Cloudaccess - Joomla! as a service

Sometimes a negative, even tragic, event can lead to a positive outcome. When a serious fire hit Collision Solutions in Indianapolis, IN, and destroyed its paint booth, management took the opportunity to make lemonade from lemons.  The fire offered the owners a chance to rearrange the shop’s layout and take the leap into the world of waterborne. Instead of being paralyzed by the devastation, the shop bought a new cutting-edge ECO Expert paint booth from Global Finishing Solutions (GFS) and converted one of their locations to waterborne paint before any restrictions mandated it. As a result, Collision Solutions was soon turning out amazing paint jobs and their crew quickly became fully comfortable with waterborne and the numerous benefits offered by their new GFS paint booth.

To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.

“We took a couple of the prep stations and replaced all of the old equipment with GFS equipment after looking at several companies. We went with GFS based on what people out there in the industry were telling us about the company and its track record.

Owner Aaron Clark, 40, is a second generation body shop owner whose parents operated a shop more than three decades ago. “I started working in our family’s shop when I was 16 and worked my way up from porter to technician,” Clark told Autobody News. “In 1994, my partner and I opened our own shop in friendly competition with my parents’ company. It was a very successful operation that eventually grew into a two-location business in the Indianapolis area.”

Auto Body World, the largest collision-repair company in Arizona, opened its eighth store in May at 6815 W. Chandler Blvd., near Interstate 10. “We’re conveniently located close to Ahwatukee, Sun Lakes and Tempe to better serve our customers in the East Valley,” says Mark Turner, the company’s president.

To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.

The 34,000-square-foot 40-bay facility was formerly occupied by Advanced Auto Body. The existing down-draft Ameri-Cure booths were refurbished to Auto Body World standards. Here, and at all ABW locations, PPG Waterborne Paint, distributed by Finish Masters, is used exclusively.

The new facility is staffed by seven technicians and five administrative staff, and Turner hopes to increase the full-time employees to 28, led by Ryan Downs, the store’s general manager. The ABW administrative team includes David Fait, CEO, the 1999 Phoenix Chamber of Commerce “Small Businessman of the Year,” David Bybee, DFO, and Lorie Kinman, chief administrative officer.

The company was started in 1946 in South Dakota by Warren Fait, David Fait’s father. He relocated his company to Phoenix in 1962, building his first collision center at 27th Avenue and Maryland Street in 1968. David slowly built the business through the following decades.

If you’ve ever received a long sales letter, you may have wondered why it was four or more pages long—and who would expect you to read it all? In the days before the Internet, e-mail and Twitter, snail-mail marketing often included these long sales letters. At that time, statistics proved that recipients who read these long letters were often the ones who bought the product. My wife’s ex-husband was an ad copywriter who made a nice living from writing long ad copy, but no more. Today we’ve entered the era of the short message. Twitter is a prime example. Ad copy must be 140 characters or less. Most advertisers no longer believe people will read long copy. The assumption is most people have a very short attention span and a message must be fast, brief and dramatic to capture viewer interest and attention.

To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.

Institutional advertising might lead a shop owner to think all an ad has to do is have an attention grabbing image displaying the company name and product. Nothing could be farther from the truth. National corporate products have large advertising budgets and often simply try to keep the product name in front of the public eye. A gigantic billboard may have a huge photo of an attractive person drinking that company’s beverage and the company name might be so small you could miss it if you didn’t look closely. The thinking behind this is that repetitive viewings will encourage sales of the product. Unless you have very deep pockets, don’t even think about advertising like this. But one aspect of this kind of ad is very accurate: Repetitive viewing can result in a prospect trying or buying the product. The question is: what is the best media to use to convey that brief, repetitive message?

Signing a commercial lease is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, financial commitment your auto body repair business will make.  Commercial leases are easy to commit to, full of traps for the unwary, and very hard to get out of without significant pain and expense.  When you consider that a commercial auto body lease (five year lease at a rental rate of $5,000) is a $300,000 commitment, it really pays to develop a basic understanding of commercial leases and to learn how to avoid common pitfalls.

To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.

Commercial leases are binding:
A commercial lease is a specific type of contract.  In a commercial lease, the owner (landlord) of a building or land grants your body auto body repair business (tenant) the exclusive right to use some or all of the building or land in exchange for monthly payments of rent.  Commercial leases can be oral, though almost always the terms are spelled out in a very long written contract. Many commercial leases use pre-printed forms that are then further modified in the landlord’s favor by the landlord’s lawyer through an addendum attached to the back of the lease.  Commercial leases can be enforced in court and the landlord almost always has the advantage in a lawsuit because the contractual language favors him.

Understand the lease and bargain:
Your job is to understand the unfavorable terms and then bargain as hard as possible to improve them.  Even if you don’t completely succeed in eliminating unfavorable terms, you will know what you are agreeing to and be better prepared to fulfill the responsibilities that you are undertaking.

Some yelled “Fore” while others exclaimed “Duck!” but in the end, 62 golfers of varying skill levels participated in the California Autobody Association East Bay Chapter’s 25th Annual Golf Tournament at Diablo Creek Golf Course in Concord, Calif. on a sunny Saturday, July 30th.

To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.

Followed by a great dinner and raffle prize giveaways galore, East Bay CAA members and their friends played 18 holes while enjoying a rare day of good weather. Matt Patterson from Airbagservice.com won the grand prize, a beautiful deluxe BBQ with all the bells and whistles that was donated by Hertz.

If you haven’t played in a tournament like this and you’re not familiar with how these events go, here are three valuable tips: First rule: Always bring a ringer (or two). Second rule: Fudge your score (it’s not cheating unless you get caught and everyone else does it!) and Three: Have fun and don’t get too competitive (a rule many serious golfers always forget.)

U.S. Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.V., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., have introduced a bill in the Senate titled the Motor Vehicle and Highway Safety Improvement Act of 2011. The bill touches on several issues relevant to the collision industry, including broadening the authority of the secretary of transportation to:

● Conduct motor vehicle safety research, development, and testing programs and activities, including new and emerging technologies that impact or may impact motor vehicle safety,

● Collect and analyze all types of motor vehicle and highway safety data and related information to determine the relationship between motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment performance characteristics.

The legislation requires that the U.S. DOT conduct a study of crash data collection and report, after one year, to a Senate Committee and to the House Committee on the quality of data collected through the National Automotive Sampling System, including the Special Crash Investigations Program. The administrator of NHTSA will then conduct a comprehensive review of the data elements collected from each crash to determine if additional data should be collected. This review will include input from interested parties, including suppliers, automakers, safety advocates, the medical community and research organizations.

The Crozat family had a grand opening recently to unveil their newest G&C location in Novato, California.

From left to right, General Manager Shawn Crozat, Owners Teri and Gene Crozat, and Josh Crozat, the manager of the company’s Windsor location, were on hand for a ribbon cutting.

Approximately 70 people attended the event, including dignitaries from the City of Novato. The facility has the ability to handle 100 cars per month.

G&C purchased the business from Complete Auto Body and remodeled the shop for approximately $300,000, including the purchase price of the business as well as the construction costs, and subsequently signed a long-term lease with the building’s owner.

Teri is holding a plaque welcoming the business from the Novato Chamber of Commerce.

The keynote speaker for NACE’s Opening General Session will be Social Media Guru Chris Brogan. Brogan will headline the Opening General Session at ASRW 2011, Thurs., Oct. 6, from 8:30 a.m.–10 a.m.

To view a PDF of this article please click HERE.

Brogan is a noted author and journalist; he is the New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents, and a featured monthly columnist at Entrepreneur Magazine. Brogan’s blog, chrisbrogan.com, is also in the Top 5 of the Advertising Age Power 150. Brogan is a marketing consultant and frequent speaker about social media marketing who educates businesses and organizations on how social software aligns with their strategies. He is the president and CEO of Human Business Works, an education and community company.

Brogan’s keynote presentation will focus on small business solutions, sales, lead generation and specific strategies—all as they relate to the use and implementation of social media.

“We carefully selected Chris Brogan this year and feel his presentation will be a highlight of ASRW,” stated Ron Pyle, ASA president. “Attendees can expect an entertaining and engaging presentation and also to walk away with ideas and solutions they can easily implement as soon as they get home.”

“Technology and the advent of social media in particular have changed the way we all do business, so we feel Chris Brogan is not only a timely choice for this year’s keynote presentation, but an extremely relevant one," said Harry Hall, DuPont North America Sales Manager—Refinish. “Brogan has become a leader in his field through his innate use of technology and connecting it to business, which parallels DuPont Performance Coatings’ philosophy of innovation as a leader in the collision repair industry.”

Mitchell International released their third quarter Industry Trends Report this month; the report focused on gas prices and their affect on car-buying and car value trends. This issue also discusses how volatile and sustained high fuel prices are impacting insurance claims beyond a reduction in miles driven.

Vice president of industry relations for Mitchell International Greg Horn talks about the role gas prices play in resale values of vehicles from fuel-efficient to so-called gas guzzlers.

“Fuel efficient vehicles tend to rise more quickly and reliably in value during periods of high gas prices than gas guzzlers, which fall in value,” Horn said in the report.

The insurance and collision repair industries need the accuracy of a true market survey method for valuing a total loss because constantly fluctuating fuel prices move too fast, with too great an impact, for slower traditional ‘book value’ valuations to accurately reflect the true actual cash value of total loss vehicles.”

Other valuable points of interest in the current issue of Mitchell’s ITR include:

When I first met Greg Coccaro, the owner of North State Custom in Bedford Hills, New York, I was immediately struck by his passion for his business, his customers and his industry. But it was his frustration with the inequities inherent in his chosen field that truly captured my attention. I listened as Greg explained to me what a DRP was, how his labor rate was determined by someone other than himself and what the practice of “steering” had done to his and other businesses like his. Having spent nearly 20 years litigating for and against insurance companies, I was aware of the power an insurance company can exert. However as Greg explained to me the realities of the collision repair industry, I was admittedly shocked by what I heard.

The Case of North State v. Progressive Insurance
In 2007, as attorney for North State Custom, I commenced a lawsuit against Progressive Insurance alleging that Progressive engaged in deceptive business practices and interference with North State’s business and customers. The case has survived two motions to dismiss, two appeals and a separate action brought by Progressive against North State resulting in two separate jury trials. (For a summary of the Progressive v. North State saga see autobodynews.com, Cocarro Case Takes a Wide Turn...). While the case against Progressive has not yet been resolved and in fact we expect a jury trial to be held sometime next year, a recent court ruling in the matter has significant impact for the industry as a whole.