question.. is it REALLY worth it to have a car repair business?

from the point of view of someone who goes to this shop and that (and have my share of both good and bad experiences) it seems that car repair is not that lucrative a business.

the problem of most pinoys is that they are really cheapskate bastards (me included). so they want the lowest price possible. correct me if i'm wrong, most of the car repair shop income would come from labor and routine maintenance e.g. oil changes, because the markup on parts can't be THAT great (maybe 10% to 20% at most, this is normal of all box-pushing businesses).

so to get decent revenue, you have to (1) have a lot of "routine" customers whom you can service quickly and which doesn't cause any problems; (2) repairs should be of the cheap, garden-variety type.

example: you charge someone 2,000 for an oil change, of which i guess 300 would be labor. this takes 30 minutes.

how about: someone wants a clutch change (a dirty, labor-intensive job). the materials cost is probably 6,000 so let's say you make 600 on that. plus labor, let's say 1,000 (is this too little? too much?) so your total net is 1,600 but it takes 5 hours.

so obviously, changing oil is more "lucrative" than changing a clutch.

and then the customer from hell comes along with his car which is liable to break anything at the drop of a hat. na last-touch ka pa. although it MAY not be your fault that something broke while your guy was working on it, the customer is well and truly pissed. what do you do?

and then those people with new cars and presumably more money to spend all go to the casa since they have a warranty. so you get stuck with the clunkers.

OTOH if you go the expensive-detailing route and the expensive-tuning route, you'll have very few customers, although they'll all blow a wad when they come in your door. but the rule of business is you make more money on lots of small transactions than on a few big transactions.

comments?

(it would seem to me that, unless you're really a car fanatic and love to tinker with cars, a food business would be less risky and have a shorter ROI than car repair)