Thank you to the 250 repair businesses who took part in our anonymous #survivingthevirus survey. The results show what a resilient industry we have and aren't as bad as many may have imagined. I'm not saying anything is rosy out there - claims have plummeted as everyone stays home and will continue to be lower than usual for some time to come, until everyone goes back to work and school. We'll run another survey in the near future to see if conditions have changed.
On the plus side according to one insurer we spoke to traffic volumes and accident claims have seen a sharp upturn since Easter Weekend.
The survey ran from 2 April to 16 April. Here are the results:
We imagine that only those who were booked out months in advance will not have suffered from a volume shop. Even Capital SMART shut for a week to get enough repairs in the pipe line.
Out of the 250 businesses who had responded, one business had clearly shut down or gone into hibernation as they had let all their staff go. The majority had let between 1-5 staff go. In total 181 staff had been stood down from the 250 respondents, one respondent, clearly a group of some description (the survey is anonymous) had let 50 staff go.
From what we understand there is currently a good supply of fast moving parts for most models. There may be some shortage on parts involved in the repair of heavy hits, and air freight items can take longer to arrive. With many of the car makers using facilities to produce PPE items around the world, and a prolonged shut down of factories in Europe and other regions, parts shortages seem inevitable and repairers will have to check delivered parts to ensure they have everything they need before working on a customers' car. On the other hand the massive reduction in claims worldwide and less road traffic could mean any parts shortages aren't severe.
Obviously a vast number of consumable items come out of China and there are bound to be delays in popular items. However many major Australian suppliers keep up to six months stock of lines and also will source items from other markets.
Luckily, fingers and toes crossed, it doesn't look like Australia will go to level 4 lockdown, although this can't be ruled out for the future if there is a spike in virus cases.
The next two questions were about the respondents postcode and number of staff.
I checked on some of the shops that were reported closed. Some weren't - perhaps operating reduced hours, some are in 'hibernation' but there will obviously be a significant number of repair business casualties because of the lockdown conditions. We were sorry to hear that Claridge Crash in Adelaide has gone into administration and we understand Smash Masters at Geelong has also closed. However, it's possible some businesses may be able to trade out of liquidation if the market returns strong.
Most of the 'other answers' were to do all of the above, some to hibernate.
Thank you again to everyone who took part in the survey.