| bumpin96monte |
03-10-2010 11:24 PM |
How are you going to run the business- certain hours or by appt only? Are you going to do it full time or part time? What kind of services do you plan to offer?
I've seen people do this and go both ways with it.
I've had some friends get into it that were REALLY into detailing their own cars- did it out of the one guy's dad's mechanics shop (he had a spare bay), and mostly by appointment only. The bad thing is, they were so into doing a perfect job to try and attract the really rich people that they ended up realizing that the $/hr was terrible. They got a semi-supplier discount on the cleaning goods (buffing compounds and such), but they spent so much time getting the cars perfect that they were coming out under $5/hr once you actually took out all the various supplies (they were using pretty high end stuff). What made it worse is they didn't have a steady stream of cars, they'd do a couple every other day or so. Plus, it seemed like most of the 'normal' people who wanted a detail job would try and haggle them down because they thought the prices were too high (which were actually low for the time they spent on it)- so they ended up barely making profit on some jobs.
Now I did see a couple guys get some pretty good money doing detailing- they ran it out of the back bay at a shop where I used to install car audio. They rented the bay for pretty cheap, bought a used power washer- and bought a bulk supply of general wax, tire wet, and window cleaner. They started off doing the cars for the tiny car lot next door of maybe 15 cars (full detail when they came in, and then a wash on all the cars every couple days)- plus they did all kinds of advertising and got a good deal of local traffic on top of that (probably 4-5 cars a day) by pulling the people in for a $5 hand car wash and talking them into a quick wax job for another $20, or a quick interior vacuum for another $5.
After a couple months of hounding other local dealerships, they scored a contract with a larger used car dealer (probably 60-70 cars on the lot at a time), and they were doing probably 15 cars a day between the two dealers and walk ins. They did a mediocre job with the cars- the wax was just some short-term BS garbage, but that is all the lots cared about anyways. By the time their businesses ended, they were making some killer money- and had hired a few of their local friends to come in so they could do 2-3 cars at a time.
I guess the short version of what I was trying to say is if you're trying to do it for a serious business- try not to get super wrapped up in spending hours and hours on the cars like you would your own, unless the car's owner is specifically paying you big money for it; and make sure you're really keeping track of how much of your supplies you're using on the cars, and what those supplies cost.
Good luck!
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