Two brothers, Nolan and David Pike, started their repair business in 2011 as a mobile tech service. After about one year, business was booming, with the brothers deciding to move into a brick-and-mortar shop. The initial shop was relatively small, at a mere 2,000 square feet with a single bay door and three stalls. They quickly outgrew this location and moved into the existing 5,500 square foot building with 8 service bays. Dave’s wife Liv runs the day-to-day operations as shop manager.
In the small town of Poway, Calif., located 22 miles north of San Diego, where the trio was raised and reside, the shop quickly became known as the go-to shop for maintenance, diagnostics and repairs.
“We grew up in Poway, and we feel the need to give back to our community,” noted co-owner Nolan. “We donate to all of the local children’s sports activities, including Little League and soccer, the annual Poway Rodeo event, and more. As both business owners and lifelong residents, we’re committed to supporting our community. In addition to our excellent reputation for quality service work, that commitment goes a long way to strengthen our ties with our customers.
“While our time is somewhat limited, given our busy workload, we also conduct customer education seminars, as time permits. This is a way for our customers to better understand the nature of repairs and to make them more comfortable with the need for specific replacement parts and labor.”
As Nolan explained, “We established WOW Auto Care as the go-to vehicle maintenance and repair facility in our area. We started out as a ‘come-to-you’ mobile repair shop, and opened our state-of-the-art brick-and-mortar building in 2012. Ever since we’ve been adding to our family of customers and building upon our excellent reputation. Our commitment to automotive excellence and a higher standard of customer service puts us head and shoulders above our competition. Admittedly, this is not about competition or who’s the best auto repair shop. It’s all about the customer and their vehicle, and who they can trust to handle maintenance and repairs.”
Does your shop offer general automotive repair or do you tend to specialize in specific makes or types of repairs?
WOW Auto Care handles all types of general repairs on any and all makes and models.
What is your business philosophy?
We exist to build community relationships, enrich the lives of our team members and provide top quality automotive care. Our fundamentals: Always make decisions with honesty and integrity, always respect yourself and others, always grow in a way that makes you and your teammates proud, always work as a team and family, and always take time to have fun and celebrate success.
Where do you buy your parts?
We purchase parts from multiple vendors, with the majority purchased from Worldpac, Parts Authority and O’Reilly’s.
What influences your parts buying decisions? Rank from 0 to 3, with 0 having no influence and 3 having the greatest influence.
Price 0
Brand name recognition 2
Promotion in racing 0
Perceived quality 3
Availability/time 3
What do customers want/expect from your shop?
As you might expect, our customers want their repairs done in a timely manner, at an affordable price, with reliability and confidence in the repair being paramount.
What is your approach to technician training?
Our technicians undergo constant training, which is critical in this day and age of advancing and ever-changing technology. They attend classes at World Tech, Cal State Training, and always keep abreast of renewing their ASE certifications.
How does ASP benefit your business?
We’re fairly new to the magazine and are impressed by the contents.
We enjoy the various technical articles and especially like reading about the new tools and equipment that have been introduced by various manufacturers. ?
