Business Operations/Management

One of the downsides of consolidation is it tends to wreck consumer markets. The tomato category has shown this over the past 15 years where lack of competition made big…

The contemporary payment card landscape can be bewildering once you leave the familiar neighborhood of the big four credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. There are debit cards,…

It has been a common practice in the detail business to pay employees “by the car.” This means a certain price to detail the entire car, treating the employee like…

The Holy Grail of the car wash industry has long been to deliver the cleanest possible vehicles to demanding customers in the gentlest, fastest, most profitable way. Touchless washes, one…

A customer calls your shop wanting a detail and you tell him about your free pick-up and delivery service. He says, “That sounds great, but are you insured?”

With today’s clear-coat paint finishes, fallout damage has become the number one challenge for detailers. No matter how creative the automotive paint manufacturers have become in developing paint finishes that…

A lifelong entrepreneur, Kevin Collette was a co-founder of Istobal USA, where he served as president, responsible for Istobal operations in the United States and Canada. In March of this…

Car washing is a “numbers game.” The more cars processed the more money to be made. The greater the production is on best days the healthier the bottom line.

Buy a struggling tunnel or self-serve, radically transform the business model, grow the business, and repeat. Most of us personally know, or know of, an operator with just such a…

The war for talent is over and talent has won. Technology and globalization have dramatically changed the way we work over the last 20 to 30 years. However, very little…