Jonathan James of James Graven, a respected and established rollover car washing operator in Cambridgeshire found that a hand-wash operation opened up on adjacent ground.
He responded by downloading the sample 'Take Action' letters from the CWA website & issued these rapidly to the Environmental Agency & local District Council. With some pushing of these bodies, he quickly succeeded in having the illegal hand-wash operation closed down for good.
In his own words ...
"From our point of view we came out fighting. We slashed our prices to half price and put posters all around the site to tell people. We got a massive vinyl sign made up to advertise on the wash screens top wash at £2.99 and our staff all wore badges to tell customers. We also promoted the carwash at our other site in town with posters and badges. We put the promotion on our website and pushed the carwash club.
We achieved all of the above in a month and I am delighted to say that the Hand Wash closed yesterday and has been totally dismantled today!
I think it was important that we acted quickly in order to ensure that the operator did not get a foothold and/or a customer base built up.
Your help and support was superb and gave me the steer on how to deal with it. The CWA website was extremely useful and we got the desired end result. Legislation can work and it certainly did in this case."
AquaValet
Even in the old days when car wash technology was not as advanced and soft foam or textile brushes did not exist there was no shortage of people willing to wash their "pride and joy" cars in automatic car washes.
Could the increase in the number of hand car washes have been the result of supermarket chains buying up petrol stations and expanding the forecourt shops into mini supermarkets at the expense of automatic car wash facilities? Finding an automatic car wash nowadays is a lot more difficult than it was even 10 years ago.
Colin Thomas
great to see an assocaition forming and growing in strength ,we can all benefit from each others advice
and im positive we can all help grow CWA to be an essential part of the car wash industry in the UK
Colin
H20
ernie tate
Iam working with my local water authority and i was wondering if you have a study or information as to how much water is used by a private consumer when they hose wash their car compared to a mobile washer compared to a car wash.
Thank You
STEVE BULL
REALLY GOOD WEBSITE - MYTHS WERE VERY INTERESTING!
Carol Smith
Really easily navigable site with good information.
Can the CWA be used to assist retailers if they have customer queries / claims about their wash ? i.e. CWA give supporting evidence ?
Mathew Muddiman
Superb Site. Escecially liked the car-wash illustration. beautiful.
I love clean cars!
Enjoyed the website. Very informative.
Brian Watson
Excellent website. Exactly what the industry needs.
Car Wash Association
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Case Study - December 2009
Jonathan James of James Graven, a respected and established rollover car washing operator in Cambridgeshire found that a hand-wash operation opened up on adjacent ground.
He responded by downloading the sample 'Take Action' letters from the CWA website & issued these rapidly to the Environmental Agency & local District Council. With some pushing of these bodies, he quickly succeeded in having the illegal hand-wash operation closed down for good.
In his own words ...
"From our point of view we came out fighting. We slashed our prices to half price and put posters all around the site to tell people. We got a massive vinyl sign made up to advertise on the wash screens top wash at £2.99 and our staff all wore badges to tell customers. We also promoted the carwash at our other site in town with posters and badges. We put the promotion on our website and pushed the carwash club.
We achieved all of the above in a month and I am delighted to say that the Hand Wash closed yesterday and has been totally dismantled today!
I think it was important that we acted quickly in order to ensure that the operator did not get a foothold and/or a customer base built up.
Your help and support was superb and gave me the steer on how to deal with it. The CWA website was extremely useful and we got the desired end result. Legislation can work and it certainly did in this case."
AquaValet
Even in the old days when car wash technology was not as advanced and soft foam or textile brushes did not exist there was no shortage of people willing to wash their "pride and joy" cars in automatic car washes.
Could the increase in the number of hand car washes have been the result of supermarket chains buying up petrol stations and expanding the forecourt shops into mini supermarkets at the expense of automatic car wash facilities? Finding an automatic car wash nowadays is a lot more difficult than it was even 10 years ago.
Colin Thomas
great to see an assocaition forming and growing in strength ,we can all benefit from each others advice
and im positive we can all help grow CWA to be an essential part of the car wash industry in the UK
Colin
H20
ernie tate
Iam working with my local water authority and i was wondering if you have a study or information as to how much water is used by a private consumer when they hose wash their car compared to a mobile washer compared to a car wash.
Thank You
STEVE BULL
REALLY GOOD WEBSITE - MYTHS WERE VERY INTERESTING!
Carol Smith
Really easily navigable site with good information.
Can the CWA be used to assist retailers if they have customer queries / claims about their wash ? i.e. CWA give supporting evidence ?
Mathew Muddiman
Superb Site. Escecially liked the car-wash illustration. beautiful.
I love clean cars!
Enjoyed the website. Very informative.
Brian Watson
Excellent website. Exactly what the industry needs.