For a company that specializes in selling cars and trucks, the Birchwood Automotive Group sure has a lot of people wearing hard hats at its locations.
Manitoba’s largest automotive company, with 24 dealerships, had 80 capital projects of various sizes
in 2025. Every banner under the Birchwood umbrella, from Ford and Chrysler to Honda and Lexus, has rigorous standards for upgrading the facilities that bear their names.
“Each automotive manufacturer has image standards and a schedule that we have to meet. If you’re visiting a Jaguar Landrover store in Winnipeg, it has to have the same look and feel as a Jaguar Landrover store in Toronto or Vancouver,” says Steve Chipman, president and CEO of the Birchwood
Automotive Group.
Bringing a building up to speed can take up to two years, as each project includes plans, drawings and
blueprints before the construction can occur. Once the work has been done, the manufacturer inspects
every site to ensure compliance.
Dealerships typically need to upgrade their facility image every 10 to 15 years. Birchwood spent more
than $20 million on its construction projects in 2025. In some cases, it’s easier to bulldoze an out-of-date building and construct a new one, as was the case with Birchwood Kia on Regent Avenue. A new 26,500-square-foot building opened in June, double the size of the one it replaced.
“We have completed 15 major capital projects focused on facility image improvements and expansion since 2019,” he says.
Birchwood is far from the only company that undertakes these kinds of upgrades. Virtually every chain store that you visit, from McDonald’s and Subway to Starbucks and Boston Pizza, wants to present a uniform experience for customers no matter where they are.
The upgrades to the repair shops are much more than cosmetic as each improvement helps make each
shop safer, more efficient and more comfortable for its technicians. For example, all of Birchwood’s new builds have in-floor heat in the shops. It might not seem like a significant improvement but there’s a physiological rationale behind it.
“It’s way easier on the technicians’ legs in the winter when they’re not standing on cold concrete,” Chipman says. “That’s the kind of thing we think about. We’ve seen the best practices from different facilities and we try to incorporate what we’ve learned to make the customer experience the best it can be. The way shops are now compared to the way they used to be is night and day.”
The image upgrades have an indirect, but significant, impact on Birchwood’s sales.
“After the work is complete, we end up with a more attractive and far more efficient facility. Just as importantly, our employees are happier—and we work hard to keep it that way. When they’re satisfied, that positive energy carries over to our customers. It also helps us retain our current team members and attract new talent,” he says.
It has all contributed to Birchwood’s best year in its history. The Canadian auto market is up four per cent in the last year but sales in Manitoba are up almost 10 per cent and Birchwood is outpacing the local market.
“We’re always trying to improve and get better, with our processes, our training and our communication with customers. We try to get a little bit better every day,” he says.
The better Birchwood does, the more people it hires and that trickles down in multiple ways throughout Manitoba, not the least of which is charitable donations.
“We’ll raise more than $1 million for United Way this year through our employees. That will be four or five per cent of the entire United Way campaign,” he says.
Upgrades to dealership showrooms like Birchwood Kia on Regent Avenue have had a positive impact on Birchwood’s sales.
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