New business, your opinions and advice needed

[fablish]

Hello everyone,

I have been thinking about starting out a windshield repair business for some time now. I'm a firefighter in Canada that works shift work. My city has a population of about 75 000. Lots of fleet vehicle business's, car rental agencies and lots of potential. There's already a business in town that just seems to be thriving doing tent jobs in mall parking lots. What attracts me to this business is low overhead, i can set my own hours, i want to be mobile and do low cost advertising around the city.

My questions:

1. A friend at work is interested in partnering with me. My concerns are I am not sure if it would be profitable. Any of you had any success with partners?

2. I read a lot about insurance jobs, in Canada I have never heard of insurance paying for windshield chip repair? Is there any canadian windshield repair business in this forum?

3. Training, odviously I want to be confident when starting to do this work. Are the instruction videos good enough to be confident in doing the work? I am not entertaining the idea of travelling to learn this trade at this point.

Any advice, comments and concerns would be greatly appreciated. If I am going to invest in this I want to do everything right.

Regards,

-PJ

[Frank EU]

Welcome to the forum! You told us that your city has a population of about 75000, and that there is, as far as you know (because I dare to doubt it, there must be more) just one vendor. Where are you located at? Ontario, Quebec?
If you take things serious, and that is probably what you will be doing (being a pro fire fighter that is in your nature), you will be succesfull and make money.
Get the right tools, a techincal training, prepare the sales side (very important) go out and find your customers (should be easy as a fire fighter, most people respect that job eh).

And yes, there are some guys on this forum from your country, there's even a DK distributor. The guys that I know off became very quite recently, but as far as I know they're still in the business, here are the details: Jonnyques in Niagara, toab in Watford, theglasspro in London, kenb81 in London, burnman in Edmonton (Alberta) and Yvan and Richard are both in Quebec.

Again: sales are important.
Money is never an issue when you start in this business, the initial investment and overheads can be low.
When we were involved in doing trainings we always explained the people that we can train a monkey to do the job, it is that easy.
For many people, the difficult aspect is sales. Ask yourself ''am I prepared to do sales and am I willing to learn?''. Also: ''Am I prepared to be going out frequently myself, being pro-active?''. You should NOT think that you just purchase a system, be trained, place adverts, distribute business cards and then can wait for the phone to ring. It won't! You have to go out.

[Frank EU]

And no, training videos are NOT GOOD, in fact they are a JOKE!
I recognize and understand where your video idea comes from because fire fighters are watching videos to evaluate incidents etc. to learn and all that and that is just fine, but this is different all together.
The training could be more important than the tools, if you are on budget, look for pre-owned tools, and invest the money in a training.
The beauty of this business is that you can go as expensive, or cheap, as you like. But please do not cut corners and be properly trained.

[maxryde]

Welcome Fablish,

To your questions,

Starting out I would recommend you go it alone, you want to keep your friend right? Starting with a partner is extremely difficult, though not impossible. Better to each strike out on your own and see what works, collaborate, and if in the end you want to merge, well OK.

Training is a must, video's are fine but there is no substitute for hands on with a professional.

Thirdly ICBC will pay for repair I believe but I have found most Canadians prefer to pay out of pocket.

Good luck, and put the wet stuff on the red stuff in the mean time.

Scott

[Brent Deines]

I would suggest contacting Matt Horne of Clear Solutions Canada. I don't know how many locations he has now, but he has been very successful and knows the Canadian market very well. I'll send you an e-mail with his contact information.

I think that this is one step new windshield repair technicians often skip. You are wise to seek out someone in the business who is already successful; it will save you a lot of time and money. Like Frank said, it's the sales and marketing side of the business that people struggle with.

Training will also help you to get off on the right foot and all things considered it is very inexpensive.

[fablish]

Wow thank you all for the replies. To answer some of your question I am in alberta. There is more techs in town but charge in the $40 range. I realize now how important the sales aspect of it is the most important. Honestly that would be for me the biggest challenge. I get excited about the potential, but need to evaluate myself more and see if I am committed to the sales. At this point I am not interested in setting up a tent in a mall. I would be more interested in being a mobile service. Thank you for the contacts.

-pj