There’s roughly one car for every three people in the UK, that’s over 20 million cars and many of us pay between £3 and £5 a week to have them cleaned, or we spend a precious hour of our weekend doing it ourselves.
It’s an easy business to start, all you need is a bucket, sponge and some car shampoo. After that it’s simply a case of wandering around your local neighborhood (or better yet the nearest rich neighborhood – find the cash rich time poor who have nice cars) knocking on doors and offering to clean their cars.
The downside however is you’ll be working outdoors during winter and you’re likely to find the weather affects business.
If you guarantee a good job you should be able to charge around £5 (after all you’ve saved them having to drive to the carwash) you could also offer add-ons such as waxing, alloy wheel cleaning, tyre blacking and an internal valet to drive up the value of the average sale. If you’ve got a big enough market locally you might also be able to leaflet for business and employ your friends to clean cars too, thus generating more income than you could alone.
This post is part of the my teen business week series.
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
Im just 13 and I tried this at our old house in a small village, made about £6, on 2 cars! Now I live in a lage ish town and I am going to try it again, first a trip too poundland for the equipment. lol.
Ill tell you if I make any money.
thanks a lot…
I have a car washing business in my local two villages and have made it quite successful as i have shrugged off the business which was doing it before which was charging a lot of money! i have also created my own website and have the people who’s cars i washed to sign up for it and leave feedback, this opened a new door for me as local businesses wanted to advertise on my site so i charged £10 for 5 months amd £20 for a year!
i now make around £50 a weekend and charge £4.00 a car as there are two of us. Also have money coming in from the advertising. Its a great business and all you need is determination to was cars every week and about £15
IM only 16