New Employees Get Expensive

With big box chains from Walmart to Chipotle offering perks like college tuition reimbursement,  how does a small shop find and keep employees?

Walmart, Amazon and UPS are also offering signing bonuses.

The 12 volt stores we spoke with are coping by raising pay or finding new ways to provide time off and flexible work hours.

5-store Car Tunes, MI may add part time employees to help give the full time employees a rest. Columbus Car Audio, OH is thinking about offering a “signing bonus” for a new employee.

Other stores are in the same old bind of wanting to raise prices so they can pay employees more, but are afraid to lose business to lower priced competitors.

Pete Muller of Tunes n Tint happens to have enough employees at the moment. But he noted, “One of my good friends is a general manger for Sam’s Club. They just starting offering employees starting wages of $20 an hour with 100 percent of their college paid for. I know it varies from area to area. It’s wild, completely insane. It won’t be that way forever. At least I don’t think so. But at the moment it’s very easy to get a job with no skills at all.”

Target is one of the latest companies to offer a tuition free program for workers. In August it announced it will cover the cost of tuition, fees and text books for part time and full time workers and it will also help fund graduate degrees.

Two-store Columbus Car Audio desperately needs sales people. “It’s become harder to even get somebody in the door. Say it’s a young guy that doesn’t have any experience. We’re having to guarantee a much higher wage than we did a year ago,” said Todd Hays.

The shop already offers a 401K, paid vacations and sick leave. “But it’s very competitive right now so you have to keep looking at what more you can do,” said Hays. “We are finally raising our labor rates by 20 percent, again to be competitive in terms of getting people paid.”  Labor is moving from $99/hour to $119/hour.

Smaller shops can’t offer the same benefits and don’t want to raise prices.

As remote start season rolls around, Audioworx in CT said it’s waiting to see if it can raise prices to cover the higher cost of remote start products this year, let alone higher wages.  “On average there’s about a $20 increase from my remote start vendors over last year, so just to make the same exact money, I’m going to to need to raise the price of my remote starts by $20. The problem is I may price myself out of the market. There’s always been those shops that do it for sub $200.”

But again, paying top dollar may not be sufficient.  Car Tunes, MI pays very well, but it’s had a 70 to 80 percent increase in business since the pandemic and it’s losing employees who want shorter hours and a less stressful job. Car Tunes is one of the few chains in the area with a good head unit supply, it said, so business went through the roof.

Because it is located in Detroit, the store is competing with the OEM arms of suppliers such as Denso and other audio suppliers to the car companies, said Business Development Manager Nate Kubicz. “The audio automotive suppliers are constantly poaching for staff.”  He added, “Retail hours are difficult and we’ve been so wildly busy…the guys are making more money than ever but some are reaching the breaking point.”

As a result, the company is thinking of hiring part time employees for the first time. That way, a former or retired salesman or technician might come in from 5 pm to 8pm and free up the full-time tech to go home to his family.

“Maybe it needs something different..  We’ve been in business for 44 years and have never done it, but unfortunately, money isn’t doing it,” said Kubicz.

Just for the record, other mega stores offering tuition reimbursement include Amazon, Sam’s Club and Starbucks in addition to Walmart, Chipotle and Target.