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that didn’t work before. “Then there is the age and variety we have here. T.J is 23, and Craig is 50. So, you have got these old-school methods of marketing that Craig used when he was younger. Then you have ideas from T.J and myself. I’m 28. Our ideas are from how the modern world is marketed, and how the younger generation see businesses like this. We are trying to plug both ends everywhere we can.” Coming up Usually one of the last questions is “what are your plans for the future?” With the garage having only opened in June, everything is about the future for this business. So, instead, we asked what is coming up next. Mike said: “We have a very large space in the yard. You could probably fit 80 cars out there. We thought about resurfacing, as it is cobbled, but believe it or not those cobbles are beneficial to us. When we do a suspension mount change, or something like it, the second you drive on cobbles, that will tell you whether it is done correctly or not, because you get knocking.” Mike concluded: “I think what we will do first is branch out to next door, expanding so we can do more MOTs, and the go from there.” We guess it is a case of ‘watch this space’. NOVEMBER 2021 AFTERMARKET 59 www.aftermarketonline.net Luke, who has come on board to learn the trade, and Aaron who keeps on top of everything, and makes sure that the garage is clean, puts tools away at the end of the day, basically making sure the garage is re-set the next morning. “My role is ADAS Technician at present, but we have done some market research and it turns out that the ADAS isn’t something that is going to turn over a lot of money, especially for us, so I am going to re-train as an EV Technician. Things are going to head that way regardless. Those cars will eventually roll up at this door. We need to grab that when we can. If we can get in early, the more chance down the line that we will be the specialist.” The business is already looking ahead: “We also have a unit next door, it belongs to a Limousine company at the moment, but he is planning on retiring at the end of the year. We are looking at that unit to take over, renovate similarly to what we have done in here, and then put some more lifts in there. After that unit there is a third unit, we are already in there, it is where our building materials are. That is three times the size of the one we are in now. If required, we will branch out into there as well. You could easily fit eight lifts in there, maybe more. “We are thinking very long-term, we are thinking big. We are trying to future-proof, for example with the EV market. We want to get all the training we can really. “ Customer base We wondered how a brand-new garage went about creating a customer base. Mike had this to say: “The first thing I did was take big broad photos of the garage, to get in as much detail as we could, whether it was interior or exterior, photos of the signage, the street location, and then I did about 1,00 flyers. Because of being in the building game, we’d made a few friends, so we have a connection at a local tyre and alloy place, so we dropped flyers there, we dropped flyers at builders’ merchants, coffee bars and any other businesses that would accept them. With the photos I also set up a Facebook page. We asked everyone we know to share it, and through word of mouth we built the business up. Once a customer comes in, we ask them to leave a review. That bumps us up.” The next step was a full website: “A lot of people are okay with just being on Facebook, but I said to Craig that we needed an actual website to direct traffic through. So that is what we have now.” The business is also taking on some trade work: “Currently we have quite a few garages in the local area that are either capable of MOT testing and can’t for whatever reason, or can’t do MOT testing, they are bringing their cars here to either have repairs done or MOTs done. It’s not just customers off the street, we are getting other garages bringing their vehicles here too, in order to get work done.” Trial and error One of the advantages of starting from scratch is that you can only look forward. Pre-existing businesses have a set-up and a model. If it has always worked, maybe it is harder to change. All you can do is look forward. We asked Mike what he thought: “For us, everything is trial and error. We try and hand flyers out locally. If that doesn’t bring us much business, then we can try something else. However, if you have been through all those steps and your numbers are dwindling, and you have been in business for a few years, you will say ‘we can’t hand out flyers again’, as Our ideas are from how the modern world is marketed, and how the younger generation see businesses like this ”