In 1979, George and his then partner, Bob Koroscil, founded Eastside Collision.

 “In the beginning it was a two man operation,” says George. “Over the years we slowly grew it. In the early 90’s I bought out my partner and continued to move forward on my own.”

 George Brick and his wife Lynn are the Owner/Operators of Eastside Collision Repairs, Eastside Industrial Coatings, and Eastside Heavy Truck Collision in Winnipeg, MB. The three facilities operate as The Eastside Group.

 The next decade was a period of slow but steady growth for the collision repair facility. It wasn’t until 1996 that Eastside Collision began to assume the form it has today, thanks to a conversation Eastside general manager Les Heshka had in a nearby restaurant one day at lunch.

 “I started talking with someone who ran a fiberglass manufacturing facility," says Les. "We talked a bit about the collision business, and he asked if we were interested in trying something different." The something different in question was working on fibreglass parts for the bus industry. George decided to go ahead with the idea and set up a night shift at the original location. It proved successful. Volume increased to a point that six months later the decision was made to move that part of the business to its own location. In 1997 Eastside Industrial Coatings officially opened for business.

 Today Eastside Industrial Coatings provides a variety of services to the bus industry, including bodywork, top coating, and special anti-graffiti coating applications to numerous types of substrates at the OEM level. They are also involved in the finessing of moulds used to make the parts. Eastside Industrial Coatings also does work for the PVC window industry amongst others.

 The next expansion came in 1999, when George perceived a need for another heavy truck collision facility in the Winnipeg area. Land was purchased and a new shop was built to expand the car facility and serve heavy trucks.

 “Some of our longest standing clients were Hutterite colonies,” says George. “Up until that point, we had been servicing their fleet of pick-up trucks, vans, and all their light-duty vehicles. It was a natural move to start servicing their heavy truck fleet as well.”

 Within two years business had grown to the point where the facility just didn’t have room for everything, and in November of 2001 Eastside Heavy Truck Collision moved to a separate location.

 Launching an expansion is always risky. For The Eastside Group it is a certainty that it has been a success. Long gone are the days when a staff of six worked in a 2400 square foot facility. Today The Eastside Group employs nearly 100 people and the three buildings total roughly 52,000 square feet. With three successful businesses under their belts, some might feel content to rest on their past accomplishments. Some might, but not George Brick and Les Heshka.

 “We are in the process of purchasing a Car-O-Liner’s BR6300 frame machine, complete with a computer controlled measuring system sporting Blue Tooth technology,” says Les. “To my knowledge it is one of only two machines certified for performing structural repairs to aluminum frames on BMWs and Jaguars. It is also large enough to handle full size pick-ups and some large cube vans. We will be aggressively soliciting outside work and concentrating on turn around times.”

 Looking to the future is a sentiment echoed by George.

 “Right now we’ve been really going both for quality control and working at efficiencies,” says George. “Today’s customers are very demanding, but good technicians are still hard to come by. We’ve been doing a lot of in-house training, especially at our industrial facility.”

 The in-house training at The Eastside Group is mentor based, with junior technicians working closely with those technicians who have more experience.

 “We work out a payback with our senior staff for mentoring new people, so they have a vested interest. Sometimes junior staff may spend years working closely with their mentor and learning about the business,” says George. “A technician who meets our standards knows the whole industry.”