What happens when mild-mannered shop owners decide to take on some of the collision industry’s biggest ills? They win. And you do, too.

It’s 5 p.m. Friday, the end of a typical 50-hour workweek. You say goodnight to your employees, finish up your paperwork, lock up the shop and wearily head home looking forward to a hot meal, a hug from your spouse and kids, and some quality big-screen TV time in your favorite recliner. Before you switch the lights off, however, ask yourself this question: “What have I done for the industry this week?”

You think, “A better question is, ‘what haven’t I done?’ I run an ethical, honest business, and I take good care of my customers and my employees. On top of that, I pay my dues to my local autobody association, a national automotive organization, and I support educational programs! What more can I do?”

Funny you should ask. Local and national automotive associations are a powerful force in the industry, but that doesn’t mean they can accomplish every goal and solve every problem the industry faces. Groups, like individuals, are only able to do so much because they must also contend with factors such as time and expense and must pick and choose what goals to pursue.

This leaves plenty of work for those willing to do it and plenty of opportunity for individual achievement.

Fortunately, the collision repair industry is composed of a number of remarkable individuals willing to pick up a torch and blaze new trails that make this industry a better place for shop owners, employees and customers alike. We examine three of the many individuals who saw opportunity where others simply saw difficulty and set the collision repair industry on the course for a better tomorrow.

Customer champion Bob Juniper  Marketing maverick built a business with an anti-steering campaign

If you’ve seen the movie “Braveheart,” you no doubt remember the first great battle scene when Mel Gibson’s character, William Wallace, used some highly unorthodox battlefield maneuvers to defeat a much larger English army. If the collision repair industry had its own version of “Braveheart,” Bob Juniper, owner of Three-C Body Shops Inc. in Columbus, Ohio, would no doubt deserve the title role. 

Just 10 years ago, Juniper was the owner of a family shop facing its own life and death struggle. Insurance companies were steering lots of jobs away from his shop and into their own direct repair facilities. If the situation continued down that same path, Juniper realized he could lose his business. Still, he adamantly refused to buy into any direct repair program (DRP) because he firmly believed his competitors offered cut-rate services at the expense of quality. With his business sinking and his back against the wall, Juniper appeared to have few, if any, options. 

Appearances, however, may be quite deceiving. Instead of giving in to the DRPs or moving his shop out of Columbus, Juniper formulated a plan to save his business by waging a massive public communication war against the insurance industry. Juniper concluded that consumers were taking their vehicles to DRP shops mainly because they believed they had no other choice. Juniper also believed that if consumers knew they had a choice, they would instead go to shops that offered the best service.

He decided the best strategy was to go on the attack, to strike the insurance industry head on by educating the public on their rights as consumers. 

To wage the battle his way, however, Juniper had to use one of the single most underused, least understood tool in the collision industry—advertising. Moreover, he was waging his information war against a much larger and extremely well-funded adversary well versed in the art of marketing and public relations. Undaunted and confident in his strategy, he moved forward.
Juniper unleashed an aggressive, multi-faceted marketing program taking direct aim at DRPs. He bought up hours of local radio time, airing entertaining spots that educated the listening audience on the rights of consumers and attacked what he saw as the dark side of DRPs and the insurance industry. 

“I let consumers know that they paid for their insurance and could get their vehicles repaired wherever they wanted, regardless of what the insurance companies tried to tell them,” says Juniper, who also ran TV ads and put his shop’s name on dozens of city buses and billboards around Columbus. He even built a Web page where copies of his ads can be played and shared. Throughout central Ohio, Juniper made sure his message was broadcasted over and over until, quite simply, there was no way to avoid it.

The result: Customers, suspicious of the insurance industry and grateful for Juniper’s course on consumer rights, began showing up at his shop in droves. “Quite often,” he says, “They came right out and said the ads brought them in.” The marketing plan brought in so much new business, in fact, that Juniper was able to expand his business into multiple locations. 

Today, Juniper owns 11 facilities and employs more than 100 people. He also has his own marketing firm, Jupiter Marketing & Advertising Inc., and recently opened a huge factory-scale shop (70,000 sq. ft. of production area) capable of placing vehicles, directed in by satellite receiving facilities, on an assembly-line work system where they can be repaired quickly and with the same high level of quality.

Juniper continues to run ads attacking insurance company steering and DRPs. He says just a year ago, an insurance company representative attempted to ridicule him in a Columbus Dispatch article by referring to him as the “Dennis Rodman of collision repair.” 

Seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the remark, Juniper showed up in his next commercial sporting a white feather boa, fluorescent red hair, makeup and a tattoo. Looking slyly into the camera, he repeated the insurance representative’s story and, with more than a bit of irony, asked the audience what they thought about the comment. 

The commercial—broadcast repeatedly during the 2002 Olympic games—was pure Juniper: brash, bold and unforgettable. Once again he had turned the tables on an adversary, winning over customers and fans alike.

time-savvy islander MARCH TAYLOR Island guru of estimation accuracy champions truth for all shops

In 1990, March Taylor thought he had seen the last of the collision repair industry. The owner of Auto Body Hawaii in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, had spent two exhausting decades running his own business and decided to take advantage of some real estate investments by retiring and trying his hand at other work. But several years later, after unfulfilling stints in construction and running a commercial fishing boat, Taylor returned to collision repair at the request of his old shop. “They needed some production help,” he says, “and I decided to come back if I could stay in production and away from any sort of management.”

That decision proved to be a turning point both in Taylor’s life and in the way the collision repair industry conducts business. Not long after his return, Taylor ran into some trouble replacing a cab corner on a 1998 Toyota Tacoma. Although the part looked identical to the cab corner from a previous model design, Taylor discovered that replacing it required an entirely different set of installation steps and therefore a different time allotment than the one recorded in the estimating guides. Thinking he could help save other technicians a lot of trouble and also fix an estimating error that would eventually affect other shops, Taylor contacted Mitchell International, ADP Claims Solutions Group and Motor Information Systems. After discussing the problem with them, he made another interesting discovery. The estimating time was based on manufacturing assembly information from Toyota and some faulty data. 

“We found out that Toyota based its data on the assembly process, which is very different than the collision repair process,” Taylor says. “Also, they based the time on a design used in Japan that didn’t have the seatbelt mounting area in the same place as the truck exported to the United States.” 

All these faulty data for the repair of just one vehicle model raised a significant point to Taylor. If other estimating data are similarly collected and reported, labor times listed in the estimating guides must also have a number of errors. So began Taylor’s crusade to correct erroneous estimating data.

He started keeping track of faulty data that he and other technicians uncovered. At first, Taylor would contact the estimating manufacturers and send out e-mail to other shops on his discoveries. Eventually, he partnered with the Collision Industry Conference (CIC) and began posting data on the organization’s Web site so shops all across the country would have access to it. Today, that list includes almost 100 critical time errors.

The information providers have taken turns battling with Taylor about some changes while readily accepting others. “They’re good people,” he says of the database editors. “They’re just in a bad position. Unfortunately, all they have to base their estimates on are factors like OE manufacturer information, along with historical data and personal knowledge.” Further complicating their jobs are the growing number of new vehicle models and changes to vehicle designs.

Despite a past sometimes colored by heated disagreements, Taylor reports that his relationship with the editors is positive. “We’re all on good terms now,” he says. “They realize it’s not a perfect world, and they thank you for your work.” Indeed, these editors, along with shops and insurers, are grateful for the service Taylor provides. He supplies a necessary quality check for estimating times—work that otherwise would not get done.

Taylor remains humble and modest about his contributions and prefers to focus on how and why he does it. “I can afford the time others can’t since I’m still essentially retired and free to do what I want,” he says. “I also have a passion for it since this industry made me. And I’m not doing this alone. I see myself as one person working with a lot of other people who care.”

woman with a mission FREDA THOMSON Tireless industry voice and education advocate shows the way

One look at Freda Thompson’s industry prospectus and you’re immediately reminded of those people you knew in high school or college who were involved in everything. You remember the type: voted Most Likely to Succeed, carried a full course load and still managed to play two sports, march in the band, serve on student council and still have time to head up a civic or church group. 

Since joining the collision industry in 1986, Thompson has regularly filled a number of roles and has been an integral part of some of the industry’s most distinguished organizations. She currently sits on the I-CAR Education Foundation Board of Trustees, is vice president of the Alabama Collision Repairer’s Association (ACRA), is a member of the Automotive Service Association (ASA) and sits on the advisory committee for I-CAR’s People Actively Creating Employability thru Short-Term Task Training program (PACE+ST3). On top of all that, the co-owner of Ace Auto Body in Hartselle, Ala., puts in a full work week, taking care of human resources, accounts payable and implementing new operational procedures.
For all her responsibilities, though, Thompson made time in October 2001 to become involved with the integration of PACE+ST3 at Brewer High School, a local vo-tech school. “The collision industry needs new workers,” Thompson says. “And I saw this as a way to help.” 

Once she became involved, Thompson soon discovered that the industry and the Alabama school system were miles apart in terms of mutual understanding and support. Until that problem was solved, little could be done to implement a successful autobody curriculum in the state’s schools. 

It quickly became apparent that the task that lay ahead of Thompson and the advisory committee she served on was immense. Somehow, they had to bring together numerous members of the collision industry with officials from the local school systems, along with representatives of several different Alabama state departments. Together, all of these people and groups had to form a unified front capable of creating and supporting a successful curriculum.

The committee immediately set up completing this massive task. Its first step involved getting Brewer High School officials and industry representatives together to determine what each needed or could offer for the course curriculum. During one of those early meetings, school officials noted that course expenses were often prohibitive. For example, wrecks were sometimes hauled to the school for students to work on, but when it came time to dispose of the vehicle, the school was stuck with removal expenses.

“We sat around and asked if anyone would be willing to donate help here and, at first, no one could,” Thompson says. “Then, the State Farm representative offered a different kind of solution. He offered to loan the school vehicles with minor body damage and to pick them up when the class was finished with them. That’s how we began to understand how we were going to solve problems. We needed a free exchange of ideas and ways to get everyone involved.”

This philosophy guided the advisory committee at every turn. Individuals from all aspects of the collision repair industry were consulted for input. The committee even received help from outside the industry. Early on, they invited Bill Harrison, estimating team manager for State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., to an organizing meeting. Harrison’s wife Ann also showed up, and the group soon discovered that Ann had helped run a similar program to get students involved in the nursing field. With her experience, Ann joined the committee and even agreed to serve as chairperson.

The 2002 Alabama SkillsUSA state competition similarly afforded the committee an opportunity to touch base with more industry and school officials. Thompson and Ron Ray, executive director of the I-CAR Education Foundation, arranged to speak to Alabama’s state career director. “Originally, he gave us just 30 minutes to talk about what we needed for a collision curriculum,” Thompson says. “But after we got to talking, the meeting lasted for an hour and a half.” That meeting turned out to be a key first step in getting the state involved.

The SkillsUSA competition itself was also a key turning point because it provided the committee with the chance to critique the competition and talk to instructors. When the competition ended, the committee discussed ways to improve it for the following year and immediately set upon putting those changes in motion. 

From there, the committee interviewed high school students who had served as interns in local automotive businesses as part of the PACE+ST3 effort. The interns, one of whom worked at Thompson’s shop, gave their opinions of the program and made suggestions on how to improve it. 

The committee’s next stop was the ACRA Sixth Annual Summer Meeting, where they presented all the materials and information they had collected for the course to I-CAR Education Foundation board members and collision repairers. “They were amazed,” Thompson says. “We had all the resources for what it took to start an autobody curriculum.” A steering committee from ACRA was also created, dedicated to implementing the program across Alabama. 

After nearly a year of hard work, Thompson’s advisory committee had turned its local PACE+ST3 program into part of a far greater statewide movement. Industry and school officials were working together, in many ways for the first time, to produce effective collision repair programs. This cooperative effort has already produced some impressive results. 

For example, the 2003 SkillsUSA competition was a marked improvement from the event held just a year earlier and served as a showcase for the collision repair industry. “Volunteers managed to collect over $50,000 in prizes,” Thompson says. She adds that not one student went home empty handed. In addition, she says many of the technical problems from the previous year were resolved and that, overall, there were more people involved and enthused about the competition.

For her contributions to the project, Thompson received the 2002 ABRN Industry Leadership Award at the NACE 2002 industry trade show in Dallas. Thompson, though, prefers to point out that she was one person, among many, who supported PACE+ST3. “This was about a lot of people coming together to do what they could,” she says, “Right now the problem with our industry is that we are too fragmented. We need more cooperation.”

Speaking with Thompson, however, leaves you with the feeling that all this work will get done. When it does, she and the people who made it happen will be happy for all those they’ve been able to help and ready to move on to the next great task at hand.