Blade Auto Center officially inaugurates their Mindanao Ave branch, their 50th store in the country and their second standalone store. It houses more isles of car accessories, as we expected of them, but also features new sections.
Robert Tan, founder and CEO of Blade Auto Center, started the company with its first branch in Market! Market! BGC back in 2004. With a lot of their stores thriving in malls all over the metro and beyond, they’re now venturing to standalone stores – a solution to the limited spaces in malls.
It’s not surprising that he felt restricted in the malls as Blade Auto Center Mindanao Avenue hosts more than your usual car accessories. The ground floor is designed like a showroom, prepared to host a car, though the current display are ebikes and aftermarket wheels. At the second floor are rows upon rows of car parts and accessories, but now also includes accessories for bikes, motorcycles, and even related tools with some brands having their own racks. There’s also a focus on safety with dedicated shelves for dashcams and helmets including the new HIRO helmets.
Blade Mindanao Ave can also cater to your car’s maintenance needs like oil change, tune up, battery issues, tire issues, and basic PMS can be done. They have four service bays, all with lifters, and have dedicated personnel. Tan said that they worked with operators of other local service centers in order to train their technicians for the car services. The training is also continuous together with their partner service center’s own personnel.
“It’s actually an experiment,” Tan said about having a service center in Blade. “Marami ang may gusto sa mga service centers, marami din ang gusto ang Blade Auto Center, so we thought it’s a perfect marriage naman. Meron kay serbisyo, meron ka din accessories” further adding that the concept was modeled after other service centers in other countries.
Apart from their own services, Blade Auto Center Mindanao Avenue also welcomes new partners into their building. They already have Petshop.ph and Team Graphitee – a motorcycle parts and accessories seller, as tenants in the building. They have 5 more commercial spaces on the ground floor along Mindanao Avenue that’s open for related products or services like bicycle shops, motorcycle shops, food services, and car aircon repair.
When asked about what’s next for Blade Auto Center, he said there are requests for a standalone one-stop store like Blade Mindanao Avenue, but in Alabang or anywhere in the south. With Blade Auto Center’s steady growth, it’s not surprising if we receive another inauguration invite for that soon.