Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin.
Hi Justin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Soluna Garage is a team effort by Justin and Marley Soluna. We began as a shared hobby project to provide both our local and online communities with a trustworthy resource for education, repair, revival, and restoration services for outdoor power equipment of all types – gas, diesel, and electric – but we’ve grown into a meaningful and sustainable source of self-employment.
We started our YouTube channel and website in 2020 on a whim, inspired by our favorite vintage vehicle repair channels to help fill a niche by creating vintage tractor repair videos. We quickly realized that there was a void that could be filled both online and locally by providing not only information, technical support, and eventually repairs, but also by encouraging others to tackle repairs themselves, helping to create a greater sense of self-sustainability. Sadly, we’ve also found growing demand for a shop that is willing to perform repairs on “outdated” or vintage machines. Soluna Garage has become known for helping keep these machines running better than they have in decades, when they would otherwise have been sent to the crusher.
What started in 2021 as a side gig to help fund Justin’s tractor addiction has blossomed into our full-time home business, with an international reputation for care, respect, honesty, and attention to detail from our fellow vintage tractor enthusiasts and almost 500 customers. Soluna Garage has been able to succeed and grow into the business it is today because of the support of the many gracious people who have shared their experiences with others and written reviews that help spread the word about us. We truly appreciate each and every one of our customers and look forward to continuing to support them for decades to come.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The business has gone through several changes since its inception: from a hobby YouTube channel to a part-time local business, then to a full-time local business, and finally to both a local and online business, offering not only repair services and lessons but also wiring harness kits and other parts through our website, SolunaGarage.com. Of course, we have had the same little growing pains as any business does when it expands and changes, but overall, things have been manageable as our business evolved naturally, driven by public demand. We’re so overwhelmed by that demand that we stopped advertising last year and still have a months-long waiting list for appointments, so we hope our story encourages others interested in small engine service to start their own shop and help save good machines from the scrap heap.
Our most consistent and persistent problem also seems to be unusual for a small engine repair shop: we struggle with communicating to new customers that they need an appointment. We clearly and openly state on our website, cards, and signs that we are available “by appointment only,” but it still confuses the occasional person who expects to stop by for same-day service or support. Since we’re such a tiny team, it’s difficult to have all the time we want to devote to everything: repairing machines both in our garage and on-site for customers, offering remote support over phone and video calls, producing informational videos, building and shipping products for our web store, and staying healthy. As a happily married couple who wants to stay that way, managing the workflow for all of that requires careful scheduling of all the customer visits, pickups, and deliveries; technical support calls; video production; and creation of wiring harness kits. The lead time for appointments and the firmness of our schedule often surprises new customers because it is so different from most repair shops.
Another struggle that we continue to have is that demand for our services vastly outpaces our capacity. We want to keep our business small and stay family-owned and operated, so we can continue providing the very personal level of support that has given us a reputation to be proud of. However, that means we have long wait times for any new customer work, which sometimes surprises new customers who expect a small shop to be less busy than a big chain. Taking individualized care of our existing customers while still allowing some room for the business to support the rest of the community and evolve with us as we age is a delicate balancing act.
We’ve been impressed with Soluna Garage, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We offer repair, revival, and restoration services for all outdoor equipment up to sub-compact tractors, but our specialty is Cub Cadets because Justin is such a huge fan of their vintage garden tractors. Justin’s reputation for gentle and patient help in the tractor enthusiast forums he frequents was part of the evidence Marley presented when convincing him to start the YouTube channel, and we’re really proud to be able to share that kind of compassionate instruction with people in those videos and the lessons we offer here. We think our enthusiasm for bringing new life to old machines is not only infectious but also unique in the small engine field, and we love inspiring others to take on the challenges of repair and maintenance and surprise themselves with their own skills and abilities. We would rather teach you to fix it than fix it ourselves, which our customers say is a rare attitude at repair shops.
We also genuinely enjoy being able to communicate directly with our customers throughout the repair process. We provide pictures and technical updates to help them understand not only what repairs are being made, but why. We give them advice on how to maintain their equipment properly, because the less often they come back to the shop, the more time we have for new customers. We have found that many of our customers just don’t know how easy and important those basic maintenance tasks are, but they’re hungry for the knowledge and thrilled to be able to take care of their equipment and preserve their investment in it.
Our enthusiasm for vintage Cub Cadets has inspired a few customers to start buying and restoring their own favorite kind of vintage garden tractor, which we know is often initially less pleasing for their spouses than it is for them and us. To any other tractor widows and widowers, Marley suggests giving up on ever beating the tractor bug – find a way to join the fun! Crafty spouses have especially valuable skills and perspectives to offer, and delighting your partner with the exact, perfectly-right doodad, thingamajig, or patch for their project is heartwarming and will likely reward you with new respect for your craft. A well-managed tractor addiction can be great for your marriage!
What’s next?
We have reached a sort of milestone, in that our focus is shifting to making sure we can support our existing customer base without changing our mission to be a resource that people can trust for knowledge, care, and honesty, so we’re limiting the number of new repair service customers we’re accepting.
Ideally, we would like to shift away from routine repair and maintenance and towards educational services, technical support, and vintage machine restorations, as these are the areas that we are most passionate about and that we believe will have the greatest impact on our communities. Long term, we want to offer conversion services to keep these machines running using energy sources that are less harmful to the operator’s health and environment than they are today, but for now, we’d just like to increase the support we offer through our YouTube channel and through various social media platforms and online forums. We also would like to offer more local and remote educational workshops and instructional sessions, and get the word out that we aren’t just repairers, we’re teachers and cheerleaders, too. We want to empower people to be curious about – and take ownership and pride in the maintenance of – their own machines.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://SolunaGarage.Com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solunagarage/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/solunagarage/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SolunaGarage
- Other: https://search.google.com/local/reviews?gl=US&hl=en&placeid=ChIJbwi7FmVxSIgRLrSUUZPiMns&q=%2A
