Hey all, thought I'd share my journey with starting a BMW shop, thought it might be interesting to see somebody starting a shop from scratch. As a bit of background, I've been working on BMW's for quite a while, along with my business partner who has been working on them for over 10 years. I've owned a pretty large collection of BMW's, and my current stable includes a 2000 540it, a 1997 M3, and a 1992 525it/5. My partner has two Z3 Coupes (one has an S52, the other has an S54), a 2003 X5 4.6is, a 1998 328i, and two 1972 Bavarias. It's safe to say we're both a little crazy for the roundel, so that's why we decided to start this venture. We've been working on various BMW's over the past few months in our driveways (through a funny turn of events, neither of us have a usable garage at either of our houses, unless you count the leaky shack in my backyard).
Unsurprisingly, when you work on BMW's and do so at reasonable rates, people take note. That's why at this point we've decided to go a little more legitimate and rent a space for our little venture. Believe it or not, the hardest part is just finding a place! You'd be surprised at how many otherwise promising locations hung up on us the minute we mentioned that we were a car repair shop. A combination of picky landlords and zoning makes it quite difficult to find a shop location that isn't stupidly overpriced, in middle of the ghetto, and/or on the edge of civilization. Sure, we could *technically* rent a nondescript warehouse space and just work on the down low, but that's no way to run a legitimate business, plus the threat of eviction would loom overhead constantly.
A few days back, my partner sent me a very promising Craigslist ad that he had found one night in his nightly Craigslist browsing (we all do that, don't lie). The rent was very reasonable, the zoning was right, it had electricity, running water, and fluid/trash disposal services. Perfect! We looked at the place and fell in love with it almost instantly.
Now the catch... there's always a catch, isn't there? This place is mostly outdoors, with a room and office in the back for storage. Thankfully in Phoenix we don't have winters, so no frostbite-inducing wrenching sessions, but we do have pretty brutal summers. That being said, the spot has a good amount of shade at all times of the day, and swamp coolers are cheap. So we'll deal with the heat, we've been doing it in our driveways already. No pain, no gain, am I right?
There's a lot to like about this spot thought, like the aforementioned rent and utilities. It also fits like 10 cars in the work bay, along with 6 extra spots in the general parking lot. There are other mechanics in adjacent bays, but none of them are BMW-oriented, preferring to deal with American trucks all day long; that's fine with us. There's no lift there at the moment, but the bay is wired for one and has the correct grade of concrete floor to handle one (the previous tenant had a lift).
This is what the place looked like in the ad:
It has this nifty room/space in the back behind the rollup door— this is most likely where we'll store all our tools. I have a big rolling toolbox, an air compressor, and a workbench that I'll be bringing there very soon. I love the exposed wiring in the breaker box... that's something we'll get taken care of before we fully move in.
Off to the side in that space, there's a dingy little office. In the picture it has the AC unit, but the previous tenant took it with them. I figure we'll source an AC from Craigslist or Walmart so we can make the office into a nice little lounge for us to relax and escape the heat. The window is also missing half of the glass, which is highly amusing.
This is how the place looked when we visited it earlier today. All the trash had been picked up and the place got a nice fresh coat of white paint, which is nice because it's one less thing for us to do. (Featuring a 98 328i and a 97 M3, E36 ftw!)
Tomorrow is our official first day of the lease, so we'll be going in nice and early to sweep the floors and hose down the dust everywhere. Then we're going to paint the office room so it looks more like an office and less like an amateur crack den. Then we'll start the tedious process of moving in our tools and project cars. Eventually we'll source a used lift and figure out how to install it (hilarity will ensue). Neither of us have run a shop before, so we're just taking it one step at a time, haha.
The landlord said we can do pretty much anything we want with the space, as long as we pay rent and don't do anything obviously illegal.
