The Greek Cypriot car whizz has wrapped cars for the Premier League's leading talents and fitted their flashy interiors with TV screens and Playstations. Now, he has his own TV show
IT'S time to Yiannimize...
Yianni Charalambous is the go-to Premier League car-customiser for footballer's rides and has made many friends along the way.
The likes of Sergio Aguero, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Didier Drogba, William Gallas and his best mate, Bacary Sagna have all brought him their supercars.
Now, the 41-year-old entrepreneur is about to embark on his first TV adventure aptly called, 'Yianni: Supercar Customiser' which premieres on Dave TV on January 10.
SunSport caught up with Yianni at his north London garage, where he shared how he has former Arsenal star Sagna to thank for taking his career to new heights.
He's so grateful to the French full-back, he even has a mural of him painted on a wall inside the workshop.
Yianni revealed the outrageous designs Djibril Cisse wanted for his Cadillac Escalade - a snakeskin exterior and interior design.
And he recalled how he was caught in-between a beef between William Gallas and El Hadji Diouf who wanted the same wrap but couldn't stand one another.
Yianni also exclusively told us that he was asked to design Conor McGregor's plane for the Mayweather superfight, but due to time constraints had to turn it down.
Speaking to SunSport, Yianni divulged how he got first involved in the business.
"From a young age I was always passionate about cars," he said.
"Loved cars, even down to the fact where I was moving my toy car, my mum would say to me you use to pretend to park in a parking space.
“So as I grew up cars got bigger and more expensive and I ended up spending more and more money on them.
"I worked at Do It All, Marks & Spencer stacking shelves in the night shift, I’ve worked in the city and I worked at a milkshake shop.
"But I believe that if you are doing a job you’re passionate about – it doesn’t feel like working, it’s fun.
"My business Yiannimize was born, about 12 years ago. The name came from my name, obviously Yianni and the word customise."
During this time, Yianni's clients were mostly millionaires and billionaires. But that all changed in 2007 when Sagna walked into his life.
"My first footballer was Bacary, who is my best friend to this day. He’s painted on the wall in the garage because he helped me out.
"I cutomised his Range Rover, wrapping it in gloss white. I also fixed an amazing sound system and put some TVs in there too.
"He asked me to deliver it to the training ground and the reaction he got from his teammates was incredible, they all thought his car looked awesome."
After being impressed by his teammates' wheels, Arsenal defender William Gallas then wanted a piece of the action, recalled Yianni.
It gave the Edgware-born businessman the best publicity he could ever have had, but he had to suffer some embarrassment for it.
Yianni explained: "Bacary passed my number on to William, who called me and said he wanted his car done too.
"I’m a massive Gooner, so I said no problem and went straight up to the training ground.
“I remember I had a Lamborghini at the time, and I drove up to the front gate and the security guard told me just to park in the first team car park.
“I parked up, had a good look around and I saw Mercedes, Porsches, Ferraris, Bentleys and I’m thinking this is special, I'm in heaven.
“Bac comes out first and he gives me a hug, asks me how I am. Next thing I know William Gallas comes out, Theo Walcott is there and they all knew my name.
"So, William was like, ‘take my car, take my car… please customise it.' At the time he had a Mercedes SLR convertible. It was worth about £350k.
“100 percent I wasn’t insured to drive that car, no way. This was like many years ago. But he insisted I take the car.
“I get in the car and try to drive it… I can’t start it. He said to me, ‘you know how to drive it, don’t you?’
“I was like, ‘of course I do, William.’ Minute, two minutes go by and I can’t get it going.
“Now, unless you know about the SLR, you’ve got to flick the switch up and hit the start button and turn the key.
“If you’ve never driven one, you don’t know that!”
A few days later, Yianni then dropped off the finished result at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium.
“Arsenal were playing Blackburn and he asked me if I could deliver it before the game.
“I delivered it to the Emirates, all the fans are looking because it’s got his number plate customised on it and I meet him after the game and he says he’s really happy with it.
“When he left the car park after the match, everyone started taking a picture of the car, fans and paps.
“The next day the headline in the paper read, ‘Arsenal’s chrome win.’ There was a picture of William Gallas in his car that I customised, brilliant publicity and it became a snowball effect from then on."
Gallas introduced Yianni to John Terry, Terry then paired Yianni up with Didier Drogba and the wheels were literally rolling.
“For John Terry I did a Mercedes Viano conversion for him. It had a custom interior, two big reclining seats, it had a PlayStation in there, it had a big screen in there," he said.
“He would be chauffeured everywhere and he’d just sit at the back and play PlayStation and be driven around. What a life!"
“Didier Drogba wanted a lavish design – I wrapped his SLR in carbon white. That’s like a £300k-£400k car.
"But it looked amazing when I'd finished with it and Didier was very happy with the end result.
“It’s unbelievable, but I do owe it all to Bacary. That’s why he’s painted on the wall and I'm very close to him.
“He introduced me to all the players, and not only did he do that, he said ‘I trust this guy.’
“If you are rich and you are famous, it's difficult to trust people. But if someone is in that industry and they introduce you, they’ll trust you.
“Also, it helps if you don’t rip them off… I have a very loyal client base, I don’t overcharge and because of that I have a three-month waiting list.
“I would say 90 percent of my customers are those I’ve worked with in the past.”
With Premier League footballers earning mega money, it would be easy for Yianni to charge through the roof for his handywork.
But he's happy to keep his prices competitive knowing full-well it will bring him more business in the future.
Based on his own Lamborghini Aventador, Yianni explained how much he charges.
"This car was grey underneath, but we wrapped it in satin black. This would cost £4,000 plus VAT," he confirmed.
“Obviously, if you paint the wheels it’s more money, if you tint the windows it’s more money… but you can end up spending between £5,000-£10,000 for a job.
“If it’s just a wrap, maybe for a car like a Audi A5 probably just around £2,000.
“But very rarely does anyone just have a wrap. My client base is very high-end. They have more than one car, they have two or three cars.
“And when they get bored, they do it again. They bring it back in, strip the wrap off, do another colour.”
Yianni's regulars include the likes of Sergio Aguero and Theo Walcott, who are both huge car enthusiasts.
“I’ve done a few cars for Sergio Aguero. I did his Lamborghini Aventador in matte black, with matte black wheels and orange wheels as well, so two-tone," he said.
“I did a Nissan GTR wrapped like his boot. So, it was specially designed for a Manchester derby and we wrapped the car in his boot design, which was Puma.
“I also wrapped two Range Rovers… one for here, one for Argentina. He loves his cars.
"Theo was one of my early customers. When he came over from Southampton, and he was just breaking in the England team, I wrapped an Audi A5 for him in grey.
"I did a Ferrari for him wrapped in matte black, his mum’s Toureg, which everyone thought was him in orange.
“I’ve even done a Lamborghini for him and a Range Rover Evoke. Theo’s had a lot of cars, he loves them and we always work with him."
But Yianni's most elaborate customer was former QPR striker and complete fashionista, Djibril Cisse.
"I wrapped his car in snakeskin and done his interior in snakeskin as well," the Greek Cypriot car aficionado said.
"We also put a centre partition up for his kids, so they had a play area controlled with iPads that they could play games on.
"That design was sick."
However, Yianni was put in an uncomfortable position when two footballers who wanted him to supe up their cars were caught in a feud.
Like Gallas, El Hadji Diouf owned a Mercedes SLR Mclaren. He wanted the same chrome wrap as the Frenchman, who wasn't happy.
He remembered: “El Hadj-Diouf had the same Chrome SLR job done as William. They actually didn’t like each other!
“I did William's first and when Diouf asked me to do it, William was like telling me: ‘don’t do it!’
“I didn’t know what to do, so I made Diouf wait three months till the buzz went away for William's car.
Footballers are fussy when it comes to wrapping. In fact, some like to stand out in the training ground car park more, according to Yianni.
Step forward, Leicester City and England striker Jamie Vardy...
Yianni explained: “Footballers don’t like having the same thing as everybody else.
“A recent example of this was Leicester City. When they won the league their owner bought them all BMW i8s in blue.
“They’d all park up in the training ground, and the only difference was the end of the license plates. None of them knew which cars were theirs.
“The majority had them redone in satin black, but Jamie Vardy wanted his to stand out more. He rang me up and asked me to do it in chrome black.
“That made his car really stand out of the 20 i8s that were parked at the training ground car park!"
Being a customiser to the Premier League's most pampered stars has its perks too, Yianni admitted.
"I was at Bacary Sagna’s wedding in Auxerre in France. Theo Walcott invited me to his wedding too.
“I’ve been at footballer’s birthday parties at The Emirates. When I go to the stadium, I go to the player’s lounge. I get to sit in boxes.
“For me, I became famous with my clients. So how much they initially became clients, we speak on a regular basis."
Yet, they certainly pick their moments when they request Yianni's services.
“Footballers have no idea of time and date. So they may message me at like 11pm or 12pm," he said.
“Majority of players are in a hotel on a Friday night before their game on the weekend.
‘They’re bored, they’re sitting there and they look at cars on the internet.
“My phone will ring and they will tell me about a car they saw online that they’d like to get. And I’m like, ‘shouldn’t you be asleep!’
“They come up with different ideas and different cars. And a couple of days later they will come and see me.
“When you’re bored, you’ve got that kind of money what do you do? You’ve bought a property, cars are next.”
Yianni has bigger ambitions now and wants to take his customising further and move onto planes and boats.
That's where it he sees himself ending up, but admits there was one regret he had in turning down an offer to design Conor McGregor's plane.
“We were offered the McGregor plane for the Mayweather fight," he said. "It was left so, so late and we couldn’t do it in time.
"They wanted a logo on the fin, which was one of the main sponsors, as well other things.
"The plan was to fly McGregor's friends and family on it from Ireland for the big Vegas showdown.
“That would’ve been a great job to do and we were unlucky that we missed it.
"But planes and boats are the way forward. I’ve got clients who are billionaires, money is no object to them and they can buy anything they want."
Yianni: Supercar Customiser launches at 8pm on Dave TV on Wednesday 10th January.