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From: Lance (study topicfor today)
Date: 24 Jan 2003
Time: 22:58:27
Remote Name: 66.82.50.50
Trucking Regulations changed for crop freezing. http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2003/01/20/daily40.html?f=et70 Well let me tell you this is interesting, very good move, now if we could take that reasoning and apply it to the fact that when transportation slows down all kinds of industries suffer. When transportation slows down, mail slows down; checks in the mail are still in the mail instead of circulation doing good for small businessmen and consumers to spend. Speed of flow is important in any cycles; whether it is the fluid dynamics associated with water flow, oil in pipelines, natural gas or traffic flows or air flows or rail way efficiencies, ship routes, ports traffic, monetary flows, electronic transfer flows. Railway flows? http://www.unece.org/trans/main/ter/terobj.html and Traffic flows are very important in places like LA, Bay Area, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, NY, DC, here are some interesting thoughts: http://ugis2.arch.chalmers.se/jocke/stad-trafik/dokument/2001_Pettersson_Transport_generation_and_traffic_flows_are_influenced_by_the_effects_of_business_structure_and_business_localization.pdf ---------- We have obviously done tons of research on these models due to the needs of our team to service our customers; we cannot wash something if it is in motion…yet!?! Yes I know, but do not think we have not considered in motion washing. ERSI has tons of companies who build software models for this stuff, North Western Pacific Laboratories has done lots of research and come up with some pretty awesome tools for traffic flow patterns. http://www.Batelle.org http://www.Batelle.com . http://www.informs.org/Conf/SanAntonio2000/TALKS/MA28.html . In every country and every market and every state and every city this is an issue. We move the world at night and 24/7/365, everything you buy, need and desire is in route to be processed, inventoried, sold, bought, packaged, stored, transferred by truck, train, ship, van to be put on a shelf, in a tub, silo, container, or in your garage, refrigerator, pantry, table, etc. Think about it, This is why Jeb Bush looked at the real situations involved the economic cost to the businesses of the state and economic well of those employed to grow, pick, process, ship, the fruit. Think about the FL drought and all year the citizens saved water so the farmers and people could both survive then along comes a cold snap threatening to destroy all those crops. Then a law in another industry would not yield such as in trucking so that the farmers could ship their crops fast without losing everything? Obviously the linear decision making at the DOT is so scared of being sued and so careful to make the world idiot proof that they believe that the dumbest person must be protected from the other dumbest person, rather than driving safe and inflating tires and wearing a seat belt, etc? As we move into a sterile society resembling the Borg and communism or Gattica (movie) and prove people like, Charles Dickens, Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russel, George Bernard Shaw correct and destroy all we are and all we have built with ridiculous laws to save people from themselves we see there are hold-outs, real people, real leaders like Jeb Bush who say forget that law this week, we have to move the fruit. Yes we do, our farmers are our team too. We cannot sacrifice industries due to stupid laws, yet we do it every day, in every industry. We cannot and should not choke hold the prosperity of this country over BS rules and run away bureaucracy. It is a major issue of flow and thank god someone can see the bigger picture, because if you watch the Boob Tube long enough you would swear that we need more laws to protect people. Yet all we really need is to use the Jeff Foxworthy approach; “here’s your sign” for those idiots who qualify for the Darwin awards or become guest star candidates for the Jerry Springer Show. You know there is no reason to make laws to protect the stupid people from themselves, you can’t they, like Murphy will always find a way to screw something up. If we fail to realize this we will continue to choke hold our infrastructure, systems and flow. Flow and cycles we must protect for the betterment of all and let the free market do the rest. If Trucking companies hire people who are stupid and wreck more trucks, their insurance will go up. When their insurance goes up it costs more money therefore they will stop hiring idiots who might run off the road, they cannot have the negative PR, they must be accountable to the market place something the government will never do and probably couldn’t do. No one who works as a regulator is an entrepreneur, they did not create this country or the opportunites that the free market gives us all. The free market is responsible for the right to pursue happiness, no words on paper can do that, no law can do that, entrepreneurs, innovators, leaders do that, they do it every day of every year. If we stop the flow of risk takers for failure to provide a fair return for those risks, we will have nothing. I guess you can tell I am serious about this issue and some ought to give Jeb Bush an atta boy. Because most politicians are cowards and would fold under pressure from the liberal idiots, who cry when the least little thing goes wrong. The alternative is to do nothing, and then we all receive just that for our efforts and in that case you will find what we have today, a lackadaisical attitude toward work, occupation, school grades, being on time, doing what you say you are going to do. A society of non-caring, non-risk takers, and lots of complaining. Okay, okay so we get the point. Back to the subject of flow and why I personally am so intrigued by it. Here are some thoughts about flow and winners and losers and risk takers who understood the value of flow in customer service and making money, and yes all these people and me included have risked everything on a hunch that flow and efficiency is the key. Yes our team has studied these flows in the delivery of products and equipment to our team. We are aware of the process and equally aware that a Grid Marketing strategic plan is needed for the end users and is definitely the wave of the future for on site car washing. We plan to deliver it. If you will look closely at the winners of the market in various sectors you will conclude that the only way to fully service the customer and command maximum market share with mobile car washing and still retain a profit is this method. Consider it like that of a basketball strategy of zone defense as opposed to man-to-man coverage. Think of it as a soccer game with three full backs, three half backs and four forwards with the occasional fourth forward adding to the team as a rover player. In this model we give as examples in wartime of border barriers, infantry divisions and occupied territory personnel. If you look at a game of Risk or Chess you see how just how important resources are for immediate response of a hostile taking of territory. If you go too far into one area and do not cover with ample force your other areas your opponent will attack your weak link. In our case of ‘Grid Marketing’ of car washes assume that the competition wants to get your market share or that the customer wants service too far from your present position, thus causing unnecessary travel time and lost efficiency. The enemy, the fixed site car washes are relatively finite in their ability to service their clientele. Problems arise immediately as demographics of change or traffic flow is diverted to other thoroughfares. It is difficult for them to conduct a grid marketing program in cities or towns which are already built out, since there will be less and less empty lots available in prime locations which can be bought for a reasonable price to provide for adequate ROI. To win the car wash market in a given area or territory there would be only one choice, that is to have a plan which encompassed both fixed and mobile car washes in combination to create synergy. Mobile must be first to market to insure proper brand name recognition and followed up by strategically placed fixed sites. Let us briefly describe the history of market winners such as Dominos Pizza, Starbucks, BlockBuster Video, Fed Ex home delivery, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Wal*Mart. We should also discuss the losers of the market such as WebVan, Emery Express, Montgomery Wards, small regional banks, Mom and Pop gasoline stations. We will show also why we will win and why there is no way a fixed site carwash can succeed while we are in domination of our fully developed “grid marketing plan”. Of course we will also show how we will be the sole survivors in the fixed carwash sector of our industry once our grid is dominating the mobile market. In the early seventies Tom Monahan, founder of Dominos Pizza, started to gain regional and metro domination in the pizza business by delivering a pizza when and where you wanted it in 30 minutes or less. He did this by having franchisees set up in an area and then adding more units. He really started cooking when the company was able to have enough franchisees in a region to deliver without too much drive time. He used delivery people, usually college students, to deliver the pizza and keep the tips. He paid them only minimum wage knowing they would make up the difference from the volume of their tips. The store managers worked hard to satisfy the customers because they knew they might some day own their own Domino’s franchise if they worked hard for six to nine months. Thus Tom Monahan was able to get maximum work effort from managers and drivers from tips and incentives of future gain. He also satisfied franchisees with a product that cost only $1.85, to produce and sold for $9.99, which provided ample profit margins for franchisees to keep expanding. Tom Monahan, who never cared much for money and drove a Ford Taurus most of his life, retired a billionaire with a lifetime of additional royalties. He gave billion dollars to his church and lives comfortably to this day. Our franchise advisor, Lou Gurnick, who advised the Wash Guys, was formerly the advisor to Tom Monahan for his European territory domination. Lou had explained to us many of the conquests of Tom Monahan and how he did it. Think of the Wash Guys now for a second. Any non-owner manager of a franchise can become his own franchisee in another area if he is given the thumbs up by his current employer, our team member franchisee. Each car washer or detailer on the trucks can keep the tips and split them with the crew that day. Our only costs for a car wash are water (about $20.00 per month per unit) and supplies (about $15.00 per day per crew-not a cost or earnings claim, this is only a discussion and concept). And we do not have to make the pizza and go back for the next order. We can, like Fed Ex, deliver many packages (car washes) without returning to the facility. Not having to make the pizza, pay labor for dispatching, answer the phone, have a storefront retail location or advertise in the phone book is a major advantage. Think about Fed Ex Ground, Air, Home Deliver or Custom Critical. Yes they are number one by air, number three in the nation as an LTL (Less than Load) carrier, and number one in home delivery due to the competition being practically zero (no one else has really cared to dominate the B2C internet delivery markets). Between Fed Ex Air and Home Delivery it appears that UPS is in deep trouble for those markets. Airborne Express is losing it and Emery Express is gone after aircraft flight failures due to bad maintenance and cost cutting to try and compete with the big guns of Fed Ex, UPS and Airborne’s independent contractor system. Home Delivery is an independent contractor system, much like the company Fed Ex purchased when it bought RPS. That independent contractor system most resembles a franchise system. Both Dominos Pizza and Fed Ex have much in common also when it comes to dispatching and state of the art, central call-in-systems. They are not alone. Look at 1-800 Batteries or 1-800 Flowers using a distributor system of existing small business people. Just like us, a chain of independent and highly successful entrepreneurs committed to the customer. Fed Ex has a 1-800 call center in Memphis and Dominos has a store-by-store database by called in number with customer profile. Like Amazon.com you need not give them any more information other than the type of pizza and the credit card number, if it is different then the last time you bought a pizza from that franchisee. If a store is too busy or chooses to close earlier than the others, then your order is forwarded to the next nearest store. This way one store can close or four stores can close at 10 pm as long as one store is open until midnight in a particular area so that the customer can still get their pizza. Great system for allocating resources. Fed Ex also does this on Saturday with only 10-20 vans operating instead of the entire fleet. The USPS also operates the Sunday before Christmas with a few jeeps still running to make sure all deliveries make it by Christmas. It is about allocation of resources, customer service and winning back customers by delivering. If you read the book “Pour Your Heart Into It” by the Founder and now Global Strategist of Starbucks, Mr. Shultz or “The World On Time” by Fred Smith, Founder of Fed Ex you will see how this strategy along with a team work atmosphere and dedication from the front line you can win the market, any market in any industry. Hell car washing ought to be a piece of cake, don’t you agree? Let us look at the BlockBuster Video and Starbucks Scenario along with the Kinko’s location models. Where do they put Kinko’s, ever notice? Next to or within a few miles of colleges and also near business parks and high tech parks which are near the same college or universities. They put them next to their clientele. Universities are a great source of labor and after the degrees are issued a great source of recruiting for these companies. Kids going to college need the Kinko’s for their studies and projects. Kinko’s needs them for labor. The high tech companies and office parks are filled with companies who need printing. It is no wonder that the older printing companies were further from these locations due to costs and many times located downtown where the businesses use to be or stuck in an industrial park where rents or lease space was cheapest. Even though Kinko’s charges more than the standard thermo graphic and printing companies in every category of service and every item, they still have won the market and killed the PIP, Kwik Copy, Signal Graphics and other franchised print shops as well as nearly every non specialty printing company in every market they are in. It is interesting to repeat the old adage “Location, Location, Location”. In this case it is very apropos. And so it is with Starbucks who picks locations very carefully, so much so that any company that chooses a store of any type next to them is sure to have a winning site with good traffic. In fact; Quiznos, Einstein Bagel and Hair Cut franchises purposely go out of their way to secure locations next door to Starbucks or within close proximity. It is nearly predictable where they will go in once they reach a synergy in the market place. Look at BlockBuster Video. Where did they put them? In the same shopping center as the existing mom and pop video store. After all in their opinion that was where people were used to going to get a video for their evening. True enough, yet if the video store draws from a three-mile radius, it behooves the demographic surveyors in charge of locations to be smart enough to put the store in the center of the largest continuous group of customers. Yet many small independent business owners do not know or understand this and instead go for the best deal on a lease space. The example here to be noted is that you need to be near your customers and if you cannot, then simply do not open a store. Or if you have a mobile unit concentrate on the area of best potential and let the competition flock to those areas you do not service, where pickings are slim. Your remaining competition weakens, competing for fewer and less desirable customers or market areas within a region. This gives you the market share and efficiency to expand leaves them busy picking up scraps with no extra reserves to expand back into your dominated area, to take back your market. Once they are weak go in and take them out with the synergy from your previously exploited areas. Never be bashful when going in for the kill. BlockBuster destroyed many a mom and pop business. So did Dominos on their way to deliver a pizza direct. So did Dell with their streamlining ordering. Fed Ex, well if you were a local delivery company you had no chance against a nationwide, then eventually worldwide powerhouse. Enterprise Rent-A-Car went on to pick up clients and deliver them to their business or pick them up from work to rent them a car. They hired young energetic people from college and always promoted from within and still do today. The President and CFO both started out at Enterprise, washing cars. Tell me they do not value washing cars. They love us. They also love crushing the competition. One story in Forbes told of them going to body shops and stealing competitors phone numbers and cards off bulletin boards for car rental. When caught they simple said, “We are better. Why should a customer have to pay more? Besides we will come here and pick them up or even deliver the car to them. Which service do you think your customers would want? They are busy. Face it. You should not allow these other companies to make it a hardship and over charge your customers in a time of crisis. Besides it gives them more money to spend in your shop.” The owner of the body shop could not argue with simple logic and forbid the other company whose flyers were stolen from posting them again. Service always wins, everyone wants and it is up to ‘Team Wash Guys’ to deliver. These stories are interesting about competitive spirit, but no one is more competitive than Wal*Mart. Sam Walton strategically placed his stores outside small towns where the ground was cheap and he could draw from multiple towns. No competition except for small mom and pop stores who could not compete. At first locals would swear that they would not go to Wal*Mart, but since it was outside of town no one would see them, so they went there only to see all their friends had done the same. Wal*Mart hired local people too, lots of them. It became such a prestigious job in some of these economically depressed towns that they only had to pay minimum wage. Many of above mentioned companies have the same brand name recognition driving employment applicants to them and thus they are able to pick the crème of the crop. Wal*Mart was very careful in selecting the best locations to service the areas in the small towns they went too. As a matter of fact Sam Walton drove around for years in a motor home surveying sites and setting up locations. He was right to do this and after traveling around from city to city, area to area, in my mobile office/command center for the last year I know exactly why he did. He was a very smart man. These are the winners of their markets and industries. We too can be winners of ours. We will, just like the other great companies listed here, surpass them to be number one in cars washed per day by early 2003. Let us explore the companies who did not make it and why. First let us take a look at Montgomery Wards, literally an American tradition. Why did this company fail? They failed to innovate. They had no online strategy. They were located in areas of shifting demographics instead of areas where the leading new discounters and box retailers went in. Target, Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, Old Navy, Circuit City, Toys R Us, Office Depot, Home Depot, Wal*Mart, etc. As demographics shifted these stores sprang up, yet Montgomery Wards stayed in place as customers shifted buying behavior habits and preferences. Montgomery Wards failed to adapt and innovate and gear its position in the changing world. They could have had a great online strategy like Office Depot. They could have made it a place to go like Barnes and Noble with their in house coffee shops. They could have made it fun, bright and new like Best Buy and Circuit City, but they did not. It is imperative to keep up to date with customer’s perceptions of how they should buy car washes. If we look at other industries such as the Pool and Spa maintenance service, window washing, landscaping and mobile oil change Industries and their business models it is no wonder that there has been no one winner of those markets. It is easy to start such a business and no sense of image or appropriate standards to follow. No one dominant player has emerged. Those that have tried, have not used a grid defense-marketing plan as the one we are going to implement at the WashGuys. Let us look at Trugreen Chemlawn, which was recently sold by ServiceMaster, that company never made it all the way and became the leader. They took the landscaping business and tried to standardize it, but were never able to concentrate on individual areas in order to make it work. In FL, they had made significant head way in setting up regions, but in other parts of the country it was a dismal failure. In other areas they did not follow the absolute grid-marketing plan. They therefore left the market and sold the company. ServiceMaster was able to hold together their Merry Maids concept and ServiceMaster brands, but clearly did not dominate the market as the industry of cleaning carpets belongs to the independents and a number of franchise type systems. In those saturated markets no one was able to win completely like in the case of Microsoft, Block Buster, Kinkos or Starbucks. In the window washing industry we see something much similar, you have Window Gang, Window Genie, Window Butler and thousands of independents and of course we have also entered that market as well, with our Window Wash Guys concept. Even as a franchisor has the greatest ability to set out and conquer a market, few do, not using the tools of Grid-Marketing. Defined areas and territories working as one giant system is the only way to truly own a market in the service industry. The power of presence occurs when you have enough locations or areas of service so that no one can miss doing business with you, because you are everywhere. Let us discuss the problems associated with the Oil Butler a NJ based franchise company with 121 franchisees doing on-site oil changes. They have failed; Jiffy Lube has out marketed them. Their franchisees pay too much for products. And they have never helped their customer understand how to do business with them or even what areas they do service. Whereas the business model is a profitable one, it is only profitable if its operators are efficient and cut down drive time to a minimum. This has never been done, because the franchisee is sold an area, which is too large and then he cannot service it. People get tired of waiting and they drive down the street and go get oil changes at a Wal*Mart, Oil Pros, Pro Lube, Jiffy Lube, Local Gasoline and Service Station, K Mart, Pep Boys, etc. The power of presence is there, but it does not rest with one market winner, just many companies doing everything the same way, copying each other. Once in a while someone comes along with a new idea and takes the idea to the consumer who is willing or even more than willing to buy the service. Such was that of WebVan. A great idea, a great service and great timing with maximum employment and 2 person working families, too busy to do the shopping. Why did this fail? How could it? Well if you look closely at the model, and its intensive infrastructure it is obvious. First rather than using existing facilities of food distribution, such as where houses and grocery stores, they decided to build their own. Bad idea. The customer just wanted the groceries, hardly cared where they came from. Instead of using these facilities, they attempted to build their own. They spent millions and millions of dollars building huge turntable style where houses to load the food onto trucks for delivery and fulfill customized orders. All this sounded like a good idea because their customer base was enormous, everybody who eats, which last time I checks was all human beings. Then they had the problem of delivering the products to people who were not home. They never made a conscientious effort to use a grid-marketing program. Too far between stops, too far from their where houses, too much traffic. Yet the entire time all the neighborhood grocery stores were right around the corner from the customer, literally set up in grids. The system was already there, yet they were refused usage, due to competitive aspects. They should have worked with the system already in place saved the money and used it to streamline ordering and add delivery vans in a direct and predictable grid plan. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, however we use this example to show the insanity of the methodology used when the system to have won the market was already in place. If only the leaders of this WebVan concept had been able to see what our team sees everyday. They burned through 1 billion dollars in start up capital and then liquidated and filed bankruptcy. All investors had lost all their money and the vans were sold for pennies on the dollar. We tried to bid on a couple. $40,000 vehicles for under $6,000 sold at auto auctions in Dallas, and the Bay Area in CA. This has been the single greatest disaster in the service sector in the history of the world and it happened less than a year ago. It proves to us that it will take more than money to beat our team. Why has the carwash industry never united itself to service the incredible market base through grid marketing? Why has the carwash industry never had the emergence of a true market dominator? There are many reasons for these current industry conditions. We shall discuss the weaknesses of the car wash industry. Car washing is a feast or famine business. Either you are packed and so busy you cannot think or it is dead and you need to send some of labor home early. Fixed site carwashes have a number of inherent problems that occur even before they start. They must find a properly zoned piece of property, which is near the correct demographics, find a bank to fund it, convince a planning commission to approve it. This is after they spend hundreds of hours surveying the right location, before they go and make an offer on the property. They need to find out the traffic speeds since it takes the average person 1-2 minutes to make a decision while driving by. If the speed is too great then by the time the customer decides that their car really does need a wash, it may be too much trouble to make a U-turn. If it is easy to make a U-turn then the location is bad because the traffic count is so low that there are not enough cars going by to help the car wash with their location. Speed of traffic is not all. Also to be considered is the center median, if there is no break in the center median, then customers cannot cross over into the location. If customers cannot cross the center median then you typically lose half of your volume. This is even more critical if your car wash is already built use to a certain volume and the city comes along and decides to put in a center median, which previously was not there. It is also good if your car wash is near a busy intersection where the signals stop traffic for more than 1 minute 35 seconds, the minimum amount of time the average car wash customer takes to decide if they are willing to get their car washed and spend the extra time and extra money. Even more advantageous is a location near or next door to a QSR-Quick Service Restaurant, which has a drive through. McDonalds is the best QSR to be near, although if there are many such as a Burger King, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Jack n The Box, etc. Carwashes have also discovered that Starbucks is a major bonus to the car wash volumes. This best location is a car wash on a bend in the road so it can be seen from both directions, near a major traffic light, where both streets are extremely busy. Additionally if the car wash was on a small hill so it’s sign could be seen not only from the intersection, but also from the other crossing street, with four QSRs surrounding it. One on each side of it and two more on the other side of the street. With a Starbucks across the street and Wall*Mart within a quarter mile. Several Apartment complexes and town homes down the street, the major roads lead to a high-tech office park not more than 4 miles away and several middle class neighborhoods and gated communities within 3 mile radius. Of course this is ideal, but these circumstances rarely exist. When they do, we will find them and set up our own hand car wash with a franchisee. A fixed site car wash gets 80% of its volume from a 3-mile radius. So what surrounds the carwash and where the competition has located their car wash will determine your volume. You can beat your competition on price and quality, but there is s fixed cost to be paid out of cash flow for use of the property or as payments to the bank. This cost has to recovered and many times it can be in excess of a million dollars, any piece of property that size requires quite a bit of debt service. This is why mobile car washes can easily beat a fixed site on price without any real difficulty. Before now it was impossible to beat them on convenience. A customer can come into the car wash anytime without an appointment. Mobile companies were not able to match this until we came along washing at peoples’ offices while they worked, they did not even had to think about it. Also since you were going to peoples’ workplace you only dealt with people who had jobs and therefore an income to afford a car wash, thus our rates of buyers and market penetration went up past anything a fixed site car wash could ever hope to expect. But that is also an increased problem for car washes because 40% of the population will not go to a car wash. These are figures brought to the industry by the ICA-International Carwash Association. There were ten reasons why. Waiting in line was one of the top reasons, the opposite of perceived convenience. We are told that many car washes often have in excess of 45-minute waits on weekends. Whereas no one on our team feels this is even close to acceptable many people still wait in line; that is until we come to town. Other reasons people do not patronize car washes is because they are afraid some one might steal personal items out of their car or damage or scratches may occur. Some people are worried that even though they came with a coupon for special price they may be up-sold and be forced to spend more money. This has been necessary for car washes wanting to make more money to help pay for increased costs of soap, water, electricity, labor, lease payments, rent or payment increases from non-fixed loans on property. Unfortunately for them every time they up sell a customer they are that much less likely to return next week for a car wash. To further streamline there car-washing process nearly 80% of the car washes in the country prompted by chemical vendors and industry associations of which there are 10 throughout the country (which we constantly monitor) started using Hydrofluoric Acid. Hydrofluoric Acid allowed these car washes to wash cars without excessive pre-washing or brushes. This sped up tunnel carwashes which could now wash cars in anywhere from 45 to 90 seconds start to finish. That was good for speeding up waiting time, but as you know it was it ruins the finishes on cars. This fact has prompted many detailing companies to tell customers not to go to car washes. Dealerships providing add-on sealant coats, were telling customers when they buy their car not to attend a car wash otherwise their special sealant coat warranty would be immediately revoked. The last and for most problem of the carwash industry is that conveyor belts will not take 20% of the cars on the road. You cannot put an LLV-Long Life vehicle postal jeep through a conveyor because the front width between wheels is less than the distance between the back two wheels. You cannot put a dually truck through the car wash, because it will skip off the track. So will any vehicle with over 31 inch tires or tires, which are 90 series. They often scar rims, rip of spoilers, and damage cars when one tire jumps off the conveyor. Some cars often accelerate and slip into gear like the Chrysler Jeep, sending them into the cars waiting to be dried off at full throttle. With all these problems occurring and none of these problems happening in the mobile side of the business you can see the obvious advantage and reason for a specific strategic plan to service this incredible need which has been unanswered. The size of the market is truly overwhelming but nowhere near unconquerable. We can, we will, we must bring quality and customer service back to the car washing industry. If we have to entirely destroy the car washing industry and rebuild it to accomplish that mission, then so be it. The industry has been distorted and it has sold its soul, the customers are crying for service. Yet even the number two consolidator of carwashes in the country can do nothing more than but wait until either their 6 million in operating capital runs out or the economy changes. They have upgraded all their car washes to wash cars in 7 minutes from the time you enter until the time you leave, but the means by which this is done is by use of a higher chemical percentages. The number one carwash consolidator in the country is probably going to be de-listed from the NASDAQ. Several large consolidators have filed BK in the last year or have had many carwashes repossessed. Large Gasoline distributors have learned that roll-over car washes are a waste of space on the property of a service station; maintenance problems, damage to vehicles, excess space taken and water shortages have made it nearly impossible for them to give an equivalent ROI of the exact same space as more gas pumps, C-store space or QSR co-brand within the station. Many gas stations give away their car washes with a fill-up, at a cost of over $1.55 for soap, water, ROI on equipment and wasted space. Very few super stations are including roll-over car washes these days in their plans, they were good at first, but now that so many oil companies have put them in that the novelty has worn off and it no longer brings in customers. The C-Store is a 2000% better use of property per square foot. There are no clear leaders in our industry, no new technology, and no one team who cares more about doing it right than The WashGuys. This is the perfect time to attack, defeat the enemy and win the market. There has never been a better or more opportune time to go all the way and bring service back to America. One more, small obstacle in our conquest to own this market will be the public’s impression of what a mobile car wash looks like, what services it offers and what it is. We must overcome the perception that mobile car wash companies are run by non-English speaking operators, ethnic hoodlums and drug dealers. We will need to work to blow away the mobile competition with service, image, quality and price. We seem to have a pretty good handle on all of that. We are the largest mobile car wash on the Planet. We are the only carwash company that can accept carwash orders via PDA wireless devise. We have the nicest looking and best equipment in the market. This is where we are today. Here is where we are going, that was your introduction and here is the plan: Strategic Grid Marketing for the WashGuys ; Our goal: To deliver car washes in 5 minutes to a house, office, school, government agency or corporation. No other service company in the history of the world has ever been able to do this. Our Weapons: We now have a zip code based 1-800 dispatch service to send calls to the nearest team member in the service zone. We set up this system for the purpose of immediate delivery of services to customers. We are adding to this system, our system of Internet ordering. Smaller units with good turning radiuses, or trailers, which can be moved using various tow vehicles owned by the franchisee or independent contractors. Flexible labor from colleges and off day firefighters and other people needing extra days of work during the current economic slowdown. A mixture of: Truck Wash Guys Isuzu trucks; Concrete, Awning, House Guys units; Oil Change Guys vans; Window Wash Guys service trucks, all working together to gather customers in the Team WashGuys databases. Meetings in each market twice a month for breakfast to discuss leads generated and distributed to the team. Tough team members and an established customer base. Name brand recognition in our subsequent markets. Community support systems in place. A service everyone wants and needs. Demographic software from many sources to help us determine target able zones for maximum profitability. WashGuys pre-paid cards, ability to take all major credit cards and a software package to follow customer payment profiles. Our biggest weapon is surprise. Since we are the ones developing it and taking it to market we are inventing it as we go. So no one can copy us in real time. Now speaking of the flow process and how it relates to grid marketing may not be fully apparent to most, perhaps to those who fight wars and command armies and provide logistics and support, those who play basket ball, football or fight crime. We have some interesting History of this grid Marketing Plan approach to systems flow processes. 15 years ago in Los Angeles County we originally had set up our business this way, we did so before the invention of Alpha Numeric pagers, cell phones, fax machines and there was no Internet, at least no one ever heard of it yet. It worked well and we were able to deliver car washes in about 20-30 minutes. So this is not a test in the real definition of the word. This is where we will find better methods, try out different marketing materials, practice crushing competition, cutting the time of delivery to the goal of 10 minutes or less. In 1992 we had 43 units running in 20 cities using this system running on alpha numeric pagers and one answering service dispatching calls. This was before we started to franchise, but it shows of the intense desire of customers for on-site services and even more so, car washes. So we understand traffic flows, money flows, industry logistics, heel just to be stay in business during the last recession we had to be experts of such. Now more than ever since this recession is a tad bit deeper than the last. Other Theoretical and Real World Users of Grid Marketing, Zone Defense, they exist everywhere. Grid marketing is similar to grid defense as any net-centric war buff would show you. Much of this theory is not too awfully different than a police department, which puts its officers on duty cruising in zones and is able to get response times down to under 2 minutes in order to catch criminals and save lives. Our only real difference is we will do it by remote without dispatchers. We will let the technology work for us. After studying police charts and service zones and techniques of police dispatch, we have come to the conclusion since this is not a matter of life and death we can cut out the dispatcher and have one nationwide system like Fed Ex, but without the labor costs. West Houston is divided already into known areas used by the USPS, zip codes, they are clearly definable and standardized. There are other zones, which are definable but are not as readily known by the customers who call in. We will not re-invent the wheel. In small cities, which have only one zip code but run multiple trucks we will set up a rover crew and the other crews will be defined by the color of flyer the customer is holding. Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Orange all of which are zones. Flyers will be handed out specifically in areas we chose for those target zones. When mass flyering occurs at events we will use the standard yellow flyers, which means it is a new customer and they will get the rover crew the first time. After the car wash that person will give them the appropriate colored flyer or WashGuy card, which has a area special code on it. For instance the card may have a Zone 1,2,3,4,5,6 on the back, which the customer can punch into the phones when calling the automated system. If a car wash customer freaks out they can press zero and get to a live operator who can explain the system and that operator will either connect them to the franchisees mobile phone or that of the rover crew. The automated phone system will walk the person through the system very quickly. Our call in system will allow us to caller ID every call. Although the technology is there for GPS positioning of callers, we will not have that for another couple of years. Fire Departments use a sort of Grid Defense plan in that they have fixed site locations that have ready alert firefighters in them. The Air National Guard also has ready alert planes sitting on the ground which can be airborne in five minutes or less. Our current president once flew in a squadron of such aircraft. The AWACS planes use a grid offense plan in zones to alert the US and her allies of possible threats. Many times it is hard to distinguish if the mission is a Zone defense plan or a grid offense plan. In the case of the fire department they have both. Are they fighting and attacking fires or are they really defending against a fire when it attacks. Ambulance services they have both also and a way of combining fixed locations and mobile units. Some types of grid offense and defense systems go to stop a problem, some go to cause a problem, some go to deliver something and some go to pick something or some one up. The police do all of that. They go to guard against problems, go and start problems, deliver a uniformed officer and pick up the bad guys, cuff them and stuff them and haul their ass to jail. The ambulance services have bases for the ambulances but many times such companies as American Medical Response AMR contracts with government agencies, namely cities and counties to run their ambulance services for them. In doing so and trying to further the response time and still lower costs, they send their ambulances into the zones where they can much quicker respond to without having to fight traffic. The result is that they can handle more calls faster with fewer units. This is why you often see Ambulances at the fast food restaurants just hanging out and waiting for the next call within their zones. After traffic dies down and response time can be greater they can let some of the ambulance drivers and technicians go home and operate the grid with less units and less people. Airport Shuttle services, taxi-cabs and limos also have a similar service and often used contract drivers, contract cars, rented cars for the day to an independent driver, and a state of the art dispatch service. All of which work in zones, routes or designated areas, which change based on needs of customers. Those industries unlike ours are highly competitive, with us no one is doing it, no one understands it, even though the customers ever day call up and say can you come right now. If the answers were yes then the word of mouth would go up and more calls would come in and eventually we would be washing everything in the service zones as we define. We will attack the zones in the place and time of our choosing. Once these areas are conquered we attack adjacent zones. Such is how wars are won. Generally a war is won through logistics and responses, both of adversarial nature and those of defense in nature. We attack the zones to combat the competition, and defend against in coming calls and cover zones appropriately to service the desires and whims of customers. By doing so we will get the customers to trade us a percentage of their income with an instrument known commonly as dollars. The name of the game is; provide what the customer wants and they will give you money. We have the power and capacity to do this, we can have the market and we should therefore move into position and take it. It does not appear that anyone is going to come and give to us, so we better get busy and claim it for ourselves. When fighting a war the US has the different military services broken into groups. Marines, Army, Air force, Navy. Each group has its areas of expertise and territories to guard. We are now even seeing the emergence of space as another territory to control and or defend. Even the original grid satellite project Iridium used a perfect grid to allow data and messaging throughout the world. Bush’s Missile defense system breaks the grid in to three dimensions and each grid is defended by satellite, geo points and triangulation to down an incoming ICBM missile. We have coverage on air, land, and sea and now space. We do not only control the air we control all that is above the Earth. Someday we will be able to shoot down or even deflect meteors or comets. We must be able to handle all needs of our clients no matter where they occur or what type of washing service is needed. By strategically placing our units nearest the needs of our customers and delivering services quickly and inexpensively we will be the next Dominos Pizza. Incidentally Dominos Pizza made 7500 millionaires out of its franchisees. Who will wash the cars? The company who can deliver, one, which understands flows of all types of things. We have the flow of equipment, we are working on the flow of smart franchisees, who understand the game, and we will continue on working to find out what the customers desire and how to deliver it. What is the moral of the story? What is the solution to the problem? Watch the flows DUMMY, Jeb Bush is, the new Secretary of the treasury is, even a mobile car wash company is. The key is in the FLOW, the natural order of things, the flow, the cycles. Ask Henry Ford? Ask anyone the glow, frequency and cycles, that is all it is. It is really simple stuff. Anything that upsets the flow needs to disappear unless it generates it’s own energy and is traded for the flow. Such as a wind generator, a hydro-electric dam, think of the world in flows and cycles, in frequencies and patterns, in concepts of thought, not in words on paper, posturing from politicians or liberals from the peanut gallery. You want to win a war, a Super Bowl, a game of chance. You must stop and stand back and study the flow. That is all for now, I hoped you learned something, because my fingers are tired. Good Day Fine Sir.
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