4 Reasons Your Motorcycle Repair Shop Needs a Professional Powder Coating Provider
1. Take on more customers
Expanding your business is always stressful. While business growth is a good thing, gathering more resources and adding to your expenses might make you cautious about growing too quickly.
Businesses in every industry share this concern. Taking on more services and more employees comes with a lot of oversight and overhead, which can slow down your core business. Here’s how partnering with a third party to offer powder coating services can help:
Subcontracting doesn’t have a learning curve.
Every new skill requires a learning period. Handling the work internally will require a significant investment in training and workflow as the new service is added into your reconstruction timelines, processes, and commercial insurance plan. Also, you might not have the proper experience to handle the wide range of applications.
But when you work with an established powder coating business, you don’t have to incorporate a learning curve or train new employees. By outsourcing your powder coating, you can give your customers a wider range of restoration services.
Don’t waste time building up capital or assets.
A specialty service like powder coating doesn’t just require skilled labor. It involves a lot of tools and materials. These include applicators, ovens, and safety equipment, as well as the permits to use them in your garage. That means your company will have to either invest a lot of capital into the upfront cost of getting tools with little to no guarantee of profit, or you’ll need to rent the tools. Both can be too costly for good growth.
You’ll also need to build up a stock of colored powders and sealant materials. Buying a wide range of options is expensive, especially if you start with small units.
A powder coating provider already has the tools to handle a wide range of powder coating options and motorcycle parts. They also have the powders and chemicals to go with them, and, because they were purchased in bulkier amounts, you see more profit without charging your customers a prohibitively high rate.
2. Offer a broader range of custom creation and services
Whether your business is all about mechanical repairs, custom builds, or antique restorations, you have a core set of services that you focus on. Spreading that focus too thin can have impacts on quality control. And if you’re in the business because you love it, don’t ruin the job by adding in tasks that are outside your wheelhouse.
Offering a narrow range of services can cause you to lose business. If your competitors provide an additional component of service that you don’t have, potential customers might prefer to work with them instead. Partnering with specialty services or building subcontracting agreements with powder coating provider specialists makes it easier to offer your customers more options without taking on more work.
Reach a broader audience.
Bright colors market well, and good marketing is essential. Offering another specialty service through a third-party adds more strength to your company brand. You can pull audiences in by solving a wider range of work, and you can use the expanded product offering to show up in more online searches and local business reviews.
Pictures of powder coated parts are also more attractive to look at. When you can incorporate gleaming motorcycles and candy-coated rims on your site, that brings in more prospective customers. Even if you have motorcycle enthusiasts in your area who aren’t currently looking for repairs, a strong image gallery can make them return to you later.
3. Get more precise color control
You never know what color a customer wants their new or vintage motorcycle to be. Someone who owns a collection of antique bikes will want to restore the look to its original shade, right down to the exact hexadecimal code. Many bike owners want to add brand logos, images, and colors that are an exact match to a piece of media.
Powder coating offers a greater range of color selection than liquid paint alternatives. Because of the application process, your customers will also get a product that is just the right hue without being too deep or too light. The vibrant colors in powder coated layers also last longer than alternatives, so you don’t have to worry about the color fading out like with paint.
You can get just the right finish.
The color hue isn’t the only factor that impacts the overall appearance of a powder coated bike or part. The finish’s sheen also adds an element of brightness. If you have a customer who wants their vehicle finished to their exact specifications, they’re going to want the glossiness to be controlled, too.
When you partner with a powder coating service instead of just offering paint, you can offer them a finished construction with anything from a flat to a high-gloss sheen. Because of powder coating’s precise application process, they can have other finish options without bulky layers or imprecise, drippy designs.
A powder coating provider can apply metallic finishes. These can range from a standard metallic sheen, like chrome, to a more textured hammer tone. Unique powder coating in candied, iridescent, and fluorescent finishes are available with unique styles like wrinkles and glitter. The finish plays a huge part in the overall appearance of a motorcycle, and that makes your expert repair work stand out even more.
Produce precise designs, blends, and pattern lines.
Motorcycles are never monochromatic. They have tiny details, eye-catching logos, and intricate patterns. It’s also becoming more and more common for vehicles to display scenes from popular media and animations. If your customer is looking for a high degree of detail in their finished product, make sure you have the options available so they can pick precisely what they’re looking for.
4. Lasts longer under adverse conditions
All vehicles take on chips and face physical damage once they hit the road. Unfortunately, no coat or sealant can keep all of the damage away, especially if there are dents or broken metal parts. But powder coating offers the widest range of protective coatings to keep everything from scratches to chemical etching at bay.
The wide array of textures also stops damage from ruining the appearance of the motorcycle. Flat, hammered, and wrinkled tones keep the bike looking like new and can hide dents from sight. Offer your customers a wide range of topcoats that prevent abrasion and UV-resistant powders that stay strong in the face of sunlight. Powder coats come in a range of applications and base materials.
Powder coatings make cleaning and maintenance easier.
Motorcyclists talk. If you want to keep demand for your services strong, your business is going to need to have good reviews and recurring customers. The best way to do that isn’t just with high-quality repairs and restoration work. It’s by giving customers a finished product that is easy for them to take care of.
Powder coatings are easy to clean. Sand and abrasive debris won’t scratch through the coats, and the owners don’t have to worry about damaging the surface with rougher tools. Even better, each grain of powder in the powder coat binds directly to the frames or parts. The owners don’t have to worry about something catching on the bike and ripping away a larger patch of paint.
Every motorcycle eventually needs a new paint job or, even better, a new powder coating. Make sure your business offers this service so you aren’t crossed off of anyone’s list of options. Contact TLC Metal to learn more about how powder coating works and why it’s a superior alternative to paint when it comes to long-term color and protection.