The Strip Mall for Auto Repair Shops

This past Friday, I met with an insurance client in Concord, California, an East Bay city, just 25 miles from Oakland and San Francisco. Deciding to see if Concord businesses could use virtual chamber of commerce services, I identified 113 auto repair shops in Concord, population about 111,000 residents.


For me, the first test, either over the phone or in person, is how warm and friendly the owner or the counterperson is. You see, when I first make contact with a business on the phone or in person, I'm looking for what level of service and greeting a customer will receive.

In about one hour, I visited seven auto repair shops with two demonstrating good to exceptional service. The five other shops did not have a warm, friendly atmosphere on the first impression. Most of the shops were busy, so perhaps the counterpeople and owners were too busy to exhibit good customer service to a potential new customer. This is just my opinion based on my observations.

However, what I'm really blogging about is the one business in a strip mall where all the businesses were auto repair shops! I've never seen this business configuration. Just imagine eight dry cleaners next to each other. Think about eight bakeries adjoined to each other.

The owner of an auto repair shop mentioned that the shop was shutting down at the end of the year because it was surrounded by a pool of sharks. The facility provides quotes to potential customers and the customers take the quote and shop it around the other auto repair businesses. What a horrendous environment to do business. Not only does a shop owner need to find customers (which is tough in that city with 113 auto repair shops), but now shop owners in this strip mall have concerns that their quotes will be underbidded by competitor shops!

Even in this environment, echamberofcommerce.ws can be effective in finding customers for this business by directing customers to the shop based on building relationships between sellers and buyers.

Thanks for reading this blog.