Bought out competition, now what do I do with it?

[sparkey]

So I bought out the only competition in town and discovered the wash doesn't do much business. I am not sure I will keep it as a car wash if the numbers don't get any better. Looking for some ideas on what you could turn an old carwash into that would make a little money. It has 4 selfserve bays and 1 automatic bay.

 

[Waxman]

my distributor had a wash in VT. he converted one bay to a mini laundrymat and it was an awesome move (he said).

 

[MEP001]

So I bought out the only competition in town and discovered the wash doesn't do much business. I am not sure I will keep it as a car wash if the numbers don't get any better. Looking for some ideas on what you could turn an old carwash into that would make a little money. It has 4 selfserve bays and 1 automatic bay.

Without knowing how you operate a car wash, it's hard to say what you can do to improve business that you're not already doing, but start with the basics:

Check everything every day.
Make sure everything works (Soft, hot water, good chems, strong pressure and no pulsating pumps,etc.)
Keep it as clean as possible.
Leave nothing out of service any longer than absolutely necessary.
Facelift (Vac/vendor/meterbox decals, clean the walls, paint where necessary)
Check everything every day.

It's free to create a Facebook page, and for $1 a day you'll get a little activity on it. Consider some gimmicks like wash or token giveaways for liking the page or posting pics of clean cars at the wash.

 

[rph9168]

From my experience you will probably end up closing it so I wouldn't invest much money trying to get it to work for you. I was involved in one project similar to this and we just knocked the wash down and sold the property but we got the wash cheap and actually made a few bucks on the deal. We did not notice much difference in our volume since the wash we bought was not doing that much anyway.

 

[sparkey]

Some of the ideas I came up with are: storage units, petwash / laundromat, or a rental garage to work on your vehicle. I suppose a drive through would also work but would require a lot more hassle.