New Car wash (international location)

[brklynbaku]

Hey everyone

Thank you for all the valuable info you guys provide, truly helps to educate myself in a completely new business for me. So, here is the deal:

This is a new market with possibly not a single automatic car wash system available as of yet. Why I say possibly is that after all the driving, online search and asking around the only "automatic" car washes people know of are the horrible three brush water spray only that bus drivers use. Hand wash car wash business is experiencing a huge growth in a city of 4 million people with 1 million cars. People love their cars here and availability of premium luxury cars here is staggering (oil rich country)

There are couple of options I am looking into. Starting with one IBA only either separate standing or at a gas station. People here did not have time to form a negative opinion about gas station car washes as there are no automatics. Drivers are a bit weary of brushes because the only ones they see are very cheap dumb terminals that scratch their cars. As such, this market has a HUGE potential for growth. Another one is simply open separate standing one in high traffic location.

My priority in getting the equipment is making sure it has good company support and I definitely want to become an authorized distributor and a repair specialist. I know there are lots of brands to choose from. After educating myself a bit "Hybrid" IBA approach seems to be what I should go with. Europe would be geographically close to deliver the equipment and supplies from however I want to keep US companies in mind as I would love to promote US made products especially if I can get competitive pricing.

What are your recommendations about companies to go with depending on their equipment
1) Reliability
2) Quality of cleaning
3) Tech Support

Thank you.

 

[robert roman]

An important aspect of starting-up a small business venture is to follow process.

For example, the first step is to identify the concept or idea and determine if it has merit.

Your idea is to open the city’s first commercial carwash.

You believe an opportunity exists because demand is not being addressed by competitors – hand washes.

Carwash is brick and mortar business model. So, you need to find a suitable location, open a new store, drive traffic to it and hope for high sales.

In the U.S., people also love their cars and there is almost one motor vehicle for every man, woman and child alive.

However, in your market, “only 25 percent” of population owns cars and staggering portion is premium luxury cars (oil rich country).

So, market isn’t huge by our standards but rather narrow - mostly upwardly mobile singles and married couples, the old money and the new young ubber wealthy paying a lot of money and time to have their beamers, jags, lotus, benz, etc. hand washed by the minions.

Next rung down is commoners who can afford to drive box-cars, the cabbies and smallish fleet vehicles.

The other 75 percent don’t own cars.

You propose to “starting with one IBA only either separate standing or at a gas station.”

So, why worry about reliability, quality of cleaning or tech support for one wash?

Buy the cheapest, simplest unit available and start making money, now and in the future.

Worry about problems later.

For example, friction in-bay can now produce hand-finished qualities but they are “slow” compared to conveyor and very long lines form during busy times.

What do people dislike especially wealthy people - waiting a long-time in a long line.

Touch-less means no brushes but it is also “slow” and chemical must be very strong to clean well. Invasive chemicals remove wax, are harsh on clearcoat and eventually the paint dulls.

What do people dislike especially wealthy people who love driving expensive shiny cars - dull paint.

Deep pockets and cheap labor is consistent with full-service business model not in-bay.

 

[mjwalsh]

Hand wash car wash business is experiencing a huge growth in a city of 4 million people with 1 million cars. People love their cars here and availability of premium luxury cars here is staggering (oil rich country)

Thank you.

brklynbaku,

We might need a little help pronouncing your name. You seem to have very good english writing skills considering you are from another very far away country.

More seriously, based on your market description you may want to consider also the potential for self service coin operated. We get a lot of high end vehicles who prefer not to go through an express or a tunnel. How is the availability of hi denomination coins in your country? That could have a bearing on the viability of that style of car wash.

mike walsh www.kingkoin.com

 

[brklynbaku]

Hey Mike

To give you a bit of background I'm from Azerbaijan originally but I lived in States for half of my life and am an American citizen, as such thank you for your compliment about my English, though I always could do better. Currently I have relocated for some time to Baku (capital) leaving my home of Brooklyn behind to attend to some family time as my folks aren't getting any younger and it's fun for other reasons as well.

Robert thank you for such a thorough response, you have made many good points. Let me elaborate a bit about why I believe it should be successfull.

Not only the uber rich like their cars washed frequently, the other mortals do it quite often as well, however the issue becomes waiting period of about 1 hr on average, where the owner has to get out and keep himself busy. Though the whole city is full of Benzes, Infiniti's and Bentleys there are still vast amounts of mid range Toyotas, Hyundai's and Kias. And the money is mostly new uber rich money as old soviet system prior didn't allow accumulation of wealth. Grand scale construction is all around so the amount of dust in the air is way more than we have ever been used to in States.

Average cost of a hand wash is roughly $12 (1 hr wait) at rented garages scattered around the city with very rare availability of such services as car wax/polish/shine. True, market isn't huge by US standards (which is anyway?), however this city is constantly expanding as it was not originally built for such geometrically expanding fleet of cars, thus creating constant traffic jams. Life here approaches 24hr rhythm and speed of service is becoming a high priority.

One thing about service, this is not very service oriented culture but it is slowly changing. There are import monopolies by little kings on almost all kinds of products, however service standard in almost all industries is heavily lacking. My goal is to provide quick and reliable automated services, attended by limited personnel for a personal touch and guidance for the new tech.

Full service would definitely be the final goal for me as people are used to (and prefer) being serviced here, however that includes considerably more investment right from the start, and I want to pilot it first. I care about quality of the machines because as a first comer to the market I want to create a barrier for entry by bringing the best, becoming it's distributor and service & repair rep.

I hope I made this picture a bit clearer.

Hamid

 

[robert roman]

“Life here approaches 24hr rhythm and speed of service is becoming a high priority.”

Life also approaches 24 hours in New York, LA, Chicago, etc. As you should know there are conveyor washes in New York that are open 24-hrs, 7-days a week, rain or shine.

“My goal is to provide quick and reliable automated services, attended by limited personnel for a personal touch and guidance for the new tech.”

If so, why plan for mediocrity or even failure by starting out with in-bay or wand that will be overwhelmed and/or unappreciated?

For example, there aren’t many spray bays in Queens or Brooklyn.

If you have a virgin market and tons of unmet demand, why bring a comedy act to town that will attract hundreds when you can bring in a circus big top that will attract tens of thousands?

Angels, venture capitalists and banks in any country don’t lend money to people who want to use it primarily to learn the business (i.e. start-up and becoming distributor and service & repair rep).

They will expect you to have this ownership and management experience or a major partner who does.

Also, unless you are willing to invest at least $10 to 20 million to clear the market, there is not much you can do to create a barrier with one carwash site when the only competition is hand washes.

As soon as you start washing some numbers, someone else will build close to you. It is inevitable.

 

[mjwalsh]

Hamid,

As long term operators we are glad we did not try to compete too much with the very numerous extremely deep pocketed oil company franchised gas station - car washes in our area. As we found out ... a lot of customers for whatever reason prefer our self service over their variety of "drive throughs" including their "touchless". In other words ... if you have the land &/or it is not too expensive ... you may want to consider some self service bays so you do not put all your "eggs in one basket".

Your demographics could be a lot different than ours though. Out of curiosity ... I notice you did not respond to the high denomination coins question for your country? Are most people in your country of the mindset that credit card is & should be the only method of payment? I am thinking that it could be a back door for a relapse into a more controlling government like you previously had since they could more easily get personal information on everyone including on their smaller transaction path.

mike walsh www.kingkoin.com

 

[JustClean]

Hi Hamid,
Some things to consider:
- Support: If something goes wrong who would fix it?
- If you NEED a technician, do you want him to fly in from another country? Maybe consider a company that also operates in Europe?
- Very hard / risky to judge the potential popularity of SS, IBA (touchfree or brush), tunnel. I guess, you are the best person on this forum to judge this. For example, where I am a tunnel/express would be NO WAY as profitable as what I am doing now.
- Do you have a lot of road grime? Touchfree machines have usually a hard time to clean this (for this reason you almost can't find any touchless machine in many areas of Europe). There are a lot of European brush machines out there that deliver an excellent result...but most of them are not simple.
- KISS - keep it simple stupid. In any case look behind the glamor of brand new machines. You may want to consider the simplest and most reliable machine with spare parts readily available. BTW Are there any or what manufacturers are already serving your market or neighboring countries?

As I said before, you are probably the best person to judge your situation. Maybe 1x or 2x IBAs & 4x SS with the option to expand?
Anyway, good luck with your venture
Cheers Justclean