Sept. 29, 2016—Kevin Rains, FenderBender columnist and owner of Center City Collision and Precision Frame & Body in the Cincinnati area, announced this week a deal has been signed for his shops to join the CARSTAR network.
Rains made the decision based on a recent gap that opened up in his market.
“There’s a ton of goodwill in Cincinnati around the CARSTAR brand,” Rains said. “I saw this as an opportunity to draft off of CARSTAR’s 20-year history in the Cincinnati market and use that to propel my own growth.”
Rains said he talked with several different consolidators, but eventually decided he wanted to maintain control of his business while still leveraging the resources of a national brand. Another advantage to joining the brand was CARSTAR’s Edge Performance Groups, which allow the comparison of data from different shops to track performance.
“It’s getting harder and harder to be competitive as a smaller MSO,” Rains said. “CARSTAR gives me the control and the freedom to be 100 percent owner of my business while still leveraging some of the scale opportunities of having a national brand so I can compete with those consolidators.”
Rains said consolidation will continue to become the norm in the industry. He advised that shops facing similar franchise opportunities begin by talking to franchisees in that network and discussing the opportunities and challenges they face as franchisees.
“CARSTAR has been extremely generous and open-handed with this,” Rains said. “They’ve given me all the attention I’ve needed to make a very informed decision. They’ve given me the opportunity to meet all of their leadership. It’s been a very open-book process.”
