Hardly Retiring: Sun Cities Stays Engaged to Protect Customers, Help Educate Techs

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Few stores may be as well anchored to their community as Sun Cities Tire & Auto is to its location in Sun City West, Ariz.

The dealer, which offers tires, batteries, oil changes and basic maintenance, opened 11 years ago in an extension of the original Sun City retirement community. With a population of 30,000, the community had only a few gas stations and a limited commercial zone. But there was a greater reason to locate the business there, beyond finding a niche in the underserved town, explains Wally Moreland, who oversees the business.

Wally’s wife, Cathy, at the time a church social worker in a neighboring community, saw auto repair shops take advantage of seniors, particularly women, by overselling parts and service. “It was just ridiculous what we were seeing – it just wasn’t right,” says Cathy. “Wally and I wanted to open up a shop where people could come and feel comfortable.”

For their business, they would choose the mission statement: “To bring integrity back to the automotive repair industry.” It isn’t just a catch-phrase; it has informed their approach to business from the very start.

“That’s what we’ve used to build our customers’ trust, because they know they can come in here and not be chased around the sales floor,” says Wally. “They know if it’s safety-related, I’m going to talk to them about it, but we don’t force sales on them.”

The male customers know their wives will get the same treatment. This respect has developed an atmosphere that reminds Wally of an old-fashioned farm co-op, with a constant flow of ladies bringing in brownies and fudge and guys who drop by just to sit and chat. “It’s hard to relate it to someone unless they’ve experienced it,” he tries to explain.

Being in a retirement community – the average age for customers is 80 – is an unusual type of operation, which Wally describes as being “entirely different from metropolitan areas.” Maintenance and service is by appointment, with a one-week waiting period. “Very unique,” Wally notes. Winter visitors (snow birds) will call in the late summer to schedule fall appointments when they return to the area from states in the Midwest. “At holidays, they’ll bring their visiting kids in and introduce us, to reassure them we’re treating their parents right,” Wally adds.

Trust Brings Rewards
Cathy says that it is not uncommon for a husband to bring in his wife and tell her this is the place to bring the car if something happens to it and he’s no longer around. “Do what Wally tells you to do,” he’ll instruct her. For Cathy, that is the ultimate achievement of their goal – to have a place with integrity and honesty where people feel comfortable. “We have accomplished what we set out to do and we’re very proud of that,” she adds.

They’ve been rewarded in other ways, too. An AAA-approved automotive repair facility, Sun Cities Tire has been honored with the AAA Top Shop Award every year for the past seven years. (They’re running out of space in the store to display the plaques!) One reason why is found on the certificates AAA sends as scorecards to participating dealers. “Customer satisfaction is 100% nearly every month,” says Wally. “If I get one back that’s 98.2%, my wife wants to know why.”

Customer loyalty is another benefit Sun Cities Tire enjoys. Wally figures they are now serving their third generation of customers. “The first followed us here, then their children and now even their grandchildren come to us.” He reports that a young woman has enthusiastically volunteered to develop a store Web site, with the help of the store manager.

Another reason for success is experience. Wally had been with Bridgestone Americas for 19 years before opening the store in Sun City West. “I designed this store around all the successful corporate Firestone stores that I ran in Nebraska, Iowa and Arizona,” says Wally. He sat down with an architect and numerous designs that Firestone’s real-estate department offered and custom-designed everything from where he wanted equipment to how he wanted the store to sit on the lot – with 42 parking places.

The store features eight drive-through bays, arranged four back-to-back, with a sales floor that seats eight customers, a small office and back room with racks for 500 tires. This space also has well-organized and labeled shelves for fluids, filters, belts and batteries – “All the ‘be-back’ stuff that has to be in the back room,” says Wally, “because if you have to order it, the customer won’t ‘be back.’”

This attention to detail may offer another explanation why Sun Cities Tire saw a 10% sales increase 2009 over 2008, from $2 million to $2.2 million, with a level car count. “We look at things others don’t: wiper blades, turn signals, cabin air filters,” Wally notes. He doesn’t look for big-dollar repairs. “It may sound trite, but if you look at over 10,000 cars a year, little parts and doing a few alignments to improve fuel economy adds up.” A $15-to-$20-a-car average over the prior year made the difference, he believes.

Advocates for Education
Cathy, who handles grassroots marketing and direct-mailing for the store, takes the lead in its community involvement. This includes having the store participate in Toys for Tots, sponsoring bowling and slow-pitch softball teams, and donating oil changes and life-time alignments to be raffled off at charity events.

The store also provides 26 first graders from the Orangewood Elementary School with school clothes, backpacks and shoes. Sun Cities also supports the clothing exchange at Ira Murphy School in Peoria, Ariz., so students from families facing home foreclosure or other hardships will still have a choice of clothes to wear.

Cathy’s and Wally’s involvement with local schools is more than elementary. Since moving to the area from Nebraska in the mid-1980s, Wally has hired Universal Technical Institute Inc. (UTI) students from the Arizona campus. You might say he provides them with a grad school of sorts.

Wally considers the best of these students to be “diamonds in the rough,” where the on-the-job training he offers helps to polish them and develop their work ethic. “I like to get ‘green’ kids because they don’t have bad habits. I like to teach them my way, and I like to think that’s the right way because of my success,” Wally asserts.

He now tries to pass along the lessons he learned going from a tire changer on up to independent shop owner. Wally says he can’t count all of the students he’s mentored over the years, but figures he’s employed an average of two students at any given time. Three UTI grads work for him now; two who worked at the shop while they were students and one since graduation.

Cathy encourages the UTI students to get as much education as they can, especially all the ASE certifications they can earn. Some of their students have moved on to accelerated programs in other states. “If they have the ability to go onto special OEM programs, we encourage that,” says Cathy.

“We want them all to better themselves and do well, because the only way you can bring integrity back to the auto industry is to have people who know what they’re doing.”