Think you like a challenge? How about Paul and Cheryl Brow of San Gabriel, Calif. They got married in 1983; one week later they opened All Car Specialists. “We found a building and worked with a friend to get it all cleaned up and prepared, and then we went on our honeymoon in Maui,” recalls Cheryl Brow. After they got back they started that following Monday and have been working from the same location for the last 30 years.
Back then Cheryl’s father also owned a chain of auto parts stores, one of the largest in the San Gabriel Valley, which gave them a solid supply line for awhile, but with retirements and market changes that dried up. Since the Brows repair a wide range of makes and year models, from restorations to hybrids, a steady supply had to be secured.
“Now we have to buy from all these different distributors and their prices are going up, and that’s one of the hardest things that we have to deal with,” Cheryl explains. “And a lot of them are going out of business so parts are getting harder to get. Sometimes we have to send our guys further out so that jobs that might have been done in a couple hours now take a day and a half.”
To help manage this problem the Brows eventually promoted one of their employees to parts manager, and he stays in contact with all the parts houses, relieving the service writers of this time-consuming duty. “You can’t learn too much in this industry,” Cheryl comments. “It’s always changing.”
“Most of the manufacturers are generous enough to open their (dealer) doors to teachers,” says Brow, “because they want something out of it — they want our students.” And it turns out he thoroughly enjoys teaching; two nights a week Brow will put in a full day at the shop before departing at 5:30 p.m. to conduct classes until 10 p.m., teaching general automotive and more recently, automatic transmissions.
And with aging hybrids a growing market in Southern California, Brow has his finger on that as a member of the board of directors for Pasadena City and Rio Hondo Colleges, the latter having a large hybrid program. “What’s also big with the schools is alternative fuels, and that’s what I’m getting myself geared up for,” Brow explains. “As a matter of fact I’m also part of the Automotive Service Council (ASC), and part of my job with them was seminar director, where I would put together these classes for hybrids.”
Brow points out that being in ASC’s Chapter 5, the largest in the country, comes with its own perks. “We’re linked in with a lot of really top shops, and we all work together; sometimes I’ll have trouble with something that another shop has already dealt with, so we’ll just get onboard with them. We also share tools, like this alignment tool that’s $12,000. That’s the future, that’s the way we’re going to have to do things. These days if you’re not linked up with somebody, your business is going to die.”
The Internet is playing a bigger role too. “We’re linked up big time with iATN (International Automotive Technicians Network),” Brow confirms. “Identifix has been wonderful; there’s a lot of new and exciting stuff.”
To harness this new synergy, the Brows have hired Taylor Jonason to be their IT guy and advertising manager. “We get a lot of our business through AAA,” says Jonason, “but over the years I’ve been trying to get more of the people who would be using Facebook or phone apps to be able to find us. The big one right now is Yelp.”
Of course being Specialists in All Cars has led to some unique opportunities; with the famed Hollywood studios only a few miles to the west, it was probably inevitable that the Brows got some of Tinsel Town’s work, like repairing cars from Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich, and perhaps most famously, the trio of Mini Coopers from The Italian Job.
Think you’re up to that challenge?
