Driving around the rolling hills in rural northeast Ohio, you'd never guess the region would support a top-performing, multi-site operator (MSO) collision repair business. Spend a little time in the area, and you're likely to see more cows than cars. Yet, headquartered in Orrville, and with locations in the outlying areas to the west and south of Akron is Nagy's Collision Specialists, a five-site operation that's looking to grow.
More surprising still, the rural setting is a key component in Nagy's business formula – one in which shops with an average 7,000 sq. ft. of work space churn out impressive revenues utilizing carefully orchestrated, lean operations that make the most of the available work opportunities.
Nagy's history stretches back to 1973 when Dave Nagy opened Nagy's Body & Frame in 1973 in Doylestown, Ohio. In 1995, brothers Ron & Dan Nagy purchased the 10,000 sq. ft. (and largest of the Nagy's shops) business from their father. According to Ron, business at the first shop was great, which actually created something of a dilemma. "We sat down one day and talked about what we wanted to do, stay comfortable where we were or grow the business," Nagy says.
Currently the brothers are mulling over opening three more locations, which actually is a desirable, even impressive, decision to be making in a state that remains hard hit by the recession.
Nagy attributes his business's success to two main factors: his brother Dan, who oversees all shop training and whom he refers to as the business's great "secret," and communication within the organization.
The training Dan oversees is extensive. All Nagy locations are I-CAR Gold-class shops. All technicians are Platinum. All employees also are ASE certified and shops are either Blue Seal of Excellence shops or in the process of earning the Blue Seal. Nagy's pays for all I-CAR classes and for employees' time when attending I-CAR training. Employee pay is based on performance and along with accreditation from organizations such as I-CAR and ASE.
Managers attend AMI management classes and webinars and are paid to take all of these courses.
Communication benefits from two efforts. Nagy's holds regular meetings with its managers to keep all the shops and employees working on the same page. Any changes in the business are uniform and implemented across every location. This factor is particularly important since Nagy's prides itself on its strict SOPs and its lean operations, though the shop doesn't refer to them as lean.
"Lean is such an overused term that I don't think anybody knows what it means anymore," Nagy says. "We refer to what we do as continuous improvement."
Each shop's production manager oversees implementation of continuous improvement efforts. Nagy's also utilizes a handpicked team that meets bi-weekly to discuss ways to constantly improve all aspects of the shops and repair process.
To further facilitate communication and keep its locations running uniformly, Nagy's spent a year creating a unique electronic guide that outlines all its SOPs and other repair and service guidelines.
Known as the Ultimate Customer Experience or UCE, the guide is a live document that sits on every location's server "U" drive to make it accessible to every employee, from the location managers to detailers. The UCE documents every stage of a repair and the service to be delivered to Nagy's customers. Changes to the UCE are made at Nagy's corporate office and are immediately updated throughout Nagy's system.
"The UCE contains almost every piece of information we used to do our repairs. We even include insurer information. That way, for example, if we're working on a car for a specific insurer, we know what their guidelines are," Nagy says.
The UCE plays a big part in helping the Nagy's add locations. As noted earlier, the brothers are considering adding several more shops. They have a steady interest in expanding and groom management candidates with the goal of having them take over at new sites. Nagy says once his business closes on the $10 million annual revenue mark (Nagy's already generates $6.5 million a year), the business will have grown so large that expanding any more will demand they rethink their business model a bit.
If the business takes that leap, it will be entering new, somewhat unfamiliar territory. Nagy welcomes the challenge. Indeed, such optimism might be the defining characteristic of the shop.
"I get up every day excited to go to work," Nagy says. "You hear so many people who are negative about the industry and focus on its problems. I don't see things that way."
Neither does his staff, who returned from this year's NACE with new ideas they're excited to try out.
That could mean some interesting changes at Nagy's five locations and, perhaps soon, at several more. The industry might want to take note. There are some big things cooking in small-town Ohio.
