Putting the Brakes on Car Wash Prices

Most busi­ness lead­ers are cur­rent­ly grap­pling with the topic of “trans­for­ma­tion.” Major change is espe­cial­ly evi­dent in the mobil­i­ty sec­tor. But not for Richard Enning. “That doesn’t con­cern us,” says the CEO of Mr. Wash AG, a medi­um-sized fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny that now oper­ates 38 car wash­es in Ger­many. These aren’t small setups, by the way, but huge facil­i­ties with long tracks on as many as three floors. Mr. Wash cleans more than eight mil­lion cars a year. It posts 140 mil­lion euros in wash sales, 110 mil­lion from the adja­cent fill­ing sta­tions, and anoth­er 40 mil­lion from its “mac Oil” ser­vice, name­ly oil changes with no appoint­ment needed.

Richard Enning is Mis­ter Wash him­self. “Clean­li­ness is a fun­da­men­tal human need,” he says. His busi­ness is tai­lored to ful­fill­ing the need of car-crazy Ger­mans for vehi­cles that ver­i­ta­bly sparkle both inside and out. “‘Clean car — happy heart’ is our slo­gan,” he notes. The sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion head of this fam­i­ly-run busi­ness has turned wash­ing one’s car into an expe­ri­ence, start­ing at 10 euros, which includes clean­ing the rims. A com­bi­na­tion of price and per­for­mance is what makes Mr. Wash so com­pet­i­tive and ensures its suc­cess — for six decades now. For Enning goes well beyond what a sin­gle wash bay at a fill­ing sta­tion can offer. And he moves with the times, respond­ing imme­di­ate­ly to new devel­op­ments, new types of cars, and chang­ing cus­tomer needs. Viewed from an out­side per­spec­tive, trans­for­ma­tion is sim­ply part of busi­ness as usual, and has always been so.

The company’s newest site is in Enning’s home­town of Mül­heim an der Ruhr, in the west­ern state of North Rhine-West­phalia. “It’s prob­a­bly the world’s first large-scale car wash to meet all its elec­tric­i­ty needs with its own solar power,” observes Enning, who never tires of try­ing to make the entire process even more sus­tain­able. The exte­ri­or wash, inte­ri­or clean­ing, man­u­al appli­ca­tion of wax on the paint, and final pol­ish with fresh­ly washed plush yel­low tow­els are all designed to quick­en the hearts of car own­ers. There’s now even a make-up treat­ment for the walls of tires, in either “jet black” or “styl­ish gloss.” Enning worked with the top chemist at a tire dye maker to come up with this envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, non-toxic, and exclu­sive prod­uct. But that’s not all. While the smart­ly attired and invari­ably cour­te­ous crews are devot­ing expert and respect­ful atten­tion to the finest auto­mo­tive cos­met­ic pro­ce­dures, cus­tomers can not only watch but also relax with fresh­ly brewed espres­so drinks and hot choco­late in white porce­lain mugs. Their chil­dren, in the mean­time, can ride a carousel free of charge.

But here’s the real high­light: the cus­tomer lounge with its com­fort­able seats also has a book exchange. Its vol­umes, from a wide range of gen­res, can be taken home. Cus­tomers can then return their books to the well-curat­ed lit­tle library. It’s a pop­u­lar place. So pop­u­lar, in fact, that Enning needs to keep it stocked. “We buy old books on eBay by the kilo,” he says. Gen­eros­i­ty is part of his busi­ness model. As is qual­i­ty. Every year he has around 12 tons of Dall­mayr beans brewed in fully auto­mat­ed pro­fes­sion­al-grade Franke machines, each of which costs around 16,000 euros, not count­ing main­te­nance. The beans are organ­ic and fair-trade, of course. “When we do some­thing,” remarks Enning, “we real­ly want to do it right.”

All of that needs to pay off, with­out send­ing the price of a wash through the roof. In fact, it should do pre­cise­ly the oppo­site. Cus­tomers who want to save the addi­tion­al cost of hav­ing the inte­ri­or cleaned may do so them­selves for as long as they like in the superbly main­tained vac­u­um hall, at no extra charge. In addi­tion to high-pow­ered vac­u­um equip­ment, they can use a com­pressed-air pis­tol to remove dust and water droplets, a small stain­less-steel basin with warm water, and a device that inten­sive­ly cleans floor mats — all at each sta­tion so they don’t have to wait in line. Tire pres­sure can also be checked at the vac­u­um sta­tions. With their cars now sparkling inside and out, Mr. Wash cus­tomers drive con­tent­ed­ly away out onto the roads, per­haps with a new book on their pas­sen­ger seat.

For some peo­ple the wash expe­ri­ence might even be addic­tive. Enning has a found a solu­tion for them too, name­ly a flat rate. Cus­tomers who buy multi-month pack­ages can wash their cars as often as they like, even sev­er­al times a day if that floats their boat, so to speak. It also gives them VIP sta­tus. Flat-rate hold­ers have their own ded­i­cat­ed track. Not only that: a red-and-white bar imme­di­ate­ly rises when its sen­sor detects the incon­spic­u­ous black flat-rate bar code at the edge of the front wind­shield. A few meters later the pre­ferred customer’s car is stand­ing under the track’s first spray arch ready to be shampooed.

That being said, Mr. Wash hard­ly trades in snob­bery. It offers attrac­tive ser­vices for every­one. Cus­tomers who come on week­day evenings between 6 and 7 pm get a vouch­er with their receipt for an iden­ti­cal wash free of charge — also on a week­day between 6 and 7. It’s no won­der, there­fore, that a size­able fan club gath­ers at the entrance short­ly before 6 in antic­i­pa­tion of a free wash. This “clean hour” fea­tures disco light­ing and the appro­pri­ate music. “It’s almost like a bar,” says Enning with a smile, pleased with the appeal it enjoys espe­cial­ly among younger clientele.

Enning wants his facil­i­ties to run at high capac­i­ty all day from 8:30 in the morn­ing to 7 in the evening, of course, in order for his busi­ness model to both suc­ceed and fuel growth. He wel­comes not only indi­vid­ual cus­tomers but also large fleets from busi­ness­es and pub­lic agen­cies. For them he has devel­oped a “Flex Wash” pro­gram. “It’s kind of like your neigh­bor­hood pub,” he explains. “You wash the car, put it on cred­it, and pay later.” Once reg­is­tered along with its license plate, each fleet vehi­cle can be washed when­ev­er desired at any of the 38 loca­tions. A detailed invoice is sent to the fleet oper­a­tor at the end of each month, which saves paper and admin­is­tra­tive costs. The recip­i­ents of these col­lec­tive invoic­es enjoy dis­counts of up to 20 per­cent, which puts the price of a stan­dard wash down to 8 euros. This pro­gram also makes Mr. Wash an attrac­tive option for the grow­ing car-share busi­ness, which needs to keep its com­mu­nal vehi­cles clean.

The “wash price brake” is a good exam­ple of how Enning moves with the times and is quick to offer mini-reforms under strik­ing head­lines. “It reflects our promise not to raise our car wash prices for the entire year of 2023,” he says. He also address­es the needs of his more than 1,800 employ­ees (start­ing wage of at least 14 euros an hour). Every month from April to Decem­ber in 2023, they are receiv­ing a tax-free bonus of 100 euros to com­pen­sate for infla­tion. “It’s our way of slow­ing the rate of mon­e­tary deval­u­a­tion — on both sides,” he notes. Addi­tion­al ben­e­fits also enhance the attrac­tion of Mr. Wash as a place to work. For exam­ple, all employ­ees get their birth­days off, at full pay. And in the inter­est of his employ­ees’ fam­i­ly lives, Enning halt­ed the prac­tice that some loca­tions used to have of open­ing on Sundays.

Hail­ing from 73 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, the employ­ees are Enning’s great­est asset. But not the only one. If you have the occa­sion to visit his office, you might spot real estate offers and land reg­is­ter maps on his two mon­i­tors. The com­pa­ny is expand­ing, and is there­fore always on the look­out for new loca­tions. Enning only rarely signs a lease, how­ev­er. “When­ev­er pos­si­ble, we buy the prop­er­ty,” he says. Sites on thor­ough­fares in major cities are choice pieces of prop­er­ty and enor­mous busi­ness assets. They also keep costs sta­ble. No land­lords can help them­selves to a slice of the expand­ing sales pie.

The com­pa­ny recent­ly made a pur­chase, name­ly 22,100 square meters on a major artery in the east­ern Ger­man city of Leipzig, near the cen­ter of town. “We’re plan­ning a new Mr. Wash with attrac­tive archi­tec­ture,” says Enning. Each site has its own indi­vid­ual design. In the port city of Ham­burg it takes the form of a cruise ship. In envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious Mün­ster it fea­tures enor­mous leaves on the ceil­ings and walls. And graf­fi­ti art graces the premis­es in hip Cologne. The com­pa­ny invests an aver­age of 20 mil­lion euros in each new wash factory.

There’s more to see in the CEO’s office, such as pro­to­types of tech­ni­cal advances that are soon to be intro­duced. But Enning doesn’t divulge any specifics, nor about poten­tial new loca­tions in the future. The rest of the indus­try watch­es the ever expand­ing dom­i­nant play­er with wide eyes. How can he do that: offer superb ser­vices with free extras at com­pet­i­tive prices? One key fac­tor is sheer stub­born­ness — in a pos­i­tive sense. The com­pa­ny designs its tech­ni­cal facil­i­ties itself, with its own per­son­nel includ­ing elec­tri­cal engi­neers, mecha­tron­ics spe­cial­ists, and experts in automa­tion engi­neer­ing. “Noth­ing here is off the rack,” remarks Enning on a tour of his site in Essen. “We draw on our expe­ri­ence in every­day oper­a­tions to keep refin­ing the tech­nol­o­gy in our machin­ery and process­es, which means we’re always becom­ing a lit­tle bet­ter.” This new site in Mül­heim is also now home to the company’s own 15-mem­ber mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing team, which is respon­si­ble for equip­ping exist­ing and future loca­tions and updat­ing the rel­e­vant technology.

It’s abun­dant­ly clear that the head of this fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny loves inde­pen­dence in every respect. To main­tain this free­dom, he needs to stay on the ball, keep abreast of the times, and con­tin­u­ous­ly devel­op his com­pa­ny. Can we real­ly say that trans­for­ma­tion isn’t a con­cern for Richard Enning? It might be that trans­for­ma­tion sim­ply comes nat­u­ral­ly to him, and is an inte­gral part of his every­day oper­a­tions. At any rate, this son of the com­pa­ny founder is con­stant­ly rein­vent­ing his own busi­ness — with a sharp eye for detail. And an unswerv­ing focus on his cus­tomers. “But as you know,” says Enning as we part, “that’s also a key part of the phi­los­o­phy at Porsche.”