Maximize profits with quality service

by Steve Osborn

Why should you offer fragrances at your car wash? Very simply: clean cars should smell clean. While that is one reason to provide fragrance services, certainly another reason is the profit. But how do you maximize sales to make the most profit?

Create the Impulse

Fragrances offered at a car wash location are impulse items. With this in mind, we introduced standalone fragrance dispensers more than 30 years ago and a few years later integrated the fragrance dispenser in a vacuum—the combination vacuum was born. The goal was to sell more fragrance by making the purchase more impulsive. How? By having fragrance combined with the vacuum, a customer with remaining vacuum time could easily trial the fragrance with just flip a switch. So, instead of just walking away from the vacuum, they could get a pro-rated vend of fragrance at no additional cost. With the old standalone machines, customers had to pony-up additional money to try something they may have never intended to buy. Combo units make it user friendly (flip a switch) and painless (doesn’t require more money).

We have found that a fragrance-vacuum combination typically sells a minimum of five times more fragrance than a standalone unit. This is a significant when you consider that fragrance is more than 90 percent profit and only takes 40 seconds for a full vend. A typical fragrance vend is $1 for 40 seconds … that is generating revenue at a rate of $90 per hour while being used.

Quality Product

There are two major components of a successful business: attracting new customers and getting the existing customers to come back. That is why it is mission critical to have the highest quality fragrances available on the market. Cheap water-based products can contain high alcohol content, which can burn your eyes. That is not conducive to repeat business. Good products may cost more, but at 90 percent profit, why would anyone not want to give the customer their money’s worth—and keep their business?

Let’s turn to a concept. If McDonald’s invented a $2 cheeseburger that would meet 100 percent of your nutritional requirements for 30 days, with just one burger, and simultaneously satisfy your hunger for a month as well, they could feed the world. They would also go out of business—I don’t think it is too likely they would bring this product to market.

So, why would car wash operators offer fragrance products that essentially would have the same counter-productive result? If a two-ounce bottle of fragrance that has 500 uses is sold to a customer, it may last six months or longer. So you make a $1 profit two or three times per year. If no fragrance products are offered, but only fragrance services you may make $1 each week or however many times the customer frequents your location.

“We use real essential oils and no alcohol,” states Tony Goodwin, chemist for Fragramatics. “Our fragrances are naturally freeze-protected to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit and unaffected by heat.” With more than 25 years of experience as chemist at Fragramatics, Goodwin offers his expertise to wash owners to answer any specific questions you may have about fragrances. 

Quality Service

In the prior example, I am drawing a distinction between fragrance services versus fragrance products. Another example: If I have ants in my yard and call Terminix, and a guy shows up with an $8 can of Bengal Ant and Roach spray and kills 100 yards of the ants in my yard, I won’t pay him $75 the next time. I’ll simply go to Wal-Mart and buy the product to apply myself. Terminix is smarter than that, and car wash operators should be as well. Terminix shows up with a company truck that has a giant bug on the top. The service person gets out with a stainless steel canister that has a skull and crossbones on it and proceeds to kill 100 percent of my ants—and I gladly pay them $75, and will continue to do business with them in the future.

Too many things are devalued needlessly by reducing them to products. Fragrance should be a service you offer for maximum repeat business and maximum profits.

Combination vacuums that offer high quality fragrances delivered via a service maximize profits. Isn’t that what operators want?

Steve Osborn is sales manager at Fragramatics Manufacturing Co. Inc. For more information visit www.fragramatics.com.