Drew Bryant didn’t set out to do this.
He’d been rising steadily over six years with Panera Bread, making good dough. The side hustle: installing custom fiberglass housings for stereo systems, from a storage unit in which he couldn’t fully fit an entire vehicle.
Sometimes it seemed clear clients were into more than just tunes, and likely ran in the law’s shadowlands.
Bryant was also getting married.
A future uncle-in-law and serial entrepreneur got wind of the latter work, and, over multiple objections, backed Bryant’s play. He found a space, outgrew that, then got cement in a layout with more spaces that could be combined.
Drew Bryant.
db Orlando Collision grew to 11,000 square feet.
Now he’s adding a second site: two stories, 34,000 square feet, with a second facility in back for mechanical and ADAS work. The ex-medical trade school site has private rooms for client consults and classrooms for training staff, his own and others. There’s a recording studio for podcasting and doing customer testimonials.
The investment all-in is $10 million.
“Mainly hustling,” Bryant said.
Oh, but there’s way more.
If Body Shops Had a Front Porch
This was 15 years ago. Bryant didn’t start in the 400 square feet that didn’t allow a whole car. He began on his porch.
He was engaged to future-wife Taylor in Orlando, training new employees for Panera out of Gainesville, and “making [fiberglass] pieces in whatever spare time I had. It was a hobby.”
Then the storage facility, then the uncle’s phone call.
“He said, ‘what’s this car stereo stuff?’” Bryant recalled. “He said, ‘call your boss’” and say you’re gone.
Bryant said what any normal person would. He said no. Several times. “‘You’re talking crazy,’ I told him. ‘I’m not going to do that. It’s not my way.’”
He called his parents instead -- “35 years in the same job” in a family allergic to debt. They said what Bryant said. Thing is, he called them several times. “My dad said, ‘Looks like you want to do it.’”
The uncle gave him a debit card with $8,000 on it and the uncle’s lawyer told him to get him an address by the end of the day.
Taking Apart a Paint Booth Bolt by Bolt -- Twice
Bryant’s existing 11,000-square-foot shop.
“I said, ‘You told me you were going to walk me through it,’” Bryant said. “He said, ‘I did.’”
Bryant found space that day, a compressor and some tools the next, then remembered he needed to paint too.
“Oh, a paint booth.”
First one was “a couple 2-by-4s, made a little frame, nose the car in, bring down the door, shift vacuum for overspray, no filter,” Bryant said. “I was bending all the rules.”
Bryant did what any normal person would: found a used booth and told the owner, “I’m trying to make something.” They shook hands on $500 cash, $3,500 full price.
He had his new-to-him “rusty old paint booth” and with two friends took it apart. “Two 5-gallon buckets of nuts and bolts,” he said. They sanded and painted it, and it took up all of his 1,500 square feet.
He moved it once more later -- another complete tear-down -- and bought a side-loading booth. He gave the old workhorse away, “to an up-and-coming guy. I told him, ‘I’m not loosening a single nut on it.’”
Walking the Humble-Hungry-Hustle Beat
“We lipsticked the pig,” Bryant said. “It gave me confidence.”
This came in handy as he went “up and down the main highway, to all the buy-here / pay-here on that row,” he said, telling, them, “I can paint bumpers, what’re your hurdles?”
No surprise.
“They wanted faster and cheaper; nobody mentioned quality and paint match.”
He did what any normal entrepreneur would do. “I over-committed and over-delivered.” If other guys took two days, he did it in one. If others were charging X, Bryant was X - Y.
“Pile up a bunch of bumpers,” he said. “Two jobs cover the nut of rent, with no line of overhead chasing me.”
With the landlord, “Every time someone would wobble” on their rent, or whether they were going to stay, he’d be there. Another 1,500 square feet, this time with a glassed retail front office. Then 2,500 square feet. Guys are struggling, he subleases; from mechanics, he’s buying tools.
“Landlord said, ‘I’m chasing these guys for rent, you’re painting the building.’”
More space, more parking, more work.
The Commercial ‘Two-on-a-Lot’ Plan
In 11,000 square feet, he has 26 employees and 65 cars a month. The new shop floor nearly doubles his legacy location, 9,000 square feet of meeting and training space, 5,000 for indie mechanical and ADAS operations that will serve other shops, opening later this year.
It’s 4 acres and enough space for 350 vehicles. All of it is paved.
He likes the look of his first site; he likes the second site -- and the new equipment, even more.
“We wanted the highest level of service; that’s what drove my eagerness,” he said, and “high-end curb appeal.”
db Orlando Collision grosses $4 million at the 11,000 square foot location. The new site will lose money for up to about 18 months, “and we’re projected to be at $8 million in year four.”
He “always said yes” at his other job when something needed doing, and said it again as a shop owner when his landlord needed something. He thought “that’s not me” when it really was. The grubstake was nice but not huge; people have saved more. Buy stuff used, get serious.
Shop owners are doing it again and again. Bryant himself might just, too.
Paul Hughes