With a recent $9 million Series B funding round led by Durham-based Bull City Venture Partners, on-demand car wash service Spiffy will continue expanding its services to tackle not just cleaning, but all car maintenance services. The four-year-old startup now allows users to book services including detailing, oil changes, and more in an effort to tap into the on-demand economy that’s attracting more than 22.4 million consumers and $57.6 billion in spending annually.
“We’ve grown north of 100 percent growth and we decided, while working with the board and investors, that we would like to continue that growth,” CEO and co-founder Scot Wingo told Hypepotamus. “We’re using the new funding round to look at those growth vectors and figure out how to scale further.”
“Right now, we’re doing so much fleet that it has grown 300 percent, keeping us super busy. We will start opening other geographies in the next 3-6 months.” The North Carolina startup is currently in five markets across four states, with a goal of rapidly expanding to 50-100.
Users can book a car washer or technician to visit them at home or at work. The company also offers a ‘Fleet’ service where they provide mobile care for fleets of commercial vehicles or trucks.
“We’re doing more B2B business working with large car rental companies, and in Atlanta, we’re working with a big general contractor that has 400 vehicles in their fleet. We’re helping them keep them maintained and inspected,” says Wingo.
Lastly, they launched a new connected car maintenance product, Spiffy Blue, to keep track of the health of your car. The on-board diagnostics sensor connects to an app to tell users what’s actually wrong with their car when the engine light turns on.
Their oil change service, which was released late last year, integrates seamlessly with Spiffy Blue, providing a schedule of oil maintenance based on your current mileage.
“The standard oil places don’t always include the filter and all of the oil you need. People hate that whole experience, both the lack of transparency and the bait-and-switch,” says Wingo. “Our customers are always concerned with environmental issues, so we found a system that allows us to vacuum the oil out of the car through a very long straw. There’s no splatter on the ground.”
Spiffy Blue displays the health of your car based on the VIN number through an easy-to-use dashboard. The Bluetooth-enabled device, sold for less than $50, plugs into the on-board diagnostics port of all post-1996 vehicles, providing alerts on recalls, upcoming scheduled maintenance, information on your check engine light, your next car wash and more.
“We started with car wash, but our aspiration has always been if we’re washing your car, what else can we do for you? If we touch your car and we see there’s something wrong with it, we want to alert you. Oil change gave us a proof point that people will trust our brand to do more than wash,” says Wingo. “Our version one of the app was very service-oriented, but we tested the dashboard version with customers and they loved having everything about their car in one place. It helps you keep control of your vehicle.”
Spiffy has maintained their commitment to supporting their employees through training, helping them earn glowing reviews.
“We employ all of our technicians as W-2 employees. We run extensive background and driving checks and they wear uniforms and drive our vans. We train every technician 100 hours — 50 hours as classroom style and 50 hours as an apprentice with a technician,” Wingo told Hypepotamus last year. Currently, Spiffy has 25 employees at their Raleigh corporate office and 120+ technicians on the ground across the country.
Wingo says that keeping the balance between encouraging organic growth and staying disciplined through that growth, “simultaneously the hardest thing you do when growing a company, and the most fun too.”
“We have a framework we work from and think about the different priorities during different phases of the company. Right now, our priority is growth,” says Wingo. “Within that, what is the path to keep growing 100 percent? We’ve found that when we start growing between 100 and 150 percent growth it is manageable, but past 150 percent, the wheels start shaking under the bus.”
“We’re pretty obsessed with making sure customers are happy,” says Wingo. “We’re focused on delivering a great customer experience and growing as fast as we can.”
