There is no secret to doing business well. Good fuel and good service make a gas station thrive; high-quality machines and good service give a car wash machine its market.
I recall passing through Beijing on a business trip a few days ago, when a local friend took me to Longrenju, a well-known local restaurant famous for its boiled fish (shuizhu yu) in Sichuan style. He said the taste was excellent and well worth trying.
It certainly was. By a little after 5 p.m., people were already queuing outside. When the boiled fish arrived, the whole room filled with its aroma — nothing like the stale, rancid smell of the recycled-oil boiled fish I remembered. And the place was packed; while we ate and talked, the tables around us turned over fast.
I asked a server, and she told me they use their cooking oil only once, and the Sichuan pepper and chillies are bought in Sichuan itself. Customers can even take the oil home to cook with, and take the pepper and chillies home too.
That is how they guarantee quality. The prices are a little high, but customers are happy to pay. When my friend and I left at seven, there was still a long queue outside.
It reminded me of the gas stations whose business is always booming — open the doors and there is more work than they can handle. Most likely they put the same effort into the quality of their fuel and their service.
Many of the busy stations do not sell fuel much cheaper than anyone else, but their service is thorough and well done. Drivers say their cars run better and the mileage is honest, so they keep coming back to fuel up.
These stations start washing at six in the morning and keep going until ten at night, trying to give drivers more and more convenient wash hours. That is very different from some large oil-company stations, where washing is only allowed at certain hours and not at others — as I have observed.
Profits in the gas-station industry are gradually falling, and competition is getting fiercer. The only thing that can raise competitiveness is control over fuel quality and better service.
It is the same for the automatic car wash machine industry that supplies stations. The manufacturers that do well put their effort into product quality and invest more in after-sales service. The reason they do well is that their managers take the long view — and stick with it.
There is no shortcut to a good car wash machine. It comes down to a consistent, serious attitude to work, strict requirements for parts and workmanship, listening carefully to customer feedback, and doing good after-sales service.
When a company is willing to invest in its products, in its people and in its customers, it will get high-quality products, loyal employees and customers who trust it.
In any industry, there is no shortcut to doing well.
The biggest secret to a thriving business is that there is no secret at all.