Car detailing industry sees new franchise business emerge

Sarah Stowe

There were plenty of businesses around at the 2015 Melbourne franchising expo spanning across all sorts of industries: food and beverage, roofing solutions, vending machines and even brokers. 

Mobile coffee franchises offered an indepth look into their vehicles but there was another type of mobile showcasing its business model in the franchising scene: Waves Detail Pro, a mobile car detailing franchise business from Queensland.

Managing director of Waves Detail Pro Daniel Fuchs spoke about the identification of a market gap and how Waves is capitalising on the mobile franchising industry.

“Our passion started in the mobile detailing industry, for us now it’s all about franchising as a business model to take a market share in an industry that we believe is not being done professionally currently. So our focus is offering super high degree of quality training to ensure that our franchisees are satisfying all the needs of the user: right from the person who wants the car wash right through to the person who wants the new car protection package.

One-stop mobile shop

“We call those ‘multiple profit centres’, which means we have happy franchisees because they have a super high earning potential using their multiple skillset and it’s also great for the end user because they’ve got a one-stop mobile shop – and that’s really important for credibility and authority,” Fuchs said.

Recruiting the right people for the job can be a difficult task in any franchise business. With a long list of preferred characteristics already in mind, it can make finding the right person to welcome to the team a gruelling process.

For Waves, the mobile detailing industry is one that sorely needs a revived business that has a refreshed model catering to all sorts of vehicle lovers. Finding the right franchisees is crucial for the business to work as intended: to create and build on relationships with customers while providing what Fuchs calls a world-class mobile detailing service.

Recruitment strategy

We’ve just developed an online strategy for recruitment, working with a couple of different companies to bring that online and especially through Facebook marketing and social media. Social media is huge for us, no one in our space is really utilising it in a big way.

“We look for motivation in our potential franchisees but we most importantly want people who love people. We’re services based – it has to be first and foremost about satisfying the needs of the individual and developing a relationship. There needs to be a certain degree of people skills and reliability,” Fuchs said.

The car wash and detailing industry is worth over $525 million.