Page 44 - Australian Paint & Panel Nov-Dec 2020

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2020 WINNERS PAINT&PANEL NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2020
SILVER LININGS
I NEVER THOUGHT I’D GET SEASICK JUDGING THE PAINT & PANEL AWARDS BUT THEN IT IS 2020, SAYS SAM STREET.
PAINT&PANEL NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2020
I
NEVER THOUGHT I’D GET SEA-
sick judging the Paint & Pan-
el awards but then it is 2020. It was all looking good for face to face judging and then the breakout from Victorian hotel quarantine happened. Never has an awards judging had such a low carbon footprint - just the petrol for fellow judge Neil Powell to schlep across Sydney and one visit from our best practice judge Steve Lozenkovski from Wollongong way. There has never been a year where silver linings have been so important so here’s some we garnered from this year. Firstly we’ve been making the coun-
try repairers make a video entry as we couldn’t get to them to judge - next year we think we might select finalists and judge via zoom. Secondly ‘hello Darwin, Mackay and Townsville.’ Because of the lower number of shops in lesser metro areas we couldn’t justify an in person visit - and we saw that we’ve been miss- ing out. There are some great businesses in these cities and in future we can put them in the mix by judging via Zoom.
You might be wondering about the motion sickness? Try six shop tours a day on Zoom and dammit could I find my Sea-Bands? Another silver lining was that Neil and I were able to eat
healthily which can be challenging on the road and that we didn’t get lost once.
WORTH THE QUEASINESS
What we did see through the poor inter- net connections, drop outs and other technical glitches was well worth the queasy stomach. First I want to say thank you especially to all of the Victorian re- pairers we talked to - and there were a huge amount entered this year. The state had just gone into full lockdown and mandatory mask wearing and most own- ers were understandably, and as it turned out, quite justifiably worried about how long the lockdown would last but still took the time to show us around the busi- ness and repeat themselves endlessly as we couldn’t make out muffled mask talk.
We saw so many professional, well equipped, organised businesses and met many new shop owners. There were so many shops that were just pipped to the post and any other year would have romped it and you can read about some of those in our ‘well worth a mention’ overleaf.
TRENDS
Very sensibly many of the business own- ers we talked to have raised the presenta- tion of their facility, invested in training with a view to wooing an OEM badge or even another OEM badge. We saw a lot more aluminium repair areas and they weren’t being used to store parts either.
It’s telling that out of our best shop winners 10 are OEM approved.
So many businesses had turned lock- down and quieter times to assess the busi- ness from workflow to personnel. The Covid landscape actually allowed many owners to cut dead wood from the team without the worry that they might get too busy and regret not having an extra pair of hands however bad the attitude of the staff member might have been. The pan- demic also shone a light on those team
ABOVE: From left judges Steve Lozenkovski, Neil Powell and Sam Street dressed up for the livestream.