Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

[ick578]

I am a college student with about a month before school starts, and have been losing hours in my landscaping job. I decided I want to start up a temporary car cleaning business with a friend, and we are just going to go to peoples' houses to do exterior and interior detailing (at very affordable prices). If it works out I will take the business to school and do it part time around my classes.

Anyways, I have done a lot of research and practiced on some cars, but I would like some advice on exterior detailing. So far the products I have purchased to use are:

Smooth surface clay kit
Deep Crystal System Polish (for customers with average cars)
#7 polish (for customers with nice cars like BMWs)
Gold Class Carnauba Paste

I plan to wash, clay, polish, and wax by hand for people. I am not going to renovate car's with neglected paint, as my knowledge is not that great. I only want to work on newer cars that are already in good condition.

My primary concerns with this are:
1. I mess up someones paint badly and the customer has to take their car to get fixed.
2. I leave a job with the car looking smudgy and bad, even though it may be temporary.

Do I have to worry about these things with the products I'm using? I have practiced on some cars and they looked good, but I'm afraid that I might do a car with different paint and the products will react badly with it. Any advice on my business idea would be appreciated, and I would like to hear if people think I chose the appropriate products to do a good job on any car. Thanks

[b2bomber]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

IMO, just stick to washing for now if you're not too confident. specially if you would be advertising your job to be "detailing" service. You might end up with a client who might be familiar with detailing too (tough luck if he knows more than you).

Regarding your products of choice, IMO, not a bad choice. However, as for your bad results query, I would like to think that bad results are usually due to wrong usage of the product.

IIRC, there has been a thread here somewhere before tackling a quite related concern: detailer damaging the client's car.

HTH

[Bill Davidson]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

I'd take polish out of the equation. Just a simple wash, clay and wax. You can offer 2 different waxes. NXT 2.0 or Gold Class Carnuaba Plus wax (it has a bit of polish built in).
Your probably better off just simplifying things ever further and just offering NXT. You'll spend more time trying to explain things than making money. Keep it simple.

I wouldn't worry about damaging vehicles with this simple routine.

[J. A. Michaels]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

I also would skip the polishing step. maybe offer two packages.
wash, wax= $$$
wash, clay, wax=$$$$

Keep it simple for know. What until your skills improve to do more.

[ick578]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

b2bomber, I already wasn't planning on not calling it detailing for the exact reason you said. Instead I'm calling it auto cleaning services. But thanks for the advice guys, I think I might drop the polish. It seems like a lot of the people I'm marketing to don't understand the importance of polish anyways. But before I completely give up on it, can you guys just explain the risks of using the polishes I choose. I feel like its really adding to the quality of my business by doing the polish, and I'd hate to sell people on waxing when it is almost always recommended to polish first. I've done tons of research reading books and everything, and I feel fairly confident about polish. What exactly is the risk in using the polishes I chose, and if I decide to stick with it what should I do to avoid that risk (once again I would do it by hand)?

[Ravi_1992]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

There's really no risk in the polishes you chose, they both pure polish and will only make the car shiner and no defect removal at all. I think everyone is telling you to leave the polish just to make things simpler for you as you are just gonna start doing customers cars. Maybe
Wash
Clay
color x (Since its like an all in one)

or
wash
clay
NXT

[b2bomber]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

b2bomber, I already wasn't planning on not calling it detailing for the exact reason you said. Instead I'm calling it auto cleaning services. But thanks for the advice guys, I think I might drop the polish. It seems like a lot of the people I'm marketing to don't understand the importance of polish anyways. But before I completely give up on it, can you guys just explain the risks of using the polishes I choose. I feel like its really adding to the quality of my business by doing the polish, and I'd hate to sell people on waxing when it is almost always recommended to polish first. I've done tons of research reading books and everything, and I feel fairly confident about polish. What exactly is the risk in using the polishes I chose, and if I decide to stick with it what should I do to avoid that risk (once again I would do it by hand)?

Ravi is correct (as far as my intentions are concerned) that the reason I advised you to stay away from a. the term detailing, and b. the polish step -- to keep things simple for now for you. Remember that detailing tackles, defect removal (ofcourse to a certain extent, e.g. scratches where the metal is showing already is not included here) and protection (LSPs), whereby your aim in doing both is to make the paintwork stand out. In addition IMO detailing doesn't only mean just working on the paint but everything else in there - trims, etc. Besides, as you mentioned, you want to do this part time. Imagine if you end up with a very neglected paint, it might be dismissal already and you're still working on it.
Furthermore, as Bill mentioned, you might just end up spending more time explaining things to your clients. A classic example would be explaining the difference between a polish and wax. Whereas if you stick to just cleaning services for the mean time, you'll have more time on your hands - ie: simple washes. If you would like to add protection (wax), then you can do that too. You have to understand that the reason people recommend polishing first is because, it's no point using the best LSP when you have defects that would prevent you from achieving the shine you want, e.g. a marred surface will still look dull even if you applied the whole LSP on that paint because of the defect.
HTH

[b2bomber]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

PS: if you haven't gone through this thread yet, you might want to sit down for a while and read through the included links to further shed light on your queries regarding polishes.

[ick578]

Re: Advice on detailing other peoples' cars

alright, thanks a lot for the tips. I think what I will end up doing is offer a wash, clay, and wax for a certain price, and say that I will polish also for some additional amount of money (I will tell the customers it is a nonaggressive polish and won't fix anything more than very minor defects). I already bought the polish so I at least feel the need to offer it as an option.