Lotus Carwash in Zülpich opens
With the opening of Lotus Carwash in Zülpich, Germany has gained another large car wash with indoor vacuuming and self-service wash bays. The competition in the surrounding areas was not great before Lotus landed. Therefore, the location had a strong influence on their choice.
After two years of planning and only ten months of construction, a new car wash was built in Zülpich near Euskirchen. Entrepreneur Alexander Zubiks has thus established a second mainstay.
Zubiks has been running a car dealership some distance from the new site for 17 years and therefore has experience in the mobility industry. “However, I don’t know much about car washes. We approached Christ directly and did all the planning together.”
The entrepreneur is glad in the current situation to have found a business partner with whom this project could be realized together. “The other manufacturers did not want to work with us. This was probably due to the fact that we concluded our financing with the bank only after the project planning. We are glad that Christ went the extra mile for us.
Large pre-wash area
Lotus currently operates with five full-time employees. “We started looking for employees at the beginning of December and quickly had applications from many young people” tells Zubiks.
Four of the employees are currently assigned to the pre-wash area. “We want it to be fast and for customers to have a positive experience. That’s why we have four employees working on one car in our large prewash bay right now.”
The new employees had no previous experience in the car wash and were trained by Zubiks, who himself had once worked at a Christ facility.
Currently, he is permanently in the car wash. “During the start, we had malfunctions almost every day. These ‘teething problems’ were quickly eliminated by the customer service department. Either Christ employees came to us or we solved it via digital remote management. The software developers quickly fixed bugs in the software”, Zubiks looks back on the first month since the opening.
Positive response
Alexander Zubiks has planned his new facility for 50,000 washes per year. Currently, about 250 cars are washed daily. “Right now, many customers are coming to us because of the salt on the roads. That’s when the cars get dirty again quickly. For us, that’s good.”
The car wash offers customers three wash programs and an optional underbody wash. There was no special wash offer at the grand opening, but Lotus Carwash also placed newspaper ads. “We distributed coupons in the local newspaper for 20% off. This increases our reach,” Zubiks knows.
Customer response is thus far positive. “The facility and also the self-service car wash are very well received. In Zülpich, we only have two portal car washes at service stations. A car wash like this is new and something completely different. Customers at the self-service car wash are already familiar with Christ technology from a car wash in Euskirchen. Now they don’t have to travel so far to wash their car.”
Just one month after opening, Lotus Carwash can already welcome some companies in the region as regular customers. “Around 30 companies have approached us and now wash their vehicles with us,” explains Alexander Zubiks. Among them are quite a few car dealers. The fact that there is so little pressure from competition in Zülpich clearly shows.
Lotus Carwash
Blatzheimer Str. 4
53909 Zülpich
Germany
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