O'Fallon, MO - For five years, Barbara Kinder said she and her husband, Greg, owners of Autotech Auto Center, were running two stores that were 20 miles away from one another.
The original Autotech Auto Center opened in 1993 and was located in Bridgeton, a northwest suburb of St. Louis, Kinder said. In 2001 a second store was opened in O'Fallon, a suburb west of St. Louis, she said.
Two years ago, Kinder said that based on the logistics and stress level of running two stores, the decision was made to sell the store being run out of a leased location in Bridgeton and keep the store in O'Fallon, which they owned.
"It was sad because on one hand it was our starting store and we had a lot of really good relationships with our customers and vendors," Kinder said. "But our quality of life definitely improved when we went down to just one store."
The 3,600-square-foot store in O'Fallon is equipped with five bays and four lifts, including one in-ground lift, two Forward two-post lifts and one Rotary four-post lift also used with a new Hunter DSP600 alignment machine, she said.
Autotech Auto Center is a five-time recipient of the Blue Seal of Excellence Award and a very efficient shop, Kinder said. She said she runs the office along with one service adviser and that there are three technicians including her husband who work on between 150 and 200 vehicles a month, averaging $300 per repair order.
"About 30 percent of our business every month is from other repair shops," she said. "If they spend a day or so on a vehicle and they can't figure it out, they bring it here."
Kinder said her husband actually goes after that market segment to increase business. "Greg goes knocking on their doors and lets them know that we are here if they ever have any headaches," she said. "We have developed relationships with other shops over time, and as an industry we all win as long as the car gets fixed right."
Kinder said she orders her aftermarket parts from a number of suppliers including Al's Automotive Parts, S&S Automotive Parts, and Factory Motor Parts. For OE parts, she said she typically uses the Lou Fusz network. "They do a good job with scheduled deliveries and respect the installer, rather than think of us as a fly in the ointment," she said.
She added that she also turns to Pundmann Ford for OE parts because it will provide specialty tools if an ordered part requires them to complete a job.
Kinder, who watches her numbers on a weekly basis, said she recently noticed a 5 to 6 percent change in her gross profit on parts.
"It happened one week and we let it go because we thought we had just ordered a lot of high-end parts," she said. "It happened a second week in a row and we found out that the price of parts had risen just high enough to put those parts in the fourth level of our price matrix when they needed to be in the third level."
By watching the numbers weekly, Kinder said she is able to address issues and make adjustments before something becomes a problem -- a valuable lesson she learned as a member of the R.L. O'Connor Bottom Line Impact Group.
"We just got out of the Impact group a couple of years ago," she said. "We got started in it about 14 years ago. It was very important for us starting out--it definitely helped us get started on the right foot to be profitable early on and look at things in the right way."
Kinder said that when she and her husband started in 1993, he was the only employee. The R.L. O'Connor group helped her in the hiring process and training of a new employee and stressed the importance of training a new employee so she and Greg could step away from the business when they needed time off, she said.
"We have met a lot of people in the industry who have owned a business for 20 years and they are afraid to go on vacation because they don't know what is going to happen to their business when they go," she said. "That is not right; everybody should be entitled to some time off."
A recent getaway to Las Vegas for SEMA resulted in the purchase of a new Snap-on John Beam EHP System II tire machine, Kinder said, a necessary addition because of an increase in tire work. She said the shop buys tires from Community Wholesale Tire and TCI Tire Center.
Kinder said she also hopes to see an increase in business due to emissions testing -- a state-run program that began last month. The new program costs the customer $24 and goes hand in hand with Missouri's motor vehicle safety inspection program -- a program that she said is very beneficial.
The money from Missouri's motor vehicle safety inspection program goes towards the school bus safety program, Kinder said, adding that vehicle safety inspections also make the cost of car insurance in Missouri 20 percent less than bordering states without safety inspection programs.
"Once I explain the benefits of the safety inspection program to customers, I don't have one that doesn't buy into it 100 percent."
Kinder said she is just happy to be involved in an industry where a small business still has an opportunity to be successful.
"I love this industry, I think we are lucky," she said. There are not very many businesses that you can be competitive in and be a mom-and-pop business anymore, and we should be yelling it from the rooftops."