By Robert Bravender
Long before strip malls, industrial parks and the internet, most commerce in America was conducted along Main Street, USA. Significant shifts in retail marketing over the years gutted city centers big and small, but in the last decade downtown areas have been seeing something of a renaissance. For one, lower costs attract businesses like Hi-Tech Auto Body.
“You can buy a piece of land and build; I bought this,” said owner Jerry Roberts of his Lenoir City, Tenn., location. “Plus I like the idea of it being downtown, of the old ‘mom-and-pop’ type deal.”
When he started the shop in 1988, Roberts first worked out of a 40-foot-by-40-foot garage in his backyard. By 1993 he had outgrown that and rented a shop for three years before buying the 7,500 sq. ft. facility downtown. He had looked into building a new shop outside of town on the main highway, but property and construction costs would have meant a significant bank loan for the entrepreneur.
“I was 54 then,” he noted, “and I couldn’t see much future working for the bank when I could have this place and it’s paid for.”
But then Roberts was always enterprising. Back in 1975 he lived in Colorado Springs, where he graduated from vo-tech school only to find that no body shop would hire him without practical experience. A tip led him to apply at a nationwide chain known for quantity paint work; hired immediately, he wound up painting about 30 cars that first day—a veritable crash course in practical experience.
“I learned a lot,” confirmed Roberts. “And when the body man was busy, I asked the manager if I could fix a car. I started roaming around the shop doing other people’s jobs, and I learned how to do everything.”
He answered the phone, wrote estimates, dealt with customers, and after four years he was promoted to shop manager—a position he wasn’t sure he was ready for.
“I talked to the buddy who told me to apply there in the first place,” Roberts recalled. “An Air Force sergeant, he told me any time you get a chance to advance in life, do it. Take this job and make it work.”
So Roberts would manage the store for the next five years, learning the business side of the body shop industry. But like many talented technicians, he eventually decided he wanted to open his own shop.
“I gave them my two week notice, moved to Tennessee to be closer to my family, and away I went,” said Roberts, coming up with the shop’s name after attending some GM-led classes. “One guy kept referring to how we were moving into a high-tech world. That phrase just stuck with me.”
With Hi-Tech on the sign out front, Roberts started with two employees. And as the shop grew he added four more, but found this to be a point of diminishing returns.
“So I scaled it back,” he reported. “We’re back down to where it’s me and two other employees, which seems to work the best for this demographic and for my customer base. I can keep two guys a lot busier than I can six, and I seem to make the same amount of money.”
Running the gamut from restorations to repairs, the work Hi-Tech does can be as varied as fiberglass repair on a boat hull to custom fabrication on a Jeep.
“It’s going to be a frame-off project,” said Roberts of the latter. “We’re going to powder-coat the frame, along with building custom fender flares. We’ve also done custom bumpers and a custom hood, all fabricated from 18 gauge sheet metal. Pretty much everything is custom on it; when it rolls out of here there won’t be another one like it.”
Such craftsmanship came from the 40-plus years Roberts spent stock-car racing, and fabricating his own sheet metal is a skill he has passed on to his son and body shop manager, Dallas Roberts.
“I’m very fortunate because my son, number one, is highly talented,” said Roberts. “He’s so detail-oriented; he’s just good at whatever the hell he does. Number two, he’s easy to teach; I can show him one time and bam—he’s got it down. He’s better than me; he can do stuff that I can’t—although I don’t want to admit that to him,” he laughed.
“I’ve sent him to several of the I-CAR and PPG courses, and I wouldn’t invest in someone like that unless I knew they were going to stick around,” continued Roberts. “I’m going to send him to paintless dent repair probably in the next year; that’s next on the list, because there is a demand for that,” particularly after the region was hit by an epic hail storm in 2011.
However Roberts has observed much more dramatic changes in the industry.
“It used to be that your insurance work was the meat and potatoes,” he said. “That’s not the case anymore; we don’t make as much money on insurance as we do customer-paid work.”
Which is why Hi-Tech does the occasional restoration like a Mustang, Camaro or classic Chevy. The bane of most body shops, a restoration requires so much time and money that such a project inevitably offsets the value of the car itself.
“You’ve got to have someone who’s serious about restoring a car, because you don’t estimate those,” Roberts emphasized. “Those are x-amount of dollars per hour plus the material. You get people who have no problem at all with that, and they get some good restoration work done. I’ve never had one person who was dissatisfied.”
Roberts notes that they’re not in a high-end market for concourse restorations like San Diego or Laguna Beach, however Lenoir City is about an hour and a quarter down Interstate 40 from Pigeon Forge. This vacation destination in the Smoky Mountains is home to many big car shows, particularly Shades of the Past and the twice-annual Rod Runs, providing a fertile market for customs and restorations.
“My work has always stood on its own two feet through referrals, even in the collision end of it,” Roberts stated. “As far as going out and seeking work, I’ve never really done that.”
Similarly, Hi-Tech so far hasn’t seen the need for further diversification.
“You can diversify to the limits of your abilities,” Roberts noted, “and in the past we thought about getting into the mechanical end of it, but I have a good friend down the road that does mechanical work, and I’m not going to jeopardize a friendship for profit, so we’ve shied away from that.”
As for being located downtown, Roberts admits there are some drawbacks: parking is a bit difficult, and some people have driven past the shop for years without realizing it’s there. However the ones that do take full advantage of the welcoming waiting area.
“I asked myself what I would want to walk in to, and it would be a place that felt more like home,” Roberts explained, gesturing at the surroundings. “A little more inviting, a little more warm.”
Having gutted the previous lobby, he redecorated with a tile floor, a drop ceiling, and a digital fireplace with a coffee bar on top—all framed from the street by the big windows common on a downtown storefront.
“Believe it or not, people really use that coffee bar; they love that thing,” laughed Roberts. “If people enter an establishment and they don’t know you already, they’re more guarded, because nobody wants to get screwed by somebody fixing their car. It’s just something that’s ingrained in people.
“I still say you’ll get better personalized, one-on-one service with someone who genuinely cares about your vehicle at a mom-and-pop business. I know a lot of businesses like mine—tires, repair, body—none of them are trying to screw their customers. I’ll stand by that all day. [Personalized service] is basically what we sell; we’ll watch your back. That’s how I built my business.” •
