Domenic Ieraci is the president of Simplicity Car Care, a Canadian franchisor of collision repair centers with more than 100 locations. He joined The Collision Vision podcast, driven by Autobody News and hosted by Cole Strandberg, to talk about franchising and why it might be a great fit for the right operator, as well growth, scalability and culture.
Founding Simplicity Car Care
After Ieraci’s family immigrated from Italy, his father and uncle owned two body shops. As the industry shifted toward consolidation, Ieraci’s family had to figure out how to stay relevant -- either by growing and acquiring more locations, or joining a larger franchise -- or they would have to sell the business.
Ieraci and his cousins, twin brothers Paul and Domenic Prochilo, came up with a production system that allowed their family’s shops to fix vehicles 35% faster than the average collision center in North America. In 2017, the trio branded that system as Simplicity Car Care. Paul and Domenic Prochilo are CEO and COO, respectively.
“From there, we ended up expanding the franchise throughout Canada,” Ieraci said.
Simplicity Car Care now has 102 locations, coast to coast, about 5% of the Canadian market share, and is the sixth-largest collision network in the country. Of its locations, 99 are franchised and three are corporately owned.
“Ultimately, we're a vehicle to help people fulfill their personal and professional goals,” he said. “If you take a look at a lot of the independents, some of the most passionate people in the world worked super hard, but don't really find the way to get out of the day-to-day grind.”
Simplicity Car Care helps independent owners enjoy the fruits of their labor, Ieraci said -- that was what he and his cousins were able to do for their fathers when they developed the business model.
“I think what's made us so unique and so different is that we're giving people the opportunity to do more than just run their business,” Ieraci said. “We're giving them an opportunity to be able to live a life that they only dreamed of, by allowing that business to give them their time back.”
To grow from two to 100+ locations in seven years, Ieraci and his cousins spent a lot of time on the road selling franchises. They also put a lot of time into finding the right leaders to bring into the company.
“People are extremely important,” Ieraci said. “Finding those first 15 hires were so critical, and then from there really investing in governance and technology, improving the system, improving the value proposition to the marketplace.”
The Simplicity Car Care Model
Ieraci said originally, he and his cousins thought they would grow the business through acquisitions, but they turned to franchising instead, as it allowed them to scale quicker. However, that required strong fundamentals and a compelling reason to get owners to join.
“I think one of the main reasons why people join is because we understood from the beginning the pains and the struggles that an independent collision center has day to day,” Ieraci said. “Our franchise business has been created around creating a solution to help those independents accelerate.”
The Simplicity Car Care model helps franchisees repair cars faster while reducing costs.
“If you're an independent, it's very difficult to gain leverage as one store, but with 100-plus unified in a back office, we can really leverage that scale, that efficiency, to start to really pull out costs and create greater efficiency at the collision center level,” Ieraci said.
After that, Simplicity helps drive results to reach each franchisee’s individual goals, “but what is true across franchisees is that they want to be profitable,” Ieraci said.
Ieraci said joining a franchise can give owners the support they need to improve their shop. It can also make it easier to sell; often, another franchisee within the system who wants to own multiple locations will buy it.
“You're creating the best insurance policy for your business and for your wealth creation by joining a franchise,” Ieraci said. “Being an independent is extremely tough in 2024.”
How Simplicity Car Care Grew
For a franchisor, growth starts with understanding the needs of the marketplace, knowing the challenges potential customers are facing and delivering a new solution.
“It’s not about features and benefits. It's not about this widget, that widget,” Ieraci said. “It's really about what are you doing to help make someone's life easier, make someone's life better, whether it be the franchisee, whether it be the consumer, whether it be the insurer. We're in the business of really solving problems.”
Ieraci said Simplicity Car Care only grows by bringing on existing independent shops and converting them to its model. It does not build any green- or brownfield locations.
Franchisees must undergo a rigorous selection process. Simplicity looks for owners’ willingness to learn and to accept change.
Potential franchisees must answer a series of questions, which are then scored to determine how willing they are to follow the system and make the necessary changes to be successful in it.
When a new franchisee joins, they go through a 90- to 120-day onboarding process, to ensure they've learned and adapted to the system. Then they are introduced to Simplicity’s insurance partners.
Simplicity has standards for how franchisees should run certain departments of the shop, but it also gives them flexibility to “use their own personality and their own flavor and their own style as well within the system,” Ieraci said.
But the core of the business model is consistency, he said. That controls expected outcomes and allows the entire network to quickly adapt to changes in the industry.
Looking to the Future
Simplicity Car Care has five core values, which it consistently communicates to franchisees and staff.
“Within each of our monthly team meetings, we have every department share what they did that exemplifies one or more of our core values,” Ieraci said. “Keeping that at the forefront allows us to consistently embrace those values. And that's helped really shape the culture of the company.”
Ieraci said he thinks “the next five to 10 years are going to be extremely exciting,” as changes in consumer trends and behaviors will require repairers to adapt by investing in infrastructure to deliver a seamless, frictionless claims experience.
“How are we leveraging technology so that we're not being left behind?” Ieraci said.
Ieraci said his company is doubling down on its investment in its people as well, “because you can only grow as well and as great as your people are.”
In 2017, Ieraci and his wife, Claudia Scali-Ieraci, founded the Children on the Rise Foundation in support of the SickKids Foundation, with the goal of raising $1 million by 2025 for the expansion of a large children’s hospital in Toronto.
Ieraci said his son Leo, born in 2019, became a patient at the hospital the same night the Children on the Rise Foundation held its annual gala to raise money for it. Today, Leo is about to turn 5 and is doing well, Ieraci said.
“It's really about your family, about enjoying your life. When you have these experiences that take you out of the day to day, and it's a real situation, it really puts life into perspective,” he said.
Key Takeaways
Know and understand your numbers. What are the key metrics that are important to your business?
Plan for your future. Know what you want from your business. If you know that, there's a higher probability you'll be able to get it.
Be willing to change. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because when you get out of your comfort zone, that's when the magic happens. If you stay in the comfort zone, you cannot possibly change. And if you're not changing, it's very difficult to evolve.
Abby Andrews