GREENWICH, CT – Crash Champions, LLC (“Crash Champions” or the “Company”), a leading independent collision repair service providers and a portfolio company of A&M Capital Opportunities (“AMCO”), announced on August 1, 2022 that it successfully completed a sale of the business to Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. (together with its affiliates, “Clearlake”), in which the Company simultaneously executed a strategic transaction with Service King Collision (“Service King”). Crash Champions’ management team and operating partners, alongside Clearlake, with a minority investment from A&M Capital Strategic Investments Fund, will lead the combined Company going forward. Following closing and integration, the Company will operate over 550 total locations across 35 states and the District of Columbia under the Crash Champions name and banner. Terms of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory clearances, were not disclosed.
Founded in 1999 by Matt Ebert, Crash Champions is a U.S. operator of over 200 collision repair facilities. Having expanded from a single storefront in Chicago into a present-day network of 20 states, each location is built on the Company’s founder and operator-led values, championing customer service and workplace satisfaction.
Since its founding in 1976, Service King has grown into one of the industry’s largest collision repair platforms with over 330 locations spanning 24 states. Today, Service King offers deep footprint coverage in many of the nation’s fastest growing MSAs, including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Partnering with Crash Champions will allow Service King to better serve its customers and carrier partners, while driving long-term value for employees, vendors, and investors.
“Today is an exciting day for Crash Champions and another major milestone in our growth story,” said Mr. Ebert, founder and CEO of Crash Champions. “This strategic combination further enhances our ability to serve our customers and insurance partners while creating advancement opportunities for our team members across both organizations.” Following the closing of this deal, the combined Company’s total workforce will exceed 9,200 team members. Crash Champions and Service King have highly complementary geographic footprints with limited overlap. “We remain committed to the operator-first mindset that has guided us throughout our history. This approach has enabled us to successfully integrate hundreds of shops and thousands of employees into one of the leading employers in the collision repair industry,” concluded Mr. Ebert.
AMCO acquired a majority interest in Crash Champions on July 31, 2019 and was attracted to the opportunity to utilize the firm’s expertise scaling and professionalizing high growth businesses. Crash Champions, as a leading Chicago-based collision repair chain, provided the opportunity to invest in a high growth MSO of collision repair centers that operated in a fragmented, but large and stable industry. Under AMCO’s three-year ownership, the firm supported the Company’s expansion from 8 original shops to over 200 shops across 20 states.
About Crash Champions
Crash Champions is a leading independent collision repair company operating over 200 state-of-the-art centers across 20 states—including: California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin—as well as Washington, DC. Founded in 1999 as a single shop outside Chicago by industry veteran and entrepreneur Matt Ebert, today Crash Champions is one of the fastest growing and largest founder-led and operated collision repair MSOs in America. For more information, visit www.crashchampions.com.
About A&M Capital Opportunities
AMCO, with assets under management of $500 million, is Alvarez & Marsal Capital’s lower-middle market growth strategy, focused on shared control and structured minority equity investments in North America. AMCO partners with business owners and management teams to help recapitalize and grow businesses, leveraging deep operational capabilities and industry relationships to position them for accelerated long-term growth. AMCO has significant experience with all types of transactions, including growth equity, growth buyouts, recapitalizations, and consolidations of fragmented sectors. More broadly, Alvarez & Marsal Capital is a multi-strategy private equity investment firm with over $4.4 billion in total assets under management across four investment strategies, which maintains a strategic association with Alvarez & Marsal, one of the largest operationally focused advisory firms in the world. For more information, visit https://www.a-mcapital.com/.
