What type of person does it take to build a successful collision repair shop? Many types! Here's a look at three very different but similarly successful individuals.
Let’s play a game called Build a Successful Shop. The rules are pretty simple. You’ll start off with $1 million in capital and use it to pay for the best available building, equipment, tools and employees. Your goal is to build a modern collision business and make all the operational areas work together to produce a great product. The key: The winner is the one who becomes (or hires) an effective manager to make all of this possible. In fact, this manager must be capable of establishing a new business and carving out a niche for it in the marketplace.
Sound challenging? Of course. But there are actually many different ways to win. You ought to consider playing it, or at least, dwelling on its implications because oftentimes this challenge isn’t a game. The lives of businesses hinge on its outcome. Let’s take a look at some real-world answers—actual cases of individuals who make the most of their talents to build collision repair facilities that thrive. Their backgrounds paint an intriguing and revealing picture of the kinds of people who keep this industry moving.
Matt Herzing: Business and Personal Transformation
In 1986, 23-year-old Matt Herzing and his 25-year-old business partner Duane Bucher were looking to open a repair facility when inspiration struck. More specifically, new technology struck. The first generation of four-wheel alignment equipment hit the market, catching the eyes of the young entrepreneurs. They quickly realized the pioneering technology would revolutionize the alignment industry. Herzing and Bucher also realized that if they signed onto the new equipment, they would be the sole practitioners of four-wheel alignments in rural St. Mary, Pa., situated just outside of Harrisburg. Deciding the business could prove lucrative, they quickly snapped up a new aligner, added a frame machine and opened Pennsylvania Body and Frame.
For most of the following decade, the small shop successfully worked just as the two envisioned—performing alignments and taking in frame work from body shops. But by 1994, it was time for a change. “Shops were doing their own frame work,” explains Herzing, who agreed with Bucher that the business could no longer continue in that form. But rather than downsize, the two men decided to transform their shop into a full-blown collision repair center.
They added 1,800 sq. ft., bought a paint booth and mixing equipment, and gathered up every collision repair tool they could get their hands on. In structure and content, and with all the proper technical accoutrements, they had the makings of a collision repair business. Still, Herzing and Bucher realized their shop was missing a key ingredient—proper leadership.
Herzing recognized that some of what he knew about running a successful frame and alignment operation would transfer to the collision industry, but that would not be enough to help him survive in his new automotive field. For the shop to survive, Herzing had to know the collision repair business inside and out and find a way to use that knowledge to give his business every advantage and opportunity to thrive.
So began his efforts to educate and transform himself into the effective business manager his shop would require. Step one involved getting professional guidance. Herzing talked to Automotive Service Association (ASA) members for their insight. They suggested he hit the books—read up on the industry and, most significantly, effective management techniques.
“The best advice they gave me was recommending a book on shop management,” Herzing recalls. “I learned that I had to run the business and not let it run me. I learned you couldn’t be out on the floor all the time doing the technical work. You had to be in the office running the business, looking at numbers, overseeing your business.”
Herzing immersed himself in every available source of information on the collision repair industry. He read books and other industry publications, attended training classes, talked to shop owners and paid close attention to the shop profiles in ABRN. “I wanted to find out what made others successful,” he says. “Then I figured out ways that their lessons applied to my own business.”
The education process paid big dividends. His new business grew slowly at first, but it grew. By 1997, sales were increasing 15 percent to 20 percent annually. Ten years after its transformation, Pennsylvania Body and Frame now churns out $1.1 million annually and employs 12 technicians. The shop also has continued to grow. To accommodate his mounting workload, Herzing added 1,400 sq. ft. in August. “You have to grow or fade away,” he says, pointing out one of the important management lessons he’s learned.
Those lessons continue to guide the business. Chief among them, Herzing’s and Bucher’s guiding principle, is the belief that quality people are vital for success. “Good people make good products and that makes good profits,” says Herzing. “Our management philosophy is finding good people who are filled with passion, committed to making things happen, open to ideas from anywhere and blessed with lots of runway ahead of them. They have the ability to energize not only themselves but also everyone in the organization. They make work productive and fun at the same time.”
To help employees reach their potential, Herzing and Bucher invest heavily in training. All of their technicians regularly attend I-CAR classes, and two have qualified as ASE-Certified Master Collision and Refinishing Technicians. Their business has earned both I-CAR Gold status and the ASE Blue Seal of Excellence designation.
Herzing and Bucher fully attribute their shop’s remarkable growth to the employees. “They make it successful. Their contributions have made the shop what it is,” Herzing says.
Although he remains modest, Herzing himself also is a significant part of that success. The transformation of his business from frame and wheel alignment shop to an I-CAR Gold\ASE Blue Seal facility is very much a reflection of Herzing’s transformation from an ambitious service owner to an equally ambitious, top-quality collision shop operator.
Don Mikrut: Building from the Ground Up
Don Mikrut, CEO of Cars Collision, says he got into the collision repair industry the same way many others have—by accident. During his final year of college, marketing major Mikrut happened to speak to a classmate whose father was seeking marketing help for his collision business. Eager for the chance to put his degree to work, Mikrut inquired about the position and quickly accepted it. Little did he know that decision would put him on course for a 14-year career that would eventually have him overseeing 500 employees at a growing Chicago-area business with 29 shops and $70 million in annual sales.
Mikrut spent eight months at that first job, working for Indiana shop owner Joe Hoffman. Along with sales and marketing, he filled in for managers (giving him a chance to see the daily shop operations) and took care of the business’s IT needs. From there, he joined Core Collision and Glass in Wisconsin where, along with sales and marketing, he oversaw acquisitions and transitions. Mikrut later moved on to Amway Auto Builders and then worked with an investment group to start a consolidator called Auto Magic, which eventually became Cars Collision.
During the first part of his career with Cars Collision, Mikrut helped recruit Hoffman (whose shops were purchased by Cars) to serve as CEO and president, and Mikrut once again took the reigns for sales, marketing and acquisitions. For the past six years, he has served as CEO and chief financial officer.
Mikrut has used his experience at nearly every managerial and administrative level to help guide the development of Cars Collision. He describes himself as a “hands-on manager.” He’s worked on some of Cars’ most important internal operations, such as a shop management system that he helped design. “There are a number of good management systems on the market, but none of them do everything you want,” Mikrut explains. “The problem is too often they’re built by accountants and software people—people who just don’t know our business.”
Using his IT experience as background, Mikrut hired a software developer and began building the kind of system he wanted from scratch. This system, recently finished, is now being implemented at all of Cars’ outlets. “We’ve found that by using the new system we can raise profits by at least 2 percent a month at each shop,” he says.
The system offers such benefits as automatically creating credits and stopping parts orders when vehicle owners decide to have their vehicles repaired elsewhere. The system also tracks vacation time, an area where shops often lose money by overpaying. “For example, we pay daily for vacation. Before, this pay wasn’t tracked. There was just no good way to police it. The system also allows a shop to check what happens when a tech takes vacation—how it affects their productivity,” Mikrut says.
Using the same kind of “building from the ground up” philosophy, Cars Collision also has dedicated itself to developing its managerial staff internally. The company employs a system that trains associates interested in management positions on every aspect of the shop business. Trainees spend time in every area of shop operations—parts, paint, repair, administration—and they receive formal classroom instruction. To accommodate this part of the training regimen, Cars Collision maintains a classroom training facility in each of its business regions.
During their education, trainees become familiar with three principles that Mikrut believes are integral to success: communication, goals and honesty. “We have morning production meetings where we go over the work,” he says. “This lets everyone know where they should be...Common goals make it easier to build a strong team. People know what’s expected of them and what they need to do.”
Through training, employees have the opportunity to shape their careers and make personal changes that benefit themselves, their families and their customers. In turn, Cars Collision benefits by regularly rejuvenating itself with highly trained and skilled leaders whose grasp of the intricacies of the collision business allows them to make the kind of smart, informed decisions that keep a business energized and growing.
Eddie Cheskis: Technological Innovator
When Winnipeg-based Boyd Group purchased Gerber Auto Collision and Glass’s 16-store operation earlier this year, they made an intriguing decision. Boyd, whose 94 shops were projected to create $120 million (Canadian) in revenue in 2004, would not transform operations at the Gerber facilities based on its own model.
Rather, Boyd President and CEO Terry Smith declared Gerber’s model to be “best in class” and announced that Boyd’s facilities would be reconfigured to match operations at Gerber. In fact, as part of the purchase agreement, Gerber’s management team was retained and given the task of overseeing the business transformation. At the head of that team is Eddie Cheskis, CEO of Gerber and an industry veteran who has spent his career overseeing technological innovations that have revolutionized the automotive industry.
Cheskis began his career 30 years ago with Chicago-based USA Glass Network, the nation’s first franchiser of auto glass installers, where he eventually was named president of operations. When he left in 1992, the company had more than 100 franchises and was pulling in more than $200 million a year in revenues. CCC Information Services recruited Cheskis to be president first of its Autobody Systems Group and then president of all its services groups. During his tenure, CCC went from servicing 500 shops—at a time when only 5,000 had computers—to more than 15,000 within five years. CCC also worked with Allstate, which wanted to integrate an electronic management system with its direct repair program shops, to create a system using a common language for estimates.
Cheskis’s experience at CCC convinced him his next professional move should be to the collision repair industry. “There were two things that got me interested in collision work,” he says. “The first was the people, the value they put on family and the values they place on their work. Second, I wanted an opportunity to grow a scalable business that could be professionally managed through infrastructure, through technology.”
In 1998, Cheskis got that opportunity when he started working for Gerber, which was a five-shop operation at the time. In 1999, Gerber unveiled its new technological infrastructure when it became one of the first collision companies to open a call center. “The call center lets us manage our business one car at a time,” Cheskis says. “With just one call, a customer or claims rep can schedule an estimate and have the vehicle picked up with a flatbed truck for delivery to the shop whose schedule allows the vehicle to be repaired the quickest. The same system can set and guarantee a delivery date, schedule a rental, keep the owner informed during the repair process and deliver the vehicle back to the owner. All of this with just one call.
“This is marvelous technology. It’s fully networked. We know where every car is anytime we want, and we never sacrifice quality. It’s also cost-effective. Most importantly, though, this infrastructure is built for each individual vehicle. Every vehicle here gets the same level of service and commitment.”
The call center also is at the heart of Gerber’s goal to increase its business capture rate. “Shops want to be able to capture every bit of business that comes to them, whether it’s by referral or an owner stopping by for an estimate. The problem is most shops aren’t very good at this,” Cheskis explains. “That’s because our industry isn’t good at doing things it can’t measure. Previously, there really was no way to measure capture.”
Under Cheskis, Gerber addressed this problem by investing in technology capable of measuring capture rates. The company also began training employees on ways to better acquire potential business, for example, by giving each potential customer as much individual attention as possible. The call center works into this solution because it allows Gerber associates to give customers their undivided attention. The center also helps keep track of all the potential business that reaches the company. Gerber’s goal is to capture 100 percent of that business.
The company’s investment in technology has paid remarkable dividends. In the past eight years, the company has grown threefold to 15 shops. Its annual revenue now surpasses $20 million. While Cheskis places tremendous emphasis on technology and the power of technology to drive a business, he also believes the most important asset for a company ultimately is its people. At Gerber, this belief has translated into an emphasis on communication and personal growth within the company.
To help cultivate these initiatives the company sponsors events where associates at all levels can intermingle and exchange ideas. For example, Gerber holds biweekly breakfast meetings at all of its shops. In attendance are associates, shop management and at least one representative from company management. The breakfasts also serve as stages where associates are recognized for their accomplishments.
To ensure individual growth, Gerber promotes from within and provides career paths for interested associates. The company also runs an active apprentice program where it develops future technicians. “We want to develop from within as much as possible,” he says.
He believes these efforts help put a human face on a thriving collision industry. “It’s a wonderful time for the collision repair industry,” Cheskis says. “It’s a great time for those committed to quality and improving how we do what we do.” For the past three decades, Cheskis has taken a significant role in making this time possible.
Refining Your Role
So which one of these role models most closely resembles your background, goals and management style? Are you the young, budding entrepreneur, the marketing maven turned CEO or the technological innovator? Perhaps you’re a blend of all three with your own ideals leading the way. The key is to harness your motivation and experience, as well as the guidance of others, and use that to carve the niche you see for yourself in the collision industry.
