ADN SPRING 2022 WEB

60
Years of
Excellence
William Phillips,
founder of P&S
Sales, stands
next to the iconic
original delivery
van. Yes, he
made deliveries
in that outfit!
by Prentice St. Clair
Prentice St. Clair, CD-SV, RIT is the President of Detail in Progress, Inc., a San Diego based automotive reconditioning training and consulting firm. He is a Founder’s Club and Hall of Fame
member of the International Detailing Association. He can be reached at 619-701-1100 and prentice@detailinprogress.com.
(This information first appeared in the April,
2022 issue of Auto Detailing News.)
As a young man, William (Bill) Phillips’
first business endeavor was a body, upholstery,
and detail shop, which acted as a
one-stop-shop for automotive dealerships.
Early in that career, Bill saw an opportunity
to sell the products he used in his shop
to similar operations. He liked the idea of
selling consumables instead of service, and
he believed that doing so would better fit
his lifestyle and provide more growth opportunities
for more people.
Thus, in 1961, Bill established P&S
Sales with partner Art Stuber, and additional
partners Floyd Biava and Walter
Rosen. The first production and warehouse
facility was all of 10,000 square
feet and located in the “South of Market”
neighborhood of San Francisco,
California. P&S produced cleaners,
compounds, polishes, and glazes for the
auto body and detail industry.
The very first product was Formula
61, a general-purpose cleaner that was
madly popular for many years. From the
beginning, the P&S team looked for ways
to make things easier. The perfect early
example was Hi Tone Glaze, a liquid wax
that was designed as a substitute for paste
wax, which was the difficult-to-use standard
at the time.
In the early years, Bill, Art, and Walter
worked sales routes around the San Francisco
Bay Area. (Floyd was in charge of
production.) Bill’s route included the City,
the east side of the bay (“East Bay”), and
the Central Valley area of California. In
1968, Bill brought on the first independent
distributor, Henry Chin, who had been a
direct competitor in Hayward, California.
Henry took over East Bay and built a highly
successful distributorship, which he passed
down to his son. (The much-liked Steven
Chin still runs the distributorship today,
and it recently moved into P&S Headquarters
to become the “factory store”.)
In 1970, Floyd Biava expressed the
desire to separate from the company and
start his own chemical compounding business.
At the time, it made sense for P&S to
then simply buy its chemicals from Floyd’s
company, and for the next 20 years or so,
the focus for Bill was building the distributor
network and responding to customers’
feedback for new and better products. In
the mid-1970s, Bill bought out Walter and
Art, and they became independent distributors
for P&S. Art passed away in 1985,
and Walter in the mid-1990s.
The original P&S Sales building.
Look closely and you can see a
sales counter inside the open door.
P&S Sales 1980s fleet of branded vans.
4 | AUTO DETAILING NEWS | VOL. 7, NO. 5 • SPRING 2022