Matt Kossoff: From Cutting Up Headlights in His Parents' Basement to Selling The Retrofit Source

Matt Kossoff started The Retrofit Source in his parents’ basement in Cleveland the year he graduated from high school. It grew into a company that sold 80,000 sets of headlights in a year and did close to $75 million in revenue. Along the way he created Morimoto, a lighting brand named after a TV chef.

Throttlecast host Grant Brewer met him years ago as a customer, after buying a new Mercedes that turned out to have halogen bulbs instead of xenons. Matt had a kit in stock. He lives in Milton now, and he brought a coffee machine and a green 993 Turbo to The Ride Lounge.

A Dodge Stratus with Audi headlights

Xenon headlights were new technology when Matt was a teenager. His father bought one of the first Acura TLs to have them, and Matt wanted them on his own car, a Dodge Stratus. Nobody made a kit for a Stratus, and the HID kits that existed were junk.

He spent his summers hanging around a Porsche and Audi dealership in Cleveland. The man who ran the body shop was the only one who would talk to him. One day he offered Matt a pair of xenon headlights from a crashed Audi A6 that were headed for the dumpster.

Matt hid them in the basement. When his parents were out, he pulled the ballasts, bulbs, and projectors, cut up his Stratus headlights with a Dremel, and rigged the Audi parts inside. None of the wiring matched. He had to tell his father what he had done, and his father, who was always good with his hands, helped him wire them up until they worked.

How a forum post became The Retrofit Source

This was the era of forums, not Instagram. Matt posted photos on a Stratus forum, and other owners asked him to make a set for them. Soon people were mailing their headlights to his parents’ house. He would get more crashed headlights from the Audi dealership, retrofit the lights, and ship them back. The work spread to all kinds of cars and trucks.

At Ohio State he ran into a problem. You can’t cut up headlights in a dorm room. So he stopped doing the installs and started selling the parts with a guide to do it yourself.

To find parts, he faxed flyers to junkyards around the country offering to buy broken xenon headlights, the ones with cracked lenses and broken tabs that yards couldn’t sell. They shipped them to Cleveland by the Gaylord box. Every weekend Matt drove home, sorted the parts, and went back to Columbus. His little sister shipped orders from his parents’ house while he sold on eBay and the forums from his dorm. While his roommates sold plasma to pay bills, Matt bought a used E46 M3 with a six-speed manual. He still didn’t really know how to drive stick when he took delivery.

The whole business ran on one idea. Enthusiasts wanted HIDs, but every kit on the market was junk they expected to replace in six months. The brand never tried to win on price. It tried to make the best product in a category known for junk.

Morimoto and the move to Atlanta

In college Matt wanted a house brand for the store. The best lighting components were Japanese, so he spent a day looking for Japanese names. Then Iron Chef Morimoto came on TV. That became the brand. His measure of success: search Morimoto on Instagram today and you find more pictures of headlights than sushi.

Matt moved the business to Atlanta in 2011, a year after graduating. He had customers here and family in both Florida and Ohio, and Atlanta sat in the middle. The company went from basements to a real 2,000-square-foot space. He hired one more person, Andrew Powers, a customer and follower he found through Facebook. On the first day Matt told him to meet at Home Depot, and they bought materials to build the shop. Andrew Powers still works for him.

The Retrofit Source grew organically. Matt never believed in paid advertising. By 2018 it had about 24 people.

Selling The Retrofit Source

In 2018 Matt sold 75% of the company to a private equity group in Atlanta. He calls it the best decision he ever made. With partners, every opportunity no longer had to be a risk to his own money. He moved from CEO to chief product officer, the job he always liked best, and the team grew the company five times over in both revenue and profit. Together they sold it in 2021 to Wheel Pros.

He left at the end of 2024. The company had changed. “There were more suits and ties walking around than there were car enthusiasts,” he says.

Founders Parts and lights for classic Ferraris

Some of the projects he wanted to build as chief product officer never got approved because the audiences were too small. So he built them himself under a smaller company, Founders Parts. It makes high-end lights for classic Ferraris and Porsches: headlights for the 360 and 430 with real carbon fiber inside, and tail lights for the 964, 997.2, and 996 widebody. You can no longer buy an OEM 360 headlight from the factory. The lights are OEM replicas, not a restyle. The strategy is the one he has always used: find a niche nobody else serves and be the only player in town.

Milton Coffee Co. and the Line One

His newest company started with a $12,000 Slayer espresso machine, handmade in Washington state, that he bought without knowing how to use it. The best coffee gear, he realized, is built for the 1% who will dial in grind size and temperature. The other 99% use pod machines, the biggest category in the world, and those are plastic inside and out.

Matt sketched the Line One on a notepad at the end of 2024, started full time and bootstrapped in 2025, and opened pre-orders early this year. Deliveries were set to begin the week after recording. He is upfront that it’s the most expensive Nespresso machine on the planet. Nespresso sells cheap machines to sell pods. The Line One goes the other way, down to an all stainless steel build.

The hardest part of development was user experience, down to how heavy the water tank is when full. The finishes come in six shades of leather, carbon fiber, hammered metal, and wood. The one on set was green with woven leather to match his 993 Turbo. About half of Milton Coffee’s customers so far are car people.

The green-over-tan garage

Matt bought his 1996 993 Turbo in 2019 with 27,000 miles, navy blue over gray. It never went home. He drove it straight to a body shop for a nut-and-bolt restoration and an engine rebuild. It’s now Irish Green over tan, with tan Alcantara and woven leather inside.

It is one of five green-over-tan cars, along with an Audi RS6 Avant, a Ferrari 550 Maranello, a Porsche GT3 Touring, and a 1996 Ferrari 355. The exception is his Carrera GT, the greatest car he has driven.

Rapid fire

• Porsche or Ferrari forever: Porsche.
• Driven most: the 993 when he’s alone, the GT3 Touring with his wife, and otherwise the family Raptor.
• The moment he knew it would work: at his business school interview before graduation, he was asked why he wanted the job. He said he didn’t.
• Best advice: from his mother: if you can afford a Ferrari, you can have one. From an older businessman in Cleveland: “Work on your business, not in your business.”
• Start over tomorrow: same game. “Do what I like. Follow my hobbies. Turn them into my businesses. Work hard.”

As a kid, Matt wanted to be a valet because it was the best way he could think of to drive a nice car. Now he has three kids and doesn’t mind a 10 p.m. call with his factory on a Tuesday.

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Matt Kossoff is above and on YouTube.

Matt’s green-over-tan collection is the kind of garage The Ride Lounge was built for. It’s a private car club with climate-controlled car storage in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta, where members keep their cars in monitored bays and spend time with people who care about the same details. Learn how membership works.