PEI Detail said:
I think I misunderstood the opening post. You decided to open a shop because they can charge $300 for a full detail?
If that's your reason, think hard about it. These businesses, unless backed with a tonne of money and someone famous, take YEARS to build, and mostly fail along the way. A high class shop with opening ads in a small town in a building you DON'T have to change structurally is a $100k. If rent is low and you have a small staff, for a nice shop you are looking at $300-$500/day cost just to open the doors. And most likely for the first coupla years you'll have to charge $125-$250 for a full detail just like everyone else.
But perhaps you were just being witty.
All true. Yes, I decided to open a shop because they can charge $300+ per car. If the money is there I am taking it, I don’t care what the business is.
Do the math:
$300 per piece @ 25 = $7500week
$7500 * 50 weeks = $375,000 annual
Monthly shop expenses at $12,000 per month
That’s a $255,000 pre tax profit. Not bad for a $100k investment!
Obviously the trick is to get the 25 clients per week to keep the place rolling. Now you know what you what your target is, your job now becomes hitting it. How can I generate 25 new clients per week? Or can I? This required demographics and a marketing team to analyze.
If you have the funding and plan anything is possible. Hence my investigations into these detailing forums. I have the funding and was developing a business plan with my accountant and attorney. I have spent approximately $10k and 3 months time already investigating the probability of opening a detailing business. At this point in time I think there are other businesses I could invest in and get a better return as an owner, not an owner/operator. I also considered opening this garage just to have it when I needed it, as long at it could pay its own bills and not cause a loss. Face it $100k to open a business is peanuts. Try to open or buy an automatic car wash in New York, you’ll be in it for $1 million + and years of city and county court time before you can make dollar one.
Keep in mind this shop is in a wealthy area, recently rated by Money to have the most millionaires per capita excluding their personal real estate of any county in the country. I think the average home price in my neighborhood, is up to $900k with $15k per year in property taxes, and I don’t live in the "best" area of this county. I'd also go as far to say that it is way overpopulated, my property is only 80' wide x 100’ deep and the house is just 2400 sq./ ft.
If a boutique service like this is going to make it anywhere, given these demographics, I think it can make it here, just who is the right guy to do it?