Ali Lijee has never fixed a windscreen in his life but now has one of the biggest growing `auto glazier' portals in the UK, which thousands of people use every month to contact car window fitters and fixers all over the country.
Basically, customers go on the My Windscreen website, select their car details, enter a location and the portal selects six independent local technicians who provide quotes to repair or replace the glass on a vehicle.
It seems a strange business for someone to get into who has no experience in car windscreens but Ali is determined to take on the Autoglasses of this world, after his own brush with the big boys when his car windows got vandalised.
"I contacted Autoglass because they were the ones when you needed a repair but they quoted me £300 which I thought was a lot of money, so I started looking around and found that there were independents out there who are very good and could do it for a lot less" he recalls "I didn't want to go through my insurance, I just wanted to find someone cheaper. I got an independent technician down and he did a fantastic job for around sixty quid but I found that independents don't know much about marketing. And I thought `They need someone who could get them out there...'"
Ali's background was in IT, registering domain names and building websites in the early days of the net, before working for UKFast for eight years...
"I'd been involved in IT a lot and thought `How can I support those guys on the road doing windscreens?'; they don't know much about websites and social media and don't have the time or are not interested in online stuff" he explains.
He came up with the concept of My Windscreen, an open, commission free portal for customers to contact a network of independent auto glaziers... "They get out doing the work and I'm there supporting them and driving work their way" he says "We facilitate the communication between customer and technician."
The website, or portal, began from Salford 18 months ago and has now grown and gone nationwide, with almost three hundred independent auto glaziers associated to the My Windscreen network, to the point where Ali is thinking of branding the vans with the company's logo.
For the customer, the site is easy to use and free, putting them directly in touch with the repair people, who pay £40 a month for the My Windscreen association, with the first two months a free trial.
"We make our money from the technicians so there's no cut from the customer or the cost of the repair" Ali explains "The great thing about it is that companies like Autoglass sometimes can't do repairs for a few weeks and our technicians, some of whom have thirty years experience and know the industry, can do same day and charge less.
"Insurance companies tend to put people onto a company like Autoglass but the customer has the right to choose who they want to go to" he adds "They can get it done through one of the independents who will offer a very good service, quick and quality. And what we're finding now is that insurance companies are taking customers to us if their preferred supplier cannot deal with it."
With around one quarter of independent auto glaziers already signed up to My Windscreen, Ali reckons there's plenty of scope to expand the business, and is ploughing more resources into it to get the name even better known. He has already got a full time team of writers and developers working on boosting the My Windscreen name.
"Our focus is to be a well known brand out there..." he says "I also understand that many people in the UK want a quality windscreen repair service from a local technician with many years of experience, without having to pay the inflated prices that the big nationals are charging..."
Ali started the business in Eccles, where it's still based, but he's taking on the whole world of auto glazing. You could say he's driven to succeed...
For more details on My Windscreen see the website at www.myWindscreen.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/myWindscreen
Facebook: http://facebook.com/myWindscreen
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