Waterless Wash — Several Sources
of Potential Competition
By Stefan Budricks

The arrival on the scene of a new competitor is bound to make a business owner sit up and take notice. It’s a situation professional car wash operators are familiar with. Wash formats are constantly being tinkered with, and new facilities featuring the latest in technology and process come on-stream with regularity. Many operators have kept a close watch — perhaps with some apprehension — on developments regarding waterless wash services.

These services are offered to the public in various ways. The most visible are the corporately organized and managed providers featuring proprietary identity, products, and processes. Less obvious are the independent establishments that rely on off-the-shelf products and equipment to get the job done.

CORPORATE

Franchising is the business model of choice for the corporate providers, though some units may remain within the company fold. Business operations are conducted either at a fixed location our out of mobile units. In each instance, the venture boils down to a detailing business that offers as its most basic service a waterless car wash. Because the car wash is a spray-on, wipe-off affair requiring only a pint or so of water per vehicle, the service is viable just about anywhere.

Fixed Location
Pronto Wash USA has been active in the United States since 2002, one year after its beginnings in Argentina. Pronto pioneered the fixed location concept, organizing leases for its franchisees on spaces in shopping-mall and office-complex parking garages and lots.

This is the kill-two-birds-with-one-stone approach: while the customer is shopping or earning a living at the office, his or her car is cleaned. No special trip required, and no waiting. Convenience weighs heavily in what makes the service appealing. Price is not a major attraction: depending on location, a basic exterior wash runs around $20, though ticket average nationwide is $40, according to George Rivera, operations manager for Pronto Wash. This is accounted for by the host of additional detailing services available from a lengthy menu, including interior cleaning and headlight restoration.

Mobile Units
Starting in 2008, Ecowash Mobile International, headquartered in Australia, was one of the first to offer mobile waterless wash franchises in the United States, an opportunity also available from Pronto Wash. The Ecowash Mobile franchise includes a vehicle and a defined territory within which the franchisee has the right to operate.

Franchisees are encouraged and trained to arrange multiple jobs per site: they might set up on a school campus and clean several teacher cars, do the same for members at a local golf club parking lot, or set up appointments with several residents in the same neighborhood.

As with fixed-location businesses, the mobile units are essentially detailing operations. It would be tough to make a living from the basic waterless car wash only, acknowledges Manish Adhiya, vice president for franchising at Ecowash Mobile. Rivera agrees that it’s not easy. “You have to be really hardworking and increase your average ticket by doing some waxing or shampooing,” he says.

Extent
Pronto Wash claims around 40 fixed-location sites. Roughly 75 percent of that number is concentrated in California and Florida. Texas is the only other state with multiple sites (two). Pronto Wash’s pilot program with Proctor & Gamble’s Mr. Clean Car Wash in Cincinnati ran its course, and the parties decided not to proceed with the arrangement.

EcoWash Mobile has signed up five franchisees covering 12 territories. As with Pronto Wash’s fixed locations, territories are concentrated in California and Florida (11 of the 12). According to Adhiya, six additional territories are in development and awaiting financing.

His company’s overrepresentation in California and Florida is due, Adhiya believes, to consumers in these states having a greater awareness of environmental issues, helped along, in California at least, by regulation. In addition, the company’s U.S. operations are headquartered in Carlsbad, CA, making the state a natural for initial development.

Rivera sees his company’s two lone fixed sites outside the Sunbelt a little differently. Since most of the workplaces are open to the elements, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to operate when it snows or when temperatures drop to the freezing level, he explains. Even in Florida, he adds, operators are going to hurt for three or four months of the year due to rain.

Both companies appear to be in flux. Pronto Wash is moving headquarters from Miami to West Palm Beach and has a new management team at the helm — so new that the “Management Team” page on its website is blank. Ecowash Mobile’s Australian parent is in the process of rebranding — it’s operations to be known as Nanotech Wash in future. Rebranding in the United States is a possibility, says Adhiya.

INDEPENDENTS

Individual detailers and the consumer represent a significant potential market for waterless car wash products.

Detailers
It requires little capital and even less effort for a detailer to switch to waterless car washing or add it as an option to an existing menu — this is true for both a fixed-location and mobile operation. The spray-on solution (a huge selection of competitively priced products is available) and microfiber towels (which every detailer will already have a supply of) are the only requirements to get the job done. As more local authorities impose ever more stringent regulations on water usage and runoff, detailers may find they have no choice but to make the switch or addition.

Consumers
The car wash industry has waged a long and mostly successful campaign to convince both local authorities and charitable organizations that parking-lot charity car washes are bad for the environment — they use too much water and the unchecked runoff carries pollutants into storm drains. The alternative — a professional car wash hosting a charity wash — assures efficient use of water and safely channels any runoff. Waterless car washing undercuts the stated rationale for offering the alternative — water quantity and water runoff. To maintain established relationships with charities and build new ones, operators may have to consider an adjustment in emphasis.

Waterless car wash products also affect the water-waste-runoff argument with regard to driveway washers. However, the International Carwash Association’s Studies of Consumer Carwashing Attitudes and Habits shows a steady increase in the percentage of people who usually wash their cars at a professional car wash as opposed to the driveway — from 55 percent in 1999 to 65.6 percent in the most recent study (2008). This time span includes both periods with and without water restrictions and periods of low and high gas prices. The trend seems constant, regardless.

COMPETITION

Waterless car washing is set to become a fixture on the menu of car care options available to the consumer, regardless of how the quality of the end product stacks up compared to traditional car washing. Some of the service providers mentioned potentially present more serious competition than others, but none should be ignored.