Promoting your car wash

I'm in the process of have one of the local high school teams sell car wash books. They would take orders in advance for a certain number of books from their friends, parents, relatives, etc. I would then have the coupon books printed up and personalized with their team info, etc. They would sell the books (five coupons per book) for $40 ($8 per wash), and would pay me $25 per book ($5 per wash). If the team sold 100 books (500 washes) then they would net $1500. This is alot better than corner car washes and other means to generate revenue for teams to purchase uniforms, etc.
Has anyone else tried this ?
Seems like an excellent way to promote and build the business.
I would think that other teams/groups would be interested as well such as little league, football, baseball, band, etc.

Comments ?

Crown,

I used to print up a certain amount of wash tickets. The organization could sell them, collect the money and the purchaser would be able to wash the car with a 9 day period (one week with a weekend on both ends).
We would have an honor/agreement that states they will pay for all of the tickets we received.
They could sell 1000 tickets at $8.00 possibly grossing $8K.

We would have 350 redeemed and charge them between $3-$4 each. We'll go with $4.00

They would owe us $1200.00 and make as much as $6800.00!

Very easy, no need to take orders, make sure the customer got the book, too much B.S.

The other option is for them to buy prepaid cards @ $.50 on the dollar and give the customer a card.

Either way, It's a good deal. Make sure you have a press release in the local paper "announcing" the sale. Free publicity is the best! Showing community support at the same time is "priceless"!

Have fun!

What printing firm do you fellows use to print up coupon books and tickets? I've been looking around locally and for a print shop to do something like this, unless we ordered a TON up front, it just didn't make sense to spend the money on coupon books or tickets. I looked around on the internet and couldn't really find anyone priced decently to do it either.

- J.

Jin,
I've been using a local printer for several years. He prints car wash vouchers for me for around $100 for 1,000 vouchers. I was thinking of re-doing some of the wording to endorse the particular team or group, having the vouchers numbered and then stapling them together into books with a nice cover. It will cost me less than $200 for 1,000 vouchers or less than $.20/ea. My printer is in the Pittsburgh area, but you should be able to find someone local to you.

Crown

The Western Carwash Association, among others, has a marvelous "charity car wash program" in place to assist their members in going to charity groups and offering them the same type of program.

The Puget Sound Carwash Association did a "Save the Salmon" program getting the local governments behind the program.

While it is against the law for groups like you mention to conduct charity car washes in gas station lots, etc, no publicly elected official is going to go on record as closing down the local football team's or cheerleading squad's charity fund raising car wash.

If car washes are pro-active and go to the officials with a well laid out alternative they will jump on it.

You should contact both associations for assistance.

Regards
Bud Abraham

I've had a thought for something similar but geared more toward self-serve, and with the charity getting 100% of the profit. At some point I plan to make flyers and package up five tokens worth $1 each and just give some organization a couple hundred of them. They'd do the legwork (Door-to-door, in front of a mall or grocery store, whatever suits them), collect donations of $5 and give a "gift" of $5 of wash tokens in return. I figure it would cost us about 50% of the token value, but I would think it would go a long way as advertisement for us on more than one level.

Currently, I use the same item I do for multiple wash, pre-sales...wooden nickels. They are reusable and cost about 8 to 9c each. www.wooden-nickel.com

For prewash sales, I give the customer 10 to 25% off depending on the volume. For charity sales, we do a 50/50 split on my $10 wash only, and they must pay up front.

I have one employee who is an energetic salesperson. I've designated him as my outside, bulk-wash salesperson. He has sold over $2,000 retail in the last month. I give him 25%. He gives the customer, up to, 25% off. I get 50% with an expected 20%-25% attrition factor. He does it on his own time, off site. So far, it's worked well.

Most of my wooden tokens have holes and keychains in them. And I have a different color print for each kind of wash. No expiration...good at any location.

Sometimes, I put expiration dates on items but we NEVER refuse an expired coupon. In 1998, I redeemed a coupon, that had expired in 1965 (33 yrs). It was an honor to do a full service wash for 99c in that situation. The customer and I still talk about it to this day.

So my advice, don't ever put a coupon or gift certificate in a customer's hand that you don't want to take years later. One day events, with special offers, are a different situation. But when someone has purchased or been given something, and they have carried that around for a long time, you want them to feel good about trying to use it. If we have raised prices and they have a coupon for a specific service, we don't charge extra.

You can imagine the items I have out in the public with a location, that we have owned for 54 years. We've learned to be flexible and keep customers. They only thing we don't do is return money.