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Site Evaluation Formulas

WikiWash

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Hi everyone! What are the formulas you guys use to evaluate a prospective car wash site and an existing car wash site? Thanks!
 

Earl Weiss

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Took over 3 beaten down locations. Formula for each was SOP . Seat of the pants.

# 3 is located in a shopping center managed by some professional mgt co for some insurance or pension fund. When I wanted to take over the lease they asked if I had a business plan. I said "Yes, wash a lot of cars"

Sadly, The world is now run by MBA types who look for formulas
 

rph9168

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Earl is partially right. From my recent experience it appears that your ability to operate successfully or any projections are secondary to how much you can put down and how much they can take away from you if you fail.

As far as site evaluation formulas go there are many out there but as has been noted in other threads they cannot be relied upon to be a prediction of volume or revenue.
 

robert roman

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“What are the formulas….to evaluate a prospective car wash site and an existing car wash site?”

Analogue-based approach uses performance of existing sites to evaluate prospective ones. Example is checklist method used by OEM’s to develop pro forma for quotations. Some are online, free. Issue - most OEM models haven’t been updated for over a decade.

Gravity model (retail gravitation) predicts share of customers that a site attracts or probability of patronage as function of distance to customers and competing sites. Requires statistical knowledge or commercial service.

Discriminate analysis is another method for site location. Here, technique is to identify those variables that best explain the difference between pre-selected groups of stores. Some OEM’s have models. Issue – models haven’t been update for decades. However, DIY is possible.

Spatial analysis is another approach where mathematical model and gravity model are combined. Very complicated, much more expensive than gravity model.

Another approach is intuition or as Earl described “seat-of-the-pants.”

As Earl infers, analysis of demand/supply balance would be incomplete without qualitative assessment as reasonableness check of the conclusion. Issue – seat-of-the-pants judgment takes years of experience just like modeling does.

This is why it is unwise to rely on only one simple formula (i.e. capture rate) to judge site location.
 
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