Village Squire, 1978-08, Page 22Who Kould ever have thought a fey years
without his van for a couple of days down
the road, then he can be without it many
miles away. People are coming because
they can get good work at a lower price.
When he started out he worried that he
might not be able to get enough business
because of his location in a small town
away from the major city markets but he's
found out it isn't hard to get business to
come to him.
One of the major reasons for success has
been that Mitchell location and the low
overhead it brings. He knows of people in
the customizing business in cities who have
to pay $1800 a month rent just for their
shop he says. His combination shop and
home is only a fraction of that meaning
he's been able to get by even during the
winter months which are the slow season
for van work.
ago that vans would someday
spent doing nothing but installing sun
roofs when they arrived.
Installation of things such as sunroofs is
part of the diversity that Ted has taken on
to protect himself against slack periods.
While the genesis of the business was from
customizing vans. that's far from the whole
things now, he says. He prefers to call the
business one of automotive specialty.
Besides installing sunroofs, the people
at Vanscaping are into car sound systems
in a big way. all the way up to $1000 stereo
systems for cars and vans. They also do
things like installing new carpeting in cars
when the old has become a little the worse
for wear. There's the installation of raised
tops for vans which can give headroom of 6
foot 3 inches and there are custom painting
jobs including such things as fancy facelifts
to gas tanks on motorcycles.
And there's a lot of advice dished out
too, free for the asking to those who want
to do their own custom work on their vans.
Of course along with the advice. the
Vanscaping people also hope that the
do-it-yourselfers will pick up their supplies
like iceboxes. tables, or swivelling bucket
look like this? seats in the retail area of the shop.
So what do you do if you've just bought a
new van and you want to turn it into a
mobile livingroom. or bedroom. Well the
first thing you're likely to do when you go
to Vanscaping is to look at a photo album.
Ted keeps an album filled with colour
pictures of vans he's done over. Looking at
these. he says. helps people pick out the
general feeling they want. The most
important decision for the van owner is to
decide what he or she wants to do with the
• van whether camping or touring or they
want it to be a big station wagon or they
want it to be convertible, hauling freight
during the week and able to switch over to
being a dressed up van on the weekend.
There's only so much room in a van and it
can only be used so many ways so the
customer has to decide his priorities. Ted
says.
Once the main use of the van has been
decided the next problem is how eleborate
the van will be done. The easiest thing is if
the customer can say how much he has in
mind spending Ted says, although some
customers are hesitiant to say this. There's
That low overhead and the fact he has a
small staff and does a lot of the work
himself has allowed Ted to do customer
work at competitive or better prices than
large van shops in cities which have
standard packages that they install,
produced on an assembly -line basis. In
many of these shops a customer goes in
and looks at sample interiors and orders
this or that package. "I'd rather work than
sit around and supervise and assembly
line," Ted argues.
Of course there are times when the
assembly line concept makes its way into
Vanscaping too, when things get too far
behind. For instance in July Ted was
waiting for an order of sun roofs to be
installed on cars to arrive. Some 21
customers were waiting for the delayed sun
roofs meaning that several days would be
HURON X784�Z
INTERNATIONAL
PLOWING MATCH
September 26 - 30, 1978
HURON COUNTY
(Area Code 519)
�,t\Qt'AL p1Oi
(JIV
�4 Ii , c�
•
•
\MATM AMC H1141"
On the Jim Armstrong
and neighbouring farms
one mile east of Wingham,
Ontario on .Highway 86.
PG. 20. VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1978.