Blending smart and traditional repairs

Is there a place for smart repairs inside a traditional panel shop? Barry Scholz, national sales director of Bradleys Smart Repairs believes there is, and that most shops are missing out on valuable business opportunities.

Smart repair is largely the domain of franchise operators. It is probably a fair criticism that they generally do not work to standards that smash shops work do. Obviously they do work to suit what their customers will accept, wether in car yards, hire cars, fleet owners, or private retail repairs.

But this does not mean there are not higher standards to work to. There are. I have heard the grumblings of smash repairers and spray painters about the quality and OH&S issues relating to the mobile painters. But the fact remains that those guys are doing real work on real cars for real people who pay real money.

Why have the smash shops lost so much of this turnover and profit over an extended period of time? Because they have not pro-actively developed new customer service opportunities presented by smart repair technologies as they have become available. They allowed the mobiles in.

Yet I believe panel shops still have the opportunity to make huge gains by embracing smart repair methods instead of stubbornly defending an 'ideological' position.

Often when we tell them what we do with paint-repair, many painters will say "it won't work" or that "people won't accept that". But when Mercedes, BMW and Toyota approve our methods and products for use on new vehicles under warranty throughout England and Europe, why should someone decide their customers would not accept it?

The two main issues when a smash shop tries to compete with mobiles are price and convenience. It is hard to compete on price with a van operator painting the front bumper if you use only a conventional smash shop approach. The good van operator makes a good margin not because he has no workshop rent, but because of the methods he uses. It is not low quality. It's a different way of thinking.

I admit that some van operators are brazenly doing respray work that belongs in a booth. But unprincipled people always come unstuck eventually, so you don't have to win their customers. Instead, you have the opportunity to become informed about the standards that have been set and how to achieve them, and then build your business around that. Chasing the lowest common denominator is a mindset that afflicts many people in the motor trade, (especially used car yards) but many more people appreciate quality, service, and an integrity-based relationship.

So is it a case of smash shop versus smart repair, or is there a very real opportunity for the smash shop industry here?
I believe there is a tremendous opening for the smash repair trade, but it will involve a radical shift in attitudes to be able to see it.

Consider the idea of a dedicated smart repair area in the smash shop. A technician is given full-time responsibility for doing smart repair, including paint touch-ups, (outside the booth and not in the paint department) paintless dent repair, plastic repairs, trim repairs and glass repairs. This gives management flexibility to establish two work streams in the shop and decide how to handle which jobs. In many cases it may be decided to do, say, the bumper as smart repair and the guard conventionally. In many instances, especially on large panels, it may be an advantage to use PDR first to reduce the size of damage as much as possible before letting the panel beater start.

We went to a shop once to train staff on a chip'n'scuff paint system we sold them. We said "okay that's a job we can do". It had deep gouges and paint damage along the bumper behind the wheel arch. They'd quoted around $400 including remove and replace. Our guy repaired the gouges and finished the job in about 25 minutes and used 10 ml of paint. So you see, a dedicated smart repair area would also give the shop a department very keen to quote and win small retail cash sales.
Paintless dent removal has long been a bit of a secret society. Franchise operators, having paid big money for their franchise, are not about to pass on any knowledge in a hurry. It is an art, but so is panel beating. PDR requires a lot of practise, but once perfected it is a wonderfully high margin low consumables repair process.

Paintless dent removal is an attractive retail opportunity. Most franchise operators are so busy doing wholesale work they don't have time to develop a retail customer base.

In the following example, which would you rather quote on and which would offer the greatest gross profit? 1. Two dents on a door, fill sand blend basecoat into panel either side, clear.

2. "Yes, we can repair that today, your car will still have original paint, it'll cost around $130. Will that be cash or credit card?

Which customer will give you the best word-of-mouth referrals?

If a shop were to add two dents a day at $65 each to its turnover, it just added $32,000 pa to its bottom line. Then wait for a hail storm to roll by and you could go close to making that in a month.

Bradleys Australia runs a training school for paintless dent removal in Adelaide.

Plastic repairs has had huge growth in awareness in the past few years, with a lot of smash repairers now believing this is an important part of their business. Today it is a major growth area with vehicle manufacturers now selling cars in Australia with plastic guards and boot lids, in cars like Mercedes, BMW, Nissan, Landrover, Renault, Peugeot. Being able to reshape or repair all these parts, match textures, and recolour discoloured parts are all part of the smart repair technician's abilities. To be able to achieve quality repairs to bumpers on HSV, Tickford, FPV, Silvia, and Porsche, where replacement costs are high, makes the smart repair area an important profit centre in its own right.

A very important aspect of the smart repair area is to comply fully with OH&S guidelines, especially in spray painting without having to charge booth time to your repairs. A booth is very expensive to run. Bradleys requires that all risks are considered and the technician operates in safe working conditions while still functioning at optimum productivity to deliver top quality minor repair.

The Smart-e is a local exhaust ventilation unit (LEV) designed to capture airborne solids and vapour at the source when spray painting is being carried out and discharge cleaned air back into the working environment. It can safely extract from a spot repair up to 30cm x 20cm. For larger areas than above, say up to a full bumper, the Smart-e then plugs into the Smart-Dome, enabling overspray to be captured within the Smart Dome for extraction by the Smart-e. Any jobs larger than this obviously is classified as a conventional repair and must be painted in a booth. The Smart-Dome system can also be used for engine bay painting. This system, with other steps, makes your smart repair area compliant with OH&S guidelines while operating with very low running costs.

Another area of interest is Bradleys development of aerosol spot texture repair. This method offers amazing finishes and exciting efficiencies, when you can get past the 'I'm a professional, I don't use aerosols' mentality. There is no faster way to apply it, given that many textures are best replicated by blending both corse and fine. You've grabbed the cans, used them, and put them away before the old gun is ready for use. And aerosolling is not out-of-booth spraying.

Many tradesmen will make rude remarks about the quality of van operators repairs but will themselves plaster a whole bumper with a thick layer of gungey 'texture' that looks nothing like the original finish particularly when the damage started off only 2cm wide. Why cover the undamaged texture? Why use so much product? Why not find out how to do it properly?

With all these smart repair processes, especially chip'n'scuff and plastics/aerosols department one comment we hear regularly is "I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself". But it's the people that are out there doing it that are reaping the benefits.

One of the latest areas being catered for by Bradleys is alloy wheel refurbishment. Latest in a long line of innovations, it consists of a motorised turntable with a self-centring quick release spindle coupled to a fully articulated arm running grinding or buffing wheels as required. Solely for repairing light kerb damage on alloy wheels, it is enjoying popularity in England as a new mobile service venture and is finding its way into many service workshops to provide easy add-on sales to service customers. It does well in a luxury vehicle environment where appearance is everything and another $75 or so a wheel isn't! It has wide application in used car detailing.

The opportunities for smart repair, especially in conventional panel shops are virtually endless.