What services should detailers offer? Big post!

Oscar Gil

Feb 13 in 🎙 General Discussion

This is a detailed post about our journey on offering new services, that aren’t detailing related, in our business.

It was originally an email series I did over a week but I edited and compiled them into this awesome post.

Let's get started...

There's no perfect number of services you need to offer to be successful.

Of course, this is highly dependent on the goals you want to achieve.

If you want to make $1,000 a month as a side-hustle, then two to three services is all you need.

If you want to make $15,000 a month, then it makes sense to have a wider selection of services.

But even that being said, it all just depends on what you want to do.

Here are three questions to think about on whether or not you should add new services:

👉🏽 What services do your customers want?

This is why we started offering smoke odor removal services in our business.

People would continually ask us for this service and we kept on turning them away. Then we realized it might be a good idea to offer this service so we got trained, bought the necessary tools, and started offering it.

It turned out to be a great service and customers really appreciated it. The average cost ranges between $500 to $800.

Listen to your customers and add (or remove) services based on what they're requesting.

👉🏽 What services can you add over time?

You don't need to start your business with nine different services. You can start with a few basic services and over time, as you gain more knowledge and skill, can add more.

Start off with a basic wash and interior cleaning and then a few months later, add a wash and wax or a headlight restoration.

You don't need to wait months to attend a training class or buy a bunch of tools and products. You can make incremental progress over time.

👉🏽 What services are a distraction versus an opportunity?

Just because something makes money doesn't mean it's an opportunity.

An important part to growing your business is having the discipline to say 'no' to many other things.

When detailers purchase a hot-water extractor, the next thing they think about is offering residential rug or couch cleaning services.

It makes sense at first because you already have the products and tools to get the job done, but I'd recommend against it because it's an entirely different kind of service to offer.

You're basically running two businesses in one. And if you're a solo operator that handles every call, job, and task in your business, you can end up being overwhelmed and spread yourself out too thin.

Instead, you should focus your limited time and energy on growing your main detailing services.

1️⃣ How We Added Vinyl Wrap Services

Over the last 12 months, we've introduced vinyl wrap, paint protection film, and window tint services to our business.

We first started with vinyl wrap because I needed a panel on my car wrapped to gloss black. Angel gave it a try, he liked it, and we just kept on going from there.

We practiced everyday. Angel went to a 2-day training class (it cost $1,750). It took us about 10 months to develop the skills to start offering full wraps to customers.

Since then we booked in multiple full wraps that ranged between $1,800 to $3,800 (which is still on the lower end of the price range).

The pros of vinyl wrapping

👉🏽 You can order film from 3M, KMPF, Avery, Cheetah Wrap and start practicing this weekend. You don't need to become a dealer or be certified to purchase anything.

👉🏽 You can spend $300 to buy all the tools you need to wrap cars: a heat gun, squeegee, knifeless tape, blade, and a few other things and you're set to go.

👉🏽 This is a high-ticket item. It's both a pro and con. The film alone can cost between $600 to $2,500 or more to wrap an entire vehicle. And that's just the material. For labor, that can range between $1,200 to $5,000.

So you have to find the right kind of customers to spend $2,500 to $7,000 to wrap their vehicle.

The cons of vinyl wrapping

👉🏽 You need to disassemble parts of your vehicle to get proper coverage. This isn't a con, but more-so an extra step in the process for a proper job.

You'll need to remove the front bumper, door handles, side mirrors, emblems, etc... Depending on the car, this can add a lot of time to the process.

👉🏽 Finding cars to practice on can take a bit more time. You need someone who is okay with changing the color of their vehicle. You can practice on a hood and roof, but eventually, you need to practice on doors, fenders, bumpers, etc...

They need to change the entire color of their vehicle and give you their car long enough to practice on.

👉🏽 More chances for a mistake or redo. Since every panel gets wrapped, tucked, and cut, there's a possibility that a problem arises with any given panel.

Of course, this can happen with any service, but when you're wrapping a door and you cut to short or you get a wrinkle, you have to start the door over again.

With all that being said, vinyl wrapping doesn't align as well to detailers compared to window tint or paint protection film (PPF).

Over the last 5 years, we've never been asked by a customer if we offer vinyl wrap services.

But we have been asked plenty of times if we offer window tint or PPF services.

So it's been a great service for us, but if I could do it all over, I'd start off with window tinting first.

2️⃣ How We Added Paint Protection Film Services

As detailers, the highest level service we can offer is paint correction and ceramic coating.

That's going to be a detailers high-ticket item. And depending on the size and condition of the vehicle, the price can range between $800 to $3,000 or more.

A complimentary service to offer is paint protection film (PPF). This is a great service because if you want to offer the absolute best form of paint protection, this is what customers should choose.

On top of that, PPF is an extremely high-ticket service but with a lot more factors involved.

If a customer wanted their truck fully protected, it could range between $7,500 to $10,000. It just depends on the size and type of truck.

That sounds amazing, but the amount of work that's involved to get the job done is far different than detailing and requires a completely different set of skills.

The pros of PPF

👉🏽 It's a high-ticket item. Someone who wants the front-end protected can range between $1,500 to $3,000. If your goal is to offer premium services, this is a great addition.

👉🏽 It's not an easy service to offer. This sounds like a con, but the few detailers that do offer this, will not have much competition. So you can separate yourself from others.

The cons of PPF

👉🏽 There's a very steep learning curve. You need to learn about film, installation, cutting, and even disassembling vehicles to get the proper results. Training classes cost around $1,500 to $2,000 and that's just to get you going.

👉🏽 The cost of entry is high. A roll of film can range between $600 to $1,600 or more. A plotter, the machine that cuts out the pattern of the panels, can range between $5,000 to $8,000. You also need to pay for the monthly software to use the plotter.

👉🏽 These are not quick turnaround jobs. Depending on what all they need done and what you need to do for a proper install, you can expect to keep a car a full week.

👉🏽 It helps to have space to work. You need room for the vehicle, tables to lay the film, and the plotter to make the cutouts. You also need to work in a clean environment to not allow any debris to get on the panels or film during the installation process.

This is why if I could do it all over, I would have first started off with window tinting.

It's an easier service to sell because everyone knows what tint is and they know they need it for their vehicle.

For PPF, it's a much smaller group of people who know what it is and an even smaller group of people who are willing to pay for it.

They're all great services, but each one has its time and place.

3️⃣ Why We Should Have Started With Window Tinting

How many people know about vinyl wrapping? It's a great service, but it's very niche. There's not that many people that want or need to change the color of their vehicle.

How many people know about paint protection film? Just like vinyl wraps, only a small portion of people know what PPF is and why they need it.

The customer must really want to protect their vehicle in order to pay a high price to get it done.

How many people know about tint? Everyone knows what tint is and everyone wants it on their car. It's that simple.

Whether someone wants tint for privacy, heat rejection, or just to make it look cooler, tint can get it done.

If you want the most basic level tint, there's an option for that.

If you want the most premium level tint that's going to last the longest and reject the most heat, there's an option for that.

So you're able to service a much larger audience with a variety of options based on the customers needs and budget.

And unlike paint protection film, you don't need a $6,000 plotter.

You can start by hand cutting all your tint. It takes longer, but that's a great skill to have.

You can use a plotter to cut out your film for tint or PPF, but you never get to develop your hand cutting skills and that may be a problem at times.

One of the instructors said, "If you use a plotter, you're just an installer. But if you learn to cut tint, you're a tint installer."

Sounds funny, but it makes sense.

We sent Angel to a 3-day training and it cost $1,200. They included plenty of installation tools and a 100 foot roll of film to practice with. We then ordered another 100 foot roll of film for $236.

So for less than $2,000, we got trained, got the tools, ordered film, and we've already practiced on five vehicles doing window tint.

The lead generation is vastly different compared to paint protection film or vinyl wrapping.

As I said, over the last 4 years, no one has ever asked us if we do vinyl wraps. But people have been asking us if we offer tint services.

Now that we added the window tint page on our website and to our web form, people are actively asking us about it.

With vinyl wrap services, we were spending $800 a month to generate leads through Google Ads. But with window tint, we've spent no money on ads and are already getting leads for those services.

Of course, all this being said, every service can be a winner if you know what you're doing.

There's shops that only offer vinyl wrap services.

There's shops that only offer detailing and window tint.

There's shops that only offer detailing and PPF.

There's shops that only offer window tint.

The great thing about running your own business is you can run it however you want 🤷🏽‍♂️

2 comments