SPOTLIGHT ON KILLARA GARAGE Killara Garage has been a successful independent European service specialist and dealer alternative since 2004 and for owner Rafael Jelich, it all began servicing Volvo’s as a 16 year old. Raf began his apprenticeship with Concourse Volvo, a dealership in Haberfeld Sydney in 1986 where he learnt, nearly exclusively, the ins and outs of servicing and repairing Volvo’s. These first years gave Raf a great base but wanting to gain experience in other makes, in 1991 he found a position at Pacific Motors, a general service specialist that leaned toward European vehicles.
had effectively been running a workshop, taking the responsibility for its success and putting in the long hours. I felt my experience and hard work could be channeled better as an owner, motivating me further and providing opportunity to see the reward for those efforts. Raf partnered with two previous bosses to start Killara Garage. Building the new business from scratch, the biggest question was how to attract new customers.
The owners must have been impressed with Raf’s work ethic and business nouse, and by 1999 he took over as the Workshop Manager, a position he held until 2004 when Pacific Motors decided to relocate. At that time, Raf took stock of where he was at from a career perspective and where he wanted to be.
Unlike most states, NSW has compulsory yearly safety inspections of all vehicles older than 5 years old, before you can renew your registration. Killara Garage capitalised on this with a very simple catch phrase placed on a sandwich board out the front that said ‘Rego’s while you wait”.
“Pacific Motors relocating gave me the catalyst to take the leap into business ownership. I
This quick turnaround offer proved to be a golden ticket for attracting new customers, as did opening on
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Saturday morning. Retaining those customers came from quality work, fair prices and great communication. Word of mouth soon became a fantastic business multiplier. The other major challenge in the first years was making the partnership work. “We all had different personalities and to a certain extent different ideas about how to best run the business, so this took some communication on all sides to move forward,” said Raf. Form that first year with a team of four, year by year the business continued to grow and today the team is eight strong, consisting of a service manager, book keeper, three qualified technicians and three apprentices. Raf is also now the sole owner of the business, the other two partners having moved on.
