We’re thrilled to be celebrating Wash Doctors 1st birthday today; 1500 customers, 3 services and 3 London boroughs later, at the time of writing, here is our story of how Wash Doctors came to be, from chatting on a Tinder date to an app supporting local washers and global water projects. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback from our SW London community this year.
THE EUREKA MOMENT
It all started with our founder Will, who was cycling for Deliveroo after completing his Masters in Mechanical Engineering, and frequently noticed the amount of cars neglected by their owners, left covered in the dust and grime of the city.
Will asked himself, why is there not a service that travels to your car with a backpack similar to the one he was carrying for food deliveries? Ultimate convenience is something people value strongly, and car washes were becoming few and far between with ever growing queues. SURELY there was a gap in the market for something more efficient.
The most obvious obstacle was getting the water to the customer. After obsessing over the idea for a solid 24 hours, Will found himself sat on a Tinder date struggling to ask the usual questions like “What do you do… for fun?” and went straight in to “What do you think of this idea I had yesterday?”. Amazingly enough it was this date that led to Will discovering the Waterless Wash - the next day he got cracking on how to code.
FROM CONCEPT TO CLEANING
On June 2017, Wash Doctors officially launched London’s first waterless car wash app - with Will as all-round CEO, coder, secretary and washer, later joined by his childhood best friend and Co-Founder, Christian. Whilst still working in the City, Christian and some other friends helped Will in the early months; spending summer evenings strategy planning and weekends washing cars, until September when Christian jumped ship to join Will building Wash Doctors.
With the support of a business partner, the wheels began to turn much faster. Will could focus on the funding and technology with our development team, whilst Christian now spearheads the daily delivery and operations. Their mission is to deliver quality car washing to every door, whilst using only eco-friendly products to reduce unnecessary water wastage.
After launching, the biggest challenge became clear; how can a startup marry tech expectations with complex logistics as it scales. Just a year in, we’ve got 10 Wash Doctors on the road, offering three services, across three boroughs, through the touch of a redesigned app. Our customers now have full visibility of their booking progress, and our growing team are working hard to develop new features, such as integrating advanced bookings into the app. We're striving to always improve, but nevertheless, proud of the milestones we’ve achieved so far.
This couldn’t have been possible without the immense support of our members, some of who have now invested at our seed round. With this funding we’ll be able to create a new-era of car care.
CARE STARTS WITH THE COMMUNITY
Wash Doctors is growing to align with Will and Christian’s broader personal objective; to build more than just a car wash. Not only does the waterless wash enable Wash Doctors to be mobile, but it provides our users with the opportunity to care for their local and global communities.
Traditionally, the car washing industry has a reputation for unregulated labour conditions and we’re working hard to shake this on its head. One of Will and Christian's main motivators and the most rewarding thing about Wash Doctors is its ability to create opportunity for people to grow and develop in every area of the business. This is baked into our ethos, especially with our Washers.
We try our best to hire passionate individuals who believe in what we are doing, and in return we endeavour to build a business that enables them to grow with us, whether that be to progress from a washer, to Borough Leader or get involved with business development and sales.
At the time of writing this we have hired 10 local washers, earning 80% of every wash, and saved over 700,000 litres of water in Wandsworth. But we’re not stopping there; the Wash Doctors team is fundraising to improve global access to clean water by running the Richmond Half Marathon this summer. Renowned for shaking up the charity sector with their transparent approach to donations, we also pledge £7,500 made reviving our most loyal water-savvy customers cars to charity: water projects in 2019.
We don’t want to give away too many secrets... but we’ve got exciting new features coming, so #washthisspace for our latest updates!
Are you an avid water warrior, a keen investor, or just a fan of our services? Why not book a mobile car wash today, learn more about our water project, or contact Will about investment opportunities.