Back in business: Year one

Jan. 1, 2020
Craig’s Collision Centers and B&B Body and Paint.
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SnapshopName: Craig’s Collision Centers and B&B Body and Paint.Locations: There are five Craig’s locations, including Arlington, Bedford, Duncanville, Fort Worth and Grapevine, and three B&B locations, with two in San Marcos and one in Austin.Shopsize: Shops range between 19,000 and 21,000 sq. ft. Yearly gross sales: $30 million for all eight shops combined.
Volume per month: About 1,800 vehicles for all eight locations.
Equipment: Drive-on frame racks, electronic measuring systems, floor racks, downdraft booths, computerized management and estimating systems.It’s often said that the first year of anything new—whether it is a new job, a new relationship, or a new place to live—is one of the hardest times; there is a lot of adjusting and adapting necessary. And it’s even harder when you’ve encountered obstacles and must rebuild your business to its original status.Craig Van Cleve, co-owner of Craig’s Collision Centers and B&B Body and Paint in Texas, can attest to this firsthand. He’s in that first-year phase right now. After he and his brother/co-owner Kyle Van Cleve bought their collision repair business back from the Ford Motor Co.-owned Collision Team of America (CTA) last July, they have had to slowly restore their facility to how it was before the sale. “All this change has been extremely challenging,” Craig says. “What we bought back was not what we sold. We’re coming up on our anniversary, and we’re thrilled to death to make it past the first year. It’s the hardest, but it’s extremely gratifying to take something and turn it around.”In the beginning
What Craig and Kyle mean by getting the business back to “where it was before” is getting it back to where it all started.
Craig’s started in 1980 with one location—a 5,000-sq. ft. shop on Main Street in Dallas, a facility without any parking. Craig built up that location, and two years later, he bought a small store on the northwest side of Dallas in Farmers Branch, Texas. Craig then asked his brother to join the business. Kyle quickly agreed, and the business continued to grow as they opened up new locations.
However, toward the end of the 1990s, consolidators such as Boyd’s and Caliber were starting to make their presence known in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market. CTA was trying to work its way into the area, too. CTA approached Craig and Kyle about buying out their business. Despite persuasive efforts,they turned down the offer.
However, competition remained stiff. Contending against a large consolidator was tough, and CTA was still interested in buying Craig’s Collision Centers. After declining CTA’s initial offer for nearly 14 months, Craig and Kyle decided to sell the business in 1998. “The best reasoning was that the market could move to where consolidators would dominate, and the independents wouldn’t have a chance—so we sold,” Craig says. They both signed a three-year contract with CTA. Kyle ran the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and Craig oversaw all of Texas. Working for CTA, however, wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Kyle and Craig only sold their shops because they felt that they wouldn’t stand a chance against the consolidators as a smaller independent. “But we saw that the gained efficiencies consolidators promised weren’t really there,” Craig says. Craig and Kyle then made the decision to get back into the business on their own. These plans, however, would come about faster than anticipated.CTA wasn’t doing well financially, and Ford had made the decision in January 2002 to divest itself of all non-core businesses. One Sunday morning in May last year, Kyle received a phone call from a CTA representative “They told me that I had a 48-hour window of opportunity to buy back the stores,” Kyle says. “I almost fell over.” CTA reps flew in 48 hours later. By July, the deal was closed. “Overnight, everything changed,” Kyle says. “A lot had to be done in a short amount of time.”From zero to 100 
Kyle and Craig had a 30-day grace period to get everything switched over. “It was crazy, no doubt,” Craig says. “I had some friendly competitors call me and ask me if I’d lost my mind. But once you sign those bank notes, you better get going.”
So they did. But it was challenging. There was a lot of overhead in place that didn’t need to be there for a local company, and there were a lot of people who had been hired who didn’t fit into the core philosophy of Craig’s Collision Center, Kyle says. During the few years that CTA owned Craig’s, there had also been a nearly 70 percent employee turnover rate at the Dallas-area stores, and a corporate culture had been implemented. A team- and family-oriented type of environment has now replaced that corporate feel. Now they have regular morale- and team-building exercises. Each month all the employees vote on “the employee of the month” and a photograph of that person is hung up in the front lobby. Craig’s sponsors a cookout for the shop of the month as another motivator. The shop with the highest customer service indexing (CSI) scores and operating numbers wins, and Craig and Kyle go to that shop and cook for the employees. “It seems to mean a lot to them that we’ll actually stand out there and cook their food,” Craig says.  They also hold monthly social outings, such as golf tournaments. “We’re in a challenging environment, and it’s competitive,” Craig says. “I don’t expect it to get any easier anytime soon. But today, I think everybody feels a part of the team. We’re working hard, and we’re extremely happy to be back and look forward to a long business career.”

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