Since the successful 2009 launch of Uber, which pioneered tech-enabled delivery of transportation and goods, a wave of mobile-app-powered companies have hit the market.
Get Spiffy Inc. is one of these rapidly growing tech-enabled companies, founded in 2014 by a team of Triangle entrepreneurs.
An on-demand car cleaning technology and services company, Get Spiffy allows users to schedule and pay for car washing and detailing services through an app at the location of their choice.
It prides itself on its Spiffy Green environmentally-friendly system, which it advertises as the most eco-friendly way to clean vehicles. According to its website, the company is on track to save 1 million gallons of water by the end of 2018.
Scot Wingo, co-founder and executive chairman of Spiffy, is not new to the tech start-up circle in the Research Triangle Park. As an entrepreneur who has successfully started four startups and exited three, including ChannelAdvisor which he took public in 2013, he’s one of the investors behind Spiffy.
Wingo first entered the car wash industry in 2003 with Carolina Auto Wash, which he invested in with a friend. In 2005, they built another car wash.
“Then the sequence led to Spiffy, and we were able to add mobile to our services,” Wingo said. “We had customers who wanted this, so we went to them.”
A big aha-moment was a ChannelAdvisor customer who had quit his job to join a startup called Uber, and the first time Wingo got on it, he thought it was amazing. “I thought ‘to use an app to get a service — what if we could wash cars in this way?’” he said.
Initially, a start-up app called Cherry launched in 2011 with the similar idea. “It had raised a lot of money, and they beat us to it,” Wingo said. But he says while it nailed the technology on the front-end, the back-end was not so well developed, such as not having the water supply to wash people’s cars.
Cherry shut down its on-demand car washing service in December of 2013. In 2014, Wingo and his team sent out its app to see what would happen, as he had been phasing out of ChannelAdvisor. In early 2016, he joined the Spiffy team full-time.
The company now has 60 employees, and is offered in Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta and Los Angeles.
Finding investors
Wingo said getting funding for Get Spiffy is a process.
“I met with a good 50 or 60 people who we had relationships with and would be interested, and we eventually navigated to a set of investors who were excited and shared the vision we did,” he said. “Every ‘no’ is a way to improve, and ultimately we were able to find the folks who loved the idea and wanted to be a part of the team.”
Jason Caplain, co-founder and general partner at Bull City Venture Partners, was the first investor to commit in the business, helping to raise a Series A round. He said Spiffy is one of the fastest-growing companies in his company’s portfolio.
Caplain and Wingo have a decade of working together, dating back to when Caplain invested in ChannelAdvisor, Wingo’s third company.
“We were the first investor in the company and that ended up being a really good success story with it going public,” Caplain said. “I had a decade working with Scot, so we decided to jump in and do the same thing all over again.”
For competitors, Caplain said the biggest competitor for Spiffy are the individuals who drive white vans and park at areas such as a mall trying to get business locally. He saw this as an opportunity, and a huge advantage.
“Our advantage is that our truck is branded, our technicians and employees do background checks, and the products we use are all eco-friendly, which are really important to companies like Cisco, Red Hat, Citrix and others,” he said. Another competitor is Squeegy, a mobile car wash company based in Los Angeles, which the company bought earlier this year.
Caplain said the company works to ensure there are no chemical spills on properties they work on, reclaiming all of their water using specially designed mats and taking the soap and water they use with them. “We can wash on the fourth floor of a parking lot and have no spills,” he said. “We have technology and knowledge that not many do.”
The technicians for Spiffy receive over 100 hours of training before they are sent out for any jobs. According to Caplain, the average individual uses over 100 gallons of water when washing their car, while Spiffy uses eight to 10 gallons. This can be attributed to its water concentration, and Spiffy’s eco-friendly approach.
When kids destroy the minivan
Personally, Caplain uses Spiffy for his wife’s mini van.
“When the kids have destroyed my minivan, I call Spiffy and have them come out to the house, roll out the blue mat, and my kids love it, they watch,” he said. Additionally, after the service, the technician gives a penguin stuffed animal, three or four of which Caplain says are attached to his daughter’s backpack.
“It’s convenient for me because instead of driving the minivan on Saturday to get her car washed and sit there, I can get part of my Saturday back and spend time with my family and they do an awesome job,” he said. “Literally, two of our neighbors asked if we got a new car.”
The company originally expected their customers to be the commuters who get their car washed at physical car washes, and those who go during the evening and weekend. To its surprise, everyone wanted their cars washed while at work.
“It’s kind of obvious in hindsight,” Wingo said. “In 2014 we realized it was important for people to get their car washed at work and not disrupt their day, and to get their key and communications through the app so that they don’t have to leave a conference or something and can also directly pay through the app.”
One of the biggest challenges Spiffy faced was in 2014 when security would stop their employees from washing cars due to policies at office parks. “By really listening to property managers, we were able to work with them and address all of their concerns and turn it long-term into a strength,” Wingo said.
A big part of Spiffy’s model now is going to office building on a regular basis and getting customers comfortable with their service. “It gets to be a normal habit, and gets people thinking ‘OK, Tuesday is Spiffy Day,’” he said.
Matt Godwin, who heads the commercial banking technology and life sciences efforts at Well Fargo in Raleigh, said he has used Spiffy three times in the last three months. He knows Wingo, but had no idea he was behind Spiffy.
“I had seen a couple of (Get Spiffy) trucks, not realizing it was his deal and we were chatting about it and he brought it up,” he said.
Godwin appreciates the reliability of the Spiffy. “I have a new car and don’t want it to get scraped up, they do really detailed wash and clean up the mess and it’s pretty easy,” he said. “And it’s tech-enabled, something I want to support.”
In the future, Godwin said a feature he would like to see is the ability to request a specific person for service. “My wife brought this up the other day,” he said. “Last weekend we used it on my wife’s car and he did a great job — it would be great if we could request a specific person.”
With Spiffy in four cities, Wingo says there is a lot they think about and work on for its future. The company is committing efforts to adding more cities, selling more and getting more partners in its existing cities and testing for adding more services.
“Customers ask for a lot of services once they trust you with one of their biggest assets, they give you a lot of good ideas,” he said.
Currently, it is testing for oil change, fueling and inspection in Raleigh. He said the government regulations may pose a challenge, but they are continuing to research and understand them.
Wingo said while the exit strategy and improving margins are important, at the end of the day, it should all start with making customers happy.
“It’s about exceeding their expectations and being pretty relentlessly focused on that, and doing everything we can, even small things like leaving a little penguin key chain to show appreciation,” he said.
