Offering Tint and Repair Services Can Bring New Opportunities
By Abby Bowman
It’s common to see auto glass shops that do both repair and replacement, but it’s not as common to find shops that do both auto glass repair and window tint.
Shops with this unique business model do exist, and the owners find advantages in offering two services that haven’t always been associated with each other. AGRR magazine caught up with the managers of some of these companies.
Daniel’s Auto Glass & Tint | Bassett, Virginia
Daniel Hanks didn’t start Daniel’s Auto Glass & Tint in Bassett, Virginia, to work with either auto glass or tint. When he founded the shop in 1989, he initially did general auto body and mechanic work. He added commercial and residential glass before expanding into auto glass in 1995.
“The automotive glass really stuck,” he says. “I was super good at it; it comes pretty easily to me.”
After auto glass work became the shop’s primary function, Hanks eventually grew frustrated repairing auto glass on cars with tinted glass. He had to send the cars over to a shop in Martinsville, Virginia, to be re‑tinted before giving them back to the customers.
“So I was like, I might as well start trying to window tint and see how difficult it is, save me that extra step,” Hanks says.
Hanks took to tint just as smoothly as he’d taken to auto glass work. “Like anything, once you learn it, it’s pretty simple,” he says.
Hanks says the longevity of his business and the convenience of offering multiple services contribute to the number of repeat customers he gets. “We typically have a tremendous amount of repeat customers,” Hanks says. “Normally, if we do work for them, they come back (when they need to) have more work done. They don’t typically start using anybody else.”
Daniel’s Auto Glass & Tint has grown enough that it has a separate center and dedicated technician for tint work.
Delmarva Auto Glass | Salisbury, Maryland
According to Brian King of Delmarva Auto Glass, his father, Homer, didn’t have a vision of the full scope of where Delmarva Auto Glass would end up when he founded it in 1986.
He knew he could do glass replacement, so he set on his own and just started doing that,” King says. “Then, as he went, he added services and added employees.”
Now, the company has locations in Salisbury and Cambridge, Maryland, as well as Dagsboro and Dover, Delaware. The company offers auto glass replacement and window tint, though only the Salisbury location does tint. For King, the main advantage of providing both services is simple.
“I mean, they’re all cars,” King says. “So people that get their cars are like, ‘Wow, you can do this as well.’”
Customer satisfaction and willingness to return for other services snowballed into word‑of‑mouth advertising, he says.
“We added on window tinting, and people see it on the road, see other people who got windows tinted, and start asking around,” he says. “Next thing you know, the same name keeps popping up: Delmarva Auto Glass. And it kind of took off from there.”
King says that tint and other auto glass work are separate departments within the Salisbury location, which can sometimes cause scheduling conflicts. On the other hand, it allows for specialization, something King is passionate about.
The tint and auto glass technicians are not cross‑trained. Though this might seem counterintuitive, King says this method works well for Delmarva to provide the best service.
“Instead of a jack‑of‑all‑trades, you’ve got a specialist in each,” he says.
According to King, providing tinting alongside other auto glass services boosts customer confidence.
“It helps customers with peace of mind and a confidence of ‘I trust this place already with one aspect of my need, and I’m going to come right back to them with another,’” he says.
Nu‑Vu Auto Glass | Pocatello, Idaho
Like Hanks, Neil Christensen said Nu‑Vu Auto Glass also stumbled into tint work. The southern Idaho‑based auto glass company purchased a third location that already did tint.
Since Nu‑Vu has owned that shop for only six months, Christensen says they’re still relatively new to combining tint, repair and replacement under one roof, but he’s already seen some benefits. It appeared to help keep business up during this past winter.
“Tint seems to be a little more stable to keep us busy on the slower months for windshields,” Christensen says. “The winter months are typically when it’s slower.”
The name of the shop Nu‑Vu acquired contains the word “tint,” so Christensen says many people initially find the shop while searching online for tint. Others in the community who already know that shop does windshield repair turn to them for that. Both leave with the knowledge that they could go back for the other service in the future.
Now, Nu‑Vu’s goal is to train more people at that location to tint, as initially, the only person trained was the owner who sold the shop to them.
“His agreement was he would stick around for four or five months to train my shop manager to do tint, and then he’d ride off into the sunset,” Christensen says. “And that’s what’s happened so far.”
Once they get a handle on the tint process at that shop, Christensen says Nu‑Vu is considering offering tint at its other two locations.
Abby Bowman is the associate editor of AGRR magazine. Email her at abowman@glass.com and connect with her on LinkedIn.
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