View From The Trenches

One of the signs of the holiday season is that my mailbox just fills up with catalogues. I get golf ones, fruit ones, clothing ones, so many in fact I feel guilty for all of the trees that died in this marketing effort. Most people would understand the seasonal joy that Victoria’s Secret holiday publication brings to many red-blooded males. However, I get the Christmas tingles when my auto glass tool catalog arrives.

Let me first just try to Express myself accurately. I think all things may very well become Equalized when viewed vaulting from this paper prospectus. Any self-respecting installer’s jowls will start watering like a big dog’s once they begin to peruse the pages of this fantasy wish book.

Think of it! How fast and with how little effort can you get your dirty work done? Windshields may actually quiver with fear when confronted by some of these removal tools. Urethane flows out like melted butter when applied via power caulking guns.

Does length really matter? How long can your long knife really be? Sabre sized? Mightier than a Samuri, I ask? You can find adjustable ones (no blue pills needed), ultra-thin ones—you can even find a stubby long knife.

There is no doubt in my mind that a male is in charge of marketing. I find all sorts of machismo names assigned to various products. Ninjas, falcons, magnum are just a few that come to mind. Nothing is small or petite. Super is a commonly applied appellation. There are super-scrapers, soakers and blades, just to name a few. I just don’t see a woman’s touch at all. Even the colors that these tools come in resemble the tastes of a frustrated fireman or a proponent of the Goth subculture. Will we ever see a cold knife protective sheath come in mauve or puce?

I digress, though. It’s (almost) December and I realize many of you out there are just aching to let your loved ones know what you really want sitting under the Christmas tree. There is nothing that says “I appreciate you” like a gift set of Prybabies does. Diamonds are forever especially when they come in a whetstone. Maybe it’s time that your loved ones think that you deserve recognition and buys you a “professional master tool set” instead of that makeshift one you use a five-gallon bucket for. (Certification not required for purchase … sigh.) What will one’s wife think if asked to provide a “lil buddy” for yourself?

I understand and I feel your pain. I’m writing this little item so that if you get caught reading it in private or found trying to leave a certain catalog dog-eared in view of your significant other, you can get validation of certain needs. You are not alone. You didn’t think Round Rock had anything to do with Santa dressing in red, did you?

I had a birthday recently and those occasions are a good time for both reflection and forecasting. Our forum recently has been alive with new and interesting threads.”

Three of those threads struck my fancy. We have been seeing postings plaintively wondering if life is still out there as far as business goes. With the end of summer, there seems to have been an abrupt change of pace for many in the trade. Also, fuel surcharges and the question posed if mobiles should end the practice of “free” on-site service are being aired.

To me, both of those threads bring up what’s ahead for us in the future. I do believe that the mortgage “crunch” is a harbinger of a general slowing down of our economy. I sense a real fear out there that hard times are ahead. Up to now, budgets have been stretched to accommodate higher energy costs. However, like a balloon, you can only stretch the limits so far before things break. We have seen corporations get lean. Wall Street loves that sort of exercise. However, one thinks that the dieting is close to being over and hitting bone comes next. The same goes for mom-and-pop stores of all ilks. Cost cutting has become a part of life at the personal levels. High deductibles have become popular to offset insurance premium increases. When a broken windshield occurs, it has now become more of a option to fix instead of merely contacting your agent for “free” replacement.

Look at our industry. If it wasn’t for the flood of overseas glass and installation parts, many of us in the industry would not have been able to sustain growth or even profitability these past five years. The drop in materials costs have allowed many of us to absorb rises in the human resources and energy sectors. That window is rapidly closing making adjustments most likely far more painful to bear.

Free mobile service has never been free to us. It is part of the cost of doing business. That facade may very crack or even crumble as gas prices stay above $3 and push towards $4 per gallon. Our suppliers have latched upon fuel surcharges as a means of keeping solvent or at least maintaining profit levels. Some shops have been brave enough to start to charge for mobile service. In some cases, the public accepts the nominal expense but insurers don’t and that obstacle alone will slow implementation. Perhaps when the industry alone stops mindlessly discounting to gain advantage over each other will some semblance of sanity return to managing real expenses. That’s a wish I fear that will go quite unfulfilled at least in my lifetime.

It’s apparent that the auto glass industry shares a very large common bond with the collision industry. The collision industry fights the very same battle as we do with insurers. They are being told how to repair as well as what to repair. Insurers will take no responsibility for final quality but they do their best to influence parts purchases and install times. Steering to favored shops and payment delays are two familiar ploys by insurers that are commonly used on both of our industries. AGR has our own incestuous TPAs while the collision industry has one-sided DRNs. One personal opinion is when insurers find a weakness in solidarity in AGRR, they have exploited it and then exported that concept to apply it to the collision industry.

There are times that we in AGRR have been subservient to the auto body industry. The degree of difficulty and pricing of removals and re-installs are many times bones of contention between us. It’s the concept of water running downhill. They are given unreasonable times by adjustors and they are squeezed as well. Still it is my belief that auto glass and auto body repair are tightly connected as the latest NACE convention proves. We need each other to be united to engage and fight some of the penurious and ultimately unsafe antics foisted upon both industries by auto insurers. The collision industry is fighting battles in court that ultimately will affect auto glass as well. We need to be aware and to be supportive both personally and as a group.

Perhaps the greatest mystery within our industry is our pricing models. I would like to challenge anyone in AGRR to explain to me the process of how we determine our prices. Is there really an actual method? I suspect that either a dartboard, dice or perhaps even a deck of cards may be considered necessary tools when conjuring up a charge for auto glass.

From forums to personal experience, this is a coast-to-coast mindset. From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., and Madison, Wis., to Madison County, Texas, pricing for auto glass is so scattershot and diverse a process that in many cases it has lost a sense of value for services received.

Call any shop in any state for almost any piece of auto glass, and you will find such a wide variance of prices, it defies logic. The secondary problem for any consumer is that comparison shopping for glass can be an exercise in futility due to the fact that the manufacturing origin, quality, fit of the glass or required mouldings are rarely cited or promoted along with the adhesives used in installation. Then there is the intangible quality of the install itself. As the MasterCard commercial promotes, it is … priceless.

It is my firm belief that many companies have little knowledge of their own costs of doing business, such as liability and set pricing based on such a sliding scale that Velcro must be a staple item in their accounting dept to retain real profits. I remember being taught in college that a certain percentage of return was the minimum that an ongoing business must have to survive. That seemingly inviolate law has been broken more times than the 55-mph speed limit ever was by most AGRR shops.

Size doesn’t matter either. The “We match any price” philosophy is “de rigueur” by many national or local shops. I know it is the required practice of some of these firms’ CSRs to call back prospective price shoppers three and four times attempting to cement their purchase decisions with lower and lower numbers. This makes them no better than the classic gypsy mobile who works on a cost-plus basis. In many cases, the customer has no idea what materials they are being quoted within their bid. It could range from the cheapest generic or in-house brand to an OE or OE equal label affecting price and many would argue the overall quality of the job itself.

This downward spiral of pricing is both crippling the industry and making us look like fools at the same time.

Up to this point, whatever I’ve written is hardly a revelation to you, the reader.

What is tearing apart this industry is what I would describe as a bi-polar attitude about pricing. We do what we perceive we must do to get a sale. For the most part, that action is to discount the sale price and as prices drop, that in turn devalues our craft.

Then along comes insurance work. Some sort of magical transformation takes place whereby prices and margins skyrocket up. The competition is heated almost feverish to service such accounts. Like dairymen scraping the cream from fresh milk, our national and/or regional chains do their very best to entice and embrace this corporate manna. The insurance industry has taken us to task for this overall pricing imbalance and has made discounting a required practice in dealings with AGRR.

So who is to blame? Walt Kelly was the cartoonist who created Pogo, an often-time satirical daily cartoon strip that appeared in newspapers in the 60s and 70s. One of his most famous lines was “We have met the enemy and he is us.” He must have been writing about the auto glass industry.