I'm gonna be doing it next summer on my own around the neighborhood and so, maybe hand out about 500-1000+ flyers I should at least get some people, there's a lot of real nice but not taken care of cars in my neighborhood.

This is a full detail, including engine bay, interior, and exterior.

Wash:
Meguirs Gold Class
2-3 MF Wash Mitt's
2 seperate buckets for cleaning

Interior:
Aerospace 303
Carpet cleaning stuff(didn't get it yet)
Vaccum
Leather cleaner/conditioner

Exterior:
Wash
Clay Bar (depending on how dirty/old)
PC 7424 w/ 4" pad
Polish(Don't know what yet, didn't buy it)
Wax
Clean wheels and shine tires
PlastX on headlights if needed

Also clean up the engine bay, Aerospace the plastic, and use Aerospace on the rubber parts on the outside.


I'm gonna be doing real good work, I'm the kind of person who puts a lot of care and perfection into it. I didn't put most of the product names because I didn't determine what brand I should buy yet. The details will probably be 5-9 hours in length.

I'm thinking about $100 for a full detail. Thoughts?

 

The appropriate price all depends on your costs, your volume, what you think your time is worth, what other detailers in the area are charging and how much people are willing to pay. But at first glance, $100 is WAAAAY too cheap.

Here are a couple of thoughts

1) You need to have more of a menu of services. Not everyone is interested in a "full detail". I would start with Wash & Wax that includes a wash, wax, window cleaning, interior vacuum, and tire dressing that should take about 2 hours and charge about $60. At the high end, you could do a "full detail" with a wash, clay, 2-step polish, seal, wax, interior vaccuum, carpet shampoo, windows, wheels, tires, and anything else you can think of. This should probably run somewhere around $250 - $350 depending on the size and condition of the car. Obviously SUV's and minivans will be on the higher end of that price range.

Also, I would not include the engine bay as part of this service. I would sell it as an add on for an additional $40 - $60. Although, on second thought, you may want to just forget about offering this altogether. I know that it *CAN* be done safely, but realistically you're always taking a risk when introduce running water into an engine bay. I'm guessing you're not insured, and if just one customer has a problem and forces you to pay, you could lose an entire summer's hard work.

2) I think you need to re-think your polishing step. A PC with 4" pads is going to take longer. And since it is much more aggressive than standard 5.5 or 6.5 inch pads, you are increasing the likelihood that you will have to do a second polishing step to remove any micro-marring induced by the buffer.

I dont' want to discourage you from detailing to make some extra $$$, but I think you need to think it through a little more. Take this winter and do some market research. Find out what your competitors are charging and what services they offer.

Figure out what it will cost for supplies. I suspect that you are missing a lot of necessary items. Clay, polish, waxes, and MF towels can get expensive quickly. Without running the numbers, I suspect that you'll need to invest about $350 to $500 just to get started. Which means your first few details are going to be a break even venture.

Finally, try to find people who will commit to a longer term car care schedule. See if you can offer package deals and add-on services to your detail customers. For example, if you can find someone willing to pay $300 for a full detail, try to get him to commit to a weekly wash schedule in order to maintain his newly acquired shine. Do a wash and tire dressing each week for $75 per month. Or do a weekly wash plus monthly wax and interior clean for $100.

You have a whole winter to figure this out. Don't rush and think it through. Good luck to you, and feel free to keep asking questions.

 

depends on the level of correction you can do. with a PC it's going to take you a while too. so, if you can correct really bad stuff, i'd say you should start off 200-300 and move up from there

 

I charge in the neighborhood of $200-300 for just an exterior detail with a single machine applied polishing step, followed by a machine applied AIO(poliseal) or hand applied sealant with wheels/tires/wheelwells. This takes on average at least 8 hours, and usually more like 10. For perfect polish, probably 2 days and $4-500.

 

Everything has pretty much been said but:

While $100 may seem cheap, you're new. You can always raise prices once you have established a customer base. I personally would not do a full detail for anything less than $200.00 and that would be for family friends. Polishing is a long and grueling process, you'll want to be getting paid.

You may want to do some cheap details to create a portfolio (online album) of your detailing process. Use can use this to justify a higher price to future customers.

 

Wow thanks for all the reponses guys. Don, you pretty much read my mind, that's exactly what I wanted to do, get a portfolio but I'm trying to figure out how to do that, I think friends and families cars because my family has some high class cars(Merc. S550, Range Rover Sport, BMW 3 seires) and my friends have some sport cars (Modded A4, Tiburon, modded GTI).

Ghaleon, thanks for the AWESOME post with all the tips The reason I was thinking about a 4" pad is because most of the cars are in BAD shape, and it would be more aggressive and break down the polish better. Lots of fading, massive swirls, and the red A4 up the street has almost black wheels(they were orginally silver) from all the brake dust. But, I do love to do it for some reason. If I can start a profitable buisness off of it to do for the rest of my life, I'm going to. That wash schedule is an excellent idea though

The thing is, I'm a college student (freshman this year) so I will only be around for roughly 4 months, and then I'll be off to college. Also, I do have another job(lifeguarding) but the hours are extremely flexible so I'll be fine. I don't know any local detailers besides dealerships too, so I'm guessing people have no idea how much time and money this will cost, so I didn't wanna charge too much, but thanks to you guys, 200-250 sounds good. (No water in engine bay)

Also thanks to all of you guys for being my inspiration for doing this and all the help. Esp. you Don, and all the other people like Concurs who post what they use and their pics for inspiration. I think I finally found an enjoy working to finally buy my G35 coupe next summer

Do you guys have any more advice? Also, what should I spring for? A PC 7424 or the Flex? I wanna run about a $500 budget to start with all my supplies.

 

i would recommend a flex because it'll take off hours from the PC

also, when you start... BEWARE OF YOUR FRIENDS. they're going to ask. i hate to sound like an *******, but i've kinda grouped my friends

crew status - super cool people who i can charge barely anything or nothing at all

friend status - i charge 250-400 normally, but for them 150 will suffice

friend who i barely know - full price

everyone else - full price unless you have a damn good reason not to be charged full price

 

There are pros and cons to both. A pc 7424 is probably going to be good enough for about 85% of the problems you run into. As long as you have an adequate arsenal of various pads and polishes, you should be able to tackle almost anything your run into.

I haven't used a flex, but I've been looking into it for my own personal use and I'm not too sure about it. On one hand it's a more advanced and more powerful machine. So you are going to get great results, in a shorter amount of time. However, they currently only make one size backing plate, and therefore you can only use 6.5 or 7.5 inch pads.

I did read somewhere though that the EDGE pads have an adaptor that will allow you to use various size pads with the FLEX, so you might want to look into that. However, after all of this you will probably get dangerously close to your $500 budget.

I know I was down on the 4" pads in my earlier post, but thay are absolutely imperative for the more intracate areas of the car. Spoilers, bumpers, and various crevices will go ALOT faster with smaller, more nimble pads. I personally wouldn't start a 'professional' operation without them.

If I had to choose, I would go with the PC and put the extra money towards a versatile aresenal of pads and polishes. Then later on you can invest in a flex if you generate enough cash flow to justify it.

Also, don't skimp on Microfiber.

 

Thanks Ghaleon. Hopefully the will come out with a new backing plate for 4" pads for the flex, because that machine just seems so much more effiecent. I would be nice to do one 1.5 minute pass instead of two 3 minute passes, since my customers most likely will need their cars back ASAP. But yea, thinking about it now, you need 4" to do like the back of trunks and stuff around the liscence plate.

And don't worry, I'm not gonna skimp on Microfibers. I'm probably gonna get the Cobra Guzzler as my main drying towel and get a bunch of smaller quality towels. Thanks for all of your help bro, you have no idea how much I apperciate it