It is the winter of 2022 and while visiting shops in Orlando, Charles sees a Red Lobster restaurant. In Quebec, the brand disappeared in the late 1990s, and Charles is always happy to travel and renew with this source of comfort that is seafood. Since [...]
Auto parts come in all shapes, weights, and sizes. They are delivered all over Canada, sometimes further away. If you are not well organized, every time you send something to a customer you have to ask yourself a ton of questions and mistakes are easily [...]
It’s April 2022, my distributor’s representative has changed again. This is the fourth time in four years. One of my main suppliers has been a business partner for the last twenty years. He is retiring and will let his son take over the business. I [...]
It’s the late ’80s… Pièces d’Autos Turcotte, an automobile recycler in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada is thinking of computerizing its business by acquiring a product that could help with sales, accounting, and inventory. The company looked at was available on the market and consulted fellow recyclers. [...]
Charles absolutely wanted me to share some sales tips for collision shops with you. Our observations in the field indicate that sales are often neglected in Canadian body shops. Charles has visited over 700 shops and we come to the same conclusion. In this article, [...]
As part of our conversation about the auto parts shortage that has plagued the market since 2021, Charles Aubry, Patrick Piché and I also discussed auto estimation and how valuable it is. This article highlights my interview with Patrick Piché from Akzonobel. Let’s first recall [...]
This has become a daily situation; there is one coveted part left at the dealership and three body shops buy it at the same time. Only one of them will get it, creating mayhem for the other two. Next arrival: days, months? These days, anything [...]
Whenever they can, Charles Aubry and his wife watch the show My 600 Lb Life. While reflecting on the collision shop industry, Charles draws a parallel between the drama around the show’s subjects and shops that maintain excessive work-in-progress (WIP) loads. He calls it “My life [...]
A few Tips to Get Through the Crisis. 2021 will have seen a return to the repair levels of 2019. Of course, many entrepreneur collision shops suffered a lot from the travel pause that took place at the height of COVID-19. Now that we are [...]
