Today we’d like to introduce you to Molly and Tim Heyen.
Molly and Tim, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
After moving to downtown Chicago we nearly had it all. A great home with a view of the Sears Tower and easy access to all the city has to offer. But, one thing was missing. Tim no longer had space to work on his own car. He could go to his friend’s homes in the suburbs or his parents downstate, but that made it hard for him to do his work on his own time. That’s when he came up with the idea for a DIY auto shop.
We toyed around with the idea for a few years but having never started such a big venture before, we knew it would be a challenge to do correctly. Tim enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and, in every entrepreneurial class he could, he ran the business idea through its paces. We figured after graduating we would either have a well-developed business plan or we would feel confident that the idea was not worth pursuing further.
We advanced to the second round of the New Venture Challenge and that contest was what really got the plan rolling. The contest is a semester-long course where teams of businesses write out a business plan and learn to pitch their idea to investors. We got a ton of advice from investors and mentors and completed the course with a much stronger sense of what we wanted to do and how to make it happen.
From that we were able to make the connections we needed to secure an SBA loan and open our doors. We opened in May 2017 and are already seeing a pattern of customers and great support from the auto enthusiast crowd.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Opening the space was not easy. It’s a new concept for the city of Chicago and required a significant amount of start-up capital for tools and equipment. It took us nearly two years to open our doors after finalizing our business plan. We took out an SBA loan and found a potential location on the north side. After many months of negotiations with the city of Chicago, we decided we could not continue through with that location and we had to find another.
A few months later we thought we found another one, but in the end, we were outbid by another company. Finally, we found the space we are in. The location is fantastic! It’s only 10 minutes from downtown and much easier to get to from anywhere than the other two locations were. It’s two blocks west of I90/94 and a mile west of Lake Shore Drive. As a bonus to us, it’s only 2 miles from our home in the south end of the Loop. Once we finally secured this space it only took about a month to open. We had learned so much about how to pitch a new concept to the city that securing our license for this location was a cinch.
Please tell us about Gearhead Workspace.
Gearhead Workspace is a DIY shop for automotive and motorcycle enthusiasts. We built it as a space for DIYers to not just have room to work on their vehicles, but also become part of a community. We welcome customers with every level of experience. We have mechanics who can be booked for coaching sessions and we offer classes every Sunday. We are even doing a series of classes starting in January where students can earn their Gearhead University MBA (Master in BadAssery). It will be the perfect course for someone who is new to auto work, but ready to jump feet first into their new hobby.
We have membership options and members are invited to enjoy our member lounge We host member events through the year. We are also starting an amateur racing team. The races require teams to purchase a car for $500 or less and fix it up, staying within a strict budget, to make it race for a whole weekend. Members have priority consideration for joining the team.
We participate in events with other car clubs throughout the year and, to keep the energy of Chicago’s auto enthusiast crowd up throughout the winter (our off-season), we are hosting monthly car meetups in our garage. The garage is heated, so we see no reason for the car shows to end just because it’s cold out! The car shows are held on the third Sunday of every month from 8:00-10:00 am from November-March.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
When we found the first location someone in city hall warned Molly that it would likely be a very lengthy and expensive process to secure the licensing for that building. Molly related this information to the team, but a few architects and other professionals we were working with were sure that she was mistaken. Down the rabbit hole we went… We took the misguided advice of the other professionals and in the end, found that the person in city hall was absolutely correct. Had we listened to him only we would not have spent so much time on that location and could have possibly opened sooner and for less money.
However, we learned a ton in that whole endeavor, so it may have been for the best. During that time we were able to plan out our day-to-day operations and we purchased a lot of our equipment and tools. So when we did find the right location we were able to open quickly because we already had most of what we needed and we had a good plan for how we wanted to set up each bay and the rest of the garage.
Pricing:
- Non-member Car Lift Bay $44/hr
- Non-member Flat Bay $34/hr
- Non-member Motorcycle Lift $17/hr
- Non-member Mechanic as a Coach $35/hr
- Regular Member Car Lift Bay $35/hr
- Regular Member Flat Bay $27/hr
- Regular Member Motorcycle Lift $14/hr
- Premium Members – Bay time including up to 150 hrs then 50% discount. Some coaching and storage also included.
Contact Info:
- Address: 305 W 31st St, Chicago IL 60616
- Website: gearheadworkspace.com
- Phone: 312-489-8818
- Email: feedback@gearheadworkspace.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gearheadworkspace/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GearheadWorkspace/?ref=bookmarks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/GHWSChicago
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/gearhead-workspace-chicago
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