In case you missed, check out the October issue of #bodyshopmag in which we catch up with Vizion Network MD Chris McKie for an extensive chat about all things body repair.
bodyshop magazine editor Simon Wait sits down with Chris McKie to examine the current state of play in the UK collision repair industry.
What’s the current outlook for the UK collision repair market?
It’s been a difficult time for repairers, and it’s certainly not easy out there right now. We’re in a changing market and to be honest the change needed to happen. We can’t do anything about the effects of the pandemic apart from limit them and we can’t do anything about the effects of Brexit apart from limit them, but what we can do is use that need for change to make things better for the future. It continues to be a lot of hard work, but we’re in the right place.
What do you mean by “change needed to happen”?
If you look at this from the point of root cause analysis, you could say the primary drivers for change have been Covid and Brexit, but really the need for change has been because of the basic neglect of the entire model for a number of years by all concerned. Everybody has been in a race to the bottom – cars, parts, insurance all need to be cheaper, and it’s not sustainable. Covid and Brexit have opened up cracks that have been there for a long while, and they have created some new ones. The semiconductor issue has been a problem and then obviously we’ve got the Ukrainian conflict which is prolonging the recovery process. We would have been in a significantly different position if it wasn’t for Russia invading Ukraine.
