Toronto, Ontario — Oct. 11, 2019 — Our debt of gratitude to those have improved the industry’s image.
This year, members of Canada’s collision community have a lot to be thankful for. First of all, times are good. The industry is growing, profits are up, and salaries are up too.
Secondly, young people are more excited about the prospect of working in the collision sector than ever before! It seems as if the industry’s image problem of the past has almost completely faded away.
That’s not just my opinion. It is shared by three leading collision repair educators, two at the high school level and one at the college level. It is also backed up by some pretty hard numbers from the Automotive Industry Association of Canada.
While many businesses are still in need of more employees, attendance in collision programs across Canada is on the rise. Other industry reports appear to show a similar uptick in interest in auto repair in the United States and Australia.
So where should the industry be forwarding its messages of thanks? I’m not sure that I could list everyone in the industry whose dedication to their work has made a difference to the community as-a-whole.
Some work done to improve the image of the industry has, however, been especially effective.
An immense amount of credit is due to those organizations that represent the interests of the industry–in particular, the AIA of Canada, whose leaders and members have produced an array of dazzling content that aims to show industry outsiders what to expect from a career in the collision industry.
Another hearty round-of-applause is due to the many thousands of repairers and painters who have taken to social media to educate the public about the industry and the auto aftermarket in general.
Just take a look at the popular website Reddit, which has several subreddits–discussion pages oriented around a particular theme–related to the business of repairing and painting automobiles.
Some of these forums, like r/AutoRepair, are aimed at providing a place for discussions between industry members. Taking all of these forums together and assuming there is a great deal in crossover membership, it appears that there are somewhere around 10,000 industry pros engaged in the forums.
Others, like r/JustRolledIntoTheShop, r/CarTalk, r/AutoDetailing and the misleadingly named r/AskAMechanic (the posts are generally more repairer-oriented than mechanic-oriented) are designed to attract a more mainstream audience—and attract them they have.
Each one of those subreddits has more than a quarter-million registered followers—and registered followers are but a fraction of the total number of viewers. In fact—while exact numbers are impossible to find—a number of sources say that fewer than one percent of subreddit viewers bother subscribing. Even if we assume that one percent subscribe, the amount of influence engaged industry professionals have is unreal. Those 10,000 engaged Reddit repairers have sway over the opinions of close to 100,000,000 people!
The numbers make it clear that people have an appetite for learning more about it. The more people learn what auto repair and auto painting are really about, the more they will forget old, negative assumptions about it—and embrace it for the exciting field that it is.
