Car wash

The bottom has fallen out of the hand car wash market, the bubbles have burst on their soapy water, the customers have been washed away and the business model has kicked the bucket.  They used to be a common sight at many brown field sites in and around our conurbations, especially at former petrol stations but now they have gone the same way and are few and far between.  But why is this so?  They are certainly an easy business to get going with very little capital equipment to be invested in and liquidity is literally aqueous.  Indeed, all you really need is a few buckets, some sponges, some detergent, perhaps a couple of chamois and access to water.  Find yourself a piece of vacant land near to a major roadway, write yourself a couple of signs and you are off. 

But that is where the problems start.  With a low cost of entry it is a business model that is very easy to emulate and so soon there is a lot of competition, the market wears thin and there is insufficient demand to keep so many businesses going.  Then there is the recession itself, the very thing that has caused people to lose their jobs and set themselves up as small businesses taking their chances by the roadside has come back to bite them.  Washing you car is something that anyone who has one has to end up doing sooner or later but no matter how much they hate it it will always remain a discretionary spend.  When money is tight it is this kind of spend which gets checked first and a hand car wash is a nice to have, a bit of luxury in a fairly mundane activity, something that you can get a machine to do for a little less than the five pounds that is being asked.    

Providing cheap things cheaply or expensive things expensively is much more viable than trying to offer cheap things expensively or the other way around. A little luxury requiring a discretionary spend delivered from less than luxurious premises is a combination that can never survive in large numbers during an age of austerity.

So is this something to worry about?  Probably not but it is a reminder that there are no easy ways to make a living and that the difficult financial times are with us for at least a little while longer.