Prestigious location, high-end service make Anthony's Auto Craft a one-of-a-kind shop

Anthony's Auto Craft ABRN Top Shop collision repair auto body repair Imagine driving through California's beautiful Napa Valley on a fall morning as the sun comes up with the dew still wet on fields growing deep purple with rich, plump grapes. Consider yourself fortunate because you're a quick drive from Anthony's Auto Craft, a high-end collision repair shop that's discovered a formula that's helped it do $6 million annually in 2008 in Marin County California.

San Rafael-based Anthony's Auto Craft specializes in repairing specific "breeds" of automobiles – luxury, high performance and exotic vehicles. Of course, other shops have created similar business models but experienced little success. Anthony's formula includes another ingredient, as the old saying goes, "location, location, location." The shop sits in one of the country's wealthiest locales (just 10 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge) near where the rich and famous reside and play, in such cities as Sausalito, Ross and Tiburon.

What makes this formula work and has kept the shop competitive is a quality-first business approach. Anthony's motto is "Quality without compromise" and its goal is to be the finest repair facility anywhere.

Meeting that goal starts with the best available training. Ten years ago, Anthony's began training exclusively with vehicle manufacturers such as Lexus and BMW. The company believed then, and still believes, that the industry eventually will move to manufacturer-certified facilities to deal with the latest technology. When Mercedes-Benz began their certification process, Anthony's jumped at the chance to align itself with the luxury manufacturer.

The shop is now a Mercedes-Benz Certified Collision Repair Facility and also is Mercedes CL Certified. Some 32 percent of the vehicles it repairs are Mercedes-Benz models. In addition, Anthony's has been in a close relationship with a factory-owned Ferrari/Maserati dealer in San Francisco for almost 20 years.

As you might expect, the owners of these vehicles get some pretty special treatment. Anthony's runs a concierge service for the North Bay Area, Napa and the city of San Francisco. It will pick-up and deliver damaged vehicles and drop off one of its rental vehicles. The shop recently purchased its own fleet of six new Mercedes-Benz C230 rental vehicles and has plans for more due to the success of the program.

Though arguably extravagant, you might consider doing the same if your customers were used to driving vehicles costing six figures or if you shared some of Anthony's celebrity clientele. Well-known figures who have walked through Anthony's doors include Sean Penn, Huey Lewis, George Lucas, Sammy Haggar and Barry Bonds. The late Jerry Garcia, founder of The Grateful Dead, also was a customer.

But meeting celebrities and working on beautiful automobiles aren't the main benefits of running a shop like Anthony's. Rather, because of the location and course the shop has taken, it doesn't have to deal with many of the headaches most shops must deal with every day. For example, Anthony's is a DRP for only one insurance company.

"That enables us to distance ourselves from the conflict of interest that comes with the contractual commitments that insurance companies insist on – making the cost of repairs the number one importance. We work only for the vehicle owners themselves and are not influenced by the companies," says co-owner/manager Todd Ballenger.

Anthony's also continues to pay hourly salaries, instead of "succumbing," as it calls it, to a commission pay structure that increases profits, "only to diminish the quality" of the product. It has a bonus structure in place for performance based on efficiencies.

The result is that Anthony's is remarkably stable. Its ownership has been the same locale for the last 35 years, and the business has retained the same management team for the last 23 of those years.

Though Anthony's has sought to distance itself from some aspects of the industry, it hasn't left the industry behind. Instead, Anthony's is one of the five founding shops of the California Repair Association and has met directly with numerous senators and the Insurance Commissioner of the State of California to draft legislation for consumer and collision repairers' rights.

"We've been involved in a lot of legislation," says Ballenger, "We've written bills. We've had some success such as helping stop an aftermarket parts bill that would have changed the definition of aftermarket and OEM parts. It was being pushed just to confuse [insurer] clients to circumvent the reputation of aftermarket parts."

"It's disheartening at times since we write the bill one way, and by the time it works its way through the legislature it means something else," he adds. "We just keep fighting the good fight."