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Pegoraro Auto Repair

BY MEGAN GOSCH

PHOTOS COURTESY PEGORARO AUTO REPAIR

SHOP STATS

Owner: Joe Pegoraro

Location: Vancouver, Wash.

Size: 6,000 square feet

Staff Size: 10 (1 service advisor, 1 receptionist, 1 parts manager, 1 general manager, 4 techs, 1 shop helper, 1 part-time parts runner)

Average Monthly Car Count: 124

Annual Revenue: $1.4 million

1 / Opportune Timing

For some, the chaos of 2020 brought new opportunity.

Last spring Joe Pegoraro, owner of Pegoraro Auto Repair in Vancouver, Wash., had committed to growing his operation and was already working with an architect to draw up plans for a shop expansion when a gym in his same business complex called it quits.

“We’d been trying to acquire space for a while and had finally decided to build up rather than out, when our landlord called with a deal on the gym space,” Pegoraro said. “We leapt at it.”

Pegoraro wasted no time and set to work remodeling the space himself, while his team continued to work out of his original shop just across the alley.

2 / Curate a

Brand-Building Look

Pegoraro had a clear vision for the space from the get-go, with his sights set on a sleek, polished, Apple store-style look. “I was going for more of a bright, airy retail vibe. I wanted a look I can build a brand off of, so I hired a designer to help make sense of it.”

In the lobby, he kept the walls bright, and installed recessed and flush mounted LED lights, metallic pendant lights, and a sculptural fan salvaged from a Tesla dealership as striking accents designed to create a wow-worthy first impression.

Plush leather sofas were added and a refreshment bar was built to give customers a relaxing space to wait, but a pair of new service advisor cubicles may have been the biggest challenge. Pegoraro built them from plexiglass—a material that was hard to find as demand skyrocketed at the beginning of the pandemic. Despite delays, he was able to finish the work in just three months.

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3 / A Workfloor With Style

Pegoraro didn’t skimp back-of-house either.

While he budgets regular spending for new shop equipment and upgrades, Pegoraro invested in a custom Challenger lift for the launch of the new space.

He also extended the sleek look of the customer lounge to the shop workfloor where he team’s toolboxes have all been aligned on one wall for optimal workflow and the installation of high gloss cabinets on the other help keep the shop floor clean and tidy with plenty of space to stash odds and ends like brake pads and oil filters.

4 / Optimized Shop Operations

With techs working across both shop floors throughout the remodel, Pegoraro and his team took the opportunity to tighten up team communication.

The Pegoraro team uses walkie talkies and Autovitals to text and chat through progress reports throughout the day, but with the back doors of each shop located just across an alley from each other, the team also developed a system using dry erase markers and bins to deliver parts back and forth as deliveries arrive each day.

The Culture and Data Solution

KUKUI isn’t just a tool; it’s a path to a better culture and business

What do you do when construction on your new shop isn’t complete by the time the lease on your old shop is up?

You improvise and make the best of it. That’s what Troy Vaninetti did in 2016 with Graham Auto Repair when the building owner refused to extend the lease.

“Those were a nightmare five months not being up to my standard,” Vaninetti says. Forced from a fully operational six-bay shop into little more than an ad hoc placeholder equipped with two bays, Vaninetti grit his teeth and simply saw it through.

“What do you do? Go out of business or keep going? You can’t lose that kind of business and stay open and our customer base was way too big for that small building.” Vaninetti repainted the exterior and interior top to bottom. There were bugs in the walls. Every day, however, was one day closer to his new shop’s bug-free digs.

And the wait was worth it. After one year, he more than doubled the revenue from the original shop, moving well into seven figures and discovering—or re-discovering—that most if not all of his clients had returned. Savvy customer service and high-quality work brought them back, and KUKUI’s suite of data and customer service solutions helped them stay.

But more importantly, it helped Vaninetti secure the team he needed to push his shop forward.

THE CULTURE SOLUTION Vaninetti has been working with KUKUI for over six years. He became manager of Graham Auto Repair in 2001 and owner in 2006. Like many owners, he found his best solutions through word-of-mouth; KUKUI came via a friend (and owner’s) recommendation through a mutual 20 Group. “I was immediately confident in KUKUI’s services based on my friend’s success,” he says. And nothing begets success like success. For Vaninetti, it started with the website. KUKUI completely revamped his site from head to toe and they continue to update and reformat it with every passing month. “We like to use new formats every time they come out; we add new tabs and continue to change our staffing / hiring pages,” he says.

“People can now apply to Graham Auto Repair from our website. When our team sees something that needs to improve, we work with KUKUI and they update it.” Vaninetti also took KUKUI’s advice on what makes a snappy website: regular blog updates. Real pictures of real people and repairs—no stock photography. Slowly but surely, Vaninetti noticed things begin to change.

“There’s a lot that makes our shop unique,” he says, “and we’re always training and improving peoples’ lives through our automotive business, both internal and external. This past year we focused on culture; we got rid of a few employees and our culture improved.”

THE DAILY DASHBOARD DOWNLOAD For any manager or owner, hiring and firing always comes with a little trepidation. “You lose some productivity but the end game is a much happier shop,” Vaninetti says, “and we work better together as a team.” Throughout the pandemic, Vaninetti secured a PPP loan and everyone kept their wages despite low months.

“Through it all, we improved our culture, our business and finished out a record year,” Vaninetti says. In the old location, they did about $600,000 per year; in the new one, that number has ballooned to over $2 million.

KUKUI has also helped Vaninetti identify his target market and drill down his marketing efforts to reach the customers most suited to benefit from his business.

“My marketing director uses the dashboard constantly and we develop goals day to day, month to month about how we’re doing,” he says. For Graham Auto Repair, KUKUI tracks ROI for most of Vaninetti’s marketing efforts and allows him to track his material investment through new customers per month (or however he wants to filter his data).

“One of our biggest essential factors is always improving, whether throughout leadership or skills,” he says. KUKUI has helped Vaninetti to foster the team he needs to build a robust business, keep conducting premium repairs and to spend more time working on the business instead of merely within it.

Success begets success. For Vaninetti, employing KUKUI was the first success of many.