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Bill HatswellCraftsman Collision

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PROFILE OF A PROFESSIONAL

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the futurethe futureCrafting

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Bill Hatswell likes cars, especially the three perpetually gleaming Mercedes-Benzes in the driveway of his architect-designed West Vancouver home: a late-model ML 63, an SL 65 and a CL 65 Coupe. He also likes fixing cars – about 40,000 of them a year

by the latest count. In fact, starting from the original body shop in 1977, the president and owner of Craftsman Collision can legitimately lay claim to having repaired more accident-damaged vehicles in BC than anyone else.

The new Craftsman Collision location in West Kelowna.Photo:ReneYoung

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At 69, Hatswell is healthy, fit and very much in charge of the company whose archipelago of squeaky-clean shops under three names – Craftsman Collision, Beck Collision Services and Distinctive Auto Works – stretches from Victoria to Edmonton.

Equally robust is Craftsman’s business, which in 2010 managed to maintain its sales volume from the previous year, easily outperforming an industry decline of as much as 20 percent in some areas. This year is shaping up to be even better, with a new shop having just opened in West Kelowna and two more coming next spring.

The company’s success can be summed up in the word ‘sparkle’ – a term that is heard frequently within the walls of Craftsman these days, and a quality of which the original Cambie Street shop in Vancouver was sadly

bereft when Hatswell stumbled across it for sale in a classified ad those three decades ago.

“I had to drive around the block four times just to find it,” he recalls. “It was a filthy, dirty building with one flat, faded, rotting sign. When I finally located the office, I walked into a pile of overflowing ashtrays, a garbage can full of coffee filters and stench. The shop was also a pigsty – poorly lit, and one of the most hostile environments for a bodyman that I’d ever seen. But I looked outside at the traffic and knew this was a success story waiting to happen.”

The road to that initial purchase was not without a pothole or two. The eldest of five kids growing up in a small South Australia town on a policeman's salary, Hatswell moved from high school to an apprenticeship in the steel industry, a career in construction and a

part-time job selling men’s clothing.But a burning desire to be in business

for himself led to an intensive management training program with oil giant Shell, and by 24, he owned and managed his own station in the town of Port Pirie. He soon traded up to a busier location in the state capital of Adelaide, where he noticed an in-house collision repair business was more profitable than the gas pumping side.

“When the manager got into trouble I turfed him out and took over,” he says. “I got more pleasure giving shiny cars back to customers and watching their reactions than I did filling their tanks.”

Soon after that he sold the second station and opened a 10,000-square-foot collision repair-only facility he named Plush Cars. As it rose to become one of the most

Bill Hatswell, BC's Kingof Collision, is lookingeast – and Far East

The first Craftsman location in Vancouver, circa late 1970's.

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22 Winter 2011 Collision QUARTERLY www.collisionquarterly.ca

successful body shops in Adelaide, Hatswell found himself embarrassed to admit he belonged to an industry he judged to be rife with “graft, bribery and total customer dissatisfaction.”

The shady business climate and 18-hour days took their toll, and still in his 20s, he was diagnosed with ulcers. Escaping for a brief holiday to the Jindabyne ski resort in Australia’s Snowy Mountains was almost literally what the doctor ordered.

“The minute I hit snow I forgot about all my worries,” he says. “I fell in love with skiing.” In 1974, he sold Plush, packed up his wife and young daughter Melanie and headed for a two-year sabbatical in Vancouver, where between troubleshooting collision repair businesses and renovating and reselling houses, he managed to squeeze in some time on the slopes.

The scheduled, but reluctant, move back to Adelaide in 1976 would last all of a week.

“I walked into a card game that was still going on,” he frowns. “Exactly the same game, exactly the same people, exactly the same comments two years after I left. When I sat down, they said ‘How’s it going?’ I said, ‘Great, I love Canada. Do you want to hear about Canada?’ They said ‘Tell us later, where’s your money?’

“I shook my head and felt like I’d never left. So unbeknownst to my wife, I went down to the docks where our large box of furniture from Canada had just arrived, and told the shipper I wanted it sent back to Vancouver. Unopened

containers could be returned for half price, so he simply crossed out Port Adelaide and wrote Vancouver, British Columbia on it.”

Back in Vancouver, the collision repair opportunities were every bit as attractive as its snow-covered slopes. “There were no under-the-table envelopes, or tow truck drivers demanding $100 to give you a damaged car. And (unlike in Australia) customers had the right to choose any repair shop they wanted.”

But BC body shops were struggling with

their own brand of mayhem.“I couldn’t believe customers here would

open their pockets so easily for so little respect and such poor treatment,” he says. “The industry was in rough shape. Alcohol abuse was so bad that tradesmen would knock off at two in the afternoon to hide behind the spray booths and drink beer. A clean, professional-looking business could do nothing but excel.”

With a fresh logo, desks, carpets and lighting, the now familiar red and blue Craftsman shop on Cambie Street doubled its business in three months, then doubled it again in a year. As word spread and more customers came, business spilled over to two more locations, Main Street and Powell.

By the early ‘90s, the high-profile clean-up made Craftsman one of the industry’s models for a new ICBC quality standard for collision repair – the so-called C.A.R. (which apparently stands for nothing) accreditation. As more and more shops qualified for C.A.R. status, Hatswell was already eyeballing

marketing opportunities other shops couldn’t muscle in on.

The Air Miles loyalty program was known mainly for its affiliation with Safeway supermarkets and Shell gasoline. Bringing it into body shops may have seemed to some like a stretch – but not to Bill Hatswell. Customers would receive reward miles without paying a penny more for repairs, and Craftsman would enjoy an unassailable marketing advantage, because the Air Miles people allow only one

business per market segment. No other body shop in BC would be permitted to join.

Today, 65 percent of Craftsman customers are Air Miles collectors. And business is humming at full throttle, with over 400 employees, at least that number of replacement vehicles (aka courtesy cars) and sales closing in on the magic $100 million mark. The chain’s shops showcase what Hatswell calls “a new era in cleanliness, courtesy and operating efficiency” – again, that Craftsman ‘sparkle’ – with professionally dressed estimators and managers, tidy reception areas, high-tech paint booths, the latest in Wedge Clamp and Genesis repair technologies, eco-friendly waterborne paints and smiling faces all around.

Craftsman will also soon be the first body shop in Vancouver to use a new 100% nitrogen paint spraying system known as Nitroheat. Distributed by Wedge Clamp, the system leaves a smaller carbon footprint than conventional paint sprayers, uses less paint

photo:ReneYoung

Craftsman invests in the latest equipment and shops are thoughtfully laid out. The Craftsman 'sparkle' is evident everywhere during the

www.collisionquarterly.ca Collision QUARTERLY Winter 2011 23

and is consistent with Craftsman’s leadership in adopting greener technology.

A month ago, the already large boardroom at Craftsman’s corporate HQ in North Vancouver had to cannibalize contiguous storage space to make room for all 31 shop managers at the company’s monthly meetings.

By next spring there will be 33 locations. The new Calgary shop will be Craftsman's largest, at 29,000 square feet, with a dozen body techs and the best available technology and facilities.

As a hedge, and perhaps an indication of Hatswell's high tolerance for risk, Craftsman has also contracted to open a 20,000-square-foot shop in Suzhou, China, an hour and a half drive from Shanghai. The leasehold improvements are under the supervision of son Greg, Craftsman's GM of Real Estate.

“It started with a visit to a trade show in Beijing with my son (Operations GM) Rick,” says Bill. “We met a few key people in the industry and we both wanted to be part of the action.”

“China is booming,” says Greg, who accompanied Bill on a second trip to Asia. “Craftsman will have a great opportunity to establish a foothold in the-up-and coming automotive market and make a difference in the Chinese repair industry.”

Meanwhile, Craftsman Ventures, another division of the Craftsman Group, has been blazing trails of its own. Also owned and operated by Hatswell, it scored its first victory in 1981 – a year when developers were falling like asbestos insulation – on a residential

project in Seattle. Despite a doom-and-gloom post-crash aftermath, cabins and a townhouse complex built on Bill’s “gut instincts” in Whistler Creek in 1984 did even better – and persuaded Hatswell to purchase emerging Benchland properties from mega-developer Intrawest.

Success with the three resulting projects – Cedar Hollow, Cedar Ridge and Powderhorn – led to a financial partnership with Intrawest on the $20 million, 113-unit Trails complex in Surrey. Two more projects in Whistler and nearby Pemberton managed to make money in the real estate downturn of the early ‘90s. More recently, the 51 homes and townhomes of Hatswell’s Aberdeen Estates in Kamloops sold out in under a year and won the Canadian Home Builders Association’s Keystone Gold Award for building excellence and innovation.

A luxury smart show home in Kamloops, Casa Bella, also copped a Keystone for design and acoustic environment. Craftsman Ventures is currently listing 32 view estate lots, one-half to two acres in size, in nearby Stone Ridge Estates on Juniper Ridge.

“He has a self-confidence in his abilities that is infectious,” says Pat Anderson, president of insurance firm Pat Anderson Agencies.

S a y s C h r i s Meyer, South African Honourary Consul and Craftsman corporate law yer, “ I ’ve been working with Bill for years, and every deal we’ve done has been successful.”

Bill is quick to deflect the credit to his staff. “The biggest single factor in our success is team spirit,” he asserts.

H e l p i n g t o generate that spirit is a variety of social events including a ski day, golf tournament, boat cruise, and deluxe Christmas parties with gourmet meals for employees and their spouses. Managers and executive staff are pampered with an annual seminar and golfing weekend in Palm Springs. Working conditions and benefits far exceed industry

standards, and a regular newsletter keeps employees apprised of corporate and staff goings-on.

The loyalty is often reciprocated. David Cant, Executive VP and CFO (and a recent ARA award winner) has been with the company for 24 years. Craftsman’s first hire, David Ng, retired after 35 years and is an honourary employee and permanent guest at social events.

With today’s auto body industry in decline – a fact which Bill ascribes to improved safety in cars and traffic systems – he is all the more determined to broaden his lead.

“We work harder to develop our customer base through marketing and different types of training programs for our managers,” he says. “We're continually finding ways to connect even more strongly with our target customers.”

With Rick running operations and Greg looking after real estate, Craftsman today is a family affair. Twice a week, the two sons and Janet Zia, Bill’s personal assistant, get together in one of the offices with a special visitor, sit down and open their textbooks.

The visitor is a tutor. They are learning Mandarin. n

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new West Kelowna Grand Opening in September 2011.