This is not the common family-owned, father-to-son hand-off business story; but then, this is not a typical body shop.
“I never saw him until he was 12 or 13,” Chris Raeder says of his eldest son, “and saw him one week a year, until he was 18 or 20.” Raeder is dad to Robbie Mulderrig, general manager running one of four body shops for the Texas multi-shop operator Raeder owns, Autocraft Bodywerks.
They didn’t come together like a normal family and they’re not growing Autocraft in average ways, either. It has four locations in 11 years; and is multiple OEM certified, authorized, or getting more top-shelf brands.
Autocraft Bodywerks is known for handling newer vehicles like Tesla and Rivian along with classics and high-end brands.The most recent addition: in Spicewood, “the most beautiful shop in the country,” says Robbie, who runs it, and who isn’t kidding.
Like a family
When Robbie was the most recent addition, Chris and his wife Kate weren’t married, they were in college, in New York. Chris was at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He would eventually earn a Ph.D. out west, and do 20 years for chip-and-wafer maker AMD.
Now in high-tech hub Austin, Chris, in his early 40s, sought “some sort of retirement.” He took a year off and “was always a car guy,” — Robbie notes his dad’s a “race car enthusiast” — with a doctorate in metallurgical engineering. “The body element intrigued me,” Raeder said.
He looked all over the country before buying a single south Austin shop from John Borek, who’d founded it — yep, that storied ‘30 years’ before.
Robbie, 32, would come down for a week at a time in his teens. As college receded in the rear view and he had a degree in finance, he spent two months in Austin and at the new venture.
“I wasn’t planning on moving here,” Robbie said, “I wasn’t planning on staying. I didn’t think I was going to love it,” but he hit Austin with a buddy, worked a couple other jobs, came aboard in 2019.
“It was a big deal,” Chris said. “Owning a business can be tough, feeling alone in the thing; having someone with me kept me engaged and motivated, creating a dream I never had.”
It’s not personal
This is work.
But don’t make it either-or: combine family dynamics and skill, loving the vibe and hard labor.
“Engineer father and finance son,” Robbie said. “I like working with him and for him and what he’s building.”
If that’s not biological in your shop, then do the ‘business-is-a-family’ thing, but not just lip service because it sounds good on social media. It actually doesn’t sound that great, because everyone is saying it. Better to do it.
Autocraft is four locations so it also needs good people, Robbie adds, which not incidentally is part of how the shop aspiring to ‘family’ without the genetics goes about it. He knew he wanted in when he began to realize his every action in the shop, for good or ill, mattered.
Don’t worry about the work: it’s right there waiting. Robbie got hired in parts, did customer service, then was a blueprinter, and ran the San Marcos location, adding a short stint to transition North Austin’s leadership too.
Robbie’s brother Will, Chris’ second-eldest son who summers at the shops, wants in. But it’s not just personal. He graduates this year from Texas A&M with an engineering degree and he’s certified for Porsche, Land Rover, and Jaguar, trained in welding, and restores BMW 2002s with his dad.
He’ll come in as a tech — just a tech.
But from Chris’s viewpoint, he doesn’t yet speak of Autocraft as a family business. “I had no idea any of my kids would be interested, didn’t know I’d get this interested. It could become a family enterprise,” he said.
“We’ve run marathons and triathlons together,” Chris said of Robbie. But in a previous breath he’s lasered on the responsibilities of running shops: “You take on all these employees,” he said. “I have a business.”
Think, then act
Autocraft Bodywerks has pursued intentional growth.
Four shops, multiple OEMs, more of both. Autocraft has historically been first or second with hot and hard-to-handle newer brands, like Tesla and Rivian, and classics like the ones Will can fix. They can do Corvette C8s, too.
Autocraft saw and caught the Tesla wave at the start and located the second shop next to a Tesla service center. They’ve since scoped Tesla’s ‘vertical alignment’ — insurance, service, collision … and shops in some markets decertified. Time to de-emphasize.
On Rivian, they put their third shop, in San Marcos — next to an Amazon distribution center, which delivers via Rivian. It has 20,000-square-feet of production: 10,000 for paint, plus more ceiling space for those vans and Sprinters.
General EV growth meant Lucid as well. And if EVs taper for now and competitors drop out, as Autocraft pursues BMW, Audi, and Mercedes.
Hats and cattle
The shops are in affluent areas, even by Austin standards. Autocraft bought the Spicewood land, its fourth shop to open, before bowing San Marcos, which was third. Chris saw housing heading that way.
“Ten years ago it was nothing but farm land and cattle ranches,” he said. Then builders started planning 1,000-home communities on formerly 100-acre woods. “We just saw a lot going on.”
Adding to the land development savvy, Chris now couples that with an eye on Consolidators don’t buy collision parts from dealers, he noted, but nationally and at steep discounts while requiring trucks for shipping and space to store them. Mechanical parts yes, collision no, he said.
He’s visiting anyway — “Christmas rounds” this year included 19 dealerships in four days — and he paid attention, too.
“It creates opportunity for the high-end market, high-end repair.”
Chris and Robbie are now looking north of Austin for this, such as areas near the communities of Cedar Park, Round Rock, Georgetown, and Leander.
Family dynamics include challenges, the father and son said. “We expand well [even] in the past couple years where you wouldn’t necessarily be thinking of expanding,” Robbie noted. “We’ve had ups and downs.”
Like, well … families.
And families, whatever else they do, tend to get bigger through the years.
“Our ears to the ground, we’re definitely looking to grow,” Chris said. “We want to keep adding locations. For me, no; for my sons, yes.”
Paul Hughes