Reno, Nev.--Gil Grieve sees State Farm's shift to its new "Select Service" program, which rolled into his area earlier this year, as a positive change.
"I believe it is one of the best things to happen to this industry since claims offices were conceived," said Grieve, owner of Concours Body Shop.
His reasoning: In 2004, Grieve said, he discontinued most of his company's direct repair agreements with insurers, other than those with State Farm and AAA. Because he no longer gives parts or labor discounts to any insurers, he added that he doesn't have to extend such discounts to State Farm under the requirements of the new "Select Service."
"So for me, it's business as usual," he said. "I don't believe that the body shop industry is going to be able to give everybody the concessions that they now give some. Either they will go out of business because they can't get their numbers to come together, or they're going to tell other insurance companies, 'Since we cannot afford to give these discounts to State Farm, we cannot afford to give them to you.'"
Ultimately, Grieve said he believes, discount insurance companies and their customers will have to settle for second-rate repair work or step up and pay what State Farm is willing to pay for efficient, high-quality repairs.
Efficiency and quality are key goals for the 46 employees at Concours Body Shop, Grieve said. The company recently implemented a "blueprinting" process, for example, in which a long-time technician with the company is now responsible for teardown of vehicles before the repair process proceeds.
Grieve said he believes blueprinting will help the shop get more complete repair estimates and documentation up front, so that insurer approvals and parts orders can be handled in a more timely way with fewer delays during the repair.
The business, which now fills three buildings totaling 40,000 square feet on a 2-acre lot, has come a long way from its fairly humble beginnings. Grieve said he grew up in the trade, starting as "a clean-up kid" at a shop while in high school. He passed up a college scholarship when the owner of the shop promised to teach him the business if he kept working for him rather than going to college, he said.
Six years later in 1985, however, that shop owner died unexpectedly, and Grieve said he soon found himself jobless. He had been scheduled to attend a General Motors' training program on Fieros and decided to go ahead with the training. There, he said he met the owner of Concours Body Shop, who was actually looking to sell his one-man business in order to go to work for an insurance company. The two sat at a bar and penciled out a sales agreement on a cocktail napkin, he said.
Grieve recalled his first day as owner of the 4,000-square-foot shop.
"There were 30 cars there, and after handing me the keys to the building, I find out he didn't tell any of those customers he was leaving," Grieve said of the company's former owner. "I called all 30 of those people, kept 27 of the jobs, hired a painter and worked my butt off for six months. A year later, we started hiring more people, and it grew from there."
By 1989, the company needed more space, and Grieve said he negotiated a deal to buy Nevada Body Shop, which occupied one of the three buildings in which his business is currently located. The company expanded into the other two buildings by 2000, and now averages about 100 vehicles a week, he said.
Grieve pointed to his investments in paint booths as key to his business success, starting with the downdraft that cost him $60,000 in 1987 when his 2-year-old business switched to the new-to-the-U.S. Akzo Nobel Sikkens paint line that it continues to use.
"Everyone said that money spent on that booth would put me out of business, and, yes, I had to work day and night to pay for it," Grieve said. "But bar none, that booth has made me more money than anything I've ever purchased."
He said he more recently invested in two Nova Verta paint booths, giving the shop a total of four booths.
"There was a Nova Verta booth here when I bought this shop, and at first we had nothing but problems with it," Grieve said. "But that was only because it had been abused for seven or eight years. We got it serviced and cleaned and stopped abusing it, and life was good. I looked at a lot of booths and went back to Nova Verta because they are a very nice piece of equipment. Very high quality."
He said he hopes to replace the shop's two older booths later this year.
The shop uses primarily Chief frame racks and has four Chief Velocity electronic measuring systems, Grieve said, adding that two full-time mechanics allow the shop to handle virtually all aspects of repairs in-house.
Grieve said that at times he gets discouraged by the level of control the industry has allowed insurers to have over repairers. But he said he hopes that more insurers will see State Farm's success and follow its model.
"They care more about the consumer than the dollar," he said of State Farm. "Of course, they care about costs, but I believe their ultimate goal is to give a good, high-quality repair in a timely manner. They just want efficiencies. That's truly what they're after."
That, Grieve said, is a goal he shares at his business.