The 4 different groups of car appearance industries

[Mike Phillips]

The 4 different groups of car appearance industries

As someone that has worked with all 4 groups, I want to share the 4 groups and a small passage that explains what they are and thus why they are unique because it is the needs of these 4 different groups that in part dictates how products are made or formulated to cater to the different needs of these 4 groups.

In no particular order...


1: The OEM Industry
That would be when your car is being manufactures and at some paint if their is a problem with the paint the car is moved off the assembly line to what is called a polishing deck and then "products" formulated for the OEM industry are used to fix the problem.


2: The Refinishing Industry
This is your local body shop and custom paint shop, for example after you wreck your Honda the body shop installs a new fender and paints the fender to match the car or like Max, you take your classic Mustang convertible to a Custom Shop and a guy like Wayne Carini has his guys rebuild the car and then spray a custom paint job on it. These two types of business are the "refinishing industry" as they are "re-finishing" the car.


3: The Detail Industry
This primarily includes "Production Detailing" but also includes Show Car Detailing, we have both types of detailers on this forum and they use products formulated by just about everyone.


4: The Enthusiast Market
This is the guy that just wants to take care of his own stuff, he's a do-it-yourselfer. Often times the do-it yourselfer does as good of work as a Pro Detailer that specializes in show car detailing and even better work than you can get in the re-finishing industry and the simple reason for this is he cares about his car and thus his work.



There are companies that make products for just one category and companies that make products for a few categories and even some companies that make products for all 4 categories.

[Mike Phillips]

Note....

This is an re-write of the original article that after posting it to the forum, it went horribly off topic.

[Desertnate]

Just like there are companies that target all four markets, there are products that span multiple markets.

Once when picking up my car after having some collision repair work done, the guy working on a vehicle in one of their bays had a bottle of Meguiars Ultimate Compound in his hand. There was a host of OTC and Pro-grade Meguiars stuff on their shelves.