Hangin' at the Wash

Yesterday afternoon, I spent some time with old friend Rob Burke (former COO of K2 Design) at his car wash in Wayne, NJ. For the past nine months, Rob and his partner Rob Kaplan have been running a car wash and quick lube after buying the business from its former owner and renovating the heck out of it. Rob and Rob have made a ton of improvements, many of them geared toward environmental responsibility and efficiency. For instance, they've put an array of 58 solar panels on the roof, which have provided around 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity for the facility (and it's tied back into the power grid). They've also invested a ton of money in a system that reclaims waste water, as well as a sewer hookup. They also have two furnaces that burn the waste oil from oil changes to provide heat energy.

You might figure "What's really interesting about a car wash?" Well, there's quite a bit, actually. In walking around the grounds with Rob, listening to him passionately describe the improvements he's made, it became obvious that there were a million interesting stories (some little, some big) about the car wash, environmentally friendly business, running a small business in general, etc. To help tell those stories, Rob now has a fresh copy of Wordpress running on his domain - WayneAutoSpa.com.

Dan Arabia from Novocent Partners (the agency my cousin Al Crisafulli co-owns) came out to shoot some photos of the renovated site and offer some additional marketing advice. Dan will be designing a Wordpress theme for Wayne Auto Spa in the coming days. Underscore (well, me anyway) and Novocent will be lending a bit of support to Rob with his marketing efforts.

I ended the day at the car wash by walking Rob through the Wordpress dashboard and interface. He was very enthusiastic and had that passionate look in his eye that seems to come with an introduction to blogging and direct conversation with his customers.

Even if you never intend to go to Wayne, NJ, much less get your car washed there, drop by Rob's blog if you have the time. As he's just entered the blogosphere, it would be cool if you could drop him a line with some words of encouragement.