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About Empire
A shop that started chasing hail storms and ended up doing everything else as well.
The story
It used to be called something else.
Empire opened in 2012 as Empire State Hail Company, doing one thing: pulling dents out of hail damaged cars without touching the paint. That is a specialist trade, and it is what Dave built his certifications around.
What happened after that is the part most people find surprising. Every time a customer needed something the shop did not do yet, the answer was to learn it rather than to send the car somewhere else. Bumpers, then wheels, then collision work, then detailing, then custom paint, then two certified finishes that most shops in the northeast have never sprayed. The name changed to Empire Custom Paint & Body Repair because the old one had stopped describing the place.
It is still Dave and Heather's shop, with three full time technicians on the floor alongside them. Trading since 2012, formally incorporated in 2014, and at Spencer Street ever since.
Who you are dealing with
The owners are on the floor.
Dave Nauseef, owner
ARC Certified Master Technician and ARC Master Hail Technician. Dent Wizard Certified Master Technician. Four star and five star master technician. Certified to spray both Lumilor and Cosmichrome, and the reason the shop holds its Lumilor lab and training center status. If your car is in the booth, that is who is spraying it.
Heather Nauseef, office manager
Books the work, writes the estimates up, and handles the insurance carriers. If you have ever called this shop, Heather is who answered.
Meet the crew
Five people and a dog.
Dave and Heather run it. Three full time technicians work the floor with them, and every job in this building is done by one of them rather than sent out.
Dino Petrella
Shop managerRuns the floor at Spencer Street.
Dakota Nauseef
TechnicianFull time on the tools.
Claire Sears
TechnicianFull time on the tools.
Stella
Shop dogGreets everyone. Repairs nothing.
The boring but important part
Covered, accredited, and answerable.
$4 million garage liability
Plus workers compensation. Your vehicle is covered from the moment it is on our floor.
BBB accredited, rated A+
Accredited by the Better Business Bureau of Upstate New York since March 2024, and rated A+.
Insurance approved
A preferred or approved vendor with the major carriers, so a claim does not have to become your second job.
Why it matters that it is all here
Nothing gets handed to a subcontractor.
When a shop sends the wheels out, the trim out and the detail out, three other businesses now control your delivery date and nobody owns the finish. At Empire the metal, the paint, the chrome, the glow and the detail all happen in the same building under the same person. If something is not right, there is nobody else to point at.
