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I am a big consumer of car washes. I am constantly working to keep our cars clean and fresh and it is a never ending battle. What frustrates me most about using car washes how poorly they are run. The level of service is hit and miss. You essentially need to find a good one and stick with it. That is fine if you don’t travel much, but if you are in foreign cities often with your car like I am, then it is pure luck if you hit upon a good one (and Google Maps doesn’t help).

What would be good is if I good go to a city and find a car wash just like I could find Starbucks. Well Procter and Gamble are investing in building franchise car washes around the Mr Clean brand:

Professional car washing, which rings up about $35 billion in sales a year in the U.S., according to P&G estimates, won out as the company’s first major franchise push. “We want to blow this out to a national network of car washes,” Mr. Brown says.

The car-washing business has a handful of competitive advantages, says Nathan Estruth, vice president of P&G’s FutureWorks, which develops new business ventures. It lacks a dominant national chain, aging baby boomers are reluctant to wash cars themselves and more water-strapped communities are pushing professional car cleaning as a conservation measure.

I am big fan of rationalizing industries where it is important that the product be well developed and consistent:

The Arnetts have deconstructed each step of a car wash in their franchisee-training process, including the precise location of where to start wiping a window and the direction in which the first stroke needs to go. Towel care also counts. “It matters what temperature you use to wash them,” says Mr. Estruth of the lessons learned from the Arnetts.

This is a welcome addition to the $35 Billion Car industry where a serious consumer company can create a strong value proposition around a single consistent brand. This is also a winner for the franchisee who can build a serious well run business without having to guess how to do it. Now we just need to figure out how to get them to add Starbucks to the car wash.

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