Business lessons learned while starting and growing a car wash business.
A few years ago, my husband Jason Cunningham approached me, somewhat cautiously, with the “crazy idea” that he wanted to own and operate a car wash. At the time, he was successfully self-employed as a commodities trader, but he found that line of work less than fulfilling.. He has a finance degree from San Diego State University as well as extensive work experience in sales, information technology and production lines. On top of that, he’s a smart guy who can fix/plumb/wire just about anything. He not only understands heavy machinery, he really enjoys that kind of thing!
Using the cover of my full-time job to support ourselves, he embarked on a journey to locate, develop and improve a car wash facility located in Overland Park, Kan. During this investment trial period, in order to curb the financial burden and give us time to evaluate the car wash business, we found an investor who was equally interested in owning a car wash who went in 50/50 with us. We leased an existing car wash property that had been closed for some time and was in disrepair, and we took out a small equipment loan to get the site operational again.
Car Wash “Tuition”
In hindsight, I see the mistakes we made as part of the “car wash tuition” we paid to get Jason his education in this business. The underlying lesson we learned back then was “Get the cleaning process working right before you market anything.” It sounds so obvious to us now, but the point is, unless you are turning out a very clean car quickly and consistently, you will not win repeat customers in the car wash business. That’s true for any business: You can always drive trial, but unless you’re constantly focused on doing the job right, you will not build your customer base. For us, it’s rinse and repeat—and keep washing those cars!
We eventually bought out the business partner, purchased the Overland Park property, and secured an improvement loan to upgrade the car wash tunnel equipment.
Regulations, Reinvention and Reinvestment
We’ve found the car wash business to be pretty simple compared to a lot of industries where you might deal with inspections or heavy government regulation. Even so, it’s important for us, or any business, to stay abreast of the latest technology. To stay current with equipment, soaps and water reclaim, we always attend the major annual trade shows to gather ideas. During the development stage of a site, we are constantly reinvesting our profits. But even going forward, a percentage of reinvestment is required to project a healthy image and stay competitive in the marketplace.
People and Profits
Any business owner must be well aware of their soft spots and work to protect them. For example, in the car wash business, we shoulder a lot of liability, so we have a close relationship with our insurance providers. Employee staffing and turnover is another challenging area small business owners must address in order to run a business well. We’ve done this by putting finely-tuned training programs in place to protect the outcomes for our customers. Bottom line, we must truly deliver the value and quality of service that we promise in order to grow our business.
Making a Big Splash With Marketing
Yogi Berra once said “Baseball is 90 percent physical, and the other half is mental.” I’m sure a variation of this adage can be applied to every business. For a car wash, I’d say the key to success is 90 percent getting the car clean and the other half is marketing. Only after everything was tuned and working properly did we install all new signage and really kick the marketing into high gear. We’ve had good success with direct mail, a mobile alerts club that delivers text message coupons to our customers, door hangers and other channels for distribution. The email marketing channel is an initiative we are focusing on in the coming year as well as gift card promotions, especially through the holidays.
Presenting a quality website, investing in SEO for search result optimization, and engaging in social media channels like Google+, Facebook and Twitter is crucial to elevating a small business brand to a higher level. Sometimes the little things you can do to give your small business more of a”corporate” feel, such as putting an online employment application on your website can actually make it easier to recruit and hire higher quality employees. Allowing e-commerce on your website can lure lastminute shoppers to your store for online purchases of items such as gift cards or memberships.
Taking the Next Plunge
For us, the story is only beginning. Our next car wash (ad)venture is in Westport area where we acquired an old Kansas City car wash site that sits east of Southwest Trafficway on 39th Street. We are improving and expanding that facility. So far, our investment looks promising!
