Glass Just a Click Away for Shops and the 'Do-It-Yourself' Market

Windshieldstogo.com, a website that sells automotive glass directly to consumers and/or shops, was launched in 1999 and continues to grow, according to company president Beau Turner. Using the website, glass can be ordered online and either shipped to your shop (or to a customer's home), or picked up at one of the company's warehouses.

While Turner says the company does not advocate "do-it-yourself" windshield installations, it does offer links to its windshield tool supply division, which the website says offers "tools for do-it-yourself auto glass installation and repair," and links to windshield installation guides. The windshield supply division was launched about a year and a half ago, according to Turner.

"Our disclaimer is that we discourage from installing their own glass and to only used trained certified installers," Turner told glassBYTEs.com™/AGRR magazine. "It's not something you really want people doing themselves. But some windshields you could-on some of the older cars."

As for the installation guides available via a link on windshieldstogo.com, Turner said these are meant to serve only as a reference.

"We give that just as a reference. We don't back it up," he said. "That's just a link that has some information that we know of about installing glass. Again, when we send someone information about picking up their glass, we do tell them that we don't really recommend that they install-at least on windshields."

Turner said the company does not discourage customers from installing other glass parts, though.

"Of course there are all the tempered [parts] and door [glass]-most people can do those themselves," he said.
Windshieldstogo.com does offer to provide installation as well, through a network of shops-who can be considered for addition to the site's list by entering their info on the website, under a link called "Add Shop." Turner says there's no fee for this service.

"If we're selling the glass installed, we contract with another shop to do the labor part of it," he said.
Turner could not disclose how many jobs a day it normally contracts-nor how many windshields it sells directly to consumers.

For its glass sales, Turner, who owned his own auto glass shop in central California prior to the launch of the website, says the company has a wide range of distributors it subcontracts throughout the country.

In addition, windshieldstogo.com offers a range of windshield repair systems for the do-it-yourself market. However, if a customer needs a windshield repair and would like to have it done professionally, Turner said the company refers the customer to a shop, but doesn't get involved in the payment process.

The company's latest venture is a site called autoglasshosting.net, which allows shops to pay to have a website created automatically.

"[Shop owners] can actually go online and sign up and it immediately creates a website for them," Turner said. "We haven't really been pushing it but we've signed up quite a few shops and we're really going to push it in the next few weeks."

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