CollisionClassifieds.com recently debuted after a year of planning and development on both coasts, and in the fabled and ubiquitous cloud. It’s a path that fits the stated aim of its founder to give body shoppers “a platform for all things collision.”
The venture is based in Florida, though Laura Gay, who started it, is usually on the road to somewhere else as a consultant to body shops and collision centers selling their shops, via her Consolidation Coach company. The new site is programmed, developed and marketed by Micki Woods and her eponymous firm to the industry, in Thousand Oaks, CA.
Micki Woods.
“When I was a shop owner, it was so frustrating,” Gay said. “There’s a lot of good stuff out there for sale, or to find teammates, office or any type of position. I realized there was a definite need to have one-stop shopping.”
Now, she notes, and anyone who’s looked experiences, there are “50 different Facebook platform, CraigsList,” and a few, more finely focused external sites.
Choices Abound, Which Might Be a Bad Thing
In that latter category, there’s BodyShopJobs.com, for instance. But that, of course, is only for, well, jobs.
There’s BizBuySell.com -- a general businesses-for-sale site, part of big real estate watcher CoStar Group, which also hawks land and apartment slots at some of its other sites. Body shops are on BBS, but you might have to wade through 179 listings of all “auto repair and service shops” in, say, Florida, first.
Facebook throws up dozens of groups -- public, private and some parochial, with perhaps a couple dozen or so members, most of whom are inactive anyway.
Options include Buying and Selling Collision Repair Shops; Selling or Buying Body Shops, where Gay is an admin; Auto Body Shop Owners Group and at least two for technicians: “auto body” or in “collision repair,”as well as a global group of them. Here’s one for painters, whether “professional and novice.”
They range in size from about 1,000 members to more than 30,000. The global tech group has more than 70,000, and 463,000 have signed on to the painting one.
Content can be, like social media itself, sketchy.
Moderated groups, buy-sell ones, especially, control access. The wider universes -- there are more techs than there are owners -- can get chaotic, with complaints or unhelpful comments, as well as jokes. The worldwide gathering is heavy on sometimes oddball TikTok-like videos.
There are often good discussions, the trading of advice and best practices, and the general information of “shop for sale in Des Moines,” so there’s some value, and we’re already perhaps on Facebook a bit.
The Plan is Coming Together Differently
As a new site, Gay knows there will be bugs on CollisionClassifieds.com similar to social media -- “There’s a lot of tire kickers out there, people who will never be able to buy” -- along with, no doubt, some new ones.
Screenshot of the new site's home page.
She’s considering different options -- paid memberships, which always pre-qualifies a person, for instance.
“We’ve talked about an inner circle,” Gay said. “There may be a qualification process.”
In the first 90 days, “anyone can use it free” and searching is likely to remain free; whether comments will is another question. Advertisers eventually will pay, and there are of course options for different kinds of ads.
After all the “interweb” isn’t new.
“Next thing, though, will be multiple chat rooms,” Gay said. “You’re not sure what you need, need guidance for financials, any topic” is possible. This element is likely about a year off, she said.
The buy-sell-shops-stuff-jobs site could then overlap with her main work, selling body shops.
Specifically anonymous users seems not to be an option, but users higher-up the M&A food chain might seek some kind of shadow use to cut down on the tire kickers contacting them directly. Still, their standard access barriers are in place and gatekeepers are on duty, and some people want the phone call.
Little by Little, Then Perhaps an Explosion
“There will be, starting out, some phases if you will,” Gay said.
The site, after some 12 months of labor and hours of bi-coastal conversation and meetings, basically just dropped, as the kids say. It opened for business Dec. 18.
Gay acknowledged there are likely to be “very few” ads and listings at first.
About 40 people participated in creating dummy ads to test the programming, and Gay is putting the word out for shop sellers to, well, kick the CollisionClassifieds tires a bit.
She emphasized the “professional” aim, and the site looks clean and simple, in vibrant reds and formal black.
Marketer Woods has 20 years in the industry, including as a shop owner, and in marketing for an MSO.
She hosts a podcast, Body Bangin’, builds body shop and mechanics’ websites, does graphic design, marketing -- especially, at the moment, a Google plan, “a hot thing for shops right now” -- for topping listings.
Speaking like a web maven, Woods said she wouldn’t mind things starting slow so bugs can be worked out better.
“There are sites up three or four years that nobody uses,” she said. “We want to see what errors flush out, get users’ feedback, and get this going, because there’s such a need.”
Speaking like an entrepreneur, Gay said long-term she wants to “take it across all automotive industries” with sites for mechanical repair operations and dealerships, new and used.
For now, for buyers, sellers, employers, workers, it’s “anything you want in the collision space: there’s a place for you here.”
Paul Hughes