Waconia 1Collision & Auto
📍 Waconia, MN
When Chad Bijou took the leap and opened Waconia 1Collision & Auto, he knew he needed equipment from a manufacturer he trusts, so dialing Global Finishing Solutions (GFS) was the only call he made.
“Our shop opened in July 2020. It’s a brand–new, 9,000-square-foot shop, with seven employees. I wanted a very upscale, modern facility that really gives that ‘wow’ factor to our customers, the community and our technicians.
The hardest thing about investing in this equipment was doing it on my own. When I worked at Morrie’s Auto Group in Minnesota, I had resources throughout the dealership network that I could lean on. Doing it on my own has been very educating for me. But pulling the trigger on it was easy.
I’ve been wanting to do it my whole life, and I learned everything I could on the business side of things — opening new shops, relocating and updating. I know the business. It was just a matter of getting the doors open.”
“We purchased a dual-bay Ultra XD Closed-Top Open-Front (CTOF) Paint Booth and a three-sided Ultra XD Paint Mix Room from GFS. The spray booth is fantastic in terms of its performance, and it is really quiet. It has a variable frequency drive (VFD), so it ramps up like an airplane versus having that hard bang and everything is vibrating. It makes it easier to hear in the shop.”
“At Morrie’s, we had GFS equipment — two 27-foot, drive-thru paint booths and two dual-bay CTOFs. I also went through a three-day training with GFS in Dallas. I got really familiar with GFS paint booths. I like the way they are built. I like how they work. I like the mechanics of them, and they don’t break down. We never had any issues with our GFS spray booths at Morrie’s. We never had to replace a motor. We never had to replace door seals. We never even had to replace hinges.”
“My goal is to have two additional shops within the next five to seven years. All I’m ever going to use is GFS equipment. I’m not going to go with anything else. I’ve had too good of luck with GFS paint booths to go away from using them.”
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