Starting A New Business: A Garage

Starting a garage is a dream of many who love to have a tinker with cars. We all know someone who has a little knowledge of cars, who is happy to take a look if you think something might be wrong, and can often point out just what it is that is wrong. If this is you, and repairing cars is a passion, you might want to take the next step and start your own garage or repair shop.

So what do you need to do.

Be Certified

You need to make sure that you have the correct certification if you want to start your own car repair business. In The UK this can be in the form of City &Guilds IVQs in motor engineering. In the States the certificates required are the  Automotive Service Excellence (ASE), the industry standard for determining the skill of auto mechanics. Receiving a certification requires that you pay for and take a computer-based exam at a monitored testing location.

Premises and Equipment

You need to find suitable premises where you can do your repairs, you may initially rent rather than buying outright, and the same could be true of some of your bigger pieces of equipment. If you are buying pieces of equipments such as car lifts, go to a company like Best Buy Auto Equipment who not only offer really good prices, but offer finance options so you can spread that initial cost, good if you have a strict start up budget. You may also think about getting a car diagnostic tool that will certainly save time when it comes to identifying problems.

Have a Business Plan, Seek Legal Advice

Your business plan should show how much finance you will initially need to start up your business, and whether you will need to be applying for a small business loan or finance. You may have a backer or financial partner, which means contracts need to be drawn up, so you will need to seek legal advice, and you also need to sort out insurances, public liability etc, so advice from an expert is a must.

Are you thinking of starting a new business in 2019?

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