Year in Review: 2019’s best-read interviews

To say that Sabrina Thring is thriving in the industry is an understatement. After graduating with an Honours BBA from The Schulich School of Business, and spending many years managing financial planning, analysis and accounting, Thring has spent the last three-and-a-half years with Driven Brands, beginning as VP of Finance for CARSTAR, and working her way up to VP of Operations; managing the MSO platform and Canada. Collision Repair caught up with Thring to discuss rebranding strategies, the value in franchises as well as the future of the collision industry. 

Collision Repair: As the vice president, MSO Operations & Canadian Development, you are playing a major role in Maaco’s Canada-wide rebranding initiative. Could you tell us a bit about the goals of the rebranding?

Sabrina Thring: I proudly stand behind our Go Forward Plan launched last November 2018.

Our Go Forward Plan in Canada embraces the Maaco 3-legged stool value proposition of Retail and Cosmetic, Fleet and Local Trade and finally Insurance – Tier 2 DRP and/or Customer Referral. In Canada, we recognize the need to stay on top of industry performance requirements such as ICAR Training and OEM repair directives. We are not just here to paint, our value proposition includes all legs of the stool and are equipped to do so with brand consistency through our Image improvements and center standards by achieving Certification levels – Gold, Diamond and Platinum.

CR: What should collision facility owners expect from membership in a banner group? What is it that franchises value in potential franchisees?

Sabrina Thring:  We see daily that it is getting harder for independents to maximize their earning potential and maintain a succession plan for their families without being part of a banner group. There are so many benefits that come with being part of the  Maaco Franchise System. There is corporate support for creating the 3 legged stool model – retail, fleet, insurance – for independents an opportunity to layer on business without losing their primary customer base. There are also two accredited state of the art training facilities in Edmonton, Alberta and Charlotte, North Carolina as well as an Online Training Portal through Maaco University. Other benefits include a ramp-up on site center training support from Corporate, procurement leverage for materials, paint and parts with selected top industry vendor partners such as Axalta, Sherwin Williams & PPG, an enhanced Marketing Platform as well as Access to National Fleet Accounts, insurers, and industry standard certification training.

CR: A decade ago, there were about twice as many auto repair businesses as there are today, but half as many as in 1999. Do you think the long-term trend towards consolidation in Canada’s collision industry will continue?

Sabrina Thring:  Yes, Bob Benjamin our President of Maaco, believes strongly that the collision industry will continue to consolidate as we see more and more multi-site operators scale the system, which is a great benefit to our national customers (purchasing, Fleet, Insurers). We also believe there will be a more buyouts (M&A) of the larger collision repairers and regional MSOs. That said, independents still represent the lion share of the market.

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By Lindsey Cooke

 A month ago, at the Saskatchewan Association of Automotive Repairers (SAAR) Spring Show, Saskatchewan Government Insurance made the announcement of its new accreditation system for repair shops in the province. Sorted into two tiers, shops have one year to pull together the money to invest in specified equipment, tools, and training in order to be accredited by SGI as a Tier one shop – all of which has been claimed to cost close to $100,000.

To gear up for these changes, SAAR is hosting several town hall meetings with representatives of Saskatchewan Government Insurance. This will give shop owners the opportunity to speak about their concerns and receive some clarification to their questions. The first town hall meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 9, at 6 p.m. in Regina. Collision Repair caught up with SAAR executive director Tom Bissonnette to hear his thoughts on SGI’s requirements and what he would tell shop owners who are feeling overwhelmed.

CR: What are your thoughts on SGI’s new accreditation program?

TB: For the most part, something needs to change. Obviously, vehicles have changed, and we need to take a serious look at how we are repairing these vehicles. Bottom line is we do have a concern with what the door rates are going to the shops that are actually doing this work.

CR: What do you hope will come out of the upcoming meetings SAAR is hosting with SGI this week?

TB: I think that people just need to understand what they’re going to need in order to repair vehicles but also how it’s going to impact their business. We have a lot of small rural areas that have one- and two-man shops, and some of them are doing a fantastic job, we would love to see them stick around. On the other hand, we want to make sure that vehicles are being fixed properly and that people have the knowledge to do that. So, it all hinges on the attitude of the shop. If they’re moving forward and they want to make those changes I don’t think it’s going to be a big issue for a lot of them. If they don’t want to do anything it’s going to be difficult.

CR: What advice would you give to the owners of small-town shops that are stressing about these changes?

TB: In the last year I’ve been doing a weekly newsletter where I’ve been sending out this information. So, it’s not a surprise. I’ve been telling these owners it’s not as bad as they might think it is and it’s not as good as you think it is. I think when the shop owners meet with SGI and they kind of clarify what their requirements are, the repairers are going to find that it’s within their reach to do it. There are some shops that have all the equipment already and might be thinking they’re going to have a windfall; I don’t think so. I think that shops that are serious about their business are going to maintain their market share. The equipment that is out there right now, I think is going to help the shops become better at what they do.

From our point of view, SAAR is helping people by doing a training session today on estimating. What I’m trying to do is illustrate to the shops that if they pay a little bit more attention to the job they do with estimating, they’ll make more than enough money to pay for the equipment they’re going to need this year.

CR: Is there anything else SAAR is going to do to help shops in the province gear up for these changes?

TB: We have a big conference coming up in September in Saskatoon. We do a semi-annual conference and we’re bringing in SGI to speak, but we are also bringing in all of the suppliers to do a showcase. It’s very similar to what you would see at CCIF. Suppliers have really jumped on board and they’ve really partnered up with us. They obviously want to sell equipment, but they also want to help. They want to help shops make that adjustment whether it’s leasing a program or financing programs. The other thing we are doing is instituting a buy and sell on our website. Lots of shops are gearing up to buy new equipment, so there is lots of other equipment that is available for these shops to buy. We’re going to help them connect the dots with each shop and get the equipment at the best possible price.

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By Ben Hart

As a post-secondary instructor, I am often baffled by the confusion around how apprenticeship programs work in our industry. I believe most people understand the basics—someone wants to join the trade, so they start working in a shop. Eventually, the employee signs up for an apprenticeship, works a number of hours then goes away to school a number of times. Eventually, this person gets a fancy piece of paper with his or her name on it and can be called a journeyman.

Okay, so what else is there to know? Well, quite a bit, actually.

An apprentice will typically attend four levels of technical training for a period of about two months each. The rest of the year the apprentice is expected to learn on the job. Most schools find that the expectations of training are placed almost exclusively on the institution. When looking at the hours spent on the job versus at the school, it is estimated that the apprentice should be learning upwards of 85 percent on the job. The school is responsible for rounding off the apprentice’s remaining 15 percent.

For one thing, employers are contractually obligated to provide training to their apprentices and allow him or her to attend technical training classes.

Let me back up a fair bit and talk about the history of the apprenticeship system. The auto body and collision branch was officially designated as a Red Seal trade in 1964. The refinishing portion is covered within this branch, but can also be pursued independently via the automotive refinishing technician branch—which was designated in 1992. Most Provinces consider both branches to be compulsory, meaning that anyone working in the trade must either be a licensed journeyman, technician or registered apprentice.

Across the country, anyone interested in entering the trade basically has two main options. Option one is to start working in a shop, and then sign a contract of apprenticeship and work towards becoming a journeyman. Option two is to attend a technical school that provides a pre-employment type course. Upon graduating, the person can be hired by a shop and start his or her apprenticeship, often with credit for the first year of apprenticeship.

Each province has its own apprenticeship program which is governed by a board often overseen by an elected member of the provincial parliament. With this, each province has the ability to adapt the programs as needed—and while this allows for some flexibility, it has also led to considerable grief. For some apprentices who start their training in one province, continuing it after moving can be anything but a smooth transition.

One of the national requirements is that all provinces work toward the Red Seal standard. There is a Red Seal initiative called Harmonization that aims to homogenize more aspects of most trades—particularly for training.

Within our trade, the goal is to complete the implementation by September 2020.

For more information please contact your province’s apprenticeship governing body and visit red-seal.ca.

To learn a bit more about apprenticeship programs across the country, follow the links below.

British Columbia

Alberta

Manitoba

New Brunswick

Newfoundland 

Nova Scotia

Northwest Territories

Ontario

Prince Edward Island

Quebec

Saskachewan

Yukon

The Prochilo family is well-known to the Canadian collision community, not just for Prochilo Brothers Collision, but also for the work of brothers Domenic and Paul Prochilo, and their cousin, Domenic Ieraci, to found their own franchise: Simplicity Car Care. As vice president of operations for Simplicity, Domenic Prochilo has spent much of the past few years bringing his in-depth understanding of the business of collision repair to driving the success of the bodyshops that have partnered with the brand. Collision Repair spoke with Prochilo to catch some of his insight on what he thinks is the most important aspect shop owners should be focusing on in the industry.

Collision Repair: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing bodyshop owners right now?

Domenic Prochilo: Currently the biggest problem for bodyshop owners is the lack of repair professionals. By repair professionals, I mean anyone working on the vehicles, throughout the collision centre. These are people who understand how to use procedure pages, who are able to write estimates using OEM procedures and people who have communication with the client very often. It’s almost like looking for a salesperson that can train in collision repair. Recruitment and training on the shop floor is another aspect where shop owners are having some trouble. If not now, it will definitely be a bigger issue for shops for the next five to 10 years.

CR: What do you think is collision repair business owners can do to bolster their business?

DP: I believe that shop owners should control what they can control and not to worry about anything else right now. One thing that we can control, is the client experience. I feel that is the biggest area of improvement in terms of a business’ profitability.

I don’t think there could be anything more important than the client experience and I’ll tell you why. The client has more control than ever on being able to communicate to the masses about their experience. From the comfort of their office, a client can rave about your business, further improving your Yelp score, your Google review score. But with a click and a swipe left they can detract others from visiting your site, just by sharing how unpleased they were.

The average person touches their phone 150 times a day. Technology is not something that is used or taken advantage of by just the millennials, but anyone can use their phone to communicate anything today. You’ll see that that will be a big differentiator in the business now and for years to come.

CR: What advice would you give for owners concerned with maintaining their success in the long term?

DP: The most important thing for bodyshops to stay successful in the industry is to take care of your people. Your people, being your staff whether they are beginners or veterans. Keeping your people engaged, and letting them know what you’re thinking, what your next move is, asking them for an opinion because outside of yourself, no one knows your business better than your people.

For example, five years ago our corporate stores launched our seven-day week campaign. A process that heavily involved the input of our staff.

If we just decided as corporate leaders that we were going to walk into a shop and say we’re going to be open seven days a week, there would have been a lot of pushback and it would have been a failure.

We shared our vision with our staff of what we thought this could do for our business and what it means to our staff. We opened engagement; it took us about 90 days of planning with all of our staff at our corporate stores. After that was said and done, the communication wasn’t over. We wanted them to bring it home with to their family and share it with them to get their acceptance as well.

Five years later our corporate stores are still running seven days a week and sometimes they’re even busier on Saturday and Sunday than they Monday through Friday. We are now available when our clients need us the most and we couldn’t have done that without the planning and the buy-in of our people.

CR: What kind of efforts is Simplicity Car Care working on right now to help bodyshop owners with staying successful in the industry?

DP: We’re heavily focusing on three platforms for 2019 which include, training and development, mentoring of our franchisees, assisting them with the selection and strategies of new hires and getting them focused on performance management and client advocacy.

Focusing heavily right now on training and development of our franchisees. We have the four pillars of our repair process and we hold regional seminars and workshops monthly, focusing on those four things.

Being able to have these workshops, seminars and having our franchisees all get together engaging with one another and learning together is creating that development of our franchisees and the improvement of our culture.

Also assisting our stores with HR initiatives. If one of our franchisees hires a new technician or a new office staff, we’ll help them with our training by having them conduct on-boarding at one of our corporate stores where there is one of our long-time serving staff trainers, and they will help shadow and mentor that technician or new office staff before they go back to the franchisee. If the training of a new hire isn’t strong and effective, then you risk the chance of losing that person to another shop or industry altogether.

We are also coaching our networks through performance management and client advocacy. Net promotion score is a big deal for our company, as we measure it daily and we share the results monthly.

In 2020 we’ll be dedicating the year to digitization and technology and using the new technology the industry partners are releasing to improve the client experience and the repair process.

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In 1984, a 19-year-old Joey Gagne loaned $2,500 from his mother-in-law to start his own towing business. Now, Gagne, CEO of Abrams Towing Group, manages 200 employs at more than nine locations in Ontario.

Collision Repair sat down with Gagne — who even holds a place in the International Towing Museum’s hall of fame — to hear how broke into the business and built a successful towing company in today’s competitive market.

Collision Repair: How did you first get into the towing industry?

Joey Gagne: My parents owned a towing company, so I grew up around it and got hooked. When I was old enough to drive I drove a tow truck for them.

Once I met my wife, she kept saying, ‘you’re always talking about tow trucks, why don’t you buy a tow truck and start your own business?’ She came from a family of business owners and so did I, so it seemed logical to me, but I didn’t have any money.

So, her mother lent me $2,500 and I went out to find myself an old tow truck. I found one that no one was using and I pestered the owner for a few months before he eventually sold it to me for $1,500. After that, I was off to the races.

It took a lot of help from my wife, my family, but we did it. That was 36 years ago now.

CRM: How was it starting the business?

JG: I started kind of blind, really. I was 19 and, because I had been around towing, I thought I knew the business, so it took me a little while to realize what I didn’t know. I just went into it and did what I had to do. There was lots of trial and error. I didn’t work up to it at all — I quit my job in May 1984 and started the business the following September.

CRM: 1996 was a big year for Abrams Towing in terms of growth. Could you tell me a little more about that?

JG: We were really interested in diversifying the business and opening a mix of new locations. In early 1995 we opened a location in Mississauga, so that really got us into our initial diversification. We then had the capabilities to carry some of our relationships into different territories and it worked out very well for us.

Then the winter came and we started brainstorming for other cities and, slowly but surely, it all started coming together.

We’ve also had a lot of exclusive contracts with government agencies and police departments. In 1996 we had a contract with the Toronto police, which was a new type of business for us that helped us grow a bit more. We really just made sure we kept doing business with as many different people as we could.

CRM: What are some misconceptions in the industry?

JG: There’s a lot of confusion as to what we represent and who we are. We represent regular people — sometimes people have a misconception of this big, burly tow truck driver that lives on the shady side of life. But our guys are really nice; they go out there providing great service and protecting people from bad situations. Sometimes customers are surprised; the public hears a lot about negative experiences with tow truck drivers and they tend to generalize.

It doesn’t matter if there are a thousand good guys to one bad guy, we all get painted with the same brush. It’s not unusual for us to be misrepresented, but that’s not who most of us are.

CRM: Who or what was your biggest inspiration throughout your business development?

JG: My wife. She’s been my rock and my biggest supporter all the way through. She encouraged me to start my business and helped me through thick and thin. She really helped me elevate the business to a level I don’t think I would have been able to achieve without her.

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