For the next several weeks, we’re going to highlight some local small businesses that are doing uniquely amazing things in the Upstate. Feel free to comment or email me with any local businesses you think are worthy of being in TGM’s “Small Business Spotlight.”
This week’s spotlight is on a business that could change the way you think about wear and tear and damage on your car. Imagine for a moment that you are stopped at a traffic light, and while stopped, someone behind you runs into your rear bumper, causing you some damage. Once you have the at-fault driver’s insurance company assess your car, they give you two options – take a check for around $1,000 or have them fix your bumper at a body shop. What if you could take the $1,000 check and instead of spending it all on a new bumper, have someone take the old bumper and make it look new again for only $200? Now you’ve got a bumper that looks brand new and enough money to buy the iPhone 8, whenever it comes out.
Guess what? If you live in the Upstate of SC, this scenario isn’t a pipe dream.
Enter PLG Auto Restoration, a small business in the Upstate that has a fascinating niche – restoring paint, leather, and glass on vehicles to make them look new again (or at the very least, much less worn). Think of them as plugging the gap between auto detailers and body shops. Detailers can buff out very light scratches on a car, but they mostly exist to make your car shine. Body shops can handle the big jobs – replacing entire sections of your car with a new section that matches in color. PLG is able to handle the intermediate work – deeper scratches, holes in bumpers, worn leather, and cracked glass – with the same outcome of making your car look new again.
Just look at a few before-and-after photos of what PLG has done, and you’ll immediately see how impressive their work is:
PLG Auto Restoration is owned and operated by Alan Ballard, who has 17 years of experience in mobile auto restoration. There are others out there doing what Alan is doing, but he differentiates himself by, among other things, not merely trying to cover up scratches (as is common in the industry) but by making the scratches go away completely. Perhaps the most important difference between PLG and other restoration companies out there is that Alan uses high-end paint that is produced in Germany to ensure his body work looks great and is durable. It is extremely important to him not to cut quality in an effort to save money.
PLG’s standard pricing is extremely reasonable – a typical bumper repair is $200, fixing the scratches on a car is $100, leather seat repair is $75-100, and repairing a glass/windshield crack to prevent the crack from spreading is $50. Of course, pricing depends on the scope of work to be done, but those prices are fairly typical.
PLG’s main clients are auto dealerships, but he does work with retail/individual customers as well. I know that in the future, I definitely plan to utilize Alan and his incredible skill to help with some of the wear and tear that my vehicles experience.
To contact PLG, send them a Facebook message here or give them a call at (706) 424-2138.