5 angel eyes, E46 Facelifted Headlights, Pre-Installed Xenon Fogs, and countless other innovations that we have come up with have been our downfall in some cases.

Those cases, we all here assure you, are few, but may seem like many to the online community. We are not discounting them. In fact, we embrace them as a sign that we have an affect on our customers and we need to do better by them.

We are not a monolith, we are a good group of workers, that strive to do the best we can for our customers.

In summary, this post serves to illustrate that from humble beginnings, through trials and increases in business, we are your humble servants for products and support. While, we do not condone fraud and will fight to the end for deceiptful attempts by either customers or non-customers to defraud us and thereby raise the average customer's product cost, we do treat everyone with respect and honesty and ask that you give us the benefit of the doubt when considering products for your car.

A small thanks to Mike Tang - who came to us today in the search for improved lighting for his X5 - who also let us know about this forum, and the need to improve our reputation on it.

Thanks Mike, here's your car