“I Can’t Make Money on Paint!” (a.k.a. Why Johnny Kicked the dog.)
Many shop owners think their problems would be solved if they could just get their paint cheaper. But paint materials profitability problems are often just a symptom of larger troubles – paint labor profitability issues, lack of standard operating procedures, sales shortcomings, etc.
Is It Possible to Run a Body Shop Without Lying, Cheating and Stealing?
Point CounterPoint
DRPs, Here We Come?
Our second month in business, we landed fleet work with two major car rental agencies. We used this same strategy when visiting our first three insurance companies.
Is the Insurance Company Also the Shop’s Customer?
Rick Little, Owner Rick’s Auto Sales & Service Inc. Coshocton, Ohio Viewing insurance companies as your customer is an unhealthy and dangerous thing to do and will only lead to giving them complete control of the industry. We need only to look at the healthcare industry to see how subtly and completely this is
I Lost My DRP!
State Farm’s recent announcement that they’re testing a new direct-repair program and that they’ll be reducing the number of shops that participate has left repairers scratching their heads and pondering the same question: Is there life after Service First?
Is There Still Money in Glass Repair?
A variety of factors have made in-house glass work less profitable, but some shop owners still make it work. Is it right for you?
What’s the Goal of any Business? To Make Money
I’ll add a couple of caveats to that.
Perplexed by Paint
Turns out this topic is much like the famous Bill Clinton quote: “It depends on what the meaning of is, is.” Paint brand popularity and exact market share are touchy subjects among the refinish paint companies. No one wants to be quoted in print as having less market share than the next guy, and there’s
The Efficiency Myth
Everything you’ve ever learned about efficiency is wrong. Individual efficiencies don’t
matter one bit. It’s the overall process — the process efficiency — that we need to
focus on.
A ‘How-To’ Guide for Increasing Labor Rates, BodyShop Business, February 2006
Rather than belabor the exhaustive list of reasons labor rates need to rise, let’s focus on what type of market conditions act to create higher – or more frequently increasing – prevailing rates in individual markets. By Tigger (from his view in the Thousland Acre Wood) No one in the collision repair industry would argue