Why AGRSS Matters: Part I

The following took place on Friday, October 3, 2008, on State Route 1 in Spotsylvania County, Va.:

I was riding down the road catching up with my old friend, Frank Baitman, whom I’ve known since college. Frank’s gone on to have quite a career: Fulbright scholar, former VP of IBM, president of a number of multi-national companies with a broad variety of experience—quite the intelligent, experienced guy.

Frank also loves photography and, many years ago, supplemented his income while in grad school by taking pictures of auto glass installations for the magazine at which I worked. He became familiar with NAGS® numbers and pricing, parts and proper installations and the issues of auto glass safety.

As we were riding down the road, Frank asked me if the auto glass industry had changed much since his picture-taking days in the late 1980s. “Oh yes,” I replied, and explained the current dynamics of the industry, the influence of insurance companies, the rise of the mega-chains, etc. I told him there had been a number of industry shake-outs since the 1980s and the one bright spot was that those companies still in business have increased in their levels of professionalism and proficiency. The auto glass industry, I declared, had become much more professional in the past twenty years.

I’d barely completed the sentence when we were passed on the right by an old, brown sedan sporting dents and dings all over it. It had a wobbly front right side and the backseat was almost unrecognizable as it was filled with what looked like garbage up to the middle of the backlite. Attached to the back fender with some sort of handmade wood carrier was a windshield just riding along outside about 8 inches from the ground with a sign that said “AUTO GLASS” and a Virginia phone number (Note: We've removed the last four digits of the phone number from the photo.)


We pulled up behind the car and took some pictures. Frank looked over to me and said “You know, Deb, to a lot of consumers that guy is the auto glass industry.”

When I got back to my office I called the number on the sign and asked about windshield replacement. A man named Otto answered and, in broken English, told me that he could replace my windshield. He said he took all types of insurance. I specifically asked about State Farm and Erie and he said, yes, he did work for those companies.

I told Otto that I might want to come to his shop and have my windshield replaced. “No, no,” he said, “we just open. I come to you.”

“Do you have a shop?” I asked.

“We come to you. Give me your address. I be there tomorrow,” he replied.

I asked if he had certified technicians and he said yes. When I asked who they were certified by, he wanted to know why I was asking.

I said I had seen on the web that I should ask for certified techs when I had my windshield replaced.

”But we are not on the web,” Otto said. “not on the web. Don’t worry about certified. Everyone certified me.”

* * *

People occasionally ask me why I am so involved with and passionate about the AGRSS Council and what it is doing. It’s because my friend Frank is right. To many people, Otto remains the face of the auto glass industry. And the people in the professional auto glass industry who I care deeply about, for whom I have worked more than 28 years, have to compete with the Ottos of the world every day. They might even watch their insurance work go to him with pricing that only an Otto can meet. And I wonder, too, how many networks refer their work to him.

AGRSS is the best greatest hope our industry has. It’s come a long way in its ten-year existence and it has the potential for greatness. But no one is going to raise the lowest common denominator of professionalism other than our industry itself. The AGRSS conference opens in Vegas this week and it will unveil an ambitious program of self-regulation coupled with third-party validation unlike anything ever produced by an industry for itself.

It’s my hope that, in the next few years, all quality auto glass replacement companies will be AGRSS-registered so that when Frank and I ride down the road behind an auto glass truck, it will be the face of true professionalism with a strong commitment to safety.