Business builds for the independent store as more Saab owners move into the Tampa Bay area.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published August 20, 2004
TAMPA - Even today, when you aim your business specifically at repairing Saabs, you're talking about a niche market at best.
But when Carl Woodward started out, it barely qualified as a niche.
"There were maybe 800 Saab owners in the tricounty area," said Woodward, the co-owner of the Saaab Store. "Today, there's maybe 2,000. Probably half the drivers on the road in Tampa today don't even know that a Saab is a kind of car."
"They're much more popular up North," said his partner, Fabian Romo.
The numbers of Saab owners in this area is growing rapidly, Romo and Woodward said, thanks to the influx of residents from Northern states. The Saaab Store tries to attract two to three new customers every week, and has been pretty successful at doing that.
A lot of times, the first question people ask is about the extra letter in the name of the store. Saab is a strange enough name. Why make it any stranger?
"Because we're not Saab," Woodward said. "Seventeen years ago we went to Saab and said, "We don't want to infringe on your trademark. How do we do that?' and they said, "Change it by 20 percent.' So that's what we did."
The other thing people need to know about the name is that Woodward and Romo can't stand it when people make the obvious joke. They may think they're being clever, but owners of the Saaab Store just think they're annoying.
"Just don't say anything about a Saaab story," Woodward said. "We hear that all the time."
Besides, the story of the Saaab Store has thus far been a remarkably happy one. What started out as a one-man, part-time operation has grown into a thriving concern that draws business from all over the country.
Woodward traces the roots of the Saaab Store back even further, to when he was a kid growing up on the St. Lawrence River. His older sister had a Saab, and he learned to drive, when he was only about 8 years old, on the frozen river.
"I learned to drive on the ice," he said. "There wasn't much to run into."
He drove Saabs all through his youth, and when he moved to the Tampa area in the 1980s to take a job as an engineer he started working on Saabs on weekends in his garage.
"Pretty soon I figured out I was making more money working on Saabs than I was as an engineer," he said.
He and partner Kevin Crump started the Saaab Store, which at first was a modest and conventional repair shop on Cypress Street, in 1987. As the business grew, they moved into larger spaces until they landed in their current home, a former restaurant on Gandy Boulevard, about eight years ago.
Romo, who used to have a business called Autobahn Imports on Dale Mabry Highway, joined the Saaab Store about four years ago.
Besides attracting more customers, the Saaab Store has grown by adding services over the years.
In addition to standard repairs, the Saaab Store now sells used cars (acquired from auctions or individuals, extensively test-driven and repaired and refurbished before they're offered for sale), sells tires, does body upholstery work, sells parts, and even repairs old parts so that they're stronger and less expensive than new ones.
Unlike a lot of independent repair shops, the Saaab Store puts a lot of emphasis on Internet-based marketing. Woodward now spends a lot of his time working on the store's Web site (www.saabstore.com) and it's not uncommon for Saab owners in different parts of the country to ship a part to the Saaab Store with a letter asking that it be repaired.
Most of the Saaab Store's new local business comes either from word of mouth or through stickers or license tag holders on existing customers' cars.
"People will call and say, "I'm new in town and I saw your sticker on another Saab and I didn't want to take my car to the dealer,' " Romo said.
One big difference between an independent shop like the Saaab Store and some of the big chains, Romo said, is simply one of attitude.
"Their interest is in repairs," he said. "Ours is in preventative maintenance."
Romo said the Saaab Store keeps its customers coming back by emphasizing the kind of maintenance that will keep their cars running smoothly. It's not unusual for the Saaab Store to practically give away oil changes to its regular customers to encourage them.
And the first time any car comes into the shop for a repair or maintenance, Saaab Store mechanics go through a 100-point checklist that covers everything from the engine and the steering to the taillights and air conditioning.
Besides finding small problems that the customer may have missed, mechanics use the checklist to suggest maintenance that might prevent trouble down the road. The checklist stays on file, and mechanics refer to it on any further visits.
The result, Romo said, has been a phenomenal degree of customer loyalty.
"There are only three ways we lose a customer," he said. "They move, they sell their car or they die."
