Discussion
Hi All,
I am currently looking at career options and would love to get out of an office and work with cars. I'm 19 and would like to find out more about car detailing, what it involves and how to get into it. I know very little about it, except that people are charging around £250 a day for a car to be detailed, and looking at some sites the results look great - so there is obviously more to it that just a wash/polish?!
I'm just interested to see if people think there is a market for this, whether it's something I could get into quite easily - and where I could learn more about it?
I'm sure it would take some time to learn but any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
Craig
I am currently looking at career options and would love to get out of an office and work with cars. I'm 19 and would like to find out more about car detailing, what it involves and how to get into it. I know very little about it, except that people are charging around £250 a day for a car to be detailed, and looking at some sites the results look great - so there is obviously more to it that just a wash/polish?!
I'm just interested to see if people think there is a market for this, whether it's something I could get into quite easily - and where I could learn more about it?
I'm sure it would take some time to learn but any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
Craig
x6cdb said:
Hi All,
I am currently looking at career options and would love to get out of an office and work with cars. I'm 19 and would like to find out more about car detailing, what it involves and how to get into it. I know very little about it, except that people are charging around £250 a day for a car to be detailed, and looking at some sites the results look great - so there is obviously more to it that just a wash/polish?!
I'm just interested to see if people think there is a market for this, whether it's something I could get into quite easily - and where I could learn more about it?
I'm sure it would take some time to learn but any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
Craig
It can be done, but it certainly isn't going to make you your fortune in the first few years of business and talk of £250 quid a day is pie in the sky stuff until you really, really know the job inside out. Back in 1986 my brother started out as a 19 year old cleaning cars, he had an older partner at the time to add credibility and trust to his business.I am currently looking at career options and would love to get out of an office and work with cars. I'm 19 and would like to find out more about car detailing, what it involves and how to get into it. I know very little about it, except that people are charging around £250 a day for a car to be detailed, and looking at some sites the results look great - so there is obviously more to it that just a wash/polish?!
I'm just interested to see if people think there is a market for this, whether it's something I could get into quite easily - and where I could learn more about it?
I'm sure it would take some time to learn but any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
Craig
Most successful people in this sort of business start out either doing friends and family members cars and then progress into working for a firm, while the pay is absolutely terrible and you really have to graft, you can see it as you getting paid to learn your trade, deal with customers, learn what to do and what not to do and any mistakes you make are not likely to cost you money or business. I would be surprised if it wouldn't take you at least a year to become pretty proficient.
If you are not ready to jack it all in after all this, you might just have the drive to start your own business. If you make it through the first two years without going bust you might be in it for the long term. The next big hurdle is when you go VAT registered, you seem dearer than other similar businesses and your cash flow really suffers as you learn to save all the VAT payments.
Having done the Saturdays, after school bits and the odd Holiday cover for the brother, I realised it was much to like hard work for me and I went on to Further Education and now have an office job and have enough money for others to do my car detailing for me. I admire the amount of work and dedication my brother has and the rewards it rightly brings him, but I certainly don't envy him, he has done well through hard graft, mega hours, good customer care and quite a bit of good luck.
Good luck in your endeavours, but if I give you only one piece of advice, never, ever drive a customers car without permission and even then don't do even that if you can help it. A Reputation for damaging or driving a customers car in an unsuitable manner will kill your business stone dead, a lot of customers are more concerned that their car will be in safe hands than they are concerned about the cost of your service.
You could start by looking at http://detailingworld.co.uk/, they have got a Forum where you are bound to pick up tips etc.
I would the suggest a massive amount of practice on your's and your friends cars before you consider charging people for your work. You have to remember if you mess up a paint job on the sort of cars that people are going to spend £250 to have deatiled won't be cheap.
The only thing to think about with going into this is the iital outlay seems to be pretty huge, the Zymol Royale polish IIRC is about £10k per tub.
Good luck with it, I fancy working for myself at the moment. As someone wise once said to me 'you won't get any richer lining other peoples pockets'!!
Mat
I would the suggest a massive amount of practice on your's and your friends cars before you consider charging people for your work. You have to remember if you mess up a paint job on the sort of cars that people are going to spend £250 to have deatiled won't be cheap.
The only thing to think about with going into this is the iital outlay seems to be pretty huge, the Zymol Royale polish IIRC is about £10k per tub.
Good luck with it, I fancy working for myself at the moment. As someone wise once said to me 'you won't get any richer lining other peoples pockets'!!
Mat
Edited by matc on Thursday 16th August 14:30
If you're going into the business purely to make money then don't bother. The best detailers around are the ones that have a passion for detailing. You can also forget about charging £250 a go without the right products, equipment, reputation and experience.
I dont want to sound too negative, but I don't want you to think its an easy way to make money. As mentioned above, to charge top whack, you need to have top quality products, which in turn will set you back.
I detail as a hobby on my days off and weekends etc. I've built up a rep on PH and get a lot of bookings on that basis (and worked with some very nice cars too), but you'd need a very good rep to ensure you had enough cars to keep you working every day of every week.
Do you know what sort of work is involved in professional detailing?
I could probably babble on about detailing all day, but the long and short is that you can't just decide that it's a job you want to do unless you have a real interest in cars and detailing.
As mentioned above, take a look on Detailingworld -it's the daddy! If you need any more advice though I'd be happy to help.
I dont want to sound too negative, but I don't want you to think its an easy way to make money. As mentioned above, to charge top whack, you need to have top quality products, which in turn will set you back.
I detail as a hobby on my days off and weekends etc. I've built up a rep on PH and get a lot of bookings on that basis (and worked with some very nice cars too), but you'd need a very good rep to ensure you had enough cars to keep you working every day of every week.
Do you know what sort of work is involved in professional detailing?
I could probably babble on about detailing all day, but the long and short is that you can't just decide that it's a job you want to do unless you have a real interest in cars and detailing.
As mentioned above, take a look on Detailingworld -it's the daddy! If you need any more advice though I'd be happy to help.
Just to reiterate, detailing is not easy.
Professional detailers have £000's of equipment, from vacuum cleaners, rotarys and pressure washers, to waxes alone that can cost in excess of £1,000 per tub (£7,000 for the daddy 'o') and vans with their own water supply (filtered of course)
Again, get over to detailing world, you'll learn pretty much everything, then you'll just need to perfect the technique and build up from there.
Good luck, at the end of the day, you're 19 and have nothing to lose, 5 years time you could be scrubbing Robbie Savages' car collection on a regular basis.
PS there's a detailing section on here too (small) http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/forum.asp?h=0&a...
Professional detailers have £000's of equipment, from vacuum cleaners, rotarys and pressure washers, to waxes alone that can cost in excess of £1,000 per tub (£7,000 for the daddy 'o') and vans with their own water supply (filtered of course)
Again, get over to detailing world, you'll learn pretty much everything, then you'll just need to perfect the technique and build up from there.
Good luck, at the end of the day, you're 19 and have nothing to lose, 5 years time you could be scrubbing Robbie Savages' car collection on a regular basis.
PS there's a detailing section on here too (small) http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/forum.asp?h=0&a...
Edited by thewave on Friday 17th August 15:03
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