Teach an Old Carwash New Tricks

Turn that ugly duckling back into a profitable location

Since Dan already had a lucrative contract with the city, he needed to make sure his fleet cards would work at his second location. The cashless acceptance system he purchased had the ability to tie multiple locations together using the Internet. Dan could manage all of the city’s fleet cards from one centralized management system at his home office. This was an important feature to Dan’s wife since she did all of the books for the carwash and didn’t want to have to run back and forth between the two facilities.

By “linking” the two wash locations under one system, the new wash could get an immediate boost in business since established customers and city employees who lived or worked closer to the new location would likely appreciate its convenience and perhaps wash more often since their cards would work at both locations.

Dan offered similar loyalty cards to the general public and offered a 20 percent bonus in wash dollars for prepayment. Those same cards also work at both carwash locations and turned out to be a huge financial success.

Improvement #3: Dryers in the Bay

Dan also knew that adding hand-held dryers in each of the self-service bays at his first location had increased his dollar-per-ticket by more than $2.50 within a week of adding the new service. Rather than have his customers pull out of the self-serve bay and towel-dry their vehicles for free, he now made money every minute they were in the bay using the handheld blowers.

Dan did some research and found that he could buy either a complete turnkey solution or build his own in-bay blowers. Since he was comfortable with tinkering, he rigged his own boom system, used motors from horse dryers, and fitted smaller hoses than the industry standard. Using a smaller hose made it easier to manipulate the assembly, particularly for female customers, who appreciated the convenience. By wisely spending start-up capitol, Dan capitalized on the experience from his first location to make another ROI improvement to his new location.

A big part of establishing a business is letting people know what your business does, what its name is, and giving potential new customers the ability to easily find it from the road. Since the carwash Dan purchased from Charlie was in a good traffic location, he needed to get the sign as high as he could so it could be seen from the main road.

This is one of the upgrades that Dan worried about because the local city council was known to be very strict about sign placement. During a recent trade show, Dan attended an educational seminar by a sign consultant named Perry Powell who spoke about sign placement and the legal rights that all business owners have concerning signage.

Armed with good information, Dan was able to avoid any major issues and received approval for a big sign that displayed his company branding, identified the location as a carwash and advertised that all major credit cards are accepted. Effective signage can be a tremendous asset to any carwash. Although the sign was one of the most expensive items on Dan’s list, it certainly did the trick. Once the sign went up, there was an immediate 20 percent increase in credit card sales in the bay and at the vacuums.

Powell tells his audiences that customers won’t ever have the opportunity to spend money with a carwash if they don’t know the business exists. Proper signage will bring new customers into the wash, and loyalty programs like Dan’s prepaid card system will keep them coming back.

Dan resisted the urge to hold a grand reopening event right away. He had seen far too many carwash businesses run grand openings with half-finished projects and employees who did not yet have a good grasp on how everything worked.

Sound advice is to wait at least several months before throwing a grand opening. In the retail world, the first few months that a store is open is called a soft opening, which gives you and your staff the chance to ease into the new

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