It may not be the streets of Hollywood Boulevard, but a Mandan man is carving out a unique niche in the automotive world from his small shop just off the "Strip" in Mandan.

Nic Cruz has taken his hobby to the next level and by the year's end, he hopes to gross $100,000 in sales customizing car headlights.

CiNcity Designs LLC opened in April in a 1,500-square-foot shop just behind Kroll's Diner.

The business name is his first name, backward.

Cruz, an Air Force veteran stationed four years at Minot, came to the Bismarck-Mandan area a little more than a year ago.

While in the military, he received his training in avionics technology, or aircraft electronics.

It was while working at Capitol Avionics that he tricked out his 2004 Nissan 350Z headlights, prompting requests from friends he do the same to their rides.

As much circumstance as anything, Cruz says the word got out and soon he was doing the custom jobs as a source of extra income.

Cruz's wife, Jessica, was diagnosed with cancer about that time and it was a way to earn some cash to help with the medical bills. Jessica Cruz, a teacher at Shiloh Christian, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in February 2007 at the age of 23.

Cruz said he sold the Nissan to help pay the bills while they were looking for a home in the Bismarck-Mandan area while his wife was undergoing cancer treatment at St. Alexius Medical Center.

He said it's been kind of a round-about way of starting up his own business. But thanks to a little luck, a lot of work and faith, things are working out so far.

"Jessica has been in remission for about a year now … We really owe our lives and our success to God and support we've had from family and friends and our church family at Century Baptist," he said.

So, with a $1,000 investment on his credit card, Cruz was off and running with CiNcity Designs.

Cruz works mainly with imports - Nissans, Mitsubishi and the like - basically doing what his customers want on a case-by-case basis. And, all of his contacts come via the Web on his site www.cincitydesigns.com.

Cruz says he gets around 20,000 hits a day on the site from all over the world. He has done custom work for people in South Africa, New Zealand, England - pretty much all across the globe.

So, what is it Cruz actually does? He said the most basic and most often called-for job is adding light emitting diode to headlight assemblies, giving them a little something that the next guy doesn't have. And there are a lot of HID (high intensity discharge) orders as well for those who want to stand out a little and see better at night.

And, he says, while there's not a big market for his kind of expertise in the area, it's big in other parts of the country and abroad. "The guys that are into this are the 18-35-year-olds who have some disposable income," he said. "They take their cars to shows like Hot Summer Nights in Orlando or Los Angeles to show them. Everyone wants to out-do the next guy," he said.

Cruz also does neon lighting, and perhaps one of the most unique requests he's had so far is something he's working on now: a customer who wants a 2½-inch LCD video screen inside the headlight so it will play what's being played on the in-dash DVD simultanously.

Cruz has hired one full-time employee since he opened shop in April and says he's hopes to add one or two more by the end of the year. So why does a guy who works with customers all over the world chose to set up shop in Mandan? Pretty simple, he said.

He said his customers ship their headlights to him; he does the work and ships them back. "There are a lot of advantages to being a small business owner in Mandan," he said.

For one, he said shop rent and other costs of doing business are considerably less than they would be in other parts of the country. "No matter where I was located. I'd still have to ship."

Cruz said in the next year he hopes to put together a "shop car" that is a rolling advertisement for his business that he can take to shows, illustrating what kind of custom work he does.

He said by building some name recognition, he hopes to be featured in magazines like Import Tuner or Super Street, and even go on to being an add-on in video games. Cruz said he was recently contacted for information by the Discovery Channel for a project car they are considering building.

Cruz said one of the aspects of starting up a new business was how many details there were to bog down his daily routine. Enter the Bismarck-Mandan Development Association and the University of Mary IDEACenter.

Jim Dahlen, vice president of the BMDA, said as the area's economic development group, their role is to provide guidance and advice in all phases of business development.

Dahlen said in Cruz's case, he came to the BMDA after he opened his doors but there was still plenty of work to do. He said there are trademarking and name recognition issues and financing considerations his group can help new business tackle.

The University of Mary's Incubator for Developing Entreprenurial Action Center also has become involved with Cruz's American Dream of becoming his own boss.

Karel Sovak of the IDEA Center said Cruz's venture goes hand-in-hand with the mission of his group. The IDEA Center opened last September with a two-fold objective; to help new business find space in which to operate and at the same time provide some labor.

He said students at the university are able to get out of the classroom and get some real-world experience while helping out the business owner. Sovak said about 80 percent of new businesses fail within the first two years for one reason or another, but mainly because of capital cost involved in the start-up process.

In the case of Cruz, he said they can help by creating a network to assist in areas such as marketing and design protection. "We try to create an environment that lends to the viability of a business being more successful," he said. In the case of Cruz, a little inspiration and a lot a perspiration seems to be paying off.

"He definitely went out and found his own market," Sovak said.

(Reach reporter Brian Gehring at 250-8254 or brian.gehring@;bismarcktribune.com.)