Fix Auto - Index

Fix Auto - Magazine02-en - Index

THE STORY BEHIND
FIx AUTo
Mark wanted to fInd oUt More aboUt fIx aUto. foUnder Jean delIsle
explaIns how It all got started.
42 || MARK MAGAZINE
“Back in 1991, the economy was in recession and body shops
were losing customers fast. We had to find a way to turn
things around. I knew the business well, first as the owner of a
paint distributorship and then as a general manager for Akzo
Sikkens, a multinational corporation where I was in charge of
marketing for quebec and later in Spain.”
We had developed a productivity
management system for
body shops and started giving
seminars for the people who
ran them. Some of those who attended
my seminars asked me to help them get
their busi nesses growing again, despite the
recession. That’s when I worked out this
busi ness strategy.
When I got thinking about it, I realized there
was no way they could achieve their goal
indi vidually, no matter how much money
they were ready to throw at it. We had to
reach a critical mass of body shops and work
together to grow. The proposed solution
meant setting up a network under a common
identity. At the time, getting a dozen body
shops to work with the same identity was
like setting off a revolution.
We heard all kinds of things said about us
– but nothing succeeds like success. Our
strategy has not changed since, and Fix Auto
has always stayed the course. We’ve shown
that the smallest body shop in our network
has more going for it than the biggest of the
inde pendents. Right from the start, sharing
resources let us create a network management
system, invest in technology and start
up a training program tied to an overall strategy.
Negotiating with the insurers, suppliers
“
We had to reach a critical
mass of body shops and
work together to grow.
”