History Details

Artistic Auto Body’s roots literally can be traced back to my parent’s garage, where in 1982 I began buying cars, repairing them as needed, and selling them for a profit. I had just graduated from Northwest Nazarene College with a degree in Business Administration, and was working for my father as a technical illustrator doing Patent Drafting. But I found the car business to be something I enjoyed more.

Word quickly spread of my ability to restore a used vehicle to a high standard of quality, be honest about what was done to the vehicle, and sell it at a fair price. Soon, with many of these sold vehicles on the road, people started calling to say they had been in an accident, and wanted to know if I could do the repairs again. This is how It all began.

I learned to work with my hands from my Swedish Grandfather, who ran a blacksmith shop in Newberg for 50 years. At the age of 10 I learned how to weld. By age 15 I was actually running all of the machinery in the shop, including a lathe, boring machine, and milling machine. I learned about metallurgy and how to hard surface farm implements. My Grandfather was a true “European Craftsman”. To this day I credit him with instilling in me a passion for quality, doing it right the first time, and making sure the customers are happy, because they are why we exist.

Our first shop was 1,600 sq. ft., and located at 8085 SW Nimbus Ave, in Beaverton. I say “our” because during those early years I shared expenses with a partner who went on to start Newberg Body and Paint. In 1986 I moved my operation to 111th Ave, just off Denney Rd. At this time I was learning all I could about repairing cars, but remained “self taught”. The business was growing, I had started hiring employees, and the 3,300 sq.ft. of space was getting tight. About 1988 we expanded into an adjacent space of 5,500 sq. ft. and business continued to grow. In 1990 we added another 2,500 sq. ft. In 1992, we needed more room, but there was none available in our present location. We were more successful than I had ever imagined.

I remember going to our industry conference (NACE) that year, and hearing all the roar about Insurance Direct Repair Programs (DRP’s). It was clear that my industry was going to fight this tooth and nail. This was a time of decision for me, as I felt that if I was going to survive in the future I would need to grow the business to a much larger scale. I believed that insurance companies would want to partner with those that could deliver the results. I believed it could be a “win, win, win”. But why didn’t other shops share this belief? After much prayer and reflection, my wife Debbi and I decided that we would put everything on the line and go for it. We felt that God had blessed us with a unique set of gifts, and that He would support us in the future as we continued to do what we felt was right.

We had already committed to uphold the highest levels of honesty and integrity, to both personally and corporately be an example to those around us. We set new goals, and started looking for a new location that could help us attain them. We decided to not just participate in DRP’s, but to specialize in them.

In the summer of 1992 we moved into our present main location in Tigard. We leased the entire building of 32,000 sq ft against the concerns of our families who felt we were in way over our heads. But we had a dream, and we barely scrapped together the money necessary to make the required improvements and purchase new equipment. We found a tenant to sublease half the building for 5 years.

I assumed that in 5 years we would be ready to expand into the entire building. I was wrong. In just 3 years, we needed to expand again. So in 1996 we purchased property and opened our Wilsonville location. We were fortunate to have a great team to help start that location, and many of them are there to this day. Then in 1997 we exercised our option and purchased the Tigard property. In 1998 we took over the entire building at Tigard expanding from 16,000 to 32,000 square feet.

In 2000 we were approached with an opportunity to diversify into industrial coatings for the high-tech industry. After evaluating the chance to incorporate this activity into our current operations, we decided rather to start up a stand-alone shop in Tualatin near the source of the work. We leased a vacant Maaco building and things went very well for the first year. But in the Summer of 2001 business started to slow down, and then 9-11 hit and the recession in the high-tech industry took a very dramatic turn and all of a sudden our source of work dried up. We still had several years to go on the lease so we began auto body repairs there and that went well, but ultimately it was too close to our other two locations so we ceased operations there in 2005 when the lease expired.

In 2002 we brought the Fix Auto network to Portland. I met with Erick Bickett the founder, and he shared the potential of what can happen when a group of high quality shops decide to work together. So I contacted a number of like-minded shop owners that were high quality operators as I was, and we had a meeting to discuss these possibilities. Shortly following that meeting, the Portland chapter of Fix Auto Collision Centers was organized. This event was certainly a milestone, as our relationship with Fix Auto and by working together we have each improved our operations significantly. In other words, the best got even better. The Fix Auto shops in Portland and throughout the world continue to set the standard in the use of technology in the collision repair industry.

2006 was an excellent year where we experienced significant growth. We added several employees and again started running out of room at the Tigard facility. In early 2007 we added another 14,000 sq ft of production space that brings the total shop size to over 46,000 sq ft. This acquisition allows us to begin the process of repair segmentation, where we have specialists performing only certain kinds of repairs which speeds up the repair process. At this time, we are processing about 400 repairs per month.