Our story began as a result of an ongoing trend in the body shop business: the end of local ownership in the collision repair industry. All over the United States (and Canada), consolidators, mostly owned by giant private equity groups, are buying up both large and small body shops.

Barry Burns, the founder of Barry’s Collision, worked almost 35 years for the very successful family-owned body shop Jack’s Paint Place, Inc., in Converse, Texas. Barry began washing cars at the shop as a young man and worked his way up to shop foreman. Jack’s Paint Place had a well-deserved reputation for quality and service, which allowed the company to succeed almost purely via word-of-mouth advertising. They had a devoted base of loyal, satisfied customers.

Ultimately, in 2016, Jack’s was acquired by a large corporate-owned collision repair company, becoming one of many locations in Texas, and ceased to operate as a locally-owned business. Barry stayed on as the shop foreman, but the corporate way of repairing cars didn’t mesh well with the lessons he had learned about quality body and paint work at Jack’s. Fortunately, Barry had an ownership interest in a large commercial building across the street from what used to be Jack’s, and in 2017 he walked across Converse Business Lane in Converse, and started Barry’s Collision, LLC. With a few hand-picked technicians (who were also alumni of Jack’s Paint Place), he began repairing cars and trucks the way he had been trained: with an emphasis on quality bodywork and paint. He believes in treating his customers they way he’d like to be treated, as individuals and not as numbers in a corporate ledger.