By John Yoswick

Ron Pyle in 2012 will mark his tenth anniversary as president and chief staff executive of the Automotive Service Association — giving him a unique perspective on the industry. While Pyle says ASA has, like many businesses during the economic slump, downsized its operation in a number of ways, he’s bullish about the national association’s prospects in 2012.

“I want and expect to start growing membership again,” Pyle said. “Everyone has sort of assumed or been resigned to the fact that there won’t be member growth because all associations have just had to deal with that.”

But ASA’s membership decline appears to have ebbed almost two years ago, Pyle said. Though its member count has remained essentially flat since then, Pyle says that more recently interest in membership appears to be gaining strength.

“I do believe 2012 is going to be a pivotal year,” Pyle said. “It sure looks like it’s going to be.”

Pyle was one of several association leaders who recently shared their thoughts on the importance of membership and what they foresee happening — in their organizations or within the industry at large — in the coming year. Georgia group stays active

Howard Batchelor said that as executive director of the Georgia Collision Industry Association [GCIA], he struggles to understand why a shop wouldn’t choose to belong to a group like the GCIA that is working on their behalf.

“What shops don’t understand is we’ve got to work together to address some of the issues facing our industry,” Batchelor said. “We’re so fragmented as an industry. If we don’t work together, we’re our own worst enemy.”

Batchelor said the GCIA is dedicated to “helping shops learn to be more profitable, and to giving them solutions to some of the issues they’re having.”

He said part of the association’s success relies on representing a fair portion of the industry when it meets with lawmakers or regulators.

“We give the industry a voice when we’re speaking to our Insurance Commissioner, or to the Department of Revenue and entities like that,” Batchelor said.

He said he keeps an eye on the successful efforts of shop associations in other states, in part through GCIA’s affiliation with the national Society of Collision Repair Specialists [SCRS]. He’d like to see Georgia, for example, follow the lead of Minnesota and Montana, where a state law prohibits an insurer from unilaterally disregarding a repair operation or cost identified by an estimating system that the insurer and shop have agreed to use to determine the cost of repair.

“We’ve already raised that issue with the Georgia Insurance Commissioner, asking that office to put out a directive stating that insurers must follow what is in the database it and the shop have agreed to use,” Batchelor said.

GCIA has also worked to point out that the state loses tax revenue when insurers use such practices as caps on paint materials and shifting items like flex addition and seam sealer into the “sublet” category.

GCIA also this month will launch its sixth annual labor rate survey of shops in the Atlanta Metro area.

“We have worked hard to improve the survey year over year so we get results that truly reflect shops’ non-contracted rates,” Batchelor has said of the survey. “Hopefully the results will help shops get paid fairly for the work they perform.” SCRS focuses just on collision

As mentioned, GCIA is one of about three dozen state or regional associations (including those in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Kentucky) that are affiliated with the national SCRS. Aaron Schulenburg, executive director of SCRS, said those affiliated groups and SCRS’ direct membership means his organization represents more than 6,000 collision-repair businesses.

“We’re the largest national trade association solely dedicated to representing the hardworking collision-repair facilities across North America,” Schulenburg said. “Our association has been a visible and vocal advocate on behalf of the collision repairer, providing a collective voice on important issues that are critical to our industry’s livelihood.”

Schulenburg said the affiliate association structure enables strong communication between the state and national levels, and helps ensure that SCRS’ mission and message mirrors that of its shop members. SCRS helps its state affiliates share ideas and help one another through ongoing conference calls among the groups.

“This structure also helps us demonstrate widespread endorsement and consistent industry perspective in our communication and interaction with government and other entities,” Schulenburg said.

Like most associations, SCRS strives to build a suite of discounts on products and services that can save members more than they pay for annual dues in the group. But SCRS also looks for tools and training to help shops improve their business. This fall, for example, will be the third in a row in which SCRS has brought together more than a dozen training classes aimed specifically at collision repairers during the annual SEMA trade show in Las Vegas. It also last year released a “Guide to Complete Repair Planning,” a checklist of procedures and services that may be necessary during repairs so these items can be documented in the initial repair plan or estimate.

Schulenburg also points to the Database Enhancement Gateway [www.DEGweb.org] as something created and continued to be funded by SCRS, ASA and the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers. The DEG is a free tool that helps users improve the quality and accuracy of the estimating databases by submitting inquiries about labor times or other elements of the databases that appear to need improvement.

Its collision-only focus is also part of what sets SCRS apart, Schulenburg said.

“Our objectives are driven by repairers, because our board is comprised of repair-facility owners and operators, or people who directly support the repair industry,” he said. “Despite the amount of time and devotion necessary to serve on the SCRS board, each board member continues their involvement without pay, fancy perks or even reimbursement for the cost of their involvement. What they do receive is the satisfaction of contributing to the industry. Our board members keep the organization grounded to those we represent, and our voice is truly your voice as a shop owner.” ASA sees good year ahead

ASA, too, is a national organization with affiliate groups on a local level (including Georgia, Texas and New Orleans), but part of what sets it apart, according to Pyle, is its representation in Washington, D.C. Bob Redding and his office in the nation’s capital city help bring information to ASA’s members and the industry, and the industry’s views and needs to Washington.

The association has also recently added a “Communities” section to its Web site, a sort of industry-version of Facebook that ASA says will enable its members to better exchange information and ideas with each other. Pyle said the system is very much in its infancy, but he foresees it becoming a popular way, particularly for younger members of the association, to begin to interact with other members, much in the way attending a local chapter meeting has served that purpose.

“The collective intellectual property [of ASA members] is huge, but we don’t get to capture it to the degree that we could or should because we’re limited to the number of people we can talk to on a daily basis,” Pyle said, predicting that “Communities” will help collect and disseminate that information.

Pyle expects 2012 to end up as a fairly healthy year for the industry, with continued rebound in the sale of new cars but with used car values remaining strong, raising the dollar value of repairs that can be made before total loss thresholds are hit.

Even just a modest decline in the unemployment rate in 2012 should also be good news for shops, Pyle said, because workers need reliable transportation to get to those jobs. Credit remains a concern, he said, because another tightening of credit markets could stifle consumer and business spending.

“But overall, if the economy doesn’t get significantly worse, and it really shouldn’t this next year, then I think we have good indicators out there,” he said.

Consolidation and the growth of multi-shop operators [MSOs] will continue, Pyle said.

“I don’t think there are going to be as many shops,” he said. “It’s just part of what’s going to happen. There’s lots of low-hanging fruit, opportunities for growth out there, for those who can get capital. I think that’s an area where we’re going to play a significant role both because we have a lot of MSO members, but also because we’re going to be a more aggressive provider of information and services to the MSO community.”

He points to the successful MSO symposium ASA held during last October’s International Autobody Congress & Exposition [NACE] as evidence of both the growth of MSOs and in ASA’s interest and ability to serve that segment of the market.

“Now that presents some problems for the association, as you can imagine, because we also have a lot of single-shop operators, and traditionally our organization has been a good home for them,” Pyle said. “But I think we will continue to serve their needs as we have, at the same time presenting a similar kind of content at our events for folks who want to make that step to become an MSO, whether by growing or positioning themselves to be purchased, or otherwise creating some other sort of plan for their future.”

The MSO symposium was just one of the changes that ASA made to what Pyle calls its “event strategy,” changes that will continue in 2012, he said. NACE and ASA’s Congress of Automotive Repair and Service [CARS] will again be held in conjunction with one another this year, October 5-8, in New Orleans, La.

Shifting away from holding the event in Las Vegas was a difficult and costly decision, Pyle said. The cancellation fees are still being negotiated with the Las Vegas venue but could be in the 7-figure range, Pyle said. But the success of the event in Orlando this past October “validated that the decision was right,” he said.

“What [exhibitor booth space] we’ve sold since the show in October has been the greatest start we’ve ever had on a subsequent show,” Pyle said. “That shows there’s a big enough market for a show aimed specifically at the professional repair market in collision and mechanical, separate and not mixed in with 16 other constituencies to make it work.”

Another shift the industry likely will see in ASA this year is a growth in its advocacy efforts beyond issues specific to collision or mechanical repairers. Pyle pointed to a forum on the health care debate that ASA held during this past NACE and CARS as one example of its effort to bring information to its members beyond industry-specific issues.

“I think that many of the small businesses in America are actually not providing heath care to the degree they want to just because it costs too much,” Pyle said. “I think that’s a shame. Because at some point that was one of the security blankets that an employee could count on.”

Pyle said ASA will expand its efforts to work on such issues with other associations both in the industry and beyond, such as the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Even in cases where ASA doesn’t advocate for a specific position, Pyle said, it can bring its members the information — “the pros and the cons” — on a specific topic so its members can form their own opinions.

“I don’t think we need to jump into the middle of every issue out there, but we recognize that the common denominator between a mechanical-repair shop and a collision-repair shop is that they are both small businesses with employee and human resource concerns,” Pyle said. “That’s probably where most of the focus will be, on those small business issues like taxes, health care costs, environmental issues and safety.”

For more information on membership in any of these groups, including [for the national groups] contact information for their local and state affiliate groups, visit their Web sites:

ASA: http://www.asashop.org

GCIA: http://gacollisionindustry.wordpress.com/

SCRS: http://www.scrs.com/ •

John Yoswick, a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore., who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988, is also the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (for a free 4-week trial subscription, visit www.CrashNetwork.com). He can be contacted by e-mail at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.

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