Now you can pimp your laptop.

The same kind of ultrasharp, bold paint jobs that customize fine rides are being applied to the drab gray and silver laptop computers toted around by road warriors whose companies are affixing their corporate logos to the machines. It’s a new way to create buzz and brand awareness.

“Why not?” asked Peder Blohm, the Dearborn, Mich., marketing and branding professional whose Laptop Designs company (http://laptopdesignusa.com) is on a track to customize 15,000 laptops by year’s end.

That’s not bad for a company that just opened its doors two months ago.

Blohm, a 58-year-old native of Sweden who picked up his marketing skills working for Volvo in Europe as well as for several U.S. automotive suppliers, came up with the idea a year or so ago watching the “Fox and Friends” morning news show on the Fox TV network.

“Here these three anchors were sitting around a table that had a laptop in the middle, in prominent camera view,” he recalled. “They had slapped a sticker – a plain ugly sticker saying ‘Fox News’ on the back of the computer. It looked horrible. I remember saying to myself, you’d think they could do better.”

Dearborn, Mich.-based Laptop Designs custom-designed these Sharp Electronics laptop computers.

Blohm did some research. He found that about 15 million laptops were sold in the United States last year, with estimates that the market will be 21 million by 2009.

“The idea is to turn laptop computers into marketing tools,” he said. “The top of each laptop is an extremely visible surface. Think of it like a billboard. So why not use it as an opportunity to increase brand recognition?”

Convinced that there was a huge market out there, he then checked to see if anyone else had his idea.

“I couldn’t find any real competition,” he said. “I smiled.”

He’s still smiling. His company has deals with two big laptop providers – Sharp Electronics and Rave Computers – and he’s in negotiations with a large nationwide electronics retail chain to be its exclusive custom designer.

So far, with little advertising, his company has done work for such outfits as AFLAC Insurance, the University of Alabama, Henry Ford Community College and Performa Automotive.

Customers send in their laptops and Blohm’s paint specialists apply a durable, automotive-quality finish to the back of the top cover, without touching the computer’s internal parts or affecting the manufacturer’s warranty.

“We literally bake the color in,” he said. “It doesn’t fade and will last longer than the laptop will.”

The process is able to match any color – even proprietary logos and designs – and can produce finishes that are matte, high gloss or metallic.

The process, depending on how many colors and what kind of finish the customer wants, costs between $95 and $195 per laptop, with a turnaround time of three to five days.

“I tell our customers that it costs about as much as a night in a hotel for one of their employees on a business trip,” he said.

Blohm claims the idea of branding laptops has a lot of appeal.

“People carry them everywhere,” he said. “They’re at sales presentations, we see people using them at a Starbucks, in an airport and sitting on a desk at the office. They’re a part of the landscape. So when we make them pop with bright colors and eye appeals and the customer’s corporate logo, we attract attention and brand recognition.”

Besides, a branded laptop is much less desirable to thieves.

“Laptop theft is a huge problem,” he said. “Law enforcement recommends that everybody find a way to label or engrave their name on them. We do more than that. We make the whole thing a corporate label. There’s not much of a black market for such an easily identified computer.”

Blohm says his facility can handle about 5,000 custom jobs a month. He plans to expand that over the next year to 15,000.

“The demand is there,” he said.

Meanwhile, in gratitude for giving him the idea, he says he has written Fox News three e-mails, offering a free makeover of the ugly laptop with the sticker that he keeps seeing on television.

“They haven’t responded,” he said. “But I’m grateful for their inspiration.”