March 2020

I am often thinking about additional income streams. “What you, Arthur, obsessing over money, I’m shocked!” I hear you cry. It’s true. I am very conscious of the fact that we have a finite list of services we provide, but there are many additional things we could be doing for our customers, or as a sub-contractor for other businesses. That is a growing thing. Garages invest heavily in things like ADAS, or wheel alignment, or most likely both, and then offer to take the strain for other businesses in the area. It means those businesses don’t need to make the heavy investment, and you as a business get to go to a whole new level. You have to think of everything sometimes. Driving back over to the garage recently, I crossed a major junction in town near us where some guys were being employed to hold up signs pointing towards a new pizza place that had opened. ‘Papa Giuseppe’s, 100 yards this way’ was the sort of thing. I looked at that, and somehow it gave me the idea to start doing a car wash as an add-on. I know people make money from it, without the need to invest in a mechanical car wash. Those hand car washes are interesting. They remind me of the Roman Empire. Hundreds of years of no technological progress, because the availability of cheap (or should I say free) labour meant there was no spur to progress. Remember automatic car washes? There are much less common these days. A few years ago, you would need to be investing hundreds of thousands of pounds in a very complex, machine, that would occupy a large space on whatever site you have, and also use eye-watering amounts of water to run. Also, factor in servicing. These days, you can buy a few buckets and sponges, and pay five or 10 guys minimum wage to do it. I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just telling you that’s what happens. It led from a comment I made to Mrs P when I got back. I observed that it seemed to me that these pizza promotors might do better if they used bikini babes in Daisy Duke (from The Dukes of Hazzard TV series) style cut off jean shorts to hold the boards, instead of shivering young men in winter coats. “It’s still winter Arthur” replied my angel of reason, “do you want the poor girls to develop hypothermia?” I agreed of course, but it did lead me to suggest a bikini car wash for the summer, an idea that was shot down by her indoors, all the other members of staff present, before it had hardly crossed my lips. Look, I’m an ideas guy. Execution I leave to the team, as well as filtering out the ideas I have that won’t work. We dropped the car wash entirely, but it did lead to a discussion about more sensible add-ons, like investing in something more high-tech, developing some of our in-house skills into something more tangible. The discussion led to real development, so it was worth taking the apparent one-way trip towards what was described as “sexist, risible nonsense that would probably cost more customers that it would create.” That was me by the way, I can critique my own bad ideas you know! IDEAS – THIS WAY? 58 AFTERMARKET MARCH 2020 TEABREAK: MEMOIRS OF A MOTOR MECHANIC www.aftermarketonline.net