Our business has been growing at a very great pace. We’ve grown to 54 employees for our 2 stores. We make maximum use of the workspace. And we’re beginning shifting in our East End stores. This gives us the capacity to repair as many vehicles as we can. Since we’ve spoken last, we’ve achieved our I-CAR status for both locations. I was awarded with the Ontario Minister’s Employer Reorganization Award in 2006 for working closely with apprenticeships. That award is given to employers in Ontario who support apprentices and it’s not specifically awarded just to the collision repairs industry. So we were very excited to be awarded with this. We have 10 apprentices working in our 2 stores now. We’ve worked with dealer associations so we can broaden our customer base so we can do repairs and this has strengthened our 2 stores. The industry itself hasn’t really recovered. Locally, we’re experiencing good growth because of the way we’re running the stores.

The biggest change that we’ve seen is the ministry of labour has brought a completely new twist to our industry with new inspectors and this has caused us to be proactive to keep our stores as safe as possible. We’re watching closely the development for the future and the ‘greening of the industry.’ We’ll undoubtedly be one of the leaders in this. Waterborne paints are in the works for us. We’re not there yet. We’re going to try to closely monitor those changes. That’s going to have a whole affect on the industry. We bring in independent trainers who come in to make sure our training covers all legislative aspects in the industry. It helps us ensure our employees are properly trained in their own workplace and to help with reduction with claims and safety in the safety and insurance board.

There’s more of a 2-tier shop mentality with our insurers and with the clients. Customers are becoming much more aware of automobiles and the auto repair process. The awareness level that we’re seeing from the consumer is becoming a lot better. It’s caused us to put in the most advanced management systems. We’ve been in the process of selecting a new web manager to make more of a web-interactive website. Going forward, we’ll have a pretty impressive website.

We’re going to have to keep growing in the future. We’ll be staying as close as possible to the forefront. We’ll be attending the CCIF meetings, either Walter or I, and keeping pace with what’s going on with our industry and the insurance industry to see how to stay on top of the game. We’ll also continue building relationships locally and provincially with CARSTAR. That’s where our directions will be. We certainly plan on growing and using whatever tools needed to make that happen.

This is our 10^th year and we’d like to thank Collision Repair for all of the work they’ve done for us. We certainly need a voice in the industry, and Collision Repair has risen the top and given it to us.

I’ve been looking into a crystal ball lately, and I don’t like what I’ve been seeing. While on a recent trip to the UK, I took some time to look into their collision industry. I did this because it seems to me that whatever happens over there, ends up happening here five or six years later.

The biggest repairer in the UK is Nationwide Crash Repair Centres, with about 70 shops across the country. What’s disturbing is how little money the company grosses. It seems to me that they must be skating on the razor’s edge of profitability.

I discussed this with a friend of mine who runs an independent collision repair facility in the UK. He believes that the industry there is on the verge of collapse, in part because of a very “cutthroat” atmosphere, but also because repairers have signed massive discount deals with insurers to get business.

This is part of the reason that I joined the Integrity Collision Network. It’s a marketing and buying group composed of ten different self-owned locations. Between us we have about 65 per cent of the total capacity in the Greater Halifax area.

Basically we look at the deal a particular insurer is offering and collectively we accept or deny them. It may seem a bit risky, but we believe that this is the way to go. If every shop across the country rejected a deal from an insurer, how long do you think it would take to change it?

There have been some changes, both big and small, at CK Collision since we appeared on the cover of Collision Repair Magazine.

We are always looking for ways to increase efficiency, and to that end we are currently putting some new systems and equipment in place in our four stores.

Right now we are testing out the Mitchell ABS Enterprise management system, a web-based system for multiple shop businesses. This will give us more flexibility and allow me to track information in real-time.

On the equipment side, we’ve thrown out the old and brought in the new by replacing the spray booth in our Scarborough location with a  Devilbiss down draft spray booth. We are also looking at investing in new state-of-the-art Pro Spot inverter spot welding system with an advanced software platform.

Like most of my colleagues, my thoughts recently have centred on the upcoming mandatory use of waterborne coatings in our shops.

Although many of the downsides of waterborne coatings have been overcome in the last decade, I foresee at least one major shortcoming to converting our entire industry, from coast-to-coast, in just a few years.

The problem is one of both time and manpower (or personpower if you prefer). Assuming for the moment that every shop in Canada can afford to make this conversion (which I don’t believe to be the case), there is still the very real problem of converting every shop by the due date that will eventually be set.

I would like to use this space to talk about what I see as the three most important issues   that we as an industry must deal with in the next five to ten years.

The first and most important issue is the amount of vehicles being written off instead of repaired. Because cars are lasting longer, I know that in our facility we get a lot of cars coming in with more than 300,000 kilometres on them. 

Repairs aren’t getting any cheaper either. Aside from the rising cost of materials, sophisticated electronics and air bags present additional costs. Combine an aging fleet with rising costs and the curve doesn’t look very good.

The second issue is the shortage of skilled trades people. We’re in a service business and our facilities are only as good as our people. Many of the technicians working today are very skilled, and why wouldn’t they be? They’re in their forties or older and have been practicing their trade for many years.

Young people do come into our industry, but they are perhaps not 100 per cent committed to collision repair as a career choice. I think part of the problem might be that it often takes ten years for someone coming in to the business to get really good and reach their maximum earning potential.

The third issue is the high cost of starting a business and staying in business. Rent, taxes, utilities, wages, benefits, pick anything you want and it’s rising faster than our door rates. Margins are getting tighter and all of these costs are adding to overhead. For many shops, it is getting tougher and tougher to hit the bottom line and get a return on their investment.