POSITION: Owner, president and CEO
COMPANY: Owens Collision and Service Center
WHAT THEY DO: Automotive collision repair work, frame and suspension
REVENUE: $3 million annually
NEXT GOAL: Expand to a second location in a year, either downtown or near LSU
If you’ve seen an Owens Collision and Service Center commercial, you know the mission that owner Greg Owens is on. “While some insurance companies may try to steer you in another direction,” he says in one ad while perched on an Owens logo-emblazoned bench, “we encourage you to request the best.”
Making the switch several years ago from an insurance company pro shop to an independent repairer was a win for everyone, he says, from clients and staff to, ironically, auto insurers who still give him about 90% of his business.
“I do lots of work for insurance agents because they know I’ll do good work for their customers,” he says. “I’m not gong to sacrifice quality to save Allstate 50 bucks.”
For most of his firm’s 26-year lifetime, Owens says, it functioned as a direct repair shop for most major insurers, but “one by one the insurance companies were forcing me to make decisions that only benefited the insurance company, not the customer.”
So one by one, he left those companies’ preferred lists in order to do right by actual drivers. He started his “people’s collision center” ad campaign about four years ago to educate customers that they have a choice of where to take their cars, regardless of what the insurer wants. He says he got off the last select list a year later.
“Our business life and how we repair a car is way better,” he says. “We’re not being strong-armed into doing things to save money. It’s not like we’re anti-insurance. It’s just that we work for the customer instead of them.”
Typically, he says an insurer will push a body shop to use the cheapest parts, or to repair damaged parts rather than replace them, to get the bill to a minimum. Owens says he prefers to make work orders comprehensive, even if that means including a $70 alignment check instead of doing things strictly “cheap and quick.”
Of course, not everyone wants the royal treatment for his roadster.
“If somebody has a bumper falling off, we can rig it to hang on just until the next wreck,” Owens says.
His goal is to add a second location in the next year, either downtown or near LSU, in addition to his everyday effort to enlighten consumers on their right to shop around for a repair center.
“Most people have had a negative situation with an insurance company at some point in their life, especially with the hurricanes,” he says. “They want somebody on their side.”
