Cottage Grove, Ore.--If company Owner Joe Spady and his shop manager and son-in-law Jamon Ellingson had to summarize a key goal of their business, they would say: Keep local business local.
Over the course of several years, Spady said he saw an increasing amount of local motorists and previous customers of his Auto Art Body & Paint shop being referred by insurance companies to shops in Eugene and Springfield, 20 to 30 miles away from his hometown.
"Just yesterday, a previous customer called and said he was bringing his vehicle in," said Ellingson, who joined the company about two years ago. "When I heard what insurance company was involved, I wasn't surprised when we never saw it. They obviously towed it up to Eugene. It's a little bit of a battle trying to keep the local business local."
"Probably half of the local work here goes up to Eugene," Spady said.
"But now that we have this facility, it seems like we're able to kind of pull that back in," Ellingson said. "Our numbers had dropped off and now are building back up again."
The facility he spoke of is the new 8,000-square-foot shop the company moved into in 2005, giving it twice the space of the "downtown" Main Street location where Auto Art was located for 30 years after Spady founded the company.
For customers, the facility is attractive inside and out. The office features a gas fireplace, modern furniture and stainless steel counters, and has such amenities as a popcorn maker and water cooler. A table is dotted with reply cards sent back by customers about their experience with the shop.
For the shop's two estimators and five production employees, both buildings are air conditioned and have power overhead doors, Spady said, adding that he has invested in nearly all new equipment for the shop, such as a Golden West sidedraft paint booth and a Chief Velocity measuring system used with the shop's Blackhawk frame rack.
"I looked at all of them," he said of his choice of electronic measuring systems. "I also asked people I know in the business which one is the easiest to use."
Other recent additions include a paper compactor and a Becca paint waste recycler, Spady said.
"We were always maxing out our dumpster, so the compactor is saving us on our garbage bill," Ellingson said. "And the solvent-waste recycler has been great. We were teetering on the edge of being a 'small-quantity generator,' and we wanted to maintain our exempt status. So that's worked out great."
The shop has also installed an electronic paint scale and a clip-and-fastener inventory system that allow it to produce the documentation and invoices needed to bill insurers for specific items used on each job, Spady said.
Spady said that although he believes all of the paint companies in the industry offer a good product, he has stuck with BASF Glasurit largely because of the service offered by the local jobber.
"Industrial Finishes has always done a good job for us," Ellingson said. "It's been a good relationship."
Auto Art recently qualified for the I-CAR Gold Class distinction based on its level of employee training. Ellingson said there are really two reasons behind that.
"First, I think ongoing training is a pretty important thing," he said. "But it also is an extra sales pitch for building the confidence of the customers and insurers. As a customer myself, I like to know when people at a business are striving to improve and offer quality craftsmanship."
Spady and Ellingson agreed that they would like to add to their list of insurer direct repair agreements, which includes being part of State Farm's new "Select Service" program.
But asked what Spady and Ellingson find is their biggest challenge in running the business, and the difference in their day-to-day roles became clear. For Ellingson, who oversees much of the office operations, "keeping up with paperwork" is the most daunting task.
"You'd like to be out promoting your business, but you're stuck in the office hashing out supplements and documenting everything," he said.
Spady, on the other hand, tries to spend as little time as he can in the office.
"I've had my fill of that," he said, adding that his role of late is purchasing and maintaining equipment and continuing to fine-tune the facility. "I try to keep everything looking good and running good. The biggest challenge for me any more is to make the shop as efficient as possible."
Spady was clearly proud of the shop he's built and equipped and determined to convince more insurers that there's no need for Cottage Grove residents to drive elsewhere for collision repair work.
"We really feel that we have a facility here that is as good or even better than most of the facilities in the Eugene-Springfield area," he said.
