What’s the big idea?

Mercieca set out to work for himself in 1998. Today, as well as a huge, handsome workshop in Melton, he has three tow trucks and a dismantler. Every aspect of the business is covered.He has outgrown two premises but is reasonably confident that this one is finally big enough.
Like most successful smash repairers, Mercieca sees the devil in the details and is dedicated to rigorous processes to ensure optimum efficiency. He designed and oversaw the build of the Melton mega shop himself, from its marbled floors and kid’s play area in the airy reception to the cavernous workshop and the showroom which will showcase the collection of cherished cars he has restored. The car showroom sends the message to the customer that fixing cars is not just a job but a passion.
A shrewd businessman from the outset, even with his first workshop in Sunshine, he felt that rent was wasted money and managed to buy the premises. He outgrew that place in six years and began custom-building his next workshop in Melton, just around the corner from his current location. Just as he was putting  the finishing touches on the building, the opportunity arose to buy tow trucks.
“My wife was not happy,” chuckled Mercieca, ”We’d just spent a fair bit of money building the new workshop, then we were looking at a substantial outlay for two tow trucks and two licenses. Within a year they changed the territories, so we had a much larger patch and the licence cost doubled.”
It was worth the investment. Mercieca doesn’t have a huge amount of competition in his area, and being able to tow the damaged vehicles to your own premises can mean that if the car is already there that you will secure the repair work.
The new workshop, although not quite finished, has been operational since January this year. “We’re still in the teething stages,” he said. “We’ve had to establish new working practices, as what worked in the old shop doesn’t necessarily work here.”
Mercieca has a raft of reasons for building such a huge and impressive repair facility, and none of them are about being flash.
Firstly there’s all the cars the tow trucks bring in – it’s much more efficient to have them on-site rather than storing them elsewhere and having to transport them to and fro. “As the old workshop got busier it became less efficient,” Mercieca explained. “Eventually it was bursting at the seams and there were so many cars that it was affecting workflow.”
There is no time-consuming shuffling of cars in his new workshop – it’s so large and well organised that there is simply no need. The cars go through the whole system without ever having to leave the building.
“This isn’t about being better than everyone else; it’s about maximising efficiency and working more comfortably. We spend the majority of our lives at work, and I wanted to create a comfortable environment.” There are approximately 20 staff at Fixwell who can enjoy their break times in a modern, comfortable kitchen diner that many people would kill to have at home.
“It’s also about customer perception,” he said. “People generally have higher and higher expectations about everything they pay for – consumers have so much more choice than in the past and they are fussier. Meanwhile, insurers become more demanding. Not only is the first impression of a business important, but the whole experience. People pay their insurance premiums year in and year out, and when they have an accident they want to feel confident and comfortable with their choice of repairer. As the industry standard is always being raised, when we designed this workshop we took the opportunity to go the next level.”