Car Wash News

Oct. 24-25 we'll gather the car wash community to socialize over food and beverage, talk shop one-on-one with the supplier community, and take in quick-hitting Wash Talks to help provide tips for your business.

Mike's Carwash will partner with Big Brothers Big Sisters for the eighth year in a row to raise money for their youth mentoring programs in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. On Saturday, May 13, the company will donate half the proceeds of all Ultimate and Works washes sold throughout the day. There will also be donation buckets on site at all locations to allow customers the opportunity to contribute a personal donation, if they desire to do so. All proceeds and donations will benefit eight local Big Brothers Big Sisters chapters.

Source: The Daily Gazette

Careful washing yields cleaner cars, but it also takes more time with traditional car wash systems. So, Hoffman Car Wash designed an automated robotic system to make each wash cycle conform to any vehicle as it comes through the tunnel in the business's newest location, at Route 50 on the Malta border.

It is late on a Saturday morning. I am at the car wash. They talk about the Rites of Spring... bird chirps, re-emerging lawn mowers, motorcycles in late afternoon and your neighbor, Bud, cranking up his thermonuclear outdoor grill again. But in B-N, there is another springtime renewal. The clean car. "Every community," says Dan Dougherty, "has a group of people who like to keep their vehicles clean and shiny. It does seem, though, that Bloomington-Normal has a larger group."

Waterworks Car Wash has been acquired by Mister Car Wash, an Arizona chain, now with seven locations in West Michigan. The single full-serve Grand Rapids location will be rebranded to Mister Car Wash this summer, the company said. "With this acquisition, we are gaining strong talent and a solid platform for growth in the Grand Rapids area," said Joe Matheny, Mister's vice president of operations.

The Hard Rock Rocksino in Northfield Park announced it will open a Hard Rock-branded gas station and car wash, plus the addition of a third gaming and smoking patio — an investment that will cost more than $5 million. Construction of what will be called the Rockstop Gas & Wash started in May, with a planned completion scheduled for mid-September. 

As I head into my 12th year of blogging and business at Design*Sponge, I find myself craving more "real talk" in business. I want to hear from people about when things didn’t go as planned, or when they found themselves up against an unexpected challenge. I want to know about the nitty-gritty and the times they fell down and what they learned from it all. 

While it can be difficult to become a great leader and to achieve great things, practicing great leadership is actually quite easy. There is a tendency to overcomplicate or overthink what leadership is, but actually, leadership can be very simple. I have worked with teams all over the world, from dozens of cultures, and from different generations, baby boomers to millennials, and I have found that if you provide these four simple things your team will appreciate you, follow you and achieve great results.

Have you ever spent money on marketing that you came to regret later? Who hasn’t? I think most of us would like to forget those experiences. Maybe that’s why so many small businesses get stingy with their marketing budgets. When Wasp Barcode surveyed 1,100 small businesses earlier this year, this under-investment really stood out — 34 percent of U.S. small businesses invest less than 3 percent in their marketing.

Over just the last month I've connected with three entrepreneurs who told me they rarely did any marketing for themselves or their small business. I was really surprised. One is a freelance writer, another owns a PR agency and the third runs a software firm. Each is successful but all of them cited a lack of time as the main reason why they weren’t doing any marketing. They aren’t alone.