Think of it — all those MBA students at Pepperdine spending serious money to study business models in order to find out how to start a successful business.
All they would have to do to learn how to be successful in business is to trek down the hill to the Malibu Country Mart shopping center and observe Justin Silvers in action.
Silvers, 27, started his car washing and waxing business nine years ago with a pile of rags, a mere $250 in cash, and a free work area roped off on the tarmac of a Texaco station on Pacific Coast Highway.
“I lived in the Valley,” recalls Silvers, “and although there were car enthusiasts there, it was nothing like in Malibu, where there are people who really like their cars and like to take proper care of them.”
For the first several years, Silvers rose at dawn to commute over the hill to start taking in cars to wash as the sun rose in Malibu. In ’95 he moved here.
Now he supervises a crew of 12 at his Malibu Car Wash & Detail business in the Civic Center Road area.
“There was another detail operation over where I am now,” said Silvers. “When they left, I just moved in.”
He built his own tiny office, which, albeit smaller than some people’s walk-in closets, boasts a car lover’s ambiance — as exemplified by a Rolls Royce radiator grille and an artist’s sculpture of a pre-war Alfa Romeo race car on the wall. He also has a print depicting a 427 Cobra by Harold Cleworth, personally signed by Cobra creator Carroll Shelby.
A “detail” is the automotive equivalent of the soldier’s spit-shine on his boots, where you take an ordinary car and, by careful application of chemicals, transform it into a pristine beauty. It’s not something one has done every day, just when it’s important to make a grand entrance.
Silvers’ success is all the more remarkable because he never went to college after graduating from Taft High School in the Valley. The Pepperdine MBA students could use him as a model of self-taught, learn-as-you-go, hands-on management.
His crew are all experienced workers, older than himself.
“I can’t hire kids to do what we do here,” he laments. “I can’t have them practicing on someone’s $100,000 car.”
His part-time accountant is proud of Silvers’ ability to learn.
“When I came here he told me, ‘I can’t use a computer,’ ” she said. “Now you see he’s got a Sony laptop on his desk and he’s running his whole business with it.”
Silvers said, while it is true he didn’t go to college, there might be something to the idea that business can run in the blood as his father was a garment industry manufacturer.
He tends to be conservative in what he does with his money — investing in mutual funds instead of individual stocks, for instance.
But being a young bachelor, he does have a couple of toys. A “hobby car” — a 1955 Chevy sedan built before he was born — sits nearby. And a few feet beyond that is his 28-foot Scarab, a speedboat that can hit 50 knots on the same ocean that he is only able to catch occasional glimpses of during workdays.
With an almost perfect climate, it might seem to some that cars in Malibu don’t need much cleaning. Not so.
“Those within a mile or two of the beach, who park their cars outside, have salt water deposited on their cars every night,” he said. “Salt water is mighty corrosive stuff.”
The parade of brands he and his workers toil on daily require the utmost of attention — Bentley, Mercedes, Porsche, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, BMW, with an occasional Toyota or Saturn.
Knowing how busy Malibuites are, Silvers arranges for pick-up of cars or, if the job is going to take several hours, he has the customers driven back to their homes until their car is done.
An especially big demand comes during the rainy season when the trek of Malibuites to Santa Monica is on a highway awash with mud. “We charge extra for getting the mud off,” said Silvers.
His location is so unobtrusive that many visitors to the Country Mart have never noticed his emporium at the West end of the upper parking lot. There’s no sign on the building.
“I don’t need a sign,” he said. “My business comes from word of mouth. It’s a great location except that I can’t expand beyond my present size.”
But he likes the fact that, because it is in a shopping center, his location gives his customers something to do while their car is being worked on.
What prevents competition from setting up is there does not exist a system for proper drainage of soap-laden water, as there is no sewer system in Malibu. Silvers’ business does have a workable process, with the water going into a holding tank, which is emptied by a truck and taken to a processing center for cleansing.
One of his customers, Mike Kappas, a Malibu-based computer consultant, says: “I bring him my pickup covered with dirt, my Mercedes, whatever, and he handles it well. He is a car fanatic and a perfectionist. That is the reason that it’s so enjoyable to go to him.”
Another customer, actor Brian Bosworth, brings Silvers everything from his Mercedes to his motorcycle and says: “I’ve been his customer for nine years. I can always rely on him. He doesn’t promise he can get done what can’t be done. He believes that a car is an extension of who you are.”