News & Press

5 Social Media Tips for your Business

Mon, 6 Nov 2023 16:22:00 GMT

By: Holly Macaluso, Social Media Strategist, Turtle Wax

Social media is an amazing tool that you can use to promote your business. You can reach new audiences and expand your customer base by posting your content across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and more. Keep these few tips and tricks in mind when posting to your business account.

Post Consistently. Find a posting schedule that works for you and your business, and stick to it. Your customers and followers will learn what type of content to expect and when. Remember that content cycles quickly, so do not be scared to post on your channels. You can even schedule content within social platforms to stay ahead of your posting schedule.
Be Authentic. It is extremely important to be genuine across your social platforms. Your community followed you for a reason! As you continue to improve and evolve your content, don’t forget what brought your audience to your channel in the first place. Think to yourself, “What makes my content engaging and my own?” Always continue to post content that is true to yourself and your business. Allow for organic moments to help your content continue to feel relatable to your audience.
Video Content is King. This is especially true when it comes to those stunning before and after results, which we all know and love in the detailing industry. Social media platforms continue to prioritize video content, so if you are not hopping on the trend, you may be missing out. Tapping into platform best practices and trending content such as ASMR, trending sounds, short-form videos, satisfying content, and more opens the door to better performing content, and in-turn, new audiences.
Engage with your Audience. Having an authentic and true relationship with your audience is one of the greatest ways to build a supportive community. Responding intentionally to your comments and direct messages from followers will help continue to make that authentic connection. This can turn followers to customers one day.
Organically Amplify your Content. There are various ways to amplify your posts organically without needing paid promotion. Please note, this will vary by platform and continue to evolve, but some great options include:

Utilizing Relevant Hashtags: Especially trending hashtags or timely hashtags. The right hashtags can put you in front of your target audience, even if they haven’t connected with you before.
Tagging: This includes relevant brands you showcase in your content, accounts with significant reach that frequently share and credit other creators’ content, potential partners, and more. This can increase your chances of being featured on other accounts.
Location: Adding locations in your content helps with organic discoverability. This can result in explore page features on Instagram, For You Page on TikTok, and more, which can help you reach new audiences and potential customers.

Not only can successful content connect you with new customers, but it can also set you apart from your competitors. The process will take work, as well as trial and error, to find which content resonates most with your audience, but the positive results of “viral” content can change your business for the better.

*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the IDA.

*This article was provided by Turtle Wax, an IDA Diamond Sponsor. It does not constitute an endorsement, guarantee, warranty, or recommendation by the IDA. The IDA makes no representation or warranties about any information contained herein

The Cost of Counterfeits

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 15:20:03 GMT

Written By: Dylan von Kleist, CD-SV, Marketing Manager, RUPES USA
IDA Counterfeit & Patent Infringement Taskforce

When most people hear the word counterfeit, they picture mobsters and other unscrupulous characters in a warehouse somewhere making fake money. Maybe your mind goes to a shadowy character in an alley offering to sell you a $100 Rolex watch from under his trench coat or a card table at the local swap meet selling designer purses with logos that are just a little off for a fraction of a price that you’d find them in a store. But that isn’t where counterfeiting stops, and it has a dramatic impact on the detailing industry every day.

To understand the impact of counterfeiting we must first understand the nature of it. Counterfeiting isn’t always simply a copy of the original at a lower price. Counterfeits can include products that have unique outward appearances but internally feature patented designs. It can include reverse engineering proprietary chemical formulations or even the repackaging of the original formulation diluted and presented as a unique product. Pads and even towels, where branding doesn’t appear directly on the product, both suffer as well with low-quality copies using the same color or style present themselves as lower-cost alternatives to the original. The fact is counterfeiting, and related activities, encompass a wide variety of intellectual property theft that has become the single largest criminal enterprise in the world. It has become far more complicated and subtly nuanced than simply buying a $150 polisher that the vendor promises is the same as the more recognized brand name version. The sale of products associated with counterfeit and intellectual property theft generated an estimated $1.7 trillion dollars in 2018. It is estimated that it will grow to $2.8 trillion by 2022 with a potential loss of 5.4 million jobs. While detailing business products only comprise a part of that total, it is a growing issue and one that will profoundly impact us at every level going forward.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s a problem for the manufacturers to fight. I’ve got a business to run and saving money where I can help me.” But, let’s drill down into that thought process a little bit.

The cost of research and development is among the highest, if not the highest, any manufacturer faces. Often years of trial and error, testing, instruments for collecting data, salaries for engineers and chemists, designers, subject matter experts, certifications, specialized manufacturing equipment, documentation, and in some cases even patent filings; all these costs stack up to make the process of developing a new product for the market an extremely expensive proposition. This does not even begin to consider the protection of intellectual property once it has been stolen; a process that can suck up hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years of work. The cost of all this is rolled into that manufacturer’s overhead, so every dollar you spend on the original product goes to fund that process and ensures that innovative companies continue to innovate. Ultimately, it is these companies, working in collaboration with their customers to develop solutions is what drives the industry forward with new methods, new technology, and new ideas. All of this ultimately finds its way into the technicians’ hands to make them faster, more efficient, effective, or more profitable. Your money spent with an original manufacturer finds its way back onto your bottom line.

In contrast to that, a counterfeiter does not incur most of these expenses. In most cases, they simply purchase the original version, reverse engineer it, create a reasonable likeness and push it into the market. More common now is using private label offerings with respected brands to shield the source of the counterfeit from the consumer. The cost for these knock-off producers is a fraction of the OEM as they have saved virtually all the up-front costs to develop the product and, in most cases, they can also avoid the costs associated with safety certifications, patents, and other overhead the original inventor absorbed.

So how does this impact you at your shop? It removes the incentive for innovators to innovate. The unfortunate reality is that the act of counterfeit production has become so large and so widespread that new products can be copied in record time. Aided by advances in imaging technology, the time it takes to copy a product has gone from months or years to as little as weeks or days. It has been documented that automotive products shown for the very first time at trade events like SEMA are photographed, sent to counterfeiters, and replicated for sale before the original manufacturer even ships their first unit. With such a threat to the theft of intellectual property and a narrow window for the OEM to recoup their development costs, we are rapidly approaching a situation where it may not make good business sense for some companies to innovate. If companies that have consistently been at the forefront of new ideas that benefit you decide to stop innovating the progress of the industry stops and you, as a technician that stands to benefit from these innovations, lose out in the long run.

Consider for a moment that you are the number one detailer in your market. You have spent years developing and refining your skills. You have spent money to travel and train at some of the best facilities in the country. You have attended trade shows to learn about the latest and greatest products to make your business better. You have spent countless dollars and hours purchasing and testing products to find the perfect solutions for your business. All this time invested has positioned you as the top choice for anyone looking to have their car detailed. Suddenly, one day, you notice that a new shop has popped up nearby. You check their website, and they list all the same products you use. You browse their gallery of work and start to notice, the photos are yours, just with some minor photoshop changes made so they appear unique. They name their packages very similar to yours, but for less money. Even their shop name sounds strangely like yours and their logo uses the same colors. You are frustrated, angry, but there isn’t much you can do because all of your customers start to go to this new shop because “it’s almost the same” as yours, but costs less. You stop investing in improving your services for your clients and instead start having to fight purely on price. You don’t have time to attend training, because you have to do increase the number of details just to keep up with your new reduced level of revenue. You stop seeking out new products to improve your process because, frankly, as soon as you validate it the other guy will just use it too.

Of course, this is a tactic no one would openly endorse or admit to doing, but many have probably fallen victim to it. The issue of counterfeit and knock-off products is much the same. Months, or even years, of investment, can be wiped away if consumers choose to select the cheaper copy over the original. The next time you make a purchasing decision, consider this scenario. While one purchase may not bankrupt the original manufacturer, it is showing both financial and ethical endorsement of what the counterfeiters stand for. As an industry, we should strive to be better… because we are better.

With this article, the IDA is proud to announce the formation of a task force specifically charged with combatting the issue of counterfeit and gray market products within the detailing industry. The task force is comprised of several manufacturers, many of them competitors, who have come together to bring attention to the issue and how it is having both short- and long-term impacts on the detailing industry as a whole. This will be the first in a series of articles, webinars, and other material intended to arm you with the information to make informed decisions about where your hard-earned dollars are spent, and what they go to support.

Counterfeiting & Patent Infringement Policy Task Force Members:

Robert (Bob) Eichelberg, Lake Country Power Tools
Leviticus (Levi) Gates, CD-SV, RT, The Rag Company
Clint Hintz, CD-SV, RT, Buff and Shine Mfg
Chris Metcalf, CD-SV, Flex North America, Inc.
Bob Myers, CD-SV, MC, RT, PRO Products
Dylan von Kleist, CD-SV, RUPES USA, Inc.
Jay Schneider, Upscale Mobile Detail

Dealers Turn Detail Departments Into Revenue Sources

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 17:06:43 GMT

By Keith Duplessie, CD-SV, RT

Lean production techniques organize equipment, personnel, and materials to enhance sales, productivity, and quality while minimizing waste

For too long, the in-house detail departments of new car dealerships have dragged down profit. One reason for this financial drain has been the industry’s typically disorganized, non-standardized approach to detailing, which results in an unnecessarily high cost of labor, chemicals, and materials with slower turnaround and lower quality work.

Now, however, top dealers are borrowing from the auto industry’s lean production techniques. They are managing equipment, personnel, and materials to optimize productivity, workflow, and quality while minimizing waste. By doing so, they are transforming their detailing operations from a profit drain into a revenue source.

Such an approach can supply superior quality detailing and cut 25% or more of the time and labor needed to ready a vehicle for the lot. It can also save several dollars per vehicle in chemical and material costs for approximately a 1-year ROI.

“We have essentially cut our detailing time in half and improved the quality using lean production techniques,” says Chris Davis, Detail Manager at Wagner Auto Group, a full service new and used auto dealer in Shrewsbury, MA. “Superior detailing has become a sales advantage because impeccably clean cars sell and dirty ones do not.”

Greater Efficiency

One example of this more efficient approach to detailing that is gaining ground among dealers involves the use of accurate chemical dispensing systems.

Such a system puts all the tools and supplies needed by detailers within easy reach so they never have to leave the vehicle or service bay. These are placed on both sides of the vehicle to allow more than one person to work independently at the same time. This increases productivity so more vehicles are detailed per day, and the vehicles get to the lot faster ready for sale.

When Wagner Auto Group recently set up a new detailing facility, it included eight chemical dispensing workstations along with a variety of other equipment.

The workstations dispense up to 12 necessary cleaners, shampoos, and treatments through color coded, chemical lines, eliminating the waste, distraction, and mess associated with squeeze and spray bottles. Even more viscous chemicals, such as waxes, polishes, and compounds, are dispensed through the system, which further expedites the paint finishing process.

“Everything is ready right where you need it so there is no wasted time or effort,” says Davis. “With two techs working on a vehicle, we can essentially detail the interior and buff and wax the exterior in approximately 30-45 minutes per car.”

Because each workstation includes a powerful wet/dry vacuum, this eliminates the need for clumsy portable shop vacuums. “Our detailers do not have to drag around shop vacuums between vehicles, so there is no worry about bumping them,” says Davis.

For cleaning and shampooing carpets and fabric upholstery, each workstation has an internal heated soil extraction system. Two coiled air lines are also available for operating pneumatic tools such as buffers, shampooers, and orbital waxers.

One key to making the system more efficient than shops using spray bottles is an accompanying chemical mixing and distribution center that automatically dilutes all water-based chemicals to exact proportions. This improves safety and quality while eliminating chemical waste and improper mixing. All chemicals, including ready-to-use products, are delivered to the workstations installed in the detailing center.

“The chemical dispensing system is essentially foolproof and ensures that we get consistent quality formulations for our details,” says Davis. “We also save at least several dollars per vehicle by avoiding spills, improper mixing, and other waste.”

Greater Profitability

The bottom line for dealers looking to transform their detailing into an actual profit center is enabling everyone, including technicians and managers, to work smarter, not harder.

“With our ultra efficient detailing process, we can now take a dirty car from the lot, get it prewashed, prepped, detailed, photographed, and put back on the lot ready for in person and online sales in an hour,” concludes Davis. “We estimate 1-year ROI on the detailing equipment.”

About the author: Keith Duplessie is owner of DETAIL PLUS Car Appearance System, a Dallas, Texas-based manufacturer of car detailing equipment including ChemSpense workstations and Chemical Dilution and Dispensing Systems. He managed sales and technical services at the company before acquiring it in 2017. Keith is a Founding Member of the International Detailing Association.

*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the IDA.