“I bought my first car wash in 1989 in St. Paul Minnesota, and then the city of St. Paul decided that they would break the entire length of the main road I was on. I had a new wash and the movement through the wash was all the time low as soon as construction began. I was sure it would spoil me if I didn’t find anything to get more business. ”
-Dan Jarusso
Almost every car wash operator read an article or saw a presentation about the benefits of accepting credit cards and loyalty cards. In fact, there are dozens of equipment manufacturers who now offer built-in programs for accepting credit cards and loyalty cards. Car wash operators in 2007 can not swing a stick at a car wash exhibition without meeting the last cashless payment solution for a car wash. But how did non-cash acceptance start in the car wash industry?
The origin of non-cash card systems in the laundry industry
Eighteen years ago, accepting credit cards in the bay was unheard of, and loyalty programs were as they are today. The loyalty program concept is recognized as discounted tokens, tokens, and coupons books. Seventeen years ago, the concept of card cashless acceptance in the bay was implemented and preached by one person in the laundry industry, while the rest of the car wash industry was pleased with the sale of tokens and coupons. You may remember that you saw a guy at the ICA show in the early 1990s with an aquarium at his booth with a goldfish and a card reader downstairs to demonstrate the ability of readers to work in “wet conditions”. This man with the aquarium was Dan Jarusso, and he founded the company back in 1990 under the name WashCard Systems. Founded from his garage in Hugo Minnesota, Dan started his business as a one-person show. In an interview with Yarusso, I had the opportunity to learn that the WashCard was not originally invented for sale to other car wash operators. In fact, it was created because of the need to sell its own struggling car wash.
Dan recalls: “I bought my first car wash in 1989 in St. Paul Minnesota, and then the city of St. Paul decided that they would break the entire length of the main road I was on. I had a new wash and the movement through the sink was low all the time as soon as construction began. I was sure that it would spoil me if I couldn’t find something to get more business. ”
What was supposed to be a profitable small business quickly became a huge stress factor for Dan and his family. Dan spent nights and weekends in the laundry, keeping things in repair, and doing everything he could to keep his customers happy while the road construction was dressed before it was erased. Far from washing on weekdays, Dan worked for a company that developed access control technology for security systems. It is thanks to this knowledge in wave access control technology that Dan has figured out how to fix a pet. Dan hated to wear pockets full of tokens so that he could wash off his self-service compartments. After several weeks of mastery, he connected to a waterproof reader of access cards in each of his bays. Readers were connected to programmable control panels in their room equipment, which were then connected to the bay timers. Having moved a valid card through the reader, it will send a signal to the laundry compartment and start the sink, and it will not turn off again until it moves the card a second time.
Eureka! Big breakthrough
It was already a few days off when Dan finally started working on the system. He ran from the bay to the bay, sliding his card, which activated the bay. Then he will return to his office and check the activity of the bay on the black and green terminal monitor, which was sitting on his desk. With all this excitement, it did not take long before the client approached Dan and asked him what was the matter. Dan recalls that he might have been a little worried when he pointed the customer to the bay and explained: “Well, I take this card and skip it through the reader ... and now the bay turns on! When I shift the card turns off again! I have a screen in my office that records washing so that I can track any washing that I do with this card. ” A customer standing in the bay, listening to Dan, reflects for a moment and then says, “This is really cool.
Dan returned to the office, introduced a new card into the system for his first card customer. He took a black marker and drew an arrow on the card to indicate the direction in which you can slide the card through the reader and transfer it to the client. They agreed to pay their bill for the first time in a month for any laundry he did. A few weeks later, the customer returned with a friend, and he also wanted his washing card. This time, Dan returned to his office and returned with another card marked with an arrow indicating its use, and a new client asked: “So what do you call it?”
Dan thought for a moment, and his magic marker in his hand wrote two words that will forever affect the car wash industry: “I don’t know ... I think this is Card,” he said when he happily wrote letters on the front. a simple white card before transferring it to your newest customer.
Success is set up separately from the competition.
It didn't take long for Dan to realize that he had something that no other car wash he had ever heard about could offer customers. He went to the local police departments and small businesses in the area and received all of his laundry, which led him through road construction. He approached anyone who would be interested in having an “account” with a local car wash. In the blink of an eye, he had six local police stations and sheriffs on the bill and in the WashCard, and he soon got into the eyes of other local cars. The first few car washes in the city that came up to Dan asked if he would build a card system. He politely rejected them, because it was the only thing that allowed his car wash to maintain a competitive advantage over any other car wash in the city. “Why should I give them the opportunity to compete directly with me?” Dan notes. “Someone once had my WashCard, they would never even think to wash anywhere else.” What experience has shown that a business that bought $ 50 dollars in tokens or tokens per month will always double or triple their monthly laundry costs when they are placed on an open invoice.
It took a long time before the word “washing with the cards” was spread, and the washbasins from outside the city offered Dan good money to create their own card system. Sometimes he agreed to build and install WashCard systems for several other car washes across Minnesota and Iowa.
Taking the show on the road
Since the interest in cashless payment systems will start to catch Dan Yarusso, it was necessary to make some difficult decisions. He could either continue to work full time, or continue to sell the WashCard locally on the side, or he could have taken his “idea” on the road. According to Dan, retrospectively this decision was easy to make. He then spent most of his ten years traveling through numerous exhibitions with his card readers telling car wash owners about the potential for generating profits, adding a card system to his car wash. With the success of many car wash owners because of their WashCard program, it was inevitable that eventually new non-cash products would appear on the market. As it turns out, several WashCard customers felt so consistent that a cashless carwash system was such a great idea that they decided to build and sell their own systems and became the first competition for a WashCard. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Notification of replacing dirty tokens with cards, keys and bar codes instantly rolled into the car wash industry.
Quo status of non-cash payment systems
The number of non-cash payment solutions has increased dramatically as a result of consumer demand for using their credit cards or transferring their commercial vehicles to a car wash account. Consumers get the opportunity to use their plastic to pay for gas and groceries, why not soap and water for their cars? Finding a solution that satisfies both the desire of consumers to accept credit cards and the ability to offer commercial fleet accounts is a sure way to take advantage of how potential customers want to spend their money in 2007. These days it’s just as important as customers can spend their money, because they can spend their money. If you do not use hundreds of thousands of card consumers, you are losing money in potential profits every day.
The future of non-cash payment systems
In the future, cash will no longer be the main form of payment. Using the power of the Internet and advanced communication technologies, several companies will be connected to each other within one large payment network. Customers will unprecedentedly control their account settings. Saving checks and issuing tokens will be a thing of the past because Fleet managers will now run their own activity reports and manage their online account balance from anywhere in the world. Buying and managing car washes will be as safe as online banking.
It is clear that progress in technology will play a large role in how businesses such as car washes will work. Currently, there are car washes that have a general director and influential groups of investors who continue to grow their company. Today it is more important than ever that individual mouse owners overestimate how they do business today. The car wash industry is full of new technologies and new solutions to attract new business. Ask your sons, daughters, nephews and grandchildren how they pay for goods and services today. Will your car care business be prospering or will it flourish when customers who carry cash become your main demographics?
