Well I got Ziad Y Khoury’s book Frontline Profit Machine a $21.95 value from the 2010 SECWA Trade Show for FREE and I got the flowers out of the garbage for FREE. You can come up with the rest……
Why is No One Flying on September 11, 2010?
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I am not really sure why all the flag are at half mast today and no one is at the airport. No one is on the plane either. Seriously though, no one at all was at the airport or on the plane. I am flying to the SECWA 2010 Trade Show today. It should be exciting!
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
There was a new trend in the market this year at the ICA show and it was all web based. Two companies actually had booths, one I found their booth and the other I could not find. Then the 3rd company came over to the secwa booth, but I don’t think that they had their own booth. So the idea is this: your customer wants to wash their car, so they search the internet and somehow find one of these search sites. All the sites are basically the same: you have to enter your information and then people can search for your location. They also have coupons and you can run specials. ClosestCarWash.com looks like it was developed this year while mycarwashsavings.com looks like I developed it in the 1980s.
I talked to these guys at ClosestCarWash.com and they were really nice. They like the color orange and they unfortunately tell your customers the next 3 days worth of weather. 🙂 But on the plus side the website looks good and is really the only one out there!
mycarwashsavings.com Why would you use flash as my main navigator, which eliminates most mobile devices? And why do you have to use a plugin no one uses for a video player? I looked at this web site and I tried to figure out what they were doing. They want a lot of money for there service and they want the customer to pay them instead of you. Of course they take their cut of like 25%? I wouldn’t give them my credit card information if I was a customer or a carwash owner. Also their twitter account is already suspended and they still have the link on their page. Bad sign!
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
Here are some more pictures from the ICA show. I always go by the ERIE booth but I didn’t purchase anything this year. I went by Self Service CarWashNews to take a magazine even though I subscribe, for the flight back. I also like to go by Ra-Lock but their products seemed the same this year. Which I guess is good? No real break in problems this year.
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
This was a new product that everyone was talking about this year. It was from Hydra-Flex Inc. the Aqua-Lsb TX 9000F Chemical Delivery System. Wow that is a mouth full! The big unit (first picture) costs around $15,000 and it replaces all your hydrominders with injectors and delivery pumps. You can supposedly save up to 20% including electricity, water, chemical and maintenance! But not really sure what the difference would be if you regulated your water into your hydrominders? Also the other problem they pointed out was the hydrominder tips ware and that is how the unit saves on chemicals.
The little unit (last picture) I was told was for self-serve but I talked to Hydra-Flex last year (when they only sold injectors) and they said injectors were not good for self-serve, only automatics and tunnels so who knows? The guy was also trying to sell a unit to my Dad. 🙂
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
Fragramatics sells the largest vacuum in the WORLD! Just what you need… a vacuum with everything on it. Talk about everything being in a huge knot every time someone uses anything. Just seems like a bad idea. Couple that with the unit probably being hard to work on for repairs like the older models. But I think they look the best in the business though, which is good except for the ugly flower. Well I thought it was fine until Greg pointed it out to me now I hate the flower.
Just a large air compressor… that’s all.
This was an interesting product. A basic J.E. Adams vacuum with a credit card reader, bill acceptor and coin acceptor.
A D/H Dilling-Harris self-serve bay in a vacuum stand!
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
This looks like it would be fun driving around the neighborhood!
I like RFID but this year they seemed to not push it as much.
Something that was really hard to find were dog washes. Also no motorcycle washes like last year.
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
I really liked this product. This could replace your neon and stand up to vandalism better. I lost their show specials but their website says $500 for 100 foot roll. SunLitz LEDs by Rain Tunnel not really sure about their name. SunLiz? What is that suppose to be Sunled?
I really liked this product! But he did not have any brochures and business cards so I wrote in on one of my cards and I lost it. But you can set up the credit card processing through anyone unlike Etowah Valley’s system and you can also get a Hamilton credit card reader for it I think it costs around $2800? The system is for 6 ports and it costs around $6000? All it uses is 1 cat5 run to connect and high speed internet and you can repair the credit card reader!
Now I am going to have to try some Microcoin coin acceptors. These seem great! But if you look above the coin acceptor there is a little black box. That is part of the coin acceptor…… that is CRAPPY! But everything else sounds great. No tool opening to clear jams and seems easy to program. Will not jam with really crappy coins, it has a 2 year warranty, and it can be repaired reasonably unlike IDX X-10 (the guy said $60-$80). Plus you can program tons of coins and it is not that bad of a price (retails for $219.95).
International Carwash Association Trade Show 2010
These pictures show the beautiful Birmingham Alabama International Airport. Do flights even go international directly from Birmingham? Or by international do they mean around our nation? So it should be Birmingham National Airport? I don’t know but I do know that I have a direct flight to Las Vegas, which is awesome!
Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer?
While at the ICA show I saw this really expensive Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer machine with receipt printer and bill acceptor? It is always a bad sign to have a problem at a trade show.