V-Blog #35: When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Keep Going & Get Better

[Uncle Sam]

The past 3 years in the car wash business has been difficult, both economically and emotionally, for many in the business. This past year has been extremely tough. We are suffering from the “TOO MUCH” syndrome; #1--too much rain (which we can’t do anything about), #2--too much interference from our national politicians and bureaucrats in our private business activities, #3-- too much unemployment (See #2), and too many local government bureaucrats costing operators too much money for obscure reasons. As a consequence there is not enough business to fund the investments many operators would like to do.

We at ShurVend have a large multi-national marketing area that we are serving, so we do get to read or hear about many of the concerns that impact the operator base. Some examples we read or hear: #1--“the banks are not funding anything, #2--the City planners want requirements on the site that are not practical for a wash investment, #3--I am in a “holding“ pattern, #4--I don’t know what to do, #5--I’m just going to wait for awhile, and #6--we are not going to spend any money we don’t absolutely have to.” But there are other operators (not nearly enough) who do go ahead with investments during these tough times to help increase their near term cash flow and to be ready to ride the wave when business does turn to the upside.

Cont'd

 

[Uncle Sam]

ShurVend has taken the opportunity during this slow period to focus on our methodology and take a good hard look at what we do to see if we can build our products better, faster, and at a lower cost. As a result we have #1--completely redesigned our Hole-in-the-Wall vendor to make it better and cheaper, #2--our security enclosures are better looking, more secure, and are easier to install, #3—we now offer large letter decals (VENDING) on them to attract attention, #4—offer our small, Junior in-the-wall vendor with front or rear-loading capabilities in a very secure configuration, #5--chasing LED lights to attract attention to the vendors and add excitement to the wash atmosphere, #6--offer some refurbished vendors to those who need a lower price point to enhance the services at their washes, #7—offer a new packaged shammy product (similar to ShamWow) to operators to use in their ShurVend machines, and lastly #8—offer the latest technology available in validators, changers, token acceptance, and credit card acceptance in all of our products.

Our crystal ball is not very clear right now, so we admit we don’t know what the future may be. We just assume a “Can Do” attitude each and every day and try to offer great products to the industry and give the best support services for our products to our customers at all times.

Uncle Sam