If you are going for a Harvard MBA, you will be given one assignment to evaluate a fictitious company, which will be attempting to regionally dominate the carwash industry and then later create a nationwide carwash system. Each year students contact our company the Car Wash Guys to ask us questions about the industry. They lie and pretend to be franchise buyers and pretend to be interested, looking for industry information to help in their class case study and project.

I can tell you if you are doing a college report of some type, it does not matter what you write because the professors in business schools are morons and they would not know if what you wrote was true or not. Many times the students ask for industry data, such as how many carwashes are there of different types such as but not limited to; self serve coin-ops, rollovers and conveyor car washes. In fact those numbers are irrelevant to making money number one, number two the market analysis by anal-ists is a waste of time. Because everyone in the carwash industry is running redline with the same information and no one is using the whole track. If you want profit, not just revenues and numbers on paper you need to give the customer what they want and have them lined up all year, regardless of regional weather seasonality.

http://www.carwashguys.com/073102_2.shtml

You know endless irrelevant data is what everyone else is working with, and they all keep doing the same thing and no one has become the Lance Armstrong of the Car Wash Industry. As long as you are using irrelevant data, your report ought to be filled with pictures and a good use of white space? College Professors such as Harvard Business School (yes a college level education) love those things you know. That and young boys, deny it professors?

I know as a business student you want to fill-in all the blanks and answer these questions with definitive answers, but once you are in business, you do a disservice to your client or to yourself and in the case of a term paper if you believe that such information is relevant. It is not, unless you are selling hydraulic hoses and components or soap injection systems to the car wash industry. And if so the information is only relevant for five years anyway. Other than that, the questions you are asking are not the right questions. Case in point? Sure. Look at this recent article of someone doing it all the Corporate Business School way:

http://www.carwash.com/news.asp?mode=4&N_ID=57473

You should be focused on one thing and one thing only for your client, your boss, your professor-less teacher or your company. WINNING. To win you do need data, but good data. Relevant data, which leads to good decision-making and controlling markets and 100% market domination. Profits, Winning, remember that. The world is full of losers with bogus input, who could of, would of and should of, but didn't; don’t be one of them. That goes for your schoolwork and your business career. Think on this.

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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