The Yorkshire investor who works two days a week after making millions in vehicle repairs

The 50-year-old made his first fortune a few years ago after leading a £75,000 management buyout (MBO) of Dent Wizard Ventures (DWV), the vehicle repair franchise business he ran in 2011 and then selling it for £16m in 2018.

However, he says it was a case of being in the right place at the right time - as well as working ‘incredibly hard’ - to reach that point.

Leeds-born Newstead left school at 16 with the basic aim of earning a living and gaining some independence and was thrilled when he was given a job at Barclays Bank’s Leeds University branch.

“I rolled up on the first day with a suit and a briefcase, thinking I’d hit Wall Street, and was given a brush and told to sweep the driveway,” he recalls.

After a few years he decided to pursue a career in sales. “I had an ambition to be in sales, for one reason only - to get a car,” he says.

He had brief stint selling photocopiers before moving into an apprenticeship-type role in the Leeds office of tyre firm Goodyear, his first foray into the motor industry. He joined the sales team where he worked for seven or eight years.

“You make decisions in your career and a lot of it is fate,” says Newstead. “I reached a point at Goodyear where the only way I could get any higher was by relocating to Wolverhampton and neither my fiancee nor I wanted to move from Leeds.”

Fate, it seems, intervened at that point and he met a former colleague at a trade show who recommended him for a job at SIXT rent-a-car in Chesterfield.

But one Christmas Eve, Newstead, who at that point had a wife, a baby and a huge mortgage, was made redundant.

With hindsight, he says it was the best thing that ever happened to him. “It was a bit stressful at the time but I got a good pay-off and it gave me the opportunity to take a risk,” he says.

He saw a job advertised for vehicle repair business DWV, owned by Cox Enterprises, which he initially thought sounded ‘too good to be true’ but he took the job and ended up as their European chief executive for over a decade.

When the company, which was primarily a vehicle remarketing business, eventually decided to offload the vehicle repair division, he took the opportunity to lead the 2011 MBO.

He grew the business from a £1m turnover firm to £8m by focusing on cosmetic vehicle repairs for insurers before the completing the sale seven years later.

“If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” says Newstead. “I’m not one of those people who has strategically planned their career. I’ve done pretty well for myself but a lot of it has been right place, right time.

“I genuinely think that’s true in life. You do create your own opportunities but sometimes it’s a roll of the dice. If I hadn’t been made redundant, who knows what would have happened.”

SMART Repairs works with warranty companies, insurers, dealer groups and vehicle remarketing companies to complete bodyshop repairs on vehicles with scuffs and scrapes.

The business had been a franchise of DWV for 12 years, during which time Newstead had worked very closely with its owner Dan Besau to develop the business by introducing SMART (Small and Medium Area Repair Techniques) and wheel repair services.

The company is currently focused expanding throughout the UK following Newstead’s multi-million pound investment, which saw him acquire 50 per cent of the shares and become co-owner of the business in 2019.

Over the last two years, Newstead and Besau have rebranded the business and moved away from the franchise model, instead hiring a team of mobile technicians who work from a fleet of vans.

This year, SMART Repairs is predicted to generate a £7m turnover and end the year with 100 staff, double the number it had in January.

The business has a formidable client list, including many Yorkshire dealerships such as Bentley Leeds; BMW Leeds, Harrogate, York and Bradford; Mercedes Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and York; Ferrari Leeds; Aston Martin Leeds; and Audi York and Harrogate.

The plan is to expand across the UK with a fleet of vans and technicians. “We’re effectively selling labour,” says Newstead. “We recruit skilled people, give them the equipment to do the job, give them the customer base and reward them accordingly. It’s a really simple model but it works.”

The next market for expansion the M25, Essex, the North West, the North East and Scotland.

The longer-term plan is to continue the geographical expansion through the Midlands with an aim of eventually providing nationwide coverage.

Although the company has looked at acquisitions, it has decided to focus on organic growth instead.

“We could grow a lot quicker if we did acquisitions,” says Newstead. “There are a lot of independent and small operators out there but our success is because of our ethos. There’s a culture here that you work hard and get rewarded accordingly but in the businesses that we’ve looked at, there’s been a big culture clash.

“We took a view as a board that it would be easier to recruit 25-30 technicians than it would be to integrate a business with a different culture into our business.”

Newstead, a father-of-three to Tom, 21, Katie, 19, and Jess, 13, says he is now reaping the rewards of working ‘incredibly hard’ when he was younger, by only working two days a week.

“There’s a management team that runs this business and I’ve got a lot of free time now,” he says. “It gives me chance to look back and reflect.

“I’ve been lucky. Whilst I didn’t spend a lot of time with my children when they were little, I’ve been able to spend a huge amount of time with them during their teenage years.”