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From: Lance (Metro Deomgraphic and Economic Continuing Education)
Date: 04 Jul 2003
Time: 23:18:12
Remote Name: 66.82.48.1
Boston Suburbs and advantages to on-site car washing. First off there are many if not hundreds of competitors in the Boston Suburbs. But in Boston alone there are many car washes and auto detailers and the phone book is stacked with two whole pages worth. Three columns not including the ads. Too much yellow and black ink for the average citizen, however most good detailers know it is all about referrals not ads. Here are a few and the names all start looking the same no matter if you are in Atlanta, Dallas, Las Vegas, Seattle, Denver, Las Angeles, Houston, Orlando, Nashville or even Chicago; Advance Auto Detailing of Boston, is one example as we know of one in LV and in LA. There are a few others which are somewhat innovative such as the Blue Wave Holdings Corp whose washes are called The Blue Wave, simlar to Torrance CA and Tampa Bay area wash. Here is a Mayflower type operation called Bradford Auto-Park & Wax with locations in Boston on Avenue De Lafayette, State St. and on the corner of Seaport Ln. Also in Boston is Dr Detail Car Cleaning Service which might be very original to them but anyone in San Fernando CA or Westside will tell you they have been there for some 24 years. Also we have heard of the Detail Doctor, DOC Detail, Dock Detail (boats in WA state area). What’s in a name? Well a lot and loyalty also follows strong brands, do these companies have what it takes? How about Executive Car Care, my god there must be 100 of these across the country and in other countries: http://www.thelocalweb.net/index/CVA/tlw_43699.htm not all too original, but is that good or bad? Some might say it is good if you are in your second to third week of business, bad if in year 20, having to deal with consumer confusion. Here are some other competitors: Mr Shine Auto Detailing, Park Avenue Advent Auto Detailng, Professional Auto Detailers, and of course Ritz Carlton Car Wash. And listen we have not even begun to discuss the issues within the subs. Housing and growth in the real estate of single family dwellings is still up sharply in the subs: http://realestate.boston.com/communities/profiles/2002/maynard.html as if you could ever get there at 5 pm as traffic out of downtown is a disaster and the people drive like crap, in cities like LA you call in aggressive behavior in Boston, they did not park the CA in Havad Yad, they are in it on the freeway with their middle finger out the window cursing at you. In Boston they call themselves in for aggressive behavior, like anyone is going to do anything about it anyway? HUH? We see some serious concerns looking at Boston. We see downtown areas off the beaten path in many large cities gone to waste where there was once a booming economy, now urban flight, check out Ft Worth TX sometime, part of downtown is outrageously well off and one mile away in the center of the economic birth of downtown, it’s depressed and crime ridden, of course “Isn’t that America.” Yes, unfortunately it is very much America, but the little brick houses for you and me have moved North and West into the suburbs, land of SUV. Which is fine by us, as in any mobile grid based business we move towards those areas to win the market share where the money flow is as consumers forgot they lost their job and are screaming in credit card debt as the commercials of barbarians at the gate come to catapult them away into credit card hell. Hey your plastic is good for us. Question is? Is what’s good fro Car Wash Guys, good for America? Hard to say, there is opportunity in Chaos, Why not ask GM that question, they have the answer. As in jobs. It looks like CA wants to outlaw the SUV for their legislature? Big deal, only problem is Boston as smart as they claim to be still copy everything that CA does? So much for education, Jane Goodall’s Chimps can do better than that, copying everything they do including communication techniques. Monkey see, Monkey do, for all the prestiges Universities there you would think they would have stopped short of committing to V-2 and taxied into position and held rather than become the Concorde and followed CA into the doldrums of a fiery hell with the dot com burst. VC all the way down to their local and state government? DAH What happened? They did not even read their own HBR did they? We forgive you, question is do the X’ers who have now bought new homes at the top of the market with no job and no where to go and BMW and SUV payments? Okay enough crucifixion on Boston? But really people. You have the luxury of a Fed Bank there and money flow; why not spend it on reality-based concepts? Boy that would be interesting wouldn’t it? Don’t answer that. Boston is Boston and traffic is traffic and more than anything such a market for mobile services of any kind can only be done by a company, which understands the re-cooping of lost revenues and lost opportunities from traffic flow delays and can repeat such a process thousands of times per week. Boston itself covers 50 square miles of concrete and traffic, well city limits actually exactly 46 square miles, the entire metro area can be and is often over stated at 1100 square miles, but more realistically about 380 in our humble opinion. And you know some of that is water. And MASS is called MASS because of the number of communities and cities, similar to all the PA cities, townships, communities and three houses on a rural road deserves a new name game? In case you think I am kidding check this out. http://www.state.ma.us/sec/cis/cisuno/unoidx.htm . I remember once I was in the front pack of a 10K running race and the course was not clearly marked but I studied it before the race. We got to the 3 mile mark and things got a little competitive and the whole group went the wrong way, except me. Turns out the took a short cut and they and about 100 other runners were then in front of me, everyone was quite impressed with themselves and had personal bests. Me too trying to catch up to them all. This point is being made because Boston has tried to capitalize on CA’s silicon valley exploits and had a pretty rough time of it, playing inside a bubble they knew would burst. CA on one hand is being crippled by debt of the state for forgetting where the money was coming from and a mini-economic disaster for so many working class and tech companies insued. That did not need to happen. Even with good news from time to time of large companies for instance Boston Scientific as they move forward with 1200 jobs to go up against Johnson and Johnson for another round at the BioTech challenge, it is great headlines, but 1200 jobs does not come close to the Dot Goners and the issues with corporate downsizing. Still we see consumer spending okay in the suburbs while down town is still at 20% unoccupied space at our estimates although the guy at the economic development assoc. swears to god and his Catholic Bishop’s latest juvenile conquest that the rate was only 16% and climbing ever so slightly. That is BS. Sounds like Ross Perot and his charts again to me. Still then where is all the traffic coming from and that project is as perpetual as Houston, Dallas, NYC bridges and tunnels, Seattle and New Orleans. What are the Boston Subs exactly? Well ask a Bostonian and they start including everything from Plymouth, Taunton, Marlborough, Lowell and Haverhill. Which one could not debate with a Bostonian, they are always right, right? YEP, just ask them. We did and they told us yes, we are correct? What does that mean. We assume Politically Correct, that is it, think I am joking? NOT http://www.geocities.com/dallasuapace/aasub.html . But hey give us your keys and your money and you can be whatever you want, short of our God? You get to be right, GAY (or just Happy Either Way), get a clean car and SEEEE YA next week to remove the additional accumulated dirt. God Bless Boston and all the dirt they can muster. I threw up when I was there from all the political correctness. But soon that will be okay because maybe we can get a contract to clean up the sidewalks too? http://www.concretewashguys.com . What is funny is that the Bostonians have all moved to the suburbs and demand political correctness as long as they can live self segregated in their white suburbs? http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/newspdf/BostonHerald.html Which is okay by us, because we could really care less what color the person who owns the car is, as long as they own one which is dirty? And really do not get us wrong there are some brilliant minds which live in the suburbs: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/americasbest/science.medicine/pro.rlanger.html and have done much for the world we live in, no doubt. And they drive expensive cars and tip poorly, but are a good market segment for detailers and car washers. In 2000 we found this summation of Boston Suburbs, not much has changed still good growth and housing, retail, commercial. Maybe a little more competitive and a few situations, but overall, besides the increased traffic outside of town not all that bad really. And most businesses agree that the many colleges in the area provide good inexpensive labor supply; http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/working_for_sfs/HQ%20Internship%20Text.htm . The list is substantial and here is a partial list of what we had uncovered: http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2003/03/17/list.html -------- BioTechs even with the latest news have shed over 1000 jobs in the last six months as it was reported by Financial Times, WSJ, and Bloomberg that only 17 of the nearly 1300 BioTech firms were actually profitable. In 2002 the number of jobs were in the 30,000 range in Biotech. In June 600 layoffs came from Millennium Pharmaceuticals. And the VCs are barely interested as they hardly even look at tech deals with all of June netting less than 3 Million in venture capital for computer software and less than 10 million in biotech. Some of the largest suburb office parks are under the gun as University, Cabot, Cummings, AMB, Canton, Northwest, Cross Point, South Shore, etc. are not seeing the attrition turn to the synergy and critical mass needed for ultimate sustainability? All this has many worried, but commerce and entrepreneurship will always find a way and we must count on the best and the brightest of the literary elite to make something out of nothing in the middle of being bombarded with regulators from every level of government trying to make everything which is not equal all the same never-the-less. God Bless them with Holly Sparklets water and wafers from Nabisco. And don’t tell me I do not know what I am talking about because we have washed those delivery vans before showing up at the Catholic Church. If it were not for all the lawyers in Boston, everybody would be out of work? Just kidding, it is not quite that bad. Things are moving along, but a lot slower than in 1998-99. End of Part I
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