Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By: Jenny Chen
Rockville, MD – Jack Fitzgerald started Fitzgerald Auto Malls in 1966. A lot has changed since then. Car manufacturers have come and gone. The demographic make up of the United States has also changed. The DC Metro area, where Fitzgerald Auto Malls is based, has seen a dramatic increase in Asian and Hispanic populations in the last five years. Fitzgerald wants to keep up with this shift in demographics.
He says that although Fitzgerald Auto Malls’ employees speak a total of 45 different languages, not enough Asian Americans are in the auto business. He is actively seeking to fill that gap because he believes it will better serve his Asian American customers. “If you want to be served in your own language, we want to be able to accommodate that,” said Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald also says that there aren’t enough Asian Americans who participate in the Fitzgerald Auto Malls’ free monthly Child Safety Seat Inspection. Started in 1999, Fitzgerald said that 73% of child safety seats are incorrectly installed and he wanted to rectify that. Every third Thursday of the month since then, Fitzgerald Auto Malls has been offering free inspections to the public.
However, Fitzgerald has also noticed a lack of Asian American parents in the line up of parents waiting to get their seats checked. “[Asian American] babies are just as important as any other,” he said. “Maybe they don’t know about our inspections, but we’d like to get the word out.”
On March 21, Fitzgerald hosted a multi-cultural press conference and invited ethnic media in the DC area including Tre Magazine, and Washington Chinese News to help get that word out.