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Recent Columns
- SCRS Open Board Meeting Presentations Focus on GM ADAS Document, Data Privacy & Blueprint Optimization Tool
- Mitchell Doesn’t Share Data with CARFAX, as CIC Committee Works to Address Issue
- Mark Olson: Get it Right the First Time
- ARA Takes Summer Road Trip Virtual, Annual Convention to Follow Suit
- Shops Report Measurement Issues With Some Steering Columns
Ed Attanasio
Ed Attanasio is an automotive journalist based in San Francisco. Ed enjoys sports of all kinds and is a part time stand-up comedian.
He can be reached at era39@aol.com.
Indoor Advertising Engages Consumers in Prime Locations
Body shops are always looking for a better and affordable way to keep their name in front of their customers.
NJ Body Shop Owner Gets an Offer He Can't Refuse
Shop Owner Joe Rodi came to Italy in 1956 and thanks to a recent sale to Wawa, a large retailer, he will soon be able to return to visit his homeland of Calabria for an extended vacation.
Joseph Rodi, 78, is the owner of Rodi's Auto Body in Cherry Hill, NJ and happy to say that he is living the American Dream. He's proud of his two sons who work in the business and of all the things he has achieved through his shop in its 56 years of existence. And that's why the Rodi family and many members of the community in Cherry Hill were a little concerned when Wawa, a large retailer, started looking at Rodi's property and subsequently approached him to purchase his shop and the strip mall he also owns nearby.
Do Vehicle Wraps Make Sense for Your Shop?
The King of Wraps in San Jose, CA did this wrap that tells a story and uses humor to promote the Waffle Roost in northern California.
You've seen them everywhere and the graphics are pretty spectacular. Food trucks, large 16-wheelers, vans of all sizes and cars of every type now have advertising messages that entice viewers. Some people have allowed companies to put their logos on their daily drivers and paying them handsomely for doing so and this movement is growing fast.
Day Job/Night Job: Mixing Paints During the Day and Cocktails at Night
Sean Fitzgerald is only 33, but he's already owned Phantom Autobody in Jeffersonville, IN for three years now.
Sean Fitzgerald, 33, has a busy work schedule as he balances two jobs--body shop owner and bartender--but he makes it all work because he stresses quality in everything he does. While running the show at Phantom Autobody in Jeffersonville, IN, he is a hands-on owner who still paints most of the vehicles that come into his shop. And after his 10-12 hour days fixing cars and doing custom paint, he is off to work as a bartender to help him pay the bills.
Women Shop Owners and Female Consumers Get Help from AskPatty.com
Jody DeVere established AskPatty.com a decade ago to help women as body shop professionals and also as consumers of automotive repair services.
When a car needs repairs, it's likely that a woman will be bringing it into your shop. Those numbers have climbed over the years, and now the experts claim that 73 percent of all automotive repair customers are female. In 2012, there were more women than men with driver's licenses for the very first time. On top of that, women have become more savvy consumers and can't be bamboozled anymore with technical terms and industry speak.
The Little Things Go a Long Way with Customer Service
Nancy Friedman is known throughout the country as the Telephone Doctor, but she is also a keynote speaker for large automotive companies and a customer service consultant for big corporations. She takes businesses of all sizes that are dropping the ball when it comes to basic customer service and turns them into thoroughbreds. Her clients include CARSTAR, Big O Tires, Goodyear, Tire Pro, Midas, and many other well respected automotive companies around the country.
Best Marketing Techniques to Recruit Top Employees
It's safe to say that every shop owner in the country is well aware of the enormous need for qualified collision repair professionals—from body technicians, painting technicians, estimators and even front office personnel. With fewer technical school programs in our high schools and colleges and a lack of alternative training programs, we’re not currently creating enough new employees to accommodate the need.
Say Hello to Our Little Friend: El Nino!
There are a handful of businesses out there that praise bad weather and celebrate when the big one hits, while most of us cower in fear and prefer staying home. Meteorologists, roofers, storm window companies, and of course, body shops, benefit when different degrees of storms hit all ends of our country.
Marketing Dinosaurs That Should Be Extinct in 2016
In all industries, there are sworn by marketing practices that will eventually become archaic, due to emerging technologies and other factors. Like anything else, times change and things that were working 10-15 years ago are no longer the best path to take.
5 Smart Marketing Moves to Make in 2016
Last year around this same time, I wrote an article about 5 marketing-related things to do in 2015 and I stand by everything I listed there. In order, they were:
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Five Things to Know about the Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR)
Jack Molodanof, a California attorney and lobbyist told body shop owners and managers how to “Protect Your Business from Fines and Disciplinary Actions by the CA Bureau of Automotive Repair” at SEMA last.
What to Do if You Suspect Drugs in Your Shop
If you’ve owned or managed a shop for more than a decade, you’ve likely encountered one or more employees who had issues with alcohol or drugs. Discovering the problem and then figuring out the right strategy to deal with it can be tricky.
Candy Finnigan is one of the interventionists featured on the Emmy-nominated reality show Intervention (A&E) and the author of When Enough is Enough. In this interview, we discussed the effectiveness and success rate of interventions while she provided her insights into drugs in the workplace.
Don’t Be Content with Sub-Par Online Content
Most body shop marketing types know that well-written content is an important part of any successful marketing campaign. It’s like anything else, just doing it isn’t enough and content creation and management isn’t a “check box” type of thing.
For many years, body shops, from small independents all the way to massive MSOs, were reluctant to jump into the Internet game, hesitating to design top-notch sites, creating apps and committing to blogs for the long-term.
Body Shops Nationwide are Joining the Blog Party
One of the items on my marketing to-do list for 2015 (January 2015 ABN) was entitled Get a Blog and I can’t take credit for it, but there are more body shop blogs out there now than ever in the collision industry. Four years ago, there were 156 million blogs in existence and today there are more than 180 million worldwide. Shops that didn’t even have web sites now have them complete with blogs that contain weekly posts, sometimes more. Blogs are no longer a fad or even a trend—no, they’re here to stay and gaining traction more and more as they stampede into the World Wide Web.