How would you like your collision repair market fragmented? If you hunger for excitement, prefer life on the fringe, like to speak loudly in absolute terms, and don't care whose toes you step on or how strident your leaders are, you can join one of these new groups espousing what amounts to a revolution against ASA, the insurance industry, and the long-established, but indeed often-questionable, practices of the industry.

Evolution might seem a better pick, especially for the conservatives among us. To join this movement, however, you must buy into the notion that consolidation a la Wayne Huizenga will continue to be the wave of the future. If you have what it takes to succeed with this cadre, you will trade your business to the group purporting to be nationwide - or headed in that direction - in exchange for a minority (very) position in an untested venture. You can keep a set of keys, for now, and pretend to be the one in charge when there's a customer complaint.

Devolution means going back to yesterday by means of downsizing and disinvesting in your business. Why suffer the bother of employees and equipment when you can, once again, live off the fruits of your own labor as a craftsman among the genteel poor? Just cash in what chips you may have left, take a one-stall garage in a way-past-prime neighborhood, and offer to fix rust buckets the rest of your days. Those days will likely be shortened, however, once you rediscover the joys of working with a power post and a creeper trying to fix something that probably ought to be left to die.

For some, chaos is boss. That, like devolution, represents the roots of the industry in pre-association days. In fact, associations, such as ASA and it predecessor groups, were formed to shed light on the darkness of a totally fragmented and chaotic industry. To fully practice the tenets of chaos, all that is necessary is to isolate oneself from whatever else is going on in the industry and function more or less like Mel Gibson in one of those warrior movies that take place in some distant past or future. Let "I Did It My Way" be your theme song.

Any of the above directions will serve to fragment the industry and sap the strength of its participants through infighting, backbiting, isolation and general malaise.

The alternative, as they used to tell us children of the '60s, is to work for change within the system as individuals. As an organization, ASA is not perfect, but it is "the system," or at least a big part of it. Through sheer size, ASA can be said to suffer from the burden of bureaucratic structure and mainstream orientation. To some, it is like the federal government; others compare its operations to those of a third-party world, one-party nation. More to the point, the revolutionaries and evolutionaries seem to think it is fiddling while Rome burns.

We happen to think ASA is about the only answer in behalf of a strong and unified repair industry. While the odds are a little slim that the individual shop owner is going to have much impact on the national organization, there is plenty of room to function proactively at the state and chapter levels.

Then, it is instructive to remember that there is only so much an association can do or ought to do. No group effort is going to get the PCP raised or change the propensity of insurance adjusters to take away and bargain back that which was thought to have been given. No group is going to solve our personnel problems, instantly salvage a broken bottom line, or stop our hair from falling out.

Those who feel they need to reinvent the wheel are certainly free to do so; but they should not delude themselves into thinking they are doing anything new or particularly fruitful. In fact, they are probably weakening the entire effort.

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