xrac

Good post and points. Can you outline any specific things you are doing or how you are advertising.

I personally belong to Facebook. It is the hottest social network going. Car-x corporate has a facebook site. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Schaumburg-I...ewas=1406931130 I don't know how effective the social networks are for our type of business. The market for our businesses is a fairly small geographic area. Car-x says 3-5 miles is the majority of our business. I could see a large time committment with little in the way of results due to that factor. I think the social networks can be effective for certain products (mail order) or services (insurance) but I don't know about our repair businesses.

You have that pegged correctly. In many cases the former local dealer has just became the newest independent repair shop in town. However, in many cases the overhead will be too great for that model to fly for long. Also will the technicians in those shops be as effective without the dealer tools at their disposal and the need to work on all makes and models.

We too are taking more walk in stuff: oil changes, flat repairs, tire rotations. The only time we are saying no is if we don't have a bay free and then we try to schedule it ASAP. This is also helping our car count.

One local shop (also a franchise) has added detailing. Dealers are adding tires. Here ar our shop we are selling more and more tires. We have also taken on on being and installer for National Interlock who is a provider of court ordered interlock devices for DUI cases. We though this would generate a little more revenue plus be a source of new customers. It has worked that way somewhat. We have picked up a few new customers but some of the interlock work is too time consuming based upon what we are paid. We will drop it when our contract expires in December.

Joe is right. The best way to guarantee your success is to let the performance specialty be a business within the business. Over time you may be able to grown the performance side enough to concentrate on it.

If gas goes higher it will hurt. Above $3.00 per gallon and it seems to hurt everything.

Our June sales are running slightly ahead of last year. We have been experiencing some extremely hot weather the past two weeks which is helping AC sales.

We are $30.00 cheaper in a coupon we are running.

It also encourages debt which is some of the reason we are where we are at.

I detest doing cheap oil changes because of the type of traffic they generate. If you run a $17.95 oil change you generate about 75% who will not even consider fixing anything else on their cars. Some even tell you they don't want anything else looked at on their cars. We are trying to run value added offers that attract people interested in maintaining their vehicles. These are like a free tire rotation with oil change, summer vacation special with oil change, tire rotation, new wiper blades, and vehicle inspection, etc. We are also working on developing some new commercial accounts.

Thanks for the information. I didn't realize that there was another thread on this forum discussing Identifix.

Our car count is trending flat to slightly down. The biggest thing we are seeing right now is a yo, yo on car counts. Gang buster weeks are being followed by very soft ones.

In my opinion the two key factors in starting an auto repair business are (1)location and (2)people. A location can make or break you especially if you haven't already been in the business and developed a clientele and following. The guy who is a hands on technician and has a following may be able to go to some back alley low rent location but it will impede growth. If you have no following you had better be on a main drag. We are a Car-X franchise and Car-x says we need to be in a high traffic (think 30,000 cars per day) destination type location. Our shop is located about 1/4 mile from Walmart and we are surrounded by restaraunts and businesses. They are building a VA hospital behind us. The only problem we have now is our lot and building are too small but it was all we could afford ten years ago. If we had started in an out of the way location we would not have made it. The second thing is people. The article is right, help needs to be screened as carefully as possible. The problem I had coming into this business is that it is pretty easy to be fooled without having worked around this business. I am much better now at judging potential employees having ran a shop for ten years. We hired a service manager and our sales have grown from $560,000 tp $900,000 in three years. That's how much difference the right employee can make. The service manager who we had before thought this business was in declined and that we had topped out when we reached $605,000 in sales. Location and people are the most important factors in my mind and of the two good people are the hardest to find.

This is thinking outside of the box:

Do any of you use Identifix? Is so for how long? How useful has it been to you? Is it worth the cost? We use to use Identifix but got away from them about four years ago when we changed service manager. Now we have a new tech who swares by Identifix so we are looking at them again.

We want to do some used cars but do not have enough parking lot space. I bought a piece of property that we could have done it with but sold it turning a quick profit. Then the recession hit. I am glad that I held off but still would like to work something out.

Car-x in larger markets has worked out loaner deal rates with Enterprise. We have a couple of shop vehicles we use as loaners but we don't advertise it. It has been a positive but ofcourse, insurance rates in this area are much better.

Congratulations. It was a lot of work wasn't it but it will be worthwhile.

It is not too bad of a schedule. Obviously most guys would like to have Saturday off but unfortunately it doesn't match the needs of our customer base. I think the smaller shops that have an established customer base and large percentage of drop off business may be able to get by with being closed on Saturday but they are losing some business they could have if they were open. I really can't take credit for our schedule though it was devised by my service manager. He is absolutely outstanding (he was an Army Ranger). Through his efforts our sales have grown from $560,000 to $887,000 over the last four years and we have won two consecutive store of the year awards for our region with Car-X.

We rotate schedules. Everyone works five days and we schedule to give our service manager and technicians at least one three day weekend per month. In other words the guy who gets Saturday off this week also has Monday off the following week. Everyone enjoys that. I personally only worked about one Saturday a month. Our guys work 7-5 but we are open until 5:30 for pickups and dropoff. The guy who gets the three day weekend also only works 8-5 that week. They also enjoy coming in an hour later. We run shorter hours on Saturday (7-3) verus weekdays (7-5:30) and we also buy everyone lunch on Saturday. That way instead of them taking an hour lunch everyone takes a short lunch and gets the work done so we can all go home at 3:00. We are about as productive on a shorter day verus a full day.

We are open six (6) days per week also. The advantage is we are taking care of our customers, growing customer base, and utilizing fixed assets. If I am open on Saturday my rent, insurance, etc. are covered. I have these costs whether I am open or not. If I am not open on Saturday and my competitor is there is potential to lose my customer to the compeititor. Our community has a population of about 180,000 with not a lot of shift work. In this market the evening and Sunday hours haven't seemed to be very profitable and haven't caught on.

May sales are about even with last year. We may finish slightly down but not by much. My regional Car-x contact tells me that the Cincinnati market is taking a beating this month.

Joe it has become much harder to survive in this business as a specialist. The muffler brake franchises are not called that anymore but have now become "auto service". New car dealers are now selling tires. The quick lubes are expanding their service offerings. Each business is fighting for market share and customers like one stop shopping where they can go somewhere and get everything done. When we reach a new customer we work to capture their business and be their one stop for everything. If you go the performance route it will probably require some astute planning on your part. In essence to do that you are chosing a market niche. The effect of selecting a niche is to exclude a large portion of the market. Performance business is also more discretionary spending. What has happened to those in the performance business over the past year with $4.00+ gasoline, a recession, and a bear stock market? I have also found that those interested in performance are also those who try to do most of it themselves and are harder to get to spend money.