Profiles of Success PROFILES OF SUCCESS
Ian Ladd (left) and Peter Chavez founded the CARSTAR LC Group with just one store. The company now operates eight production centres and three satellite locations.
“The facility was only bringing in about $650,000 worth of business a year,” says Ladd. “Even with Peter working in the back and me working in the front writing estimates, we knew we’d need to get it up to at least a million in annual sales.” That might have been a daunting objective for many people, but Ladd and Chavez were just getting started. They sketched out a 10-year plan on a Starbucks napkin. The plan largely remains in place, but the napkin itself, sadly, is lost to history.
Some of those great people aren’t just staff at the LC Group, but owners themselves. Chavez and Ladd have made it a policy to partner with like-minded people to push the LC Group into new areas. Currently Javier Torres, Franc Cundari, Robin Juns, Osmar Nuñez and Allen Mattice all have ownership stakes in one or another of the LC Group’s facilities. For some businesses, multiple owners can mean multiple problems. It doesn’t seem to be that way for the LC Group.
Group purchased the facility from CARSTAR in 2008. “We definitely share values,” he says. “Our success is in our people and our ability to help grow those people. Some of them have become partners themselves. It can be a great career path.” Franc Cundari was one of those who followed that path. The Operations Manager of CARSTAR Orangeville, Cundari started at CARSTAR Mississauga about six years ago, managing satellite locations in
That might have been a daunting objective for many people, but Ladd and Chavez were just getting started. In short, the plan called for 10 stores doing approximately $20 million in business. Today, the LC Group is comprised of eight production centres and three satellite offices repairing between 1,200 and 1,500 cars a month. Both Chavez and Ladd are quick to point out that they didn’t achieve this on their own. They give a lot of credit to the hard-working staff at all locations and are always looking for ways to attract new talent and to make sure the staff they have know they’re appreciated. “Right now we’re setting up RESPs for all of our employees,” says Ladd. “It’s not finding ‘good’ people. We’ve got great people! But we could always use more.”
“From the beginning, we were always interested in bringing on managing partners as we expanded,” says Chavez. “The key is to make sure your partners share the same values you do.” That process of matching values has seen five people acquire an ownership stake in one or more of the LC Group’s stores. For many of them, the path to ownership started when they were employees of one or another of the LC Group’s facilities. Robin Juns is the Operations Manager for CARSTAR Mississauga 401. He started there in 2003 when it was a corporately-owned location. He acquired an ownership stake along with Chavez and Ladd when the LC
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Georgetown and Milton. He had previously been employed in sales with a truck leasing company, an experience which helped him communicate with customers at the satellite locations. “They were both sales oriented positions. It comes down to working with people through the process, whether that’s a truck lease or the repair process,” says Cundari. About three years after starting with the company, he acquired an ownership stake in CARSTAR Orangeville. Allen Mattice, the LC Group’s longest-tenured managing partner, also came from outside collision repair, although his previous job put him in contact with the industry on a