Everyone I interview says they'd pay for mobile detailing. Nobody has booked.

Tom Reilly· Mobile auto detailing idea; still doing customer interviews from my truck· Idea stage, Automotive·5d

I've talked to something like forty people over the last two months about a mobile detailing business. Office parks, apartment complexes, a couple of small fleet managers. Almost all of them said yes, that sounds great, I'd use that. Two gave me a price they'd pay that was higher than what I was planning to charge.

So I built a little booking page, put a magnet on my truck, and told the ten people I liked most that I was ready. Nobody has booked. One guy asked if I could do it next month and then stopped answering.

I know the standard answer is that people lie in interviews, but I don't think they were lying exactly. It felt more like I was asking about a good idea rather than about this Saturday.

What I'm trying to work out before I spend real money on equipment is how to ask a question that costs the other person something. A deposit? An actual appointment on an actual date? I've got maybe four thousand dollars I'm willing to put into this and I don't want to find out the truth after I've bought a pressure washer and a water tank.

What did you ask that got you a real answer?

4 replies

Rob Mackenzie· Open·5d

Three businesses in, and the only question that's ever given me a straight answer is some version of when can I put you down for. You take out your phone, you offer Tuesday at ten or Thursday at two, and then you shut up. People who want the thing pick one. People who were being polite suddenly have to check with someone.

Your ten people were told you were ready. That's an announcement, not an offer. Go back to the two who quoted you a price, name a day, and charge them. Detailing doesn't need four thousand dollars of gear to do one car well.

Tom Reilly· Idea stage·4d

That distinction is uncomfortably accurate. I sent ten people a message that amounted to hey, I exist. I went back to the fleet guy this morning with two specific slots and he took Thursday, so I'm detailing a work van this week whether I'm ready or not. Borrowing a friend's pressure washer for it.

Lena Kaminski· Open·4d

Mobile anything has a problem stationary businesses don't, which is that the customer has to believe you'll actually turn up at their curb. Forty conversations won't fix that. One person on their street who has used you will.

When I started the van I did a whole Saturday of half price groomings inside one apartment complex, because I wanted six clients in one parking lot rather than six clients across the county. Drive time eats you alive. Pick a single office park, do a few cars cheap where people can watch you work, and get the next bookings from the windows above you.

Miguel Alvarez· Registered·3d

From the shop side, the water and the runoff is the part I'd check before the pressure washer. My county has rules about where wash water can go, and a mobile operation can't always just let it run into a storm drain. Apartment complexes and office parks tend to have opinions about it too, and a property manager saying no after you've bought a tank is a bad week.

Not trying to talk you out of it. Just worth a phone call to your county before the four thousand dollars, because the answer where I am wasn't what I'd assumed.

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