Page 70 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Sep-Oct 2018

WINNING ATTITUDES
Judges Sam Street and Neil Powell were impressed with the positivity, innovation and dedication of all of the state winners this year.
THE AUTOBODY REPAIR industry never stands still. It is constantly changing and evolving to cope with the demands of insurance companies, ever increasing customer expectation and the plethora of new vehicle technology bombarding the landscape. This year’s winners include prestige repairers, manufacturer approved repairers, those exclusive to certain insurers , those who don’t rely on any insurer’s favour and a bus repairer. As usual the different business models and the execution of the business proves there are still hundreds of ways to skin a cat in the autobody repair industry.
What do the winners have in common? Great processes, organised, clean, tidy shops, enthusiasm for the industry and a willingness to adapt. They all care about creating a good place to work for their team, an important aspect when attracting and keeping technicians is one of the major challenges faced by everyone. They are all willing to experiment and prepared to fail and learn from their mistakes.
We consider a great many aspects when choosing our winners taking into account presentation, processes, OH&S, green initiatives, customer focus, vision for the future to name but a few, it’s a long list and you’ll find it on our website in you want to see it in full.
Every year it there are issues that all repairers face, some new, some as old as the hills and its always interesting to talk to owners about current and future challenges. The landscape has changed dramatically over the last two years with the pace of consolidation.
This year we decided to exclude AMA Group and Capital SMART on the grounds that their business model is so different from the rest of the market and their shops so numerous it was difficult to think of a way to incorporate them fairly, we will look to include them again next year. However, this took out a huge number of shops, especially in WA and Queensland where both brands are strong. In Queensland so many previous winners who are always enthusiastic about taking part in the awards have been bought by AMA – shops like Shipstones, HH Harvey, Mark McHughs. For this reason we decided to make a departure from the normal Brisbane/Gold Coast judging trail and visit Cairns and Toowoomba, both metro areas by definition of population. We were very glad we did and were impressed with many of the shops we visited, especially Willmot Smash Repairs’ excellent new shop in Cairns. It was interesting to see how the market dynamics can differ. Parts sourcing is obviously more of an issue for those outside of main delivery hubs, that’s one difference, guarding of reputation is another. The pressure of living in a smaller metro area is that people talk and if you don’t meet their expectations then their word of mouth means that customers can walk. Quite a few repairers in Cairns in particular have found this to their cost and are now out of business. The repairers we visited and one of their suppliers hosted Neil and I for dinner to talk about the market conditions there – thank you so much for that everyone, we enjoyed ourselves and it was great to be able to talk in more depth. It was a pleasant networking night for the
WHAT MAKES A WINNER IN THE 2018 AWARDS?
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2 PAINT&PANEL September / October 2018 www.paintandpanel.com.au