Who is Factory48?

Lee Alexander-owner/operator

I’ve always been art and mechanically minded. My older brother was a talented illustrator and loved working on his muscle cars. I would follow him around trying to learn everything I could.

I started racing BMX when I was 11 years old and did all of my own bike building and tuning. Learning how to grease bearings, change gears, size a chain and true up wheels was the beginning of me learning the importance of taking your time and doing things right. I started my first “business” custom painting helmets for fellow BMX racers when I was 14. I continued racing until I was 18 and graduating from High school.

After high school I attended College for art and learned design and sculpting techniques, including lost wax, metal working and clay. I loved it but I was also playing a lot of music during that time in a local band. The music thing started to take precedence over the art.

I switched from art school to music school in 1990 and finished my degree at Berklee College of Music in Boston. After graduation, for the next 10+ years, I travelled the globe playing, producing and writing music before finally landing out west. It was through these travels and being exposed to so many different cultures that I learned to keep my eyes, ears and mind open.

Once out west I attended several performance driving schools which eventually brought me to auto racing. Working on and driving race cars has been a passion of mine for the last 12 years. Being in the motorsports world taught me some things about mechanical engineering, aero design and how these are practically implemented.

Factory48 started as a race engine business that I ran for several years and on the side I did all of my own carbon fiber composite work.

It was time for a change though, so I moved from Nevada to TN and moved Factory48’s focus to metal working. It’s a seemingly endless medium and since I’ve never loved repetitive production work, creating one-off designs really appealed to me. I’ve always loved making and building things by hand. Hopefully you’ll be able to see a little bit of who I am in what I do.

Thanks for reading,

Lee