Page 36 - Australasian Paint & Panel Jul-Aug 2020

PEOPLE MATTER
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PAINT&PANEL JULY / AUGUST 2020 WWW.PAINTANDPANEL.COM.AU
EAST COAST PAINT & PANEL GOING STRONG
OUR BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION SHOP IN CAIRNS HAS GONE FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH. WE CAUGHT UP WITH CARA LEWIS TO SEE HOW THEY HAVE BEEN TRAVELLING.
AIRNS IS HEAVILY RELIANT ON
tourism so you would imagine that East Coast Paint & Panel might have been doing it tough recently. Nothing could be further from the truth, which demonstrates that all the improvements (search East Coast Paint & Panel on our website for stories of their journey if you missed them) that Lewis and Mark Debono implemented last year have stood them in good stead. “February was the best month of busi- ness since we opened in 2015,” Lewis said. “In March we saw a drop, but noth-
ing too scary. We began planning wh we might need to do should we have to close as it was such an uncertain time and did let one casual staf member go.
“April wasn’t great - all the rental work came to a grinding halt with the companies we were working with going into hibernation and we began looking into options for reducing working hours.
“However, it was private work that kept us busy. At the beginning of the year I started participating in a business network group. I attended weekly meet- ings to network and showcase our busi- ness. To date this has brought in over $20,000 in direct referrals.
“We have also begun utilising our so- cial media more and reaching out to people on local community pages. This includes working with our paint distrib- utor, Cairns Wholesale Paint, to provide some paint to a local animal shelter.” East Coast has a Facebook community of nearly 2000.
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All in all it has been a very strange year, but we are
confident in our business, in ourselves and that we will come out the other side stronger than ever.”
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“May and June were busy with private work. We figured people didn’t have many places they could be spending money with the closure of restaurants, bars and casinos,” she said.
Debono’s son Dallas has started as a school-based apprentice, so succession planning is in place. Lewis notes that the business’ volume of insurance work has remained stable although their busi- ness model is more diverse than depend- ing on work from this source.
“We have used the small amount of down time we had to begin implement- ing some extra quality control process- es, and we are constantly reviewing our SOPs,” Lewis said.
Debono is one course off completing
his I-CAR Platinum and has found im- mense value in the training courses. The business is now looking to start the ‘road to Gold’ and Debono is excited to get the rest of the team enrolled and training.
“IBodyshop was amazingly generous and halved fees for all users to help with decreased work,” she said.
The couple have continued their busi- ness coaching with MaxMyProft.
“We attended an online Business Excel- eration Course and began planning our next quarter. We have been working with Simon Whitaker who also coaches a few other bodyshops. He has been really good to bounce ideas off and helps to get us into some better habits and stay fo- cused,” Lewis said.