“I can’t say enough about the quality of GFS paint booths, because they just work. I get goosebumps.”

Shell Lake Auto Body
📍Shell Lake, Wisconsin

When Scott Farley took over his father’s body shop, he wanted a way to increase production and quality. A recent expansion steered him toward the purchase of two Global Finishing Solutions (GFS) Performer^® ES Paint Booths.

Please introduce your business and tell us your story: My dad started the business in 1980 and worked out of a small shop. When I took over the business, I slowly started upgrading it. The more clientele we got, the more we needed a bigger space. We moved our operation to a larger facility to increase production. As business expanded, we invested in our paint shop, by replacing our aging paint booth with two new paint booths.

What services do you offer and how many jobs do you usually perform? We do auto body and collision repair for cars and motorcycles. We also do some work on boats and personal watercraft for Shell Lake Marine. Happy with how their boats turn out, many of those customers return to us to fix their cars, too. We put through 130 to 140 cars last year, and the booths worked great.

What GFS equipment did you purchase? Three years ago, we purchased a semi-downdraft Performer ES Paint Booth. We wanted to put through more production, so we bought another crossdraft Performer ES Paint Booth 1 ½ years later.

“What we can accomplish with two paint booths is amazing, as that is the biggest bottleneck in a body shop.” said Shawn, painter and manager of Shell Lake Auto Body. “Our new booths have made things more efficient, and the quality is just incredible.”

How did you decide on GFS equipment? Before our GFS paint booths, we had an old DeVilbiss crossdraft booth. When searching for paint booth manufacturers, I was focused on service. I talked to many different paint booth suppliers — most of them cheap — and I didn’t want to deal with the downtime. Troy Volbrecht, GFS territory manager, was what really sold me on GFS. We hit it off, and he worked with us to get up and running as quickly as possible.

“I’m really happy with it,” Scott said. “With anything you buy, whether it’s paint or equipment, you roll the dice. Is the equipment going to be good? Are you going to have buyer’s remorse? Not here — none. It was money well spent. We are so happy and could not be happier.”

How has the equipment benefited your business and customers? The GFS paint booths give us really nice paint jobs and make all the difference in the world. With the other paint booth, the jobs turned out okay, but we had to do a little more buffing on them. Spraying inside of the new paint booths is a completely different world. The paint performs way better. It sprays different, looks different — everything is way better.

“The way it sprays shocked us both,” said Shawn. “It’s night and day from our old booth — the airflow and the way it dried especially. The new booths have completely changed our spraying technique. I can’t say enough about the quality of GFS paint booths, because they just work. I get goosebumps just talking about it. The ease of use, brightness and even the 30-foot length is great. Everything works like it’s supposed to for beautiful, clean jobs.”

What is your plan for the future of your business? The next step is to add heat to the paint booths. We are getting so much production through now and would increase production even more in the winter months with the addition of burners. We also would like to add another downdraft paint booth, when we eventually expand onto the back of the shop.