San Jose, Calif.--The "American dream" of success despite humble beginnings has become somewhat of a cliché, but it's hard not to realize that it still can be a reality when speaking with Ninos "Nick" Ternian, co-owner of Arseen Auto Body Inc.
Ternian immigrated to the United States with his Assyrian family from Iran in 1987, learned the craft of collision repair, and along with his brother, Fred, has built a business with 25 employees--including five other family members--in a whopping 100,000-square-foot, $14 million facility they now own.
"It was a crazy step when we moved from such a small place to 100,000 square feet," Ternian said. "But it was faith. Faith in myself and faith in God."
Hard work has also played a role, Ternian conceded as he recounted his story. A gas pipe welder by trade when he arrived with his wife and two children in the United States, Ternian brought his knowledge of metal and a badly damaged car to Gavilan College in Gilroy. The speed and precision with which he was able to repair the vehicle impressed his technical instructor there.
He persuaded a Sunnyvale shop owner to hire him by offering to work at a reduced wage for an hour at the beginning and end of each day to move cars and help open and close the business. Within a year, however, he opened his own business in a tiny, 1,100-square-foot facility, delivering pizzas in the evening to help make ends meet.
"Sometimes I was working exactly 24 hours a day," he said. "But if I promised a customer it was going to be done tomorrow morning, I needed to have it done that morning. The relationships that I built with my customers in that one year were the best."
A year later, the Ternian brothers moved to a building three times the size of the first, then bought a 10,000-square-foot building.
"Then I saw the opportunity to buy this building, so at the end of 2004, we sold the other building and moved to this 100,000-square-foot building," Ternian said.
The move also included significant investments in new equipment. The largest single purchase was four Nova Verta downdraft spray booths that Ternian said gives the company, which sprays Akzo Nobel's Sikkens paint, one of the largest painting capacities on the West Coast.
Ternian's nephew and the company's general manager, Ozhen Arsenous, said Arseen Auto Body is staffed and equipped to handle virtually all repair work other than upholstery in-house. That equipment includes three frame racks, a Chief Velocity measuring system, four BendPak lifts, Miller and Pro Spot welders, Mac Tools tire-changing and balancing machines, air-conditioning charging stations, and a Snap-on John Bean four-wheel alignment rack with Visualiner system.
"This is the single best piece of equipment I've ever had," Ternian said of the alignment rack. "You can't find anything else on the market that does what this machine does."
But even more important than the equipment to the business' success, Ternian said, is the family and long-term employees at the business.
Because everyone is treated like family, average tenure among employees is 10 years, Arsenous said. His brother, Bill, is one of the shop's estimators, and Fred's son, Emanuel Ternian, is the other. One of Ninos Ternian's daughters, Donie, does marketing for the company, and another daughter, Nina, is the office manager and oversees the company's 3-year-old glass business, Glass Depot, which is based in the facility and does both in-house and external glass work.
"At business college, the first lesson they teach you may be to not be business partners with your brother or any relative because it's going to be hard," Ternian said. "But in my business, I cannot do it without my family. That we are working together is the best thing."
"Honestly, we don't know exactly what it is that makes it work, but a lot of people can't believe that we've worked well together for as long as we have," Arsenous agreed. "It's because of the way we treat each other--and a pretty much unspoken understanding of what the expectations are."
Ternian said another key is separating business and family life.
"When it comes to business, it's strictly business," he said. "We don't consider who is an uncle, who is a brother, who is a nephew. That doesn't matter. But the funny thing is, after we are done here, we spend even more time with each other. We barbecue together, we have movie time together."
Arsenous said the business has grown based largely on insurer direct repair work, although word-of-mouth referrals and repeat customers account for a lot of business.
"Once you become a customer, we don't give you a reason to go anywhere else," he said. "Our customer service is unmatched. I make sure our guys who take care of customers understand that a customer is the most important person for us. So once a customer comes in here, you won't see them anywhere else. They keep coming back."
That's what makes Arsenous' goal of reaching $1 million in monthly sales within the next year or two realistic, he said.
"We started out with only $750," Ternian said as he walks through the shop. "What we have today, we built this. We expanded big time, like crazy. But we made it. Now we want to be able to hand this business to the next generation."