Mobile Carwash/Detailing Business Catches On

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Beth Hamilton, owner of The Spa at Colfax, in South Bend. Ind., has entered into a partnership with a mobile carwasher in order to better serve customers.

The idea of saving customers time was what prompted some creative cross-marketing between The Spa at Colfax and Murphy's Auto Spa earlier this year, according to Hamilton.

In the spring, Hamilton offered her customers gift certificates that provided the holder with her spa services while Donald Sills and Charles Murphy, owners of Murphy's Auto Spa, detailed and washed their cars outside.

Hamilton reports the car detailing and wash package proved highly popular, with most purchases being made by men for their wives and girlfriends.

"People just liked the convenience of it," Hamilton said. And we're always looking for things we can do as packages at the Spa at Colfax because people's lives are just so busy and hectic," she said.

Murphy's Auto Spa, formed when Sills and Murphy joined their two separate mobile carwash services this spring, is catching on.

The two entrepreneurs now have a sizable customer base and are in action five days a week. They sign customers up for one-month contracts where they first detail a vehicle and then give it a complete wash every week.

That idea is not only catching on when it comes to carwashes. A whole array of automotive services now can be brought to the workplace or even home. Oil changes, bodywork and windshield replacement are among the most prominent.

The trend promises to accelerate as people lead busier lives, or as they simply look for ways to spend more time doing what they really want.

"It's definitely something we see more and more of these days," said Steve Nolan, a spokesman for the AAA's Chicago Motor Club. "You are seeing more and more services pop up where they come to you."

The services are being hawked at airports, commuter train parking lots and wherever cars are left.

In some major cities, oil-change franchises secure exclusive rights to the parking lots of major employers. Typically, such franchises maintain a Web site that will list the days the mobile oil-change unit will be at each lot. People can pre-pay at the Web site.

Employers see the service as a cost-free benefit they can offer employees.

Auto glass replacement was the original mobile car service and probably remains the most widely used.

About 95 percent of work out of Auto Glass Specialists' shop in Elkhart, Ind., is done on a mobile basis, according to manager David Monroe.

He said the switch to mobile car window glass service took place in the 1970s, when body shops started getting out of the glass replacement business and glass shops took over.

Although mobile glass service is old hat, mobile service is still relatively new when it comes to such services as carwashes.

Source:The South Bend Tribune