Automotive Repair News Today

Braxton Critcher [00:00:05]:
Well, what's up, boys? How we doing?

Sunil Patel [00:00:07]:
Fantastic, Braxton, how are you?

Braxton Critcher [00:00:09]:
I'm excited to share some. Some kind of, like, breaking news for the first time on this podcast, automotive repair news. Today, listeners, I often hear stories and then book an interview, and then it's like a week until I'm able to get a. On a podcast and talk about what just happened. But, I mean, I didn't hear about this news until yesterday afternoon, and so we're less than 24 hours away from when I heard this, so it's kind of like I need a sounder. Dun dun dun dun dun. Breaking news on automotive repair news today. Shopgenie and Techmetric have merged, and I've got the two founder and CEO's with me on the podcast.

Braxton Critcher [00:00:54]:
Man, how long has this been in the works?

Kieran O'Brien [00:00:57]:
Yeah, well, we move fast, Braxton. That's. We had to do it right away yesterday morning. Yeah, no, I mean. I mean, getting on this podcast, we had to just do this as soon as we could.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:09]:
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

Kieran O'Brien [00:01:13]:
No, it's been in the works for a little while. I mean, you know, these types of things are never, never fast. It's a lot of work and a lot of people involved, but I think we were able to do it pretty effectively, pretty streamlined. Sunil, would you agree?

Sunil Patel [00:01:30]:
Yeah, I think it all. I mean, there's a lot of relationship building that has to happen over months, and the intention was never to. Twelve months ago. 14 months ago. Hey, Kieran, let's figure out how we're going to merge the companies. You know, 14 months later. It was just more along the lines of, like, let's just see how we can both be great partners to one another. And the merger piece just kind of fell in pace.

Braxton Critcher [00:01:52]:
So who reached out first? Was it me, Kieran, who asked the other one out? And who said yes to the date?

Kieran O'Brien [00:02:00]:
You called me Sunil.

Sunil Patel [00:02:02]:
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, look, we had to. As a software company in auto repair, we had to make a decision of whether we want to buy a solution or whether we want to build our own solution. And Shopgenie was just. They just did such a fantastic job in the industry, and customers love them. The sentiment is amazing. It just made natural sense for merging the two companies together.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:25]:
So you both have kind of interesting first names. How often? I guess. What's the success percentage of someone pronouncing your name correctly?

Sunil Patel [00:02:36]:
Mine probably zero, I was going to say.

Kieran O'Brien [00:02:41]:
I think. Yeah, mine's probably close to zero as well. I got a lot of Kiernan with two ends. I don't know where they find the second n. I can do that. Let's just put it this way, Braxton. I give fake names at Starbucks.

Braxton Critcher [00:02:54]:
Listen, my middle name is Scott, so I tell Scott because I'm Braxton, but people most of the time hear Bryson, or if they see it spelled, they pronounce it Brandon. So, like, I just. I've given up at this point. I'm Scott at Burger King. That's just what I am. So I understand. I'm with you. Well, this is really exciting.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:20]:
So, Sunil, how, like, you know, you talked about the option of either creating a solution or buying a solution. And Lucas was telling me this morning when he heard that you guys were going to be on the podcast, he was like, well, you got to pick Sunail's brain because he is a wizard with running a business and because he told me a little bit of your background about all the industries you've been involved in. It's pretty wild. You were a firefighter at one point. That's. That's pretty crazy.

Sunil Patel [00:03:51]:
I was never a police officer. Police officer.

Braxton Critcher [00:03:55]:
Okay, that's it. It was police officer. I'm a bad listener, I guess. But he was like, you know, he's just a wizard about how to create businesses and run them effectively. What goes behind the decision in creating a solution or buying one?

Sunil Patel [00:04:14]:
There's a lot of things to discuss. You know, consider speed, time of how long it's going to take to execute on a solution. But regardless of speed or time, there's still this aspect of how the industry feels about a product. And that's something that happens either through the forces of nature, of how shop cheating has been out to the market and how they engage with customers. That is the harder part to replicate. And that is something that's one of the main reasons why it drove us to acquire versus build.

Braxton Critcher [00:04:50]:
Okay. Yeah, that, you know, I think that was a topic of conversation for me was, you know, Techmetric is a well known name. You guys are all over the Us and Canada, and, you know, shop genie provided something that, you know, you guys, you either didn't offer or really, you know, we're hoping to. So, like, what happened when that phone call happened, Kieran, when snow called you, you're like, okay, had you thought about something like this in the future or what was that conversation like?

Kieran O'Brien [00:05:28]:
Yeah, you know, I think to an extent, it was inevitable that something like this would happen eventually, right? Because the companies like shopgeny in this industry are very reliant and dependent on the the data from the point of sale systems, whether it's a DVI product or a CRM product or what have you, and, yeah, so, I mean, for us, we had to make a decision, too, where, you know, did we want to continue building and run into potentially some roadblocks in the future and stay independent, or did we want to join forces with what I consider to be the largest kind of powerhouse company in the industry that's taken the industry by storm. And it's like, are we stronger as independent companies or are we stronger together? And the answer was pretty clear to me. And so it's not like we definitely weren't building the company in order to do this. And like Sunil said, this wasn't premeditated. But by the time that we got to this juncture and by the time Sunil got to that fork in the road where they needed to make that decision, it just became so obvious because we were both kind of leading our respective categories within the auto repair industry.

Braxton Critcher [00:06:41]:
So now you tell me this, because I don't know how much you know about me, but Lucas has been on me for four ish plus years to do this podcast, and I finally said yes. So I come from outside the automotive industry, and so I'm learning a ton. It's just been like a fire hose. There's my fireman's reference. Even though you weren't a fireman, it was like drinking from a fire hose from since the first of this year, learning about the industry. And so my knowledge is still pretty limited. But from what I understand, or I guess the question I want to ask you is how many shop management softwares offer the kind of CRM things you're going to be able to like this? Like, is that a common thing?

Sunil Patel [00:07:32]:
I wouldn't say it's common. Some of our competitors do offer some variation or version of a CRM or marketing product within their platform. But if you see what Shopgenie has done, they've aggregated all of the different pieces that you need from a marketing perspective to run the repair shop. And so we, when we partner with a company like that, we're basically covering the entire gamut of everything that a repair shop would need for marketing CRM purposes.

Braxton Critcher [00:07:59]:
Yeah. And you both talked about it. You know, techmetrics reputation precedes itself. You guys are used with hundreds close, I mean, thousands of shops across the country and Canada. So, I mean, what does this do for both of you? Like, what are your, I mean, I know you're excited, but what does this sort of open up for possibilities in the future.

Sunil Patel [00:08:24]:
I think learning from the shopgenie team on how they built their CRM marketing platform, we are going to be integrating it fully inside of techmetric. So you have a very unique experience from a shop owner's perspective. And then because we're not going to be limited by our traditional API that we use today to connect with third party products, we are going to be able to take it up a notch and deliver a level or a CRM product that has not been done before or seen before.

Braxton Critcher [00:08:59]:
Your thoughts, Kieran?

Kieran O'Brien [00:09:00]:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Your question, Braxton, was how many other shop management systems have CRM functionality? And then the key is you said like shopgenie. So the answer to the first part of your question is there's a few that have CRM functionality. The second part of your question of how many of them have CRM functionality like Shopgenie? The answer is none. And we're going to create a whole new class of software in this industry because shop genie, and I don't want to come off as bragging. I'm actually just repeating words that our customers tell us. Shopgenie is already worlds above the competition and we provide functionality that no other CRM company has or currently provides as an independent product. And so, like Sunil said, we're no longer bound by the rules of techmetrics API because we're now natively integrating everything.

Kieran O'Brien [00:09:47]:
And so the things that we're going to be able to accomplish together is going to be functionality, features and results that this industry has never seen before. And so that's probably what I'm most excited about.

Braxton Critcher [00:10:01]:
Yeah, so a question I like to ask a lot of folks is, you know, what does this mean for the industry? You sort of touched on it because you're going to be able to provide things that have never been offered before. But what other ripple effects do you see this being to kind of set a precedent for what shop owners, service advisors, technicians learn to expect from these softwares? Like, what do you think this really means for the industry as a whole?

Sunil Patel [00:10:32]:
I think when we launched Techmetric, we wanted to be a disruptive force in the industry and to shake up what was happening in the industry with these older on prem systems that have not really been changed in a very long time or not innovative, and we wanted to just completely disrupt that space. And then when you combine that force with what Shopgeni has done, we believe that because both of our companies are very aligned in having the customer at the center of everything we do as Kieran always says he gives a shit of everything that shopgenie does in the industry. So we want to make sure that we.

Braxton Critcher [00:11:13]:
Nice, nice.

Sunil Patel [00:11:15]:
And so we want to make sure that we continue that sentiment because we also care about our customers deeply and we always want to make sure they're heard. There's a lot of consolidation happening in the industry, whether it's pedest companies acquiring a bunch of companies, but we always want to make sure that we continue driving innovation in the industry and providing solutions for our customers that are super important for their, the growth of their auto repair shops.

Kieran O'Brien [00:11:46]:
Yeah. And yeah, just to piggyback on that, you know, what we hear at Braxton from shop owners and service advisors alike is they don't want to be using so many vendors. They want to have everything under one roof. They want an all in one platform. And the caveat, though, the trick about doing that is shops aren't willing to pay the tax that comes with that with most systems, which is limited functionality, bugs, etcetera. And so you only want an all in one platform if it's done correctly and if it actually meets the needs of the customers. Right. Because if you are choosing between not having to go back and forth between a couple tabs versus missing key functionality to run your business, the answer is pretty obvious.

Kieran O'Brien [00:12:34]:
But if you can have your cake and eat it, too, and you can have an all in one platform that actually accomplishes everything you need and more things that you maybe don't even know that you need right now as a service advisor or as a shop owner, that's the key. And that's also something that we've kept kind of at the center of our business at Shopgenie. And something that I know Techmetric has done very well also is, yes, building things that shop owners ask for and keeping the customer at the center of everything and building things that shop owners need in their day to day, but also building things that they don't even know that they need yet. And seeing around those corners and identifying trends and looking at other industries and saying, how can we bring that kind of technology to the auto repair industry? Because if we're just building what the next guy has, we already know this industry is so behind when it comes to technology. If we're just mimicking what all the other companies are doing, we're leaving innovation on the table. And so I think that's the key is techmetric, shop genie. Now, both of us combined as one company, seeing around corners and building things that shop owners might not even realize that they want.

Braxton Critcher [00:13:40]:
That's the key in innovation, staying on top of things that is so challenging for any kind of leader, owner, manager, because there's a term that I like to use that is true, but you can also rely on it sometimes when you shouldn't. It's. It's the best ideas are stolen. That is true. But to stay on top of whatever industry you're in, you've got to be able to innovate, do things that are outside the box that other people are not doing that. That is so hard, though. And I think both of you are kind of on the cutting edge of that innovation for both the things that you're providing. And so I think it sort of inspires others to think outside the box to do that for themselves, too.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:34]:
So you're kind of in the same breath solving problems that shops have reached out to you both about, but also doing something that will help solve problems that they don't even know or are a thing. Is that kind of. Does that kind of sum it up?

Kieran O'Brien [00:14:57]:
Exactly.

Sunil Patel [00:14:57]:
Yeah.

Braxton Critcher [00:14:59]:
Wow. Wow. What else do you feel is important to add here?

Sunil Patel [00:15:07]:
We want to continue just working together. And as techmetric, we've focused heavily on just delivering the best in class product for our customers. And we want to make sure we continue doing that with Shopge and E on board. And we're going to continue innovating and we're going to continue building some amazing functionality that maybe people haven't seen or people haven't heard of before. And it just makes a ton of sense to do it within the techmetric platform. So we're going to continue focusing on that.

Kieran O'Brien [00:15:42]:
Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same way. I think innovation has always been at the core of why Kaden and I started Shopgenie. And I think this is just more fuel on the fire to be able to do that at an even larger scale. Tech metric customer base is much larger than the shop genie customer base, so being able to grow that together. But in the grand scheme of things, this is a very, very large industry and we're really just scratching the surface. Both companies now, as one company combined, we are scratching the surface of what's possible in this industry with technology. And so just continuing to build and innovate is the plan.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:23]:
This is crazy good stuff, guys. I'm thrilled to hear about it. Thanks for what you do for the industry.

Kieran O'Brien [00:16:30]:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Braxton Critcher [00:16:32]:
Braxton, if you are listening to the episode on your favorite podcast platform and don't subscribe, do that, you'll get breaking news like this with all that happens in the automotive industry. If you're watching on YouTube, I want to hear from you in the comments what you think about this. If you use Techmetric, has this been something you've wanted for a while? And what's your excitement level? One to ten? Is it at 50? You let me know. And maybe if you don't use techmetric and, you know, you use a different shop software and this might solve problems for you. You know what? What does this mean for your repair shop and for the industry as a whole? I want to hear your thoughts, your perspective on whatever career path you're in in the automotive industry. So this is great stuff. Excited that you're here. Be sure to subscribe.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:24]:
And thanks for following along on automotive Repair news today. Hey, if you're still here, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Automotive Repair news today. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment. Like share subscribe to the podcast. That'll help us out a big deal and help grow the show. And you know what? While you're at it, slap on a review, too. If you feel like this content is helpful for the industry. Don't forget to follow us on all your favorite social media platforms.

Braxton Critcher [00:17:54]:
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