Contemplating Career Change-long

[JShadzi at aol.com]

Hey Mike, I worked in the Auto Aftermarket at 3 different businesses over a 3-4 year period recently, I no longer work in that "industry" for varying reasons, but let me give you a _generalized_ thread of advice based on my experience.  One such position I held, I managed over 3 million in revenue per year, another was only a few hundred thousand per year, so the experiences run the gammut.

Consequently, having worked in such a capacity, I can also draw on experiences of others whom I've worked with and still continue contact with, so it is not my experiences-in-a-vacuum per se.  Also, i still maintain many contacts and do quite a bit of business in the aftermarket business, though not on a full-time professional business as I'd done in the past.

Generally speaking, IME, most automotive repair shops and tunign firms are:

-run by a former mechanic, typiclly lacking any "coporate" experience or college education.  This is usually a negative IME, meaning they are very threatened by opinionated employees who would like to be empowered with responsibility to manage projects and improve the overall business function.  Usually, working for these kind of shops is more of a "do what I say" instead of a "lets work together to identify problems and offer solutions".  Often owners have very poor managerial skills, communicating terribly with employees and often yelling and criticizing employees openly.  It's often a roller coaster ride.  What made them a great mechanic doesn't necessarily make them a good businees owner or manager.  Speaking generally here, take it FWIW.

-relatively small, hurting upward mobility opportunities and pay increases.

-are wrought with ego and politics, doing the best job or making the best decisions doesn't always get you anywhere, often it will make you more enemies than allies.  By doing your job well, you may very well be making other's look bad, which they won't like.  Granted, this is prevelant in all job environments, but particularily bad in this industry, IME.

-patronized by customers having their cars worked on, which, as we all know, is a frustrating and often negative experience.  Thus, you spend most of your days putting out customer service fires, which usually are not your fault, and frustratingly enough, you are not empowered to change the system to prevent further problems (which seems counter entuitive enough, I know).

-sustained by reselling an almost infinite number of products with a very small profit margin, and, selling labor to repair outside-engineered vehicles.  This is a worst case scenerio IMO, and an especially big strike against this industry.  A customer car may need a part from dozens of different interchanges with limited availablility, often the part will not fit, and documentation is not available either.  For example, at the company I am at now that I helped start, we sell 6 products, they are always in stock, have an 80% profit margin and are very self expanatory and simple.  Also, often the labor being sold is unpredictable to estimate, thus a 4 hr job may very well take 8, and the customer is not going to want to pay the difference (though they likely should), so the shop has to eat it (which can hurt your bottom line as a service manager).  Granted it can go the other way, but all you need is one screamning customer (or owner) in your face a day to make you call it quits.

The best case scenario, diamond in the rough, is finding an owner or manager who understands what positive feedback is, who is not temperamental, takes care of their customers, and who understands what it takes to build and manage a sucessful business.  Preferably they will be more of a business-person than mechanic, and will attempt to build loyalty and asset in their employees.  I finally left the industry because I could not find any working environments that met my desire for professionalism, good business practice and upward mobility.  Also, I do probably 4 times more tuning-related business and activity now that I don't work in the industry, go figure.

I don't know anything about the shop you're interested in, but I'd say try to speak with some of the employees there, ask them how they like working there, that may be the best way to find out.  Initial impressins of the owner can be very decieving, and it's exciting to think that you might be able to work with cars and Audi's, but at one point, I was maintaining 2 Audi Sport Trans Am cars and had an IMSA GTO engine on a stand in my office, and I left becuase of the above issues I describe.

Also, this isn't meant to be a slam to any shop owners or those who work in the industry, I'm not holding any punches that's for sure, but its a generalized comment based IME.

Javad
80tq.com

In a message dated Tue, 11 Jun 2002  1:00:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Mike Veglia <msvphoto at pacbell.net> writes:

>I post this here because I know there are a fair number of folks on this
>list with automotive service experience who could help shed some light on if
>this would be a good path to take into automotive repair. I feel as though
>I'm "too old" (44) to start out as a tech and think this may be a good fit
>for me. Any advice from those of you out there in q-list land will be
>greatly appreciated. TIA
>
>Mike Veglia
>Motor Sport Visions Photography
>http://www.motorsportvisions.com
>
>
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