Local detail shop's prices and an overall rant/future outlook

[UncleDavy]

I also have a full time job that I occupies most of my time but I do some detailing on the side for family, neighbors and friends. I actually enjoy the activity of detailing and at times I feel that I don't need to be paid for it. Everybody likes my work and I reluctantly accept money. If you intend to keep it as a side hustle to make some fun money then keep your prices reasonable. However, if you intend to work detailing jobs as a serious business, then go into it properly by doing the following: talk to an accountant and form an S corporation, get proper insurance, talk to your local town about operating out of your garage, keep accurate records of your expenses, attend one of Mike Phillips detailing classes, keep talking to guys like Justin, Scott and Eric.

[UncleDavy]

The other shop may be using:

Cheaper products bought in bulk
Cheaper labor
Two or three people to clean the car, cuts down on time
Spending only a fixed amount of time on each section no matter what VS doing it until perfect
More than one revenue source?
Higher volume of work at lower margins?

These are great points. There is a local detail shop here in town that advertises a "full detail" for $99.99. Whenever I drive by I see three guys working on one car at the same time. They also sell used cars.

[Cruzscarwash]

So I'm.jist gonna give you my story about why I'm where I'm at today.

I was much like you and spent so much time on the small details but charged so little I wasn't making anything worth living off of. Honestly starting off low and pricing up was my first mistake and very hard to come up from..very hard and lost most of all the clients I had because of that.

Over the years in order to stay busy I started chasing the dollar and said yes to anything. Let people dictate price "well this guy will do it for X" ok I'll match that, Again bad idea. So as more and more detailers started to show up and prices where going down at a rapid rate from all the competition it wasn't worth the gas in some cases and getting the price I felt my time was worth was getting me no calls, I went months sometimes with zero calls, not even an inquiry.

This lead me into car flipping, and I looked for cars in good mechanical shape that I'd just do a basic tune up on but need visual help, so that's kinda how I got into polishing. I was polishing flip cars left and right so got lots of time behind a polisher and I got good.

This lead me to see what was missing from my area and that was a polisher, so I geared my packages towards polishing and boom things took off, 50/50 shots were helping me basically print my own money and I was back in the game and then... Everyone was polishing then AIOs got big and companies like CG turned everyone into a "pro detailer" and the cycle repeated.

So how did I get out and separate from this last cycle?... Coatings and to add to that mobile coatings. So I'm back in the bucket of very few who coat and alone with the offering that coats at your home. I now require deposits to book, I no longer wash, 99.9 % of the time get no less then $65 an HR and on a good day hit $100 an HR.

So it's been a long hard road and I guess the point is to know your worth, know the power of saying NO and if you want to hook up friends and family cool, but give them a easy and quick upsell, not hrs and hrs of your time. A top coat of PNS is a great bonis and takes mins for example. Lastly see what's missing in your area and take advantage of it. Ok rant over, hope it helps in some way

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