The Great Ideas Letter Forum

Re: A business joint venture

Posted By: sandy
Date: Sunday, 5 June 2005, at 12:23 p.m.

In Response To: Re: A business joint venture (Michael Ross)

I can believe it's a million dollar business.

"car detailing" is big also. We share a garage with a Rent a car company. The person who washes the rent a cars gets even more business from doing detail work for the building residents.

> Thanks for bringing this up.

> Over the last year or so, down here in my
> city a few handy car wash places have sprung
> up. The thing with all these particular car
> wash business is...

> a: They are all near car yards. They get a
> lot of business from car yards bringing the
> cars in for a wash - I assume after being
> serviced and whatnot.

> b: They have a LOAD of people and it works
> like a production line. One group waters it
> down, another washes it, another does the
> inside, another rinses off and the last
> group dry it by hand.

> c: They have a little coffee shop as part of
> the business. So people can pull in, hand
> over their keys and sit down for a coffee
> while the car gets washed.

> I am not sure if the coffee shop is
> subleased from the car wash owner or not.

> But in this time of DIY car wash places,
> this seems to be a welcomed service, down
> here.

> I don't know how profitable they are; where
> these groups of people who wash the cars
> actually come from - are they staff, part of
> a work for welfare program, part of a
> disabled people's program, or what. Because
> if they were staff I'd think much of the
> money from washing would be going in wages.

> But regardless of that, it does seem to be
> working.

> And just the other day, I saw one with girls
> in bikinis. Some standing on the side of the
> road trying to attract the drivers in to get
> their car washed. It was being run from a
> gas station and not its own business
> location.

> I had red somewhere a while ago that running
> a car wash was like a license to print
> money... with some owners of car wash
> operations taking home half a million bucks
> a year. And Shhh.... keep quite so as not to
> let everyone know how lucrative it is :o)

> Michael Ross

Messages In This Thread

A business joint venture
sandy -- Sunday, 29 May 2005, at 11:16 a.m.

Re: A business joint venture
Michael Ross -- Sunday, 5 June 2005, at 3:33 a.m.

Re: A business joint venture
sandy -- Sunday, 5 June 2005, at 12:23 p.m.