Shop Owner Insights

One of the key benefits of belonging to an association, attending regional or national industry events, or just stopping by other shops when you’re traveling outside your area, is the chance to catch some fresh ideas to try in your shop.

Here are some things that shops around the country are implementing that might be just the solution you’re looking for to address a problem in your business.

Shop jumps to larger, better location during recession

While others were scaling back during the recession, Bob and Jeannie Park took the opportunity it offered to expand. After 15 years of operating Superior Performance well outside the city of Portland, Ore., the Parks three years ago moved into a space 10 times the size just blocks from the city’s trendy downtown Pearl District.

“All the buildings in this area were for lease back then, and we were able to negotiate a great deal because nobody wanted them,” Bob Park said. “We actually were able to purchase this building, which is very unusual for this part of town. Nobody sells. This area is very desirable both because it’s so close to the Pearl and because there’s no competition.”

The Parks leased out part of the building, and use the rest for their eight-employee business, which focuses on collision repair but also offers restoration and complete retail mechanical services as well. It’s that diversification, Park said, that has helped the business grow while others have struggled.

“We almost need another mechanic at this point,” Park said, noting that 50,000 vehicles — including fleet vehicles for the nearby industrial area — pass by the shop every day.

Not being on any insurer referral programs results in more fluctuation in work volume, Park admits, but he feels that is offset by not having to accept the price concessions the programs require. And he’s not interested in becoming a high-volume, high-pressure shop.

“We’re having fun and we like to make sure our employees are happy and want to come to work,” he said. “That’s my strongest draw to get quality help, to attract them from other shops that are highly stressed, working Saturdays. We don’t do that. We don’t pay on commission, but we pay them very well, so they can do high-quality work yet still get the same pay.”

Park said there were those who questioned the move to a much larger facility in a down economy, but the gamble has paid off.

“Most people thought that would be the nail in our coffin. Most people told me that I shouldn’t do it,” he said. “But we watched our numbers through the depression grow. Within the first year, simply by moving, we doubled our previous grosses without even really trying. If I tried to do this now, with the economy picked back up, there are no buildings available, certainly none for sale. So the fact that we did it during a down economy was definitely the key to our success.”

Systems enable mid-sized shop to turn big numbers

Though not as common as it was prior to the economic downturn, some shops have turned to extended hours, beyond nine-to-five, Monday through Friday, to get more production out of their facilities. In order to produce close to $7 million of annual sales out of a 15,000-square-foot facility, Amato’s Auto Body in San Diego, Calif., has two shifts on weekdays, with production employees starting as early as 4 a.m. or working as late as 10 p.m. The shop has weekend production hours as well.

Shop owner Paul Amato also has used a team concept for decades. The shop has four journeyman technicians with eight helpers. The helpers work on disassembly and reassembly, leaving the journeyman techs to focus on the more highly-skilled tasks like pulling and welding.

Similarly in the paint shop, painters are primarily spraying in one of the shop’s three booths while others handle the prep, color match and mixing tasks. Four of the five employees who start at 4 a.m. are buffers, polishing whatever was sprayed the previous day.

Amato’s unique approach is also evident in the front office, where three women handle claims based on the insurer involved, each specializing in one or more companies. The company also sends some office work several states (and time zones) away.

“My sister-in-law in Tennessee works 15 to 20 hours a week for me,” Amato said. “She inputs insurer estimates into our system. We fax or email her those, and she can sit at home, with no interruptions, and get them keyed in and back to us. She’s also a couple hours ahead of us, so by 8 a.m. when we start, she’s already had a couple hours to key in what we sent at the end of the previous day. It works so great and is such a time-saver.”

Work orders sent out to technicians in the shop are enlarged and printed on 11-inch-by-20-inch paper, so they’re easier to read, Amato said. If there are any supplements, the revised work order is printed on a different color of paper, so it’s clear which is the most up-to-date version of the work order.

Take care of people, interact with other shops

Jeff Drake said a lesson from his father has always served as his business philosophy.

“My dad had his own business, though not a body shop, and he always said, ‘Take care of people and the business will take care of itself,’” Drake said. “That’s what we really try to do.”

After two decades of managing dealership body shops, Drake and his wife Kim launched their own shop in Beaverton, Ore. Four years ago, they moved the business to its current 15,000-square-foot facility, and their 12 employees include their two sons.

The Drakes have used a variety of means to build the business and name recognition in the community. They established referral programs for some of the local dealerships. They produce a monthly newsletter, and they hold a monthly drawing for prize give-aways for their customers. They support local high school activities and they sponsor local bowling tournaments and car shows. They do some advertising on transit buses and in the local newspaper. They also encourage their customer to post online reviews.

“So many people walk in and say they read our reviews online and that’s why they’re here,” Jeff Drake said.

They also belong to not one but two local shop associations. Drake said he’d like to see more shops get involved and interact with other shop owners. He rattles off the names of the nearby shop owners he knows and speaks to regularly.

“It’s always nice, because if you have something come up, you can always bounce it off somebody else and get another view,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to talk to your peers and not treat them like they’re the enemy. We’re not competitors; we’re just in the same business. That’s one of the biggest problems in this industry. People look at the shop next door as their enemy, when really they’re an ally. I don’t look at the shops around us as trying to steal our work. I just figure if we do our job, we’ll have work. They can’t take my work; I can only lose work if I mess up.”

Focus on people as well as systems

Aaron Marshall operates a single-location collision repair facility, Marshall Auto Body in Waukesha, Wisc., that has gained notoriety in the industry for getting the most out of every square foot of the shop. Although much has been written about his company’s “lean production” system, Marshall said sometimes shops get too focused on systems and forget about the people aspect. The traditional model and pay plans in the collision repair industry, Marshall said, don’t lend themselves to collaboration or to people “being respected for anything outside of their speed.”

“People are much more valuable than equipment, which you can just buy a replacement for, so that should be a good motivation for redesigning not only how we fix cars, but how we integrate people into that process,” Marshall said.

One example: He’s separated the tasks traditionally handled by a shop “estimator,” handing the “repairing planning” responsibilities primarily to those with technical know-how who focus on the estimate and repair process. Others focus on the sales and customer service aspects.

Similarly, he has looked for ways to let technicians focus on what they prefer to do.

“Honestly, they’re most satisfied when they can do their best work all day, every day,” Marshall said. “So a lot of effort goes into making that possible, what we can do to make their job easier, freeing them up from administrative add-ons and chasing people around and looking for things. That can make it much easier to retain people because they are satisfied with where they are.”

Shifting with the market

All-American Paint & Body in San Diego, Calif., is among those already prepared for the 2015 F-150, with a dedicated aluminum “clean room” that has its own vacuum system and aluminum welders. Shop manager Sebastian Oros acknowledged that the high cost of equipping an aluminum clean room has not offered an overly-quick return on investment up to this point.

“But over the next three to five years, with the best-selling truck in the world going to be all-aluminum, I think things are changing in that direction,” Oros said. “We separate ourselves from a lot of shops that can’t repair aluminum.”

With 25 employees and a modern facility, All-American is among the largest independent shops in the area. But that scale, Oros said, doesn’t eliminate concern about competition from larger, multi-shop operations (MSOs).

“For the independent single-location shop, it has become a struggle to differentiate yourself from those MSOs,” Oros said. “On the flip side of that, we’re a family-run business. One of our strong suits is our attention to detail and the quality of our repairs and our customer satisfaction. Sometimes I think things can get lost in the mix whenever you become too large. Our reviews online are fantastic when you compare them to the franchises or big chain stores.”

Getting your shop noticed

Neil Knight, the owner of Cherry Products Auto Body in Cornelius, Ore., grew up in and around body shops, with his father working in the industry and running his own shop for a time. Knight built his own shop, expanding several times as he acquired additional frontage. From the exterior, the 4,000-square-foot shop looks more like a country store and barn. While his continued purchase of additional property in his community has been a good decision, Knight said, his shop’s unique appearance may not have been.

“I put a lot of energy into creating a building that would have a positive look. I like doing things with visual appeal,” Knight said. “The problem is that it doesn’t look enough like a body shop to make people think, ‘There’s a body shop.’”

He’s done a number of things to counter that, including a three-dimensional sign that looks like one car on it’s side with another bursting out through the top. And he’s used Facebook successfully, racking up more than 600 “likes,” and regularly posting before-and-after photos and spoofs of insurance advertising icons.

“When I first starting using Facebook, this place skyrocketed,” Knight said. “It was weird because the economy was in the toilet, but we were slammed.”

He acknowledges that it’s a challenge to keep on top of such social media efforts. When the shop is busy, he said, it’s hard to remember to take both before and after shots of vehicles in for work.

“But I think if you can keep real active on it, it’s a great avenue,” he said.  •

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 email at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.

 
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