Shopgenie - Hubspot For The Automotive Repair Industry

Company & Team Introduction

Shopgenie is a vertical SaaS CRM for the automotive repair industry, equipping them with an all-in-one platform with all the tools to provide a superior customer experience. The company was founded in 2022 by a duo of young serial entrepreneurs Kieran O’Brien (CEO) and Cayden Phipps (COO), both with prior industry experience. O’Brien worked in automotive repair as a teenager before going on to build multiple businesses in his time away from the automotive world, including SaaS products AgencyReporting.com, which was acquired by Iman Gadzhi, and social media startup MediaKits, which was acquired by Viral Nation in 2022 before returning to the antiquated automotive repair industry to start Shopgenie, bringing the industry a suite of software tools to create a fantastic customer experience. Prior to Shopgenie, Cayden Phipps co-founded ShopAccelerator, an automotive repair-focused performance marketing with over 400 shops throughout the US, helping them generate over 12M in sales. The company has chosen remote to build out their fast-growing team of ~20 employees.

Product Overview

Shopgenie gives shop owners everything they need to give their customers the best experience possible. The company’s flagship product is its free online scheduling tool, which acts as an incredible inbound lead generation tool as many repair shops look to modernize their businesses. It is fully customizable with real-time bay/technician availability, appointment reminders, calendar sync, and local phone number, request reviews from customers, a custom website for your shop, an Omni channel inbox to centralize all your conversions across platforms, an AI chatbot they named “Jasmine AI” to help respond to customer questions even when you’re away from the shop. Shopgenie also has incredible marketing tools that allow you to send promotional blast email campaigns to customers, remind customers about upcoming appointments and declined service reminders, and follow up with lost customers. Shopgenie also integrates with all significant shop management software like Shopmonkey, Mitchell1, and Shopware.

Total Addressable Market

Shopgenie’s market opportunity is nothing short of enormous, with an estimated ~280,000 automotive repair shops in the US alone. Furthermore, the market is highly fragmented, with many single-shop owners who simply do not have the resources to compete with larger repair shops like Midas or Mr. Transmission. This is where Shopgenie comes into play, giving small-scale players all the tools to create a high-quality customer experience like the large-scale chains. According to credenceresearch.com, the automotive repair and maintenance industry was valued at over 845B in 2022, growing at a steady CAGR of 5.5% through 2030, creating a 1.23T opportunity by 2030.

Business Model & The Numbers

Shopgenie uses a simple monthly subscription model with no hidden setup fees or long-term contract commitments. The company doesn’t offer a self-service pricing model, as they are taking a more hands-on, sales-led approach to ensure integrations are set up properly and customers understand the software's full capabilities. The company is firing on all cylinders, with CEO Kieran O’Brien announcing that they surpassed 1M ARR in just over 100 days since their launch and are on track to hit 5M ARR in 2024.

Traction

The numbers do the talking for Shopgenie's early traction, and with 1M ARR and now serving over 650 shops across the US, it is clear to see the demand for an automotive-focused all-in-one CRM solution. Early customers rave about how great Shopgenie’s platform is in reviews, alluding to how much time it saves them, allowing them to do what they do best: fix cars without compromising top-notch customer service. Customers also appreciate the incredible 24/7 customer service and their speed to market with releasing new features.

Competitors

Any market opportunity as large as automotive repair will have a cutthroat competitive landscape for software providers. Generally, the larger players in the industry are shop management solutions focused on everything from payments, estimates, inventory, etc, causing these companies to strive for breadth of product offerings rather than depth. Shopgenie is doing an incredible job building its feature set and brand to be the most customer-centric, easy-to-use, marketing-focused solution in the market, differentiating itself from the competition. Here is some information about Shopgenie’s main competition:

Shopmonkey - ShopMonkey is a leading cloud-based automotive repair point-of-sale system founded in 2016. The company most recently raised a massive 75M series C funding round in 2021. They offer a wide variety of products, many of which are not competitive and are actually complementary to Shopgenie’s product. The product that competes with Shopgenie is their high-priced marketing suite, which is $449/month and offers similar features like an AI chatbot, automatic review requests, a scheduling tool, etc. Where Shopgenie shines in comparison to competitors like Shopmonkey is the thoughtfulness of its products, such as its real-time technician availability for scheduling, websites that rank in the 95% percentile on Google with quick load times and are optimized for mobile, reviews are automatically collected and placed on your site. Shopmonkey is headquartered in San Jose, California, and serves over 5,000 customers. It has grown its team to 150+ employees.

Funding

Founded just a few years ago in 2022, Shopgenie has only raised 1 pre-seed round of funding at an undisclosed location. The raise was led by TechNexus Venture Collaborative and had strong participation from other firms such as Antigravity Capital and Contrarian Thinking in addition to notable angel investors such as Shaan Puri (Founder, Bebo & MilkRoad), Daniel Ha (Co-Founder, Discus), Sahil Bloom (Co-founder, Assembly), Codie Sanchez (Founder, Contrarian Thinking), Hiten Shah (Co-Founder, KISS Metrics) among others. Many of these angels are well networked with large social media followings such as Codie Sanchez, who writes about buying “boring, cash flowing small businesses” and has 100,000+ followers that own or are interested in owning a small business; many are probably owners of a repair shop giving Shopgenie a massive organic distribution advantage and help build their brand.