Mark's Auto Service: Catching a second wind

Two simultaneous events once threatened to close Mark’s Auto Service: the financial crisis of 2008 and the passing of Mark Buttita’s father.

“That really took the wind out of my sails,” he recalls. The Rockford, Ill., shop he had opened 65 years ago was his father’s legacy. “But then my wife and I bought the (property) from the estate. We brought my son in, joined a 20 Group, hired a business coach and things really started to take off.”

Founded as a radiator repair shop, Buttita joined the operation in 1977 and promptly petitioned his dad about becoming a full repair shop, which it did after his father retired in the 1980s. As the shop changed so did the name, fully and figuratively becoming “Mark’s.” But his father still loomed large with his design foresight.

“My dad was sharp,” Buttita boasts. “When he built the shop before this one, it was written up in two magazines as state-of-the-art. Then my dad and I built (the current facility) as our dream shop 30 years ago and we’re just now growing into it. One of his signature things was to put all the lines over the shop — air, electrical, water — so there wasn’t a lot on the floor. And he was pretty particular about the floor itself; he floated a red powder into the concrete so it wasn’t painted and didn’t chip off.”

Despite being near the Chicago metropolitan area, Rockford was deeply impacted by the economic downturns of 2008. “We had shops going out of business left and right,” comments Buttita. “But where a lot of places had rent to pay, we owned the building so there wasn’t a whole lot of debt. (However) our numbers got crushed; we were down to two guys in the shop, two guys in the office and I was one of those guys.”

Fortunately one of the other guys was technician Terry Smith, who had started with the company about the same time as Buttita. “He was able to run the shop, which allowed me to go search out what I needed to do to save the business.”

Thus Mark began looking into consulting firms, one which came highly recommended at $50,000 a year. “But I asked if (their method) doesn’t work, what then? They said just keep sending in the checks; ‘You’re in a contract, you’re going to pay us $50,000 whether you use it or not.’ I didn’t get the warm fuzzies from that.”

Eventually Buttita found a 20 Group association headed by Gary Gunn of Automotive Service Leaders. “All the guys were great. They had all started out where I was and they were all doing over million dollars a year now. And no contracts; you’re not happy, you leave, no problem. I was like, are you kidding me? That’s fantastic! Where do I sign?”

With Gunn as his business coach, Buttita learned about becoming a “yes” company. Mark’s Auto Service now sends out about 10,000 cards a month for oil changes under $20, but Buttita had to get the shop ready first. “You have to have your policies, procedures and staff in place, because when these things hit you’re going to get busy, and you have to be able to say yes,” he explains. “You don’t send a customer down the road, you don’t say, ‘No, we can’t get to it right now.’

“And then boom — you do a good PMI, you do the inspections, you do speed of service to get everyone in and out right away. Our RO is $250 to $300, so it’s not that high, but our volume is. We believe car count is king,” Buttita continues. “We call it an ‘oil change chain:’ oil change, oil change, oil change; then hopefully they’ll do a brake job or whatever. And it works. In the last couple of years, our business has been going up and up. Last year we hit a million one and we had never gone over $600,000 before. This year we’re on track to go over that.”

Buttita estimates that in the last year or two, they’ve about doubled the staff and put in $100,000 worth of gear: seven more lifts and new alignment and tire changing equipment. “In March of 2010 we did 99 cars for $30,000; in 2012 that jumped up to 163 cars for $53,000; 2014, up to 315 cars for $74,000; last month we finished 503 at $150,000. And we’re looking at buying even more equipment and putting more guys on, including another service writer. We also went to all flat rate technicians; I had two techs recently book 80 hours each. This place is just blowing out. I recently signed a contract to expand my parking lot because I’m running out of space. It’s a good problem to have,” he laughs.

“We’ve invested a lot of money in diagnostics, a lot of money in training, and we’re going to have to keep doing that,” Buttita observes. “It looks like we might have to spend $100,000 on equipment and training every year. But we give away the first 15 minutes of diagnostics for free just to get them in the door. We offer free towing with the repair. We offer free shuttle service, free pickup and delivery, free alignment inspection just to get them in the door. But the customers learn to like you, trust you. You recommend a lot of work, and while you might not see it right away, pretty soon it all comes back.”

Add to this mix the youth and vigor of Buttita’s son, who gained some business experience working for a consumer electronics retailer before returning to work at the family’s shop. “Right now he’s one of my service writers. He’s a sharp kid, he’s motivated,” says Buttita. “His dream is to have his own shop. I never wanted to branch out. When my dad and I opened up this place, we kept the original shop open for two years (with Mark as manager) and it was just a drag, but that was because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Now that we’re getting everything down to a system, my son and I are looking at a second location, which will be coming open in February. In the meantime, my wife and I are looking at retirement, an exit strategy, while my son is looking at getting multiple stores. And he’s strong enough to do it.”

Second wind, third generation.

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