[mccannable]

I am about a year out from opening an auto repair facility. My associate and I have been working for about a year planning and saving to open the doors. One of the big questions that remains is can our area support a European reapair shop. There is only one in about a 20 mile radius and they do not even advertise their European repairs, but they are slammed busy.

I would like to conduct/purchase some information but I having trouble finding what I need. I am looking into a some local surveying, by phone or door to door, or using a company for competitive research.

With the local surveying we could draft up a few meaningful questions, pay some friends for help, and go door to door and calls from the white pages to get a significant sample size(not sure what that would need to be). Town is about 19,000 in pop but we are close the the villages FL, about 80k seasonally. We would focus on my town.

The other route might be nice because of lack of work involved. Everytime we get a car I get mailers for warranty but the mailer have my car model/year on them. Can I buy data on what kind of cars are in my area???


any info would be nice. I live in a unique place where a lot of places seem to wing it, I want to be prepared.


cliffs: need help with getting info on local car population and/or info from owners for shop.

[double_j]

I think you might be able to request general auto registration data from the local government. Less formal but potentially more effective, check in with owners clubs in your area or scan mall & restaurant parking lots.

Best bet, start small and leave room to expand (e.g., start with one bay, basic equipment, and very little inventory). No need to drop your whole nut right away.

One thought, put out feeler ads or post flyers for your services under a generic name with phone/email info only well before you're actually ready to officially set up shop. See what kind of response you get and use that to dictate how big you want to go up front.

[mccannable]

We are starting 2 bay minimum. Just want to make sure it's worth the investment to go euro from the start. Ill be looking for that data.