Unprecedented level of growth for North East Garage

Date: Monday 04 July 2022

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Gateshead-based Team Valley Service & MOT Centre, the largest independent garage in the North East, is continuing to reap larger than expected growth figures.

The company, which specialises in providing an alternative to main dealers, reported a turnover increase of £125k in just eight months during the last financial year. Owner, Marvin Campbell attributed the unprecedented growth to how it embraced the online market and its new website launch.

He said:

“As a leading independent garage, we were continually looking at ways to invest in and grow the business whilst making our customers’ experience as easy as possible. This also meant making it fool-proof for them to find us online.

“It’s estimated that 70 percent of UK motorists would rather use an independent garage than a main dealer, and given the best way to reach those customers is online, we knew we had to overhaul our website and make it really work for us. It’s certainly done that.”

Within weeks of the new website being built and launched by aftermarket specialist Garage Services Online, Team Valley Service & MOT Centre was seeing real results. The garage was getting three leads a day directly from the website – and converting 70 percent of them into sales.

Marvin continued:

“We started doing over £1k a week in direct website bookings alone. We knew it would be a good investment but this was beyond what we expected. I had to take on three extra staff and invest in two more ramps.

“Appointing Garage Services Online to design, build and manage the website proved to be a game changer for us. There’s always a leap of faith with these things but from the outset I knew we’d got the right team on board. Their customer service, knowledge and realistic pricing mirrors our own company ethos and handing the whole thing over to them was easy. The time commitment at our end was only about an hour; they were professional and slick so this was a big tick from me.

“Making the investment wasn’t a hard decision. The site only had to generate a car service a month to pay for itself. It blew that into orbit and there’s other cost savings too. The amount we used to spend on advertising alone has reduced by 60 percent. That in itself has covered the website cost 20 times over.”

Jim Lang, at Garage Services Online said:

“We’ve been creating websites for the independent garage sector for over 10 years and the best thing about the job is seeing the real difference they can make to businesses like Team Valley Service & MOT Centre.

“We can’t wait to see what the next growth phase looks like for them!”

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