Stand alone IBA

[APW]

The town next to me has 35,000 people in the county, and 14000 in the city. There is one tunnel and one IBA in the whole town. The IBA is 2 miles from the tunnel and is part of a Cstore and the only one in the whole county. I know people that go through the IBA because they don't want "anything touching their cars".

How crazy would it be to build a stand alone Gated IBA with free vacuums close to the tunnel. I feel like with a town of this population and good IBA would do good.

If not close to the tunnel, what would you look for in a great location. Shopping center, grocery store, fast food?

 

[robert roman]

Piggy-backing approach is commonly used by retailers such as Walgreen’s which almost always locates stores wherever there is a CVS.

Of course, if CVS store measures 30,000 SF, Walgreen’s will build at least 30,000 SF store.

They build nearby (like across the street) and same size so probability of customers patronizing one store over another is least affected by travel distance and store dimension.

So, it becomes a battle of product selection, brands, price, and customer service.

Instead of this, you want to locate small, low-volume wash near big, high-volume wash that produces better quality at lower cost. This is not consistent with piggy-backing approach.

Here, the only competitive advantage would be differentiation (touch-less process).

Is touch-less strong enough of an attribute to support debt?

Apply sanity test to this.

 

[APW]

Robert, where would you focus on putting one? The tunnel is next to a lowes, walmart, and a mall. There is another mini walmart on the other side of town with about 14,000 cpd traffic. The town hospital is a few blocks away from there also. Would that be a good place?

 

[robert roman]

One way to solve location problem is top down.

Determine market range (area size). Determine if there is public need for a new wash within that range (index of retail saturation). With help of real estate agent, determine alternative locations in range.

Use models of sales assessment to compare alternative locations and final store site choice.

What are alternative locations is function of store characteristics like store size, layout and implemented services.

For example, 40’ bay and one row of vacuums require at least 13,000 SF pad site. So, you wouldn’t look for 1/2 acre or larger sites.

In-bay has limited hourly capacity. So, consider locations where in-bay can benefit from its 24/7 capability.

Likewise, enough traffic is needed for exposure but not too much so the wash is overwhelmed to point it deters future demand.

I know of several free-standing in-bays on postage stamp sized lots that do very well.

Inside lots (i.e. vacant parcel or remnant land) can work if it’s a Grade A property. Of course, land associated with Grade A is more expensive.

This is why finding suitable sites for small-scale wash can be more difficult than when looking to build large.

 

[washnshine]

I'm in upstate NY and have seen several tunnel locations add and IBA to their site. They are doing what you want - capture that touch free customer. The big difference is they are now keeping them on their site for other merchandising opportunities, so it is one stop shopping.

I don't know if the tunnel you are talking about has the land or the capital to add a touch free, but if they did so after your stand alone, that could be a huge hit to your customer base since you would not really have anything to offer that they could not offer at the competing tunnel location. I'm speaking of course if you positioned the stand alone in a "piggy back" location.