While Jones was born into the auto repair business, he said he took a roundabout path to becoming a collision repair shop owner. His father owned a mechanical repair shop as he was growing up, and Jones followed in his footsteps, attending vo-tech school and spending the next nine years as a mechanic.
Jones said he then decided to open a detailing business, which after a couple of years lead to a sideline in rebuilding totaled cars and trucks and then to performing some collision repair work for customers.
At that point, around four years ago, the business was known as Jones Reconditioning, he said. The focus of the business was about to change, though, due to the meeting of Jone's new riding lawn mower and his interest in trying his hand at custom painting. While the resulting flame job on the lawnmower pales by comparison to what the shop is producing today, he said it gave him the confidence to keep working at it.
"You just have to get in and do it," Jones said. "But people don't realize the amount of time that it takes to get good at it."
Jones said his first flame job on a car or truck was a red and black Harley Davidson Ford F-150 extended-cab pickup he rebuilt for himself and that has proved to be a popular success. He said he continues to use it as his everyday vehicle even though it has taken first place for the past two years in the Kansas City World of Wheels semi-modified two-wheel-drive truck division.
Most of the early custom work done by the shop was for friends and employees, Jones said. "The next one was supposed to be just a tailgate that had Dale Earnhardt's car and face," he said. "My wife has a computer arts and graphics degree and has taken several airbrush classes and can do realistic murals. The friend traded us for some work at the shop, and, in the end, we completely stripped the truck and did a two-tone paint job with three layers of flames."
Next, he said he completed a custom paint job on an employee's truck, which included the shop's name and number on the tailgate. "We received a number of calls from people around town saying they liked it," he said.
"I think I did it as a billboard, not so much because I was planning on getting into doing a lot of custom work," he said.
Jones said several of these early jobs began to gain the shop notoriety around the community, northeast of the Kansas City area, as well as farther afield as they began to show up in car shows such as the World of Wheels and the Midwest Truck Nationals. He said that in the past 2 1/2 years the shop's work has earned 33 trophies at various car shows.
"You have to do quite a bit of work before people will start to trust you to bring their project to you," Jones said.
In the four years since the shop began to get into custom work, Jones said that even as its collision repair volume has continued to grow, custom work has surged from about 25 percent of its business to about 60 percent.
"It's good not to have all of your eggs in one basket," Jones said. "We have never slowed down because of the custom work. If you want to stay in the game, you had better think of new ways to keep your business full."
Jones said the custom work is more profitable than traditional collision work, partly because he doesn't have to deal with the delays and corner-cutting involved in insurance-paid collision repair work. "If you could go along all day just (performing collision work) and not have to fight with someone, it might be comparable, but that's not how it works."
Also, while collision repair customers are dealing with a negative experience, customers shopping for custom work are getting something done that they are excited about, Jones said. "People don't like to spend money that they have to," he said. "They'll happily spend twice as much on something they don't need. It's more gratifying."
Jones said he can usually tell if a customer is serious about custom work just by the look on his face when he tells him it will probably cost at least $10,000. Because custom work usually takes longer to complete than a collision repair job, he said he tries to get the customer to make a payment to the shop every couple of weeks for the work that has been done, which helps with cashflow.
Jones said he thinks that the reason many shops don't find custom work profitable is that they aren't willing to charge enough. "A lot of people are afraid to charge someone a lot of money to do something right," he said.
Jones said the shop's reputation for custom work has actually helped build its traditional collision repair business. "I don't think we will ever be completely custom because we have made enough of a name for ourselves locally that people want to bring their cars here after they've been in an accident.
"The people who bring their everyday cars here tend to have very high expectations because they know about the custom work we do," he said.
Whether a person is a collision repair customer or is looking for custom work, Jones said he and his staff focus on doing what is necessary for that customer to walk away happy. "I would rather do a little more for a customer than what they expect in order to keep them happy."
The growth has allowed Jones to move the shop, renamed Jones Custom & Collision Center, from its original 1,800-square-foot location to a pair of buildings measuring 4,500-square-feet in August 2004. He said he is in the process of adding 1,500 square feet and connecting the buildings. The buildings were originally the shop of Fred and Iva Dehn, who made their reputation providing frame-repair training throughout the Midwest, he said.
The shop includes a Kayco semi-downdraft paint booth and an AFC downdraft booth, in which Jones said he sprays Lesanol from Akzo Nobel, which is supplied by Autobody Color, and occasionally House of Kolor paints. He said he began using Lesanol two years ago because it offers strong color matching and that the clear is superior to others he has used. "You may pay a little more, but it is definitely worth it," he said.
While the shop's custom work includes a lot of delete work (such as deleting door handles), body kits, and lowering or raising of suspensions, Jones said it is best known for its custom paint work, including realistic flames, pinstriping, and airbrushing. "Anything we do is usually off the hook as far as paint goes," he said. "We use a lot of loud, contrasting colors."
The shop's two painters, two bodymen, and two preppers also have access to one Chief and one precision frame rack.
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