I started my career in telecommunications, working across five countries. Then I moved into the European automotive aftermarket — and never really left. Over 25 years, I built tyre distribution businesses across multiple markets. Somewhere in the middle, I spent a decade in technology, bouncing between automotive and tech before the two started to merge. With Carsu, I'm finally combining them. I saw how independent workshops actually operate — and how far removed most software is from that reality. That gap has only gotten wider. (More about our background.)
Before we wrote a single line of code for Carsu, I spent time visiting independent workshops and tyre shops across Europe. Not sending surveys. Not running focus groups. Walking into shops, standing at the counter, talking to people and watching how work actually gets done.
What I found was the same story, over and over — just in different languages.
Three workshops, three countries, one problem
In a shop in Turin, the owner held up his phone and said: "This is my entire customer database — I have it right here in WhatsApp." Hundreds of customers. No backup. No search. No way to send a service reminder without scrolling through months of chat history.
Near Cologne, I watched a front-desk manager juggle between four different programs just to look up information and complete the work on a single customer's car. One screen for the calendar. One for the customer record. One for the estimate. One for the parts catalogue. Alt-tabbing through chaos while the phone kept ringing.
In another German workshop, the owner told me something that stuck with me: he never sends reminders or any communication to his customers. Not because he doesn't want to — because he's afraid he won't comply with GDPR — or the DSGVO, as it's known in Germany. A regulation designed to protect consumers had, in practice, made a small business owner too scared to send a simple appointment reminder.
These aren't edge cases. This is how the majority of Europe's independent aftermarket operates.
The scale of the problem
The European aftermarket is a EUR 226 billion business, according to BCG and CLEPA. Within that, 250,000 independent repair shops operate across the EU — 82% of all workshops are not brand-affiliated, according to Roland Berger. These are small businesses, typically 3 to 15 people, serving 280 million vehicles on European roads.
Yet most of them still run on phone calls, paper diaries, and disconnected tools. Roland Berger's Aftermarket Pulse 2025 report found that over 40% of workshops still haven't made customer convenience a priority. That gap between what customers expect and what workshops deliver is growing every year.
The next generation of car owners expects digital-first interaction. They book restaurants, haircuts, and doctor's appointments online. They're not going to call a workshop and wait for a callback. Meanwhile, BCG warns that "new players and digital sales tools will increase competition" — independent workshops that don't adapt risk losing customers to those that do.
Old tools in a digital world
Independent workshops face three pressures at once.
Customer expectations have shifted. Drivers expect instant answers, digital confirmations, and live updates about their vehicles. A handwritten estimate or a "we'll call you back" no longer feels professional — it feels like a red flag.
Staff shortages are real. A shop owner in Trento told me he'd given up looking for front-desk help entirely. Not a cost issue — he simply couldn't find the right person. So he does everything himself: answers the phone, writes estimates, manages the calendar, talks to customers, and somehow still finds time to work on cars. He's not unusual. Across Europe, recruiting reliable admin staff has become so difficult that owners are absorbing the work themselves, burning hours on administration that should be spent on cars and customers.
Existing solutions don't fit. A BMW specialist in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, put it bluntly: he couldn't find any software that did exactly what he needed, and he wasn't willing to pay for three different systems while only using 10% of each. That's the reality for most independents. The garage management systems on the market were built for large dealer networks or designed decades ago. They're too complex, too rigid, or simply not built for a 3-to-15-person workshop. The owner in Turin doesn't need an enterprise DMS. He needs his WhatsApp conversations connected to his calendar and his job cards.
Why messaging changes everything
Here's something the software industry consistently gets wrong about workshops: they don't check email. They don't download apps. They don't log into dashboards between jobs.
But they have a messaging app open all day. And so do their customers.
In Italy and Spain, that's WhatsApp. In Greece, it's Viber. The app differs, but the pattern is identical: customers send photos of their tyres via chat. They ask for quotes via chat. They confirm appointments via chat. It's the operating system for small business communication across Southern Europe.
The problem isn't the channel. The problem is that none of it is connected to anything. Every conversation is a dead end — no record in the booking system, no link to the customer profile, no automated follow-up.
That's what Carsu was built to solve. Not to replace WhatsApp or Viber, but to make them work as proper business tools. Appointment confirmations, service reminders, status updates — all sent through the channel workshop owners and their customers already use, but now connected to the calendar, the workboard, and the customer record.
What we built
Carsu is a single platform where independent workshops and tyre shops manage their entire workflow:
- Smart bookings — Online appointment scheduling that syncs with your workshop calendar in real time. Customers pick a service and a time slot. No phone tag.
- Job tracking — Every repair, tyre change, and service job tracked from intake to completion on a visual workboard. No sticky notes. No guesswork about what's in progress.
- Estimates and job templates — Professional estimates created in seconds using reusable templates. Send them digitally, get approval digitally.
- WhatsApp & Viber integration — Automatic appointment confirmations, reminders, and status updates through the messaging channel your customers already use — WhatsApp in most of Europe, Viber in Greece.
- Customer management — A complete history of every vehicle, every service, and every interaction. The workshop owner in Turin no longer needs to scroll through chat history to find a customer's last visit.
This isn't a feature list bolted together from separate products. It's a single system designed from the ground up for how independent workshops actually work.
Built with the industry, not just for it
Every feature in Carsu was shaped by direct feedback from mechanics, shop owners, and front-desk staff across Europe. Not from a product roadmap written in a corporate office. From conversations in workshops that smelled like rubber and brake dust.
We tested early versions with real shops. We watched where they got stuck. We removed what they didn't use. We built what they asked for — and sometimes what they didn't know they needed until they saw it working.
The GDPR-worried owner in Germany? Carsu handles consent and data processing compliance by default. He doesn't need to become a privacy lawyer to send an appointment reminder. The system takes care of it.
Where we are today
Carsu launched in September 2025 and is now live in seven languages: English, Italian, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Greek. We're actively working with workshops across Southern and Western Europe, and expanding into new markets.
The product keeps evolving based on what we learn from the shops that use it every day. That feedback loop — from workshop floor to product update — is what keeps Carsu relevant. Not a roadmap written in isolation, but a platform shaped by the people it serves.
The future of independent workshops
I've watched three generations of workshop software come and go. The pattern is always the same: a technology company builds something clever, tries to sell it to workshops, and wonders why adoption is slow.
The answer is always the same too. They built for how they think workshops should work, not for how workshops actually work.
Carsu is built on that difference. On 25 years of watching what happens at the counter, in the bay, and on the phone. On knowing that the best technology is the kind that disappears into the workflow — that makes the day shorter, not more complicated.
The workshops that thrive tomorrow will be the ones that embrace these changes and adapt to what the market demands. Carsu's mission is to build the tools that make that possible.
If you run an independent workshop or tyre shop, I'd like to show you what that looks like. Start a free trial — no credit card, no commitment. Just a better way to run your shop. Want to see what's included? Check our plans.
