2020_ADN_V5_No3_web

We’re off to see…
RICARDO MARTINEZ
of Buenos Aires, Argentina
What is your name and
business name?
My name is Ricardo Martinez I´m 47,
and my shop´s called “JMP Valeting
Detailing”, JMP are the initials of my
kid’s names: Juan Manuel (19 years old)
and Paula (10 years old).
How long have you been in
the detailing business?
I went full time in May 2009, so it’s been
eleven years now. Eleven exciting years!
What was your background
before the auto detailing
business?
My parents owned a Gas Station since
the end of the 60s, and that was our
family business, it was a medium-sized
facility with an oil change service, a
convenience store and car wash. It was
mainly intended for trucks as the gas
station is located close to an important
National Road about 25 miles south of
Buenos Aires (Argentina´s capital city).
I also would like to mention that I got
a degree in marketing from a university
and got a degree in English Teaching for
primary and high school. I never worked
as a teacher though, and preferred to
work with customer service for several
American companies such as At&t,
Western Union and Microsoft… those
years of customer care experience ended
up being very useful when building up a
clientbase for my detail shop.
Do you have a fixed
location or are
you a mobile detailer?
Luckily, I can say both. I kept my old gas
station facility to provide a car wash and
detailing services to my small town neighborhood,
which was my first customer
base. About March 2018 we expanded
to Buenos Aires to deliver retail detailing
services in the northern Buenos Aires
area. We opened a shop with a partner
in a very fluent and wealthy neighborhood
with good business performance,
but costs increased and I decided to
turn to corporate
customers. This
ended up providing
a constant workflow
and I saved rental
expenses by working
onsite at their facilities.
By October 2018 we started
to take new car dealers’ work, we
call them “official dealers” as they are
manufacturer distributors. We have
official Toyota, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda,
Chrysler-Fiat, Peugeot and Citroen
dealers. Now, with these dealerships we
work for them in their facility as well, or
they assign a determined place for us to
detail their units. This is convenient in
two ways: It means low overhead for us
and is safer as new units never leave the
dealer´s building. I have a partner in this
venture (Engineer Sergey Smirnov), who
works in window tinting and has been
providing this service to many important
official dealerships since 2003, and has a
good reputation within the main dealers
in Buenos Aires.
I also started to make a business
connection with a very important collision-repair
shop that specializes in making
vehicles bulletproof in Buenos Aires.
Bulletproof vehicles are becoming more
and more demanded, and this Covid-19
pandemic has increased a need for security
for wealthy people. Most of the work is
performed on high-end vehicles, and, again
in this case, detailing comes as a part of the
process of making vehicles bulletproof at
the very end of the production line. Then
it’s the quality assurance check and the
car/truck is delivered to the customer. The
whole process may take a month.
continued ...
We’re off to see…
BANDAR ALAMER
of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
What is the name
of your operation
and where is your
operation located?
We are agents of the
American DETAIL PLUS
company and we are headquartered
in in Jeddah. We
have branches in Riyadh,
Al-Khobar, Tabuk, Jizan, Yanbu,
KhamisMushait, and Abha.
When did your
business open?
We started in 2002
Why did you choose
this line of work?
I have chosen this business because of
my love and passion for sport and luxury
cars which started during my childhood.
I used to buy weekly magazines related
to cars when I was 12 years old. My love
and passion for car news made me admire
this activity since the opening of the first
branch of the company even before I was
an agent of it. I was 18 years old then. I
decided to get into the trading world once
I graduated from university and I chose
the car polishing activity as a hobby.
Eventually, I obtained the company’s
franchise in the first branch that I
launched in Jeddah for nearly 10 years
before obtaining the agency at the level
in Saudi Arabia. After that, I got the
agency for the whole Gulf.
continued ...
VOL. 5, NO.3 • FALL 2020 | AUTO DETAILING NEWS | 27