One such shop is Conicelli Body Shop in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., which is a unit of Conicelli Autoplex, a company owned by Dom Conicelli that operates several Asian car dealerships in the area.
"You have to have a dealer principal who's serious about the collision repair business," says George Leigh, Conicelli body shop manager."If you want growth, you have to have a commitment from ownership."
Since assuming his position at Conicelli in 1993, Leigh feels he's always had the support of management.
"I've always been able to get pretty much anything I've needed," he says.One of the best examples of management's commitment to the collision repair business is the recent expansion of the body shop. In October 2006, the business moved from a 16,000-sq.-ft. facility where it had hit a revenue ceiling of about $4 million a year.The new facility is on a three-acre site with two buildings that previously served as a produce warehouse and a truck repair facility, both of which underwent extensive renovation prior to the move.
"We did extreme makeovers," says Leigh."We stripped the buildings down and redid them."
Today, the body shop occupies 45,000 sq. ft. of the larger building, which measures 60,000 sq. ft. in total.
The smaller building, measuring 5,500 sq. ft., serves as an estimating center and pickup and delivery center."It doesn't matter what kind of weather we're having — people can drop off and pick up their car inside of the building," says Leigh.
As part of the expansion, the company increased the total number of paint booths and frame machines, added an express lane to expedite processing of smaller jobs (see sidebar), and increased the number of technicians from five to eight."The old location was very cramped," says Leigh."Now we have flow and places to put cars."With 173 lights on the work floor, the shop is very well lit."It's nice and bright and we have plenty of air," notes Leigh.
In selecting new equipment, the company also took environmental concerns into consideration.
"All the equipment we bought was energy efficient, including the paint booths, the heating and the lighting," Leigh says.
Despite all the changes, Conicelli was able to make the move to its new facility with minimal disruption to the business."It took a couple of days to get organized because we were moving cars and moving equipment toolboxes," recalls Leigh."But soon our grosses and sales went up."
Less than a year after the move, the company is now on track to make $5.5 million this year."The business was there; it just needed attention," says Leigh."We were responding to customer need."
Conicelli's slogan is "a nice place to do business" and the letters NICE within the Conicelli name are highlighted in the company's signage and print materials.To keep the business top of mind with potential customers, the company also runs 30-second commercials.
Employees seem to find the company a nice place to work as well.The shop has very low employee turnover and, as Leigh notes,"If they do leave, they come back.We have plenty of work and I'm not a wicked taskmaster."
Employees are paid on a per-job basis and, as Leigh puts it,"People can make a good living here because we're very busy."The company hires some young workers out of high school."We train them the way they need to be trained," he says."When they come here, they know they're coming to the big leagues."
Because most of its business comes from affiliated auto dealerships, Conicelli does very little insurance company direct repair work.The shop is particularly heavy on Toyota work because that manufacturer offers a training and certification program — and Conicelli Body Shop has been certified."Certification makes customers feel better about leaving their car here," Leigh says.Another attractive feature for customers is that Conicelli guarantees its bodywork for as long as the customer owns the car.
With plenty of square footage available for future expansion, Conicelli looks forward to continuing growth moving forward."It won't happen overnight, but we'd like to hit $8 million a year," says Leigh.
