IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Precision Motion, which works on Porsches and other German automobiles, is looking to develop shops in three other states. The reason? Its owner would like a friendlier business climate.
Don Kravig is fed up with doing business in California.
Not fed up enough to move his German automobile repair business, Precision Motion, from Colton, where it’s done business since 2013.
But enough that he’s looking into expanding into other markets, specifically Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Colorado Springs, Colo. and Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“The business climate in California is so awful, and not just on the state level,” Kravig said during a recent interview at Precision Motion, 2281 La Crosse Ave. “This is our seventh location. The first six were in Riverside, and we left there because they put up a homeless shelter right behind us and wrecked the neighborhood. Riverside is not a good place to do business if you’re small like we are, and Colton isn’t any better. We want to expand next door but they can’t turn on the electric meters for us.”
Precision Motion, which Kravig’s father began, is located in an industrial park near Barton Road and Interstate 215, not far from where Stater Bros.’ headquarters used to be. It specializes in repairing Porsches – a brand it used to work on exclusively – along with other German-made cars.
The repair shop covers nearly 1,300 square feet and employs eight to 11 people. Kravig recently sat down with IE Business Daily to explain how Precision Motion got started, why it moved away from working only on Porsches and why he believes the three previously mentioned markets are good locations for his family’s business.
Q: After all these years in the Inland Empire, why move outside the Inland Empire?
A: Because the business climate in California is so awful, and not just on the state level. This is our seventh location. The first six were in Riverside, and we left there because they put up a homeless shelter right behind us and wrecked the neighborhood. Riverside is not a good place to do business if you’re small like we are, and Colton isn’t any better. We want to expand next door but they can’t turn on the electric meters for us.
Q: Why did you choose the three markets you’re looking at moving into?
A: We did a lot of research, and we found out that there are lot of Porsche owners in all three of those places, but they don’t have a lot of Porsche repair places. People have to drive a long way, or have their cars towed, to get them fixed. In the case of Colorado Springs, there’s some racing there that we would like to get involved in.
Q: How did the business get started?
A: It grew out of my Dad’s racing career. He was known as Karl “Big Don” Kravig. The guys he was racing against, and especially the guys he was beating, started coming to him to get their cars repaired. It grew from that.
Q: What kind of racing did your Dad do?
A: Sports cars, mostly, but he’d really race anything. He raced boats, dragsters, just about anything. I think he would have raced a cardboard box if it was possible. He was good. He won a lot of amateur races.
Q: Did he race professionally?
A: Yes, but he never won a professional race. He came close a few times, but he never did. In 1982, he got within a half a lap of winning the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at the Riverside [international] Raceway, which doesn’t exist anymore. I still remember how disappointing losing that race was.
Q: Do you race?
A: Yes. I started when I was 15 and I still race once in awhile. But I was always more of a test driver and a mechanic than I was a race car driver.
Q: Has Precision Motion always focused exclusively on Porsches?
A: No. My Dad started a boat repair business in 1968 in La Sierra, and switched to cars in 1973, which was the start of Precision Motion. He went Porsche’s exclusively a year or two after that. But now we work on other cars. We do Mercedes Benz, Audi and BMW.
Q: Why did you add those?
A: Because a lot of our clients, besides owning a Porsche, also own a Mercedes Benz, an Audi or a BMW. It made sense to branch out. They’re all German-made cars, which means they’re designed very precisely.
Q: Are Porsches that popular in the Inland Empire? Are there that many of them?
A: Yes. They’re what we call an apex car, meaning something people spend money on later in life, after they’ve paid off their house and put their kids through college. They indulge themselves. So you have Porsche owners in the Inland Empire, but they aren’t the Porsche owners you get in Hollywood or Orange County.
Q: Why did you work exclusively on Porsches for so many years? Is their something about them that makes them attractive to work on?
A: They make sense. You can tell a Porsche engine by looking at it, if you know what you’re doing. They’re designed very technically. Also, the Porsche 911 is the last of the rear engine cars, and those are fun to work on. But I think it was mostly because we were familiar with them. It’s like speaking English and Sanskrit. You can know them both, but you’re probably going to be more comfortable with English.
Q: How much competition do you have, i.e., shops that work exclusively on Porsches, or Audis, or BMW’s?
A: We have some, but what we do get is a lot of is people who get into this business who don’t know what they’re doing. We see that a lot. They cut corners and they mess things up. Businesses like that last five years at the most. We try to stay away from them.
Q: Auto agencies always charge top dollar for repair work. How much more affordable are you than a Porsche agency?
A: Probably about 25 percent on most things. A lot of our clients we see maybe once a year, or once every two years. They keep coming back because we stand by the quality of our work. We aren’t allowed to do warranty work. By law, that has to be done at an agency.
Q: How do you see the future of your business? Are people always going to buy expensive cars and then pay a lot of money to have them fixed?
A: Yes, but things are changing. We have all of these 20-year-olds whose parents drive them everywhere, or they use Uber, and they try to live within a block of where they work. They don’t drive and they don’t own cars like past generations did. We don’t know what we’re going to get from them.
