New Regional Concept - IBA Car Wash Center

[theblues]

Greetings all. I thought of reaching to all of you here and seek your insight on how to approach my objective to introduce a new car wash concept in my regional market.

I have lived for a quite sometime in NA and loved washing my cars in IBA centres throughout the years. I specially loved the touch-less machines that gave me the peace of mind for nothing would harm or damage the exterior paint and parts of my vehicles.

My regional market relies heavily on manual car wash services. The common service for the manual car washing is to clean inside and outside. It is noticeable now there is an increase in the number of orders and requests to only perform outside cleaning. However, it is becoming clear that convenient and time saving is a priority for a lot of riders and these manual car washes are taking long waiting times to get in the bay and get cleaned (most of them don't have appointments scheduling system).

There is no self serve, IBA, nor conveyorized car washes in the market. I have been doing researches to learn about revolutionizing the market and introduce IBA. Although it wouldn't be as super new, IBA is actually here in the market in some of the manual car wash centres. However they are completely operated manually by the employees how conduct the car wash service. And also they are manufactured by Chinese vendors. I have gone to different manual car washes with IBA and noticed they don't clean good at all and they actually require the employees to clean with sponges and microfibers after each run of the machine to spray and rinse.

My goal is to open a fully automated IBA bay(s). I found a peace of land that has one side opening to high traffic street. The dimensions of the land is (85 ft by 129 ft). I'm exploring how to design the car wash center and create a proper traffic flow for when cars are coming in to wash only the outside. I also would like to provide parking spots with vacuums so riders park the car and clean the inside. I also would like to introduce the idea of vending machines to purchase additional items needed to car washes. I appreciate all of your input in this topic.

 

[washnshine]

I’m not sure how this is a new car wash concept, other that you don’t have any other competitors.

 

[Wash4Life]

I’m not sure how this is a new car wash concept, other that you don’t have any other competitors.

What the original poster means is for their area, not nationwide.

Now onto the OP's query for insight.

1. There is hard work involved. Most of us here can tell stories of new owners/operators who came into a car wash, figuring it would print money with easy or no work involved. They end up burning a lot of cash and learning hard lessons while doing so.

2. There is labor involved. My inference from your post is that you think that car washes can be run without any labor. Not true. Car washes need to be cleaned. Equipment maintenance needs to occur (i.e. replacing hoses).

3. Auto Laundry is a great trade magazine. You will learn a lot about industry trends and people management from them. Don't expect them to tell you a certain company or product is bad; they want sponsors, after all.

4. Work at a car wash. I see that you know what you want from a customer end. Work at a car wash and learn the ends and outs.

5. Touch-frees can damage cars. They can and do malfunction on vehicles.

6. Go to conventions. They're great for learning about products and networking. Don't just talk to the companies that have the floor space. Talk to operators and gauge their feelings on products.

7. Learn the local area's feeling on car washes. Many car wash operators who wanted to build have found themselves going through a lot of legal wrangling because neighbors and their political representatives did not want them around. If you run into that potential problem, you will probably have to make some sort of concessions (i.e. closing times) to proceed.

8. Visit the type of car wash you want. I don't know how far away the kind of car wash you want from your area, which sounds like it is under served. Go to them.

 

[theblues]

What the original poster means is for their area, not nationwide.

...

Thank you for your time and response. I should have made it clear that it is indeed never existed in the regional and surrounding markets.

I'm certainly prepared to take the challenge and act upon work and obstacles at different phases for when running the business. I have been reading stories in this great forum about the amount of effort required and watching some of the videos online to learn more about the business. I also understand it may take time to experience positive financial returns. But I also understand that different markets around the world varies on margins and the operation cost. My understanding from the existing manual car wash services here overall tend to make great value return. The cost of manual car wash inside and outside would range between $12 to $14.66 USD. The sites that are equipped with these Chinese IBAs would charge to clean the outside for only $6.67 USD. Mind you they have employees to continue cleaning the car after it spent the time in the bay and then to dry out excess water.

I'm hoping to attract riders in the value to clean vehicles in short time and without much interactions with people. In order to successfully do it, to design a proper site plan and to use quality touch-less car wash machines and heavy duty air dryers.