The more things change, the more they stay the same for Cliff's Body Repair in Scotia, NY, a hamlet of some 7,400 souls, north across the Mohawk River from Schenectady.
Ben Bowman bought the 5,000-square-foot operation in May from Jeff Gill, for $400,000. By this, Bowman became the third owner ever of the full-service collision repair shop, in its 50-year existence. Gill had owned it since 2004, when he bought it from founder Cliff Shanty.
The new owner plans $200,000 for expansion and equipment, adding 2,500 square feet for a paint and prep area, a new spray booth and welding equipment, among other elements. Tack on $50,000 to account for an owner's salary and rent, and the all-in price works out to about four times EBITDA.
Bowman bought the land separately from Gill.
Cliff's has six employees.
Old is the New New
The never-change-but-change-or-die sentiment is more than a mantra and might make it as a marketing tagline, given Cliff's stellar local rep and Bowman's big ideas.
When Shanty opened shop in 1973, Bowman hadn't been born, and wouldn't be until the decade after the next.
Bowman is from a body shop family, and for eight years directed collision ops at Keeler Motor Car Co., a BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Honda dealership in Latham.
He was building a system, but couldn't make it what he wanted: "agile, nimble" and free of trends like DRP.
"I sought [Cliff's] out," Bowman said. "It's well-run, with a loyal customer base, and known for quality."
He's looking for half of his business from certification and specialization, half from owners of newer vehicles looking for quality. "You can't specialize in everything but you can be high-end."
On specialization, he cites Audi, Lexus -- "a big one I'm looking at" -- and EVs: Tesla, Rivian, Lucid and Polestar as the shop's new pursuits, which aren't essentially new in the reasoning and their foundations.
"A small, local business needs higher-end certifications," Bowman said. "Specific clientele, specific cars: do the training and focus on the brands. OEM certifications are the way to go."
Indie shops will thrive on anchor brands to stand out and "survive long-term without discounting, with higher margins. MSOs don't want the high-end," and can't serve it with the tech shortage and their skill set, he said.
Same Ol', Same Ol'
Gill had owned a small shop, Precision Body Repair, for four years and sometimes subcontracted framework to Shanty, prior to buying Cliff's Body Repair. Two decades later, Gill and Bowman also knew each other in collision repair.
Second similarity: as Gill with Bowman today -- the latter hearing from an insurance adjuster the shop might be off-market available -- Shanty two decades earlier hadn't marketed his shop for sale, either.
Third charm: both deals involved a changing industry and owners seeking to slow down some.
"He was 65, looking to retire," Gill said of Shanty. "In this business, you need to step up or step out."
Gill, 59, cited technical complexity, training and liability prompting his own sale. "Mom-and-pop body shops are not geared to fix today's vehicles."
He said Cliff's Body Repair's historical reputation is solid, its future one secure.
"If it wasn't good enough for me, it's not good enough for my customer -- and I'm very critical," he said. "Never did I ever have a customer in that office, upset, never an appraiser in the shop for a faulty repair."
As Gill bought Cliff's, nearby car joints with names including "Gill" or "Precision" hijacked any notion of Gill changing the established shop's name. Interestingly, there have been local car-related businesses called Cliff's.
Cliff, But Not
"His shop always had a very good reputation in our community," Gill said of Shanty. And Bowman channels what Shanty must've sounded like in 1973: high-skilled performance flowing from community-focus.
In an interview, the new owner's references range coast-to-coast, from an Aston Martin collision repair center in Long Beach, CA, to indie MSOs in Connecticut and New Jersey. One mentor is based in the U.K. He will talk geofencing marketing -- vehicle registration data, annual incomes north of $150,000 -- in one breath and New Yorker essayist and big idea book author Malcolm Gladwell in the next.
Laura Gay of Consolidation Coach.
One reason for upgrading painting at the shop is "chasing the EVs," Bowman said. "Infrared drying cures faster and heats only that panel" being painted, because with EVs, "you can't heat the whole cabin -- and the battery."
He sees private equity-backed empires growing location numbers by acquisition, but not committing the cash to do so organically at the local level.
"We want to reinvest and see the value," he said of Cliff's Body Repair.
Longer-term, he'll join those East Coast colleagues, buying other shops and keeping the names and local focus of those operations as well, when possible.
Bowman said there are others like him: younger, willing to invest, wanting to be part of a community, holding the line on consolidation, sky-high valuations and scale.
He both is and is not your granddad's Oldsmobile repairer.
Meet Ben
Laura Gay said Bowman's cadre of young owner-operators are the convergence of "nice, indie shops, looking to sell, not fit for a consolidator, with people like Ben looking to buy."
Gay runs Consolidation Coach, a buying-and-selling consultancy in Naples, FL. She started working with shop owners on M&A seven years ago, after running two body shops in Maryland.
Vehicles' growing complexity coupled with owners spending more on them, means the death of "independent shops operating on a stale, outdated model," she said.
Owners need shops that'll push back on insurers, and their own willing ability to pay out-of-pocket costs. Once Bowman finds the well-heeled clientele -- demographic work -- he can snag them, Gay said, with psychographics. Namely, marketing and outreach ranging beyond car shows to things like pet owner confabs and youth sports.
"Anything connecting to the emotional wheelhouse -- kids, dogs -- of an adult, educated client with money," she said. "Geo-marketing -- that stuff is badass for an independent repairer."
Then the work goes old-school, as Bowman aims to: do it right, do it well, in a local community.
Like Cliff.
