International Carwash Association has released the latest edition of its car wash equipment sales report, tabulating sales made by the North American-based manufacturers of car wash systems. The report contains data from the period 2007 through 2011 and is released in the quarter following the end of each calendar year. All ICA member manufacturers are eligible to participate and 13 have since the program’s inception (see sidebar on the next page).
About the Data and Process
The report is organized by market and equipment type. Markets include the United States, Canada and “Global,” which includes all sales outside of the U.S. and Canada. Equipment types are conveyor, in-bay and self-serve, with additional subcategories for the in-bay segment. All sales are reported in U.S. dollars, and are reported “net” to the manufacturer (i.e. not including distribution margin). Participating companies submit their data to a third party, along with their estimations of non-participating company sales. The data is only reported in aggregated form, protecting the confidentiality of the participants. Participants are provided the added benefit of seeing multiple reporting periods per year and seeing the individual estimations of non-participants sales. This gives each participating company a chance to learn from their peers and exchange market intelligence, while at the same time ensuring that competition and anti-trust regulations are observed through the involvement of International Carwash Association’s general counsel and governing participation agreements.
Highlights and Trends in 2011
The most welcomed data within the report was the increase in total sales (all markets and all equipment types), the first time this has happened since the program’s start in 2007. The 2011 total sales were 8.2 percent higher than 2010, or an increase of nearly $17 million U.S. dollars. This figure is still off 31.1 percent from what is believed to be the industry’s high-water mark in 2007 of more than $325 million in sales. Also interesting to note was that every equipment category grew from 2010 to 2011, except for the touch-free in-bay segment. In fact, 2011 was the first year that total friction sales surpassed total touch-free sales in the in-bay category. The shift has been fairly dramatic: in 2007, total touch-free sales were more than double friction sales. The in-bay segment is down the furthest since 2007, with a 40.1 percent decline versus a 21.7 percent decline for conveyors and a slight increase in the self-service category. When looking at the individual markets over time, it is interesting to note that sales to Canada have doubled as a percentage of total sales from 2007 to 2011 (from 6 percent to 12 percent) while Global sales have remained relatively stable in the range of 7 percent to 9 percent of total sales each year.
Implications
As with any research, car wash professionals should be cautious in drawing too many conclusions from this data. Because the report includes estimations and participants that change over time, it is perhaps most appropriate to look at the information as a directional indicator of trends as opposed to a quantitative study. But, even with that caveat, this report does represent the best information available about the state of the car wash manufacturing segment, a traditional bellwether of the industry. Most car wash professionals, regardless of segment, are hopeful that we have passed the “bottom of the curve” and that sales are now slowly recovering. This 2011 data, along with other majority economic indicators, would seem to support that belief. The industry has a long way to go to return to its equipment sales peak, but perhaps the industry is stronger in many respects than it was in 2007 — leaner and more focused than ever before.
