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TECHNICIAN EFFICIENCY STARTS AT THE TOP

Mango Automotive’s Jesse Jackson on Her Mission to Build a Network and Reshape the Industry

BY CHRIS JONES

Jesse Jackson wants Mango Automotive to become the go-to national brand for auto repair.

Her plan is to develop a network of shops across the United States, starting in the Southwest, that are traditional mechanical repair shops geared toward electrifi cation. Since opening her fi rst location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in December 2021, she and business partner Brian Walden added two new shops in 2022 before taking the fi nal two quarters of 2022 to concentrate their forces on 2023.

“In six months, we did three acquisitions… Next year, will we build out our master franchising plan; we’ll do 30 shop acquisitions in the Southwest,” she says, defining the geography as Texas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Southern California, and of course, New Mexico. “And then we’re going to be rolling out franchises across the rest of the U.S.”

One of the criteria she outlines for which shops she identifies for acquisition surrounds succession. According to the 2022 Ratchet+Wrench Industry Survey, 27% of repair shop owners indicated that they had no plan for succession while 56% said they had no retirement plans at all. Jackson wants to be able to help owners who have no succession plan exit their businesses confidently knowing their employees and their families are taken care of.

“We really want to help owners who don’t have a succession plan, who are ready to retire but are not sure how to retire,” she says.

Acquisition the Mango Way

One of the saddest things she sees in her own backyard are business closures that spring up when a ready-to-retire owner does not know how to sell the business and simply closes the doors for good.

“They’re ready to retire. They’re not sure what the business’s value is, they don’t have a succession plan and they close the doors and walk away. We want to help those owners,” Jackson says. “I just want them to do what’s right for them and their family as they move on to their next stage of life.”

She says acquisitions can be an emotional process, one which she and Walden handles with care.

“It’s quite an emotional process for a business owner to leave their baby, essentially something that they’ve built over the last 20, 30, sometimes 40 years... and move on to something else. So, we’re accustomed to working with owners who are unfamiliar with how to retire and unfamiliar with selling their businesses. It’s something most business owners only do once in their life and helping in that process by continuing to situations, and it goes a long way toward helping newly acquired team members get comfortable.

“When we’re in the due diligence period, between when we have a signed LOI, or letter of intent, and the time that the business actually transfers hands, we work with the owner to develop a plan that works for their employees and works for the owner. So usually a few weeks before closing, the owner will announce to the employees that he or she is retiring and often this comes not as a surprise because the owners are at retirement age,” says Jackson.

She and Walden then visits the shop to answer all employee questions and share what employment will be under the Mango Automotive banner, including new compensation plans, which Jackson says are typically an improvement from what they had.

“We’ve been lucky that generally, we’re able to give our new employees a raise, and we’re able to offer them health, vision, dental and life insurance, which are some things