dealership contracts

I would most definately say you're doing something wrong. Especially if the price of the job is as much as your chemical cost? You could use Vintage on every car and still make a great profit IMO. All full time detailing businesses should be buying their products in the largest size/quantity possible. Cost per vehicle should be well below $5 per car.

 

I currently have a "contract" with honda and they want full interior, engine detail, wash, clay, and wax(they think a wax fixes everything lol) im charging them 125 bucks a car they would not go any higher :-(

 

I agree with you on this. Regardless of what you are being paid, your product costs should npt exceed 5% of what you are being paid with the exception of using a very expensive LSP. Most of the products we use are dilutable making applications pennies per car.

 

I agree with Ken. Product costs must be kept low.

I did a brief calculation to see how much it cost me to clean dealer cars up to their satisfaction. In terms of products I spent ~$5 and even that I would consider high because I didn't have COMPLETE economies of scale. My tire shine was still too expensive along with my wheel

Buy in bulk my friends and buy chemicals that get the job done. The Zep line can be your best friend when doing dealer work. I use a separate line for dealer work which includes AutoMagic, Zep, and a couple no name brands that are far cheaper than your zymol or swissvax treatments. That being said for my retail clients I would use other products to really give them their moneys worth.

I think it's important to look at expectations. My dealership sent me cars with tougher carpet and seat stains. As long as I took care of those and the major areas they wouldn't sweat it....That being said I would still make rounds to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The whole ideology behind dealerships is to do the bare minimum to get the car in adequate shape to sell. I may piss some people off with this comment but the mentality you need to have is; where can I cut corners to get this job done faster and up to satisfaction so that the dealership will be happy and so will the customers in their first week. I went from taking 4 hrs to do a car to about 2hrs by myself. I cut out certain aspects of my treatment like 2BM, foaming, brush, drying etc...But that's just what you gotta do because the car looks good for the customer and a week later when they want to get it cleaned again they bring it back to the dealership who then recommends me and now I charge the client retail $ and actually do a good job. This has happened to me more times than not. I have done cars for dealerships and the client who bought the car came back 2 weeks later to get it properly cleaned at which point my business card was handed as the guy who did all their work and I got to happily double my price and did a quality job - doing all the other little things that I normally wouldn't do because here the expectations have changed.

This is why volume dealerships are not going to pay you triple digits. And to those that have broken the Triple digit barrier then kudos to you but I've cold called all my major dealerships and breaking the $100+ mark is tough. That being said just because somebody makes $125 per car doesn't mean they make more money than somebody else who does it for $80. The quantity of cars done must also be taken into consideration to maximize revenues. My buddy does work for a caddy dealership and they charge them $125 per car. They don't get anywhere near the amount of cars I get from my volume dealership.